I haven't blogged in like 4 days! Haha I've been so busy.  This week was good, and very busy.  I like all of my classes.  It's a lot different here because there are some exams in my classes, but mostly papers.  I'm used to just exams with my business major.  My italian class is awesome, instead of just learning vocabulary like most level 1 language courses, we've been really immersed into it right away.  He's been teaching us all the terms we should know as we learn to get around Florence.  I've been trying to use as much as I can when I'm ordering food, and in stores.  Yesterday, two people came up to me in the stores and spoke Italian so I was excited that maybe I kind of look like I fit in.

My other classes are good too.  My identity and culture class is a sociology class where we compare Italian and American cultures, so it's interesting and fun.  I'm also taking Family Business in Italy, and we actually already took a field trip to the Gucci Museum (who knew they had a museum?!).  It was very classy and obviously all of the handbags and luggage were all very elegant.  It's kind of crazy to me that they actually have a museum of Gucci.  It was cool though because Gucci started out as a family business.  My last class is called story of the city, and I have it twice for 90 minutes each on wednesday.  The first class is learning about the history of the city, which is interesting.  I also feel somewhat stupid because I haven't taken a history class since high school! The second class of the day is used to for field trips around the city.  It seems like it's going to be really cool and hopefully I will learn a lot.

We climbed up duomo which is the dome part of the cathedral today.  Earlier this week we climbed the bell tower that is right next to the duomo.  The bell tower was 414 stairs, and the views were really awesome.  The dome allows you to be a little bit higher up.  The dome is cool because when you climb it, you walk right under the ceiling paintings to you're able to see them close up.  They had some weird creepy paintings on the top of the cathedral, but it just blows my mind how they even got up there to paint it, let alone paint it really well.  The dome was 463 stairs and definitely tiring, but so worth it.  The bell tower and the dome have the tiniest stairways that you have to go up and down on the same one, but it's very old and fascinating.  At the top of the dome, we met some people who are in a home-stay program, meaning they have a host family and they are staying there while going to school at their program.  They were really nice and they told us they were going to a soccer game on Sunday, which now we are thinking about probably doing! They were really cool and we might even hang out with them later.  Because they are living with host families, they know a lot more of the local places to go.

After we went to the duomo, we found the best gelato we've had yet.  I got dark chocolate and crema la grom.  Crema la grom was chocolate and cookies and pure deliciousness.  I got it in a cone and it was only 2.50 Euros.  We will definitely be going back there.  Speaking of delicious food, there's a restaurant right below us and I finally grabbed some take out there for dinner last night.  I got lasagna and potatoes for only 5 Euros and it lasted me two meals.  It was really great lasagna.  I feel like now that I know how good and cheap this place is that I won't be cooking as much.  The restaurants are weird here because they open at 7PM for dinner and I'm usually hungry before that so it's sometimes frustrating.

It's really awesome being done classes by 10:30 AM on thursday, because it leaves us so much time to do other activities and explore more of Florence!

Upcoming Plans:

This weekend (Jan 18-20): Check out some more museums.  The kids we met told us how they are going to try and stay in Florence for the first month and do limited traveling because the museums become very crowded in February with tourists.  I'm really glad they told us that because now we will try and do as many museums as possible!  We were also considering a trip to Pisa for a day this weekend, but we haven't planned anything yet.  We definitely are also trying to go to the soccer game on sunday!

Next weekend (Jan 25-27): Friday, we have a free school trip to Chianti which is more out in the countryside.  We get to do wine tasting and it should be a good time.  Saturday, we are doing another school trip to Siena and San Gimignano which will be cool.  It's nice to have already organized trips.

The weekend after (Feb 1-3): The school's opera trip got moved to the 1st and was originally full, but now that they changed the date, people already had other plans. The opera was originally 75 Euros, but now is only 10! They had spots so we signed up to do that on February 1st.  The 2nd is the Venice Carnivale and that should also be really fun.

I'm loving Firenze! I just don't know when I'm going to have time to do work!