Bonjour! 

I spent this past weekend in Paris! It was awesome, I really enjoyed it. This past week before Paris was pretty uneventful, I was just catching up on sleep from my Interlaken trip.  I volunteered officially for the first time with the elementary school.  It was fun to meet all the kids, and the ones that I worked with were very advanced english speakers.  One little girl even gave me a postcard that she had gotten from a museum.  It felt great to volunteer.  Also last week, my field trip was to a church called San Miniato and it's up on the hills with a beautiful view of Florence.  The church was from the medieval times and it was very dark and almost creepy.  There weren't many windows, and the church was split-level, which is very unordinary for churches.  It was a cool field trip, I really like that class.

My weekend was so awesome!! I traveled with my friends this weekend, and my roommates did a mix of staying home, and some went to London.  I was excited to travel with a different group! There were seven of us but we accomplished so much in just two and a half days and it worked out that we all pretty much wanted to do the same things.  Our flight to Paris was at 7:20 AM, so we were pretty exhausted all weekend after not getting much sleep before the weekend either.  

We got to Paris at 9:20 AM on Friday and took a shuttle to our hotel to check in and meet up with the other girls who had come in on Thursday night.  After meeting up, we started planning out our day. First we went to grab some breakfast.  We each got a pastry and split a baguette.  The bread is AMAZING in Paris, I don't understand why Italy's bread sucks.  Also, the pastries were all so good no matter what you ordered. The metro was just about 20 feet away from our hotel, right across the street.  We figured out the metro pretty quickly.  The metro is so efficient and convenient, I'm surprised it isn't like this in the U.S. After we planned out our route, we decided to go to the Louvre first.  We saw the Mona Lisa, which in my opinion wasn't all that impressive.  There was a really cool egyptian exhibit in the Louvre which was my favorite part there.  There was a real live mummy! The Louvre was unbelievable huge.  I couldn't believe how long it stretched around.  After the Louvre, we headed to the Orsay Museum and it was also cool.  I liked the Louvre better but Orsay was cool.  Orsay was mostly paintings and sculptures.  We saw a lot of Van Gogh, which was a lot cooler in paintings than in books when we just learned about them.  I definitely have a lot more respect for the artists we've learned about now that I can see the real paintings.  We also saw Monet, and Degas.  After the Orsay, we headed to Notre Dame!!! It was a really pretty church.  On the way there, we saw love-lock bridge and there were so many locks on there, it was adorable.  We got to Notre Dame, and when we went in, mass was going on.  It was actually pretty cool, but there must be pretty annoying for the people actually trying to listen with all those tourists around.  After Notre Dame, we tried to head to a fondue place but it was way too busy, so we just grabbed dinner somewhere else.  The meals in France were so cheap, they were 15 Euros for a 3 course meal with an appetizer, entree, and dessert.  It was nice because we don't have that in Florence.  After dinner, we walked around a bit and saw the Moulin Rouge area.  We were so exhausted we just went home and went to bed because we were getting up early the next day.

On Saturday, we woke up early to go to Versailles! It took us so long to get there because Versailles is on the outside of the city.  We thought we knew how to get there but we had to switch so many trains because they kept ending.  Finally, we realized that the one train we needed wasn't going to Versailles that day and we had to take another that would take us in walking distance. It was probably a good hour or so of travel time, but it was completely worth it.  Versailles was my favorite part.  I loved seeing the palace.  The palace was where Louis the 14th, 15th, and 16th stayed, as well as Marie Antoinette, and another Marie.  I loved all the rooms.  They were incredibly gaudy and overwhelming, but it was awesome to picture living back in that time.  Even the dauphin's apartments were nice.  We thought we were done looking around until we walked outside and realized the gardens extended very far, and there was Marie Antoinette's estate down there.  My friend and I walked down there and wanted to see the estate.  Unfortunately, we had gotten separated from our friends earlier and they had our tickets, so we had to pay just to see the estate.  The estate was much more home-y and quaint than the palace, but it was still very nice.  The one funny thing is how small their beds were, because they were much shorter back then.  After Versailles, we headed to grab some lunch.  We all got grilled cheeses and fries.  Their fries are pretty good -- I mean they are FRENCH fries after all.  The grilled cheeses were cool because they put cheese in the middle AND on top, and I love cheese.  After that we headed to the Eiffel Tower!!! Honestly, the Eiffel Tower is cool but it's brown and somewhat ugly.  It's really pretty when it's lit up at night though.  Apparently the guy who built it ate lunch everyday under the tower because that's the only place he couldn't see it.  We waited in line and we were planning on taking an elevator to the top.  Me and my friend Abby were freaking out because we don't like heights that much.  The top ended up getting closed while we were in line so we could only go to the second floor which is about halfway up.  That was a little easier to handle than going all the way to the top.  We still got great views, and it was cool.  After the Tour Eiffel, we went to see the Arc de Triumph.  It was big, and to get to it you have to walk down stairs underground and then back up, since the intersection is so crazy. Under the Arc de Triumph, they had their tomb of the unknown soldier, which was very pretty.  They don't have a guard that watches it like the U.S. though.  We then headed to another great dinner, where they gave us free white wine with raspberry.  It was delicious.  After that, we headed home and slept.  

Sunday morning, we just took our time getting to the airport.  When we got there, our one friend found out that for some reason she was on the later flight.  I think Expedia messed it up.  The flight home was okay, we hit a lot of turbulence which really freaked me out.  I was glad to be home after a busy two weeks of travel.

Paris was awesome, but I'm so glad I'm studying in Florence.  Paris is way too big of a city for me, and even though the metro was convenient, it still took a good amount of time to get places, and you can't really walk anywhere.  The metro is quick, but you have to switch trains a lot to get specifically where you want.  I always like having the option to walk places.  The other thing about Florence, is that I feel a lot safer here.  In Paris, there were a few sketchy incidents that occurred.  My one friend was getting money out of an ATM machine and there were some young, about 13 years old, boys near by.  I thought it was kindof weird that the boys were so close, but then I felt bad for judging them so I just ignored it.  Apparently, when my friend got to the screen where you pick the amount you would like to withdrawal, the boys covered the screen with a paper, pressed the maximum amount button, and were trying to grab her money before she could.  Luckily, a french man from across the street ran over and yelled and them, and they ran away.  My friend got out 250 more Euros than she planned but at least she was holding them and not the boys.  There was another incident where we were getting off the metro and some man was getting on and all of a sudden, four policemen ran and pulled the man off the metro.  That was scary because we hadn't even seen policemen or security on the metro until then.  And then in the airport on the way home, there was almost two women fighting.  Some cashier came out from behind the counter and pushed the customer and I thought for sure there would be a fight. It was quite an interesting weekend.  

This week I've just been relaxing and getting ready for midterms next week. Next week, I'm supposed to start playing soccer, which I'm very excited about, but I have 4 midterms next week and I'm supposed to play in 4 soccer games.  I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to go to them, so we'll see how my studying goes.  I have a lot of studying to do.  Most of my midterms are essays, which makes me a little nervous seeing as I haven't had essay exams probably since high school. I have a lot of studying to do!! 

Cannot believe my family will be here in 8 days!!!!! And Matthew will be here in 2 weeks!!!  I am so excited to show them around Florence and I'm also excited to see Rome!!

Ciao ragazzi,

Katie

Ciao ragazzi!

It's been an awesome week and an even better weekend.  Last week was good.  I had two quizzes that I did well on, and I played in a practice soccer game.  I think we start the real games against other schools next week.  It was so great to play again.  I also went to the elementary school that I will be volunteering at.  It was a really nice school and I was surprised at how early they start teaching english.  These little 6 year olds were already learning english phrases.  I'm excited to start volunteering this week, it will be very fun.  I went to Interlaken this past weekend, and it was possibly the most beautiful place I've ever been.  Florence is a very pretty city but Interlaken is this beautiful snowy place with amazing mountains.  It's so serene and amazing.

We left for Interlaken on thursday at 8 PM and didn't get there until 4 AM.  I woke up as we were on the side of the mountain in the snow and driving so slowly up the hill.  It was probably the most terrifying ride I have ever been on but we made it! When you enter Switzerland, it's just tons of mountains so there was a lot of tiny roads up and down the mountains.  I was just glad that I didn't have to drive on those roads.  We got to our hostel and immediately slept for about 2 hours.  The hostel was so nice, super clean, and they were very helpful.  I feel like I was a little spoiled for my first hostel experience.  We all got to stay in the same room so that was nice.  We went with a company called Bus2Alps and they were so helpful and nice compared to the last company we booked a trip with.  After we slept, we got up to have breakfast and get going to start skiing!! My friend Colleen and I had booked a full beginner's day and we were really excited.  We got there and found out that we couldn't have a lesson because not enough people had signed up.  So our choices were to pay more and have a private lesson, or to just do a half day skiing and have our lesson in the afternoon.  We decided to do that and it was so perfect.  The lesson was sweet, our instructor was really friendly, and the mountains were beautiful.  I was so glad I took the opportunity to ski.  I wore so many layers that I was actually so hot on the mountain, and I never once was cold.  We went down the bunny hill the whole time, with little kids flying past me, but I didn't care, I had a blast.  After we got home, we went out with a big group to grab dinner.  All food in Switzerland is crazy expensive.  It was hard to find a meal that was under 15 swiss francs (swiss francs are basically the same amount as dollars).  We all went out and had swiss cheese fondue for dinner.  It was very filling, but I wish we had gotten chocolate fondue instead! We were all so exhausted Friday night that we went to bed early.

On Saturday, me and some of my friends went to Zurich.  It was so cool! Zurich is a really pretty city and it was only about a two hour drive away from Interlaken.  It's pretty small but it reminded me a little of Boston.  It was very clean and people friendly.  It was snowing and it was so beautiful.  First, everyone made a stop at Starbucks, since there are none in Florence.  It was nice seeing some familiar American stores there.  We walked around the city, saw a beautiful church, and then we got to climb the Grossmunster church and see the views of the city from the top.  It was awesome, and Lake Zurich is beautiful.  We got lunch and shopped.  For lunch, we all got rostis.  A rosti is Swiss food, and it's basically a hashbrown with toppings.  Mine was the rosti on bottom, then cheese, bacon, and egg on top.  It was delicious; it pretty much just tasted like breakfast.  After we got back to Interlaken, we grabbed dinner and then spent the night with all of our friends at the other hostel's bar.  It was a great time, and so fun because we knew so many people from our program on the trip this weekend.

On Sunday, we walked to the beautiful lake in Interlaken.  It was about a 20 minute walk and we got to see a lot of the local houses.  They all look like little toy cabins, they are so cute.  The lake was so clear and blue, it was like we were in the caribbean.  I was in awe of how beautiful this place is and I hope to go back someday and bring my friends and family.  After, I bought lots of chocolate, and it was unbelievably delicious.  Chocolate, unfortunately, is also very expensive.  We grabbed some burgers for lunch - which were weird and tasted more like sausage - and then got on the bus home! We were all exhausted by that point.

I feel like this trip was probably different that the others I will be doing.  Most of seeing other places is just walking around and going to museums and such.  But this trip, we got to do really fun activities while seeing the country.  They had a ton of stuff you could do: skiing, snowboarding, paragliding, skydiving, night sledding, etc.  It was very expensive but 100% worth it.  It was also really awesome, because in Switzerland they speak Swiss-German, so I could read and understand things! It was a nice change from being in Florence where I can only understand a little.

There's a chocolate festival going on in Florence this week, literally 2 minutes from my apartment.  We signed up early and tonight we get to go to a free wine and chocolate tasting! I'm really excited :)  Other than that, this week is pretty relaxed since I will be getting ready to go to Paris friday morning! We still need to figure out everything we want to see but it will be fun regardless.  I want to definitely see the eiffel tower and the louvre.  I'd also like to see Versailles because I've heard it's beautiful.  I'm so excited!

Upcoming Plans:

This weekend (Feb 15-17): PARIS! I am so excited!

Next weekend (Feb 22-24): The weekend before midterms, so I will probably be studying and just relaxing after all of my traveling!

THEN IT'S SPRING BREAK!!!!

I miss you all! Ciaoooooo,
Katie

Buongiorno,

It's been another great week and also a busy one.  I should really try to blog more in between so I don't have to type out these huge blogs, but I always forget.  My week was good, my classes are starting to get more serious and I have an italian test next week which I'm pretty nervous about since we learned so much in just a few weeks.  I'm going to have a busy upcoming week.  I officially signed up for soccer and we have our first practice game this wednesday.  I also have signed up to volunteer helping at an elementary school and we meet with the principal on Wednesday. It should only be a few hours a week so I'm looking forward to it.  This past week I officially booked my flight to Barcelona! I should be booking my hostel soon.  My friend Colleen and I are going March 14-17.

This week was fun! Tuesday my friends and I went out to Tijuana, which is a mexican place. They're pretty rare here in Italy but it was so awesome.  We got nachos, toastadas, and margaritas.  Tacos is my favorite meal so I was really happy.  We will definitely be going back.  Also on Tuesday, we went to the Uffizi Museum, which was cool.  There were a ton of busts and paintings. On Wednesday, my story of the city class went on a really cool historic tour of the city.  We saw exactly where the city of Florence was during the Roman Empire. It is so small to what the city is now.  We saw the rounded walls of where the coliseum once stood, which is now houses. We saw where the center of town used to be.  We were able to see the 1966 flood marks on the buildings, and they were way over one story high.  I really enjoy that class.  On thursday, we tried to go to Cappelle di Medici, which is the Medici's tombs, but it was closed. We ended up just walking around and shopping.

On Friday, we just hung out around during the day.  We went to the diner and it was awesome. It's an American diner so they had pancakes and breakfast sandwiches and burgers.  I got chocolate chip pancakes and I was so happy.  Later around 6:30, we got all dressed up and went out to the restaurant literally across the street.  It was really nice and delicious.  We had a really great dinner.  I got spicy spaghetti and it was way spicier than I imagined it.  We then went to the opera around 8!!! It was so fun to get dressed up and go out to something so formal.  The only problem was that we all bought new heels and they were very cute, but it was awful walking in them on cobblestones.  The opera was good, the singers were so talented.  It was just hard to pay attention to a 4 and a half hour opera when it's all in Italian.  They had the subtitles projected on top of the stage, so I could look at it and identify about one word in each line, but that wasn't very helpful.  The opera was called Don Giovani, and I looked at the wikipedia summary during intermission to get to know more about the storyline.  It was truly exhausting and we came back and immediately went to sleep.

On Saturday, we went to Venice.  I was so excited to see Venice.  We booked our transportation with this one company since it was cheaper than doing it on our own.  It took about three hours to get there and when we got there the group leaders weren't very helpful.  We took a water taxi to San Marco, which was where carnivale was happening.  Although, mostly everything was cancelled since it rained the entire day, was freezing, and incredibly windy.  We all knew it was going to be miserable so we decided to make the best out of it. When we got there we got lunch with a big group of us, which was fun.  We warmed up and then shopped around for a while, and it was cool because they have so much Murano glass there.  Murano is another island and it's famous for the glass making there.  We then went in and got "dinner" somewhere.  And by dinner, I just mean we got bruschetta and I got hot chocolate, which was literally just melted chocolate.  It was so thick, but it was good.  We were told that the leaders would be back by 7 and they made it sound that whoever got on the first bus would leave first once it filled.  Instead, that didn't happen and we sat on the bus for an hour waiting for everyone to get back.  The ride back took about 4 hours because it rained, and snowed pretty hard.  The bus was blowing air conditioning, so it was freezing, and at some point the ceiling was leaking.  It was not the best trip, and we won't be booking with that company again.

Today, we are going to the diner again! I have a lot of work to do and then we are going to watch the superbowl tonight!  We had to reserve tickets since so many people like to go see it.  It makes sense because there are so many students here.

Upcoming Plans:

This weekend (Feb 7-10): INTERLAKEN! I'm so excited, but I need to figure out if I can rent everything I need there.

Next weekend (Feb 15-17): Paris!!! I can't believe it's so soon.  We need to start looking up the places we want to go!

Feb 22-24:  This is the weekend before midterms!! I will most likely be studying but we were also thinking about taking a day trip to Pisa and/or Lucca.

I can't believe the weekend after my parents will be here!!! I'm so excited! I've started writing out places to take them and everything.  Time is flying by here.

Ciao Ciao Ciaoooo,
Katie

Buonasera,

It's been almost a week since I blogged so I have a lot to catch all of you up on :)

The week was pretty uneventful, just had my classes and some homework to do.  One of my classes was cancelled since we're going to have a longer field trip time in April.  We learned all about Fiesole, which is the countryside right outside of Florence.  We will go there on our field trip. It's supposed to be beautiful and it was one of the Etruscans first colonies back in the ancient times.  I'm really excited to go there; it's supposed to be awesome at sunset.  This week I also signed up for a soccer tournament and we play during the week.  I'm excited to play soccer again, although I didn't bring my cleats with me! I also signed up for volunteer activities.  I signed up for helping out with preschoolers or helping high school students with their english.  Hopefully the schools schedule matches up with mine and I can do one of the activities.  I was debating on buying a gym membership this past week.  It's about 200€ for a semester.  I would love to go to a gym but I just don't think I'll have time to get my money's worth out of it.  I should start running again, but I do walk around a lot.

This Friday, we took a school trip to Chianti.  I wasn't sure what to expect, I knew it was an Italian countryside.  It was so beautiful and quaint.  Our first stop was the Trebbio castle.  We got a tour throughout some of the rooms and the wine cellar.  The tour guide was great, she told us about how the castle originally belonged to the Pazzi family, who competed closely with the Medici family for popularity and wealth.  The Pazzi family decided they wanted to kill the two Medici brothers, and asked the Pope for help.  The Pope agreed and gave the Pazzi family an army.  They succeeded in killing one of the brothers on Easter in a church, but Lorenzo Medici escaped.  He then plotted and succeeded in killing off the whole entire Pazzi family.  The Medici Family took over the Trebbio castle and only left two of the Pazzi family crests on the walls since Davinci had created them.  The castle was huge, about 43 rooms, but we were only allowed to see a few.  There is a family who looks after the castle that lives there now.  After the tour, we had an awesome lunch and wine tasting.  Chianti is famous for their red wine, and vineyards can only call their wine Chianti if it is made in the Chianti area, and only if they use a certain type of grape.  It was interesting to learn that if a wine is older, the droplets will fall slower down the side of the glass after swirling it around, than a new wine would fall. The first two wines were good.  The dessert wine was gross.  It's apparently a tradition to eat biscotti with the dessert wine and dip it into the dessert wine.  I just liked the biscotti on it's own.  We then got to walk around the area and take pictures.  I was incredibly bus sick on the way back so after I got home I had to buy these stabilizing bracelets and medicine for the next day trip!

On Saturday, we went on another school trip to Siena and San Gimignano.  I wasn't bus sick, so that was a plus.  We got to Siena first, and it was a gorgeous day.  It was sunny and warm and perfect for walking around.  In Siena, we went to the cathedral and it was so pretty.  It's a lot smaller than the duomo here in Florence, but it is a little more detailed inside.  Everything was covered in beautiful paintings, or tiles.  It was really cool to see how intricate every picture was.  We were able to see the baptistry also, and climb up to the top of one museum to see all of Siena.  We got lunch in Siena at a great pasta place with a bunch of our friends, and then we were off to San Gimignano.  San Gimignano was a lot smaller of a city than Siena.  It was soooo small but really cute.  It was cool but I don't think there were that many locals walking around, we only saw tourists.  We got to walk around, and see the little church they had there.  They have walls surrounding the city from medieval times, since the walls were a form of protection from attacks.  We could have walked around the city in just an hour or two.  After we saw the church, we climbed up to the fortress and just sat down and enjoyed the sun and the view.  It was nice to relax for a while.

And finally today, was maybe one of my favorite days in Florence so far.  We woke up and wanted to go to the American Diner for pancakes! Italians don't eat any pancakes or waffles for breakfast; they just eat croissants and donuts and pastries.  We got to the diner and it was a long wait, so we decided instead to go to our favorite pizza place - Gustopizza.  We grabbed it to go and ate outside on the stairs of a church because it was so warm out today (I got sunburn...) We were trying to see the boboli gardens at Palazzo Pitti, and they close early so we wanted to eat as quickly as possible.  We finally got to see the gardens after our first two failed visits! I guess third time really is the charm.  The gardens were very pretty, and on a hill so we did a lot of climbing.  We climbed to the top and could see a great view of Florence.  We had no idea the gardens were so huge... we will have to go back another day to see the rest of the gardens we didn't see today.  We ended up even going to another section of the gardens called the bardini gardens.  There we could also see more awesome views of the city.  We will have to go back into the gardens in springtime when all the flowers have bloomed.  When walking around these gardens we heard music and saw all these people, and realized they were on piazzale Michelangelo.  We decided to walk up there, and see more beautiful views of the whole city.  The Piazzale is free and anyone can go and stand up in the big square.  The fake David (Michelangelo's famous statue) is up there, and doesn't even compare to the real one.  There was a lady singing and we ended up grabbing a drink and listening to a free concert for about an hour.  She was singing english songs too! It was so awesome to see the view of the city from there.  Then we went home and now we're just doing some homework and relaxing.  It was a great day.


Upcoming Plans:

This weekend (Feb 1-3): Opera on Friday, Venice Carnivale on Saturday, and possibly Pisa on Sunday!!

Next weekend (Feb 7-10): We have officially booked Interlaken!!! So excited for the Alps!! I'm thinking about ice skating, Zurich day trip, maybe trying skiing, and definitely the chocolate show. :)  I just have to figure out how to rent all the snow gear I'm going to need!

Feb 15-17: Paris!! We officially booked our hostel.  It's a little far away but we can just take the metro in.  It looks nice and it's in our price range!!

Ciao!!! I miss you all!

Buongiorno,

This past weekend was really fun!!! We didn't travel this weekend, we just ended up staying in Florence.  Since my classes end by 10:30 AM on thursday, I felt like we had so much time to do everything! Although it ended up being a pretty relaxing weekend, which is what I think we all needed because we've all been very tired.

Thursday night after I blogged, we went to a really awesome family style dinner place.  There were 12 of us, and we all got 2 bottles of wine, bread, 2 big appetizers, and 3 dishes of pasta.  There was so much good food, and I was so full, and the best part was that it was only 15 Euros.  It's a great place to go with a big group.

On Friday, we decided to do some exploring and we didn't end up accomplishing all that we wanted.  But, it was still really fun.  We went to the general market, which is basically like the Reading Terminal in Philadelphia.  There's tons of fresh food and meat.  They have really weird meat there, like cow stomach/brains, and a lot of seafood like octopus and squid.  We walked around and just browsed and decided to come back on Saturday to buy things.  You mostly have to speak Italian there, so we brushed up a little bit before we went on Saturday.  After the market, we walked around the little stands of leather jackets, purses, and scarves.  It's called the leather market and it's a lot cheaper than buying leather in the actual stores.  I'm not sure that it's real leather but it looks nice enough.  We then decided to go back to the Pitti Palace and try to see the Boboli gardens which are supposed to be very pretty.  We got there around 4:30 only to find out they had closed at 3:30.  We were bummed, but we finished walking through the parts of the museum we hadn't seen.  We went home, made dinner, relaxed, and then caught up on our sleep.

On Saturday, we went back to the market and bought a few things.  My italian was awful, so I mostly resorted to pointing to things... they get mad if you touch anything.  I bought some strawberries, a tomato, and a pepper all for only 1.75 Euros, which was really cheap.  After that we stopped by the leather market and I bought a new purse.  I managed to haggle down the price from 18 to 15 Euros so I was pretty happy about that.  We found a supermarket really close to us when we were walking home a different way! We've been going to one that is about 20 minutes away and now this one is only about 5, so it will be way easier.  We then decided to go the the museum called Academia which has the David sculpture in it.  I was somewhat forcing myself to go there because I just thought the David was just some statue that everyone over-exaggerates and I was only forcing myself to go just because I had heard so much about it, but I wasn't expecting too much. Instead, I was blown away by how unbelievable it was.  It was HUGE and it was so beautiful.  I was so blown away by how human-like it looked and wondered how Michelangelo carved it.  It was definitely worth seeing.

On Sunday, we went to a futbol game!!! We walked to a breakfast place and met up with "Florence for Fun" which we ordered our tickets from.  They were really cheap tickets and we went with other Americans.  We grabbed breakfast before we went and they had bagels!!! It was so nice to have a bagel again.  It's really hard to find a bagel here, they really only have croissants.  Then we walked to the stadium.  We watched Fiorentina vs. Napoli.  It was a good game, and luckily it only rained for about 20 minutes when we thought it would rain the whole entire time.  The game ended in a tie, 1-1.  The fans were so crazy and really into the game.  There was a whole line of security guards standing in between the two team's fans, most likely so they didn't start fighting each other.  After that, we went home and finished our homework!


Upcoming Plans: 

This weekend (Jan 25-27): School trip to Chianti on Friday, then Siena and San Gimignano on Saturday.  We talked about maybe Piza on Sunday, but we haven't planned anything.

Next weekend (Feb 1-3): Opera trip on Friday, then the Venice Carnivale on Saturday! We also talked about doing Pisa this weekend, but are still figuring things out.

Feb 7-10: We might be going to Interlaken, Switzerland, which is the alps!! We would do it with a group trip, and we get round trip bus (8 hour ride) and hostel included in the price.  There is a lot to do there, such as ice skating, skiing, skydiving, bungee jumping, snowshoeing, etc.  I was considering doing night sledding, ice skating, chocolate show, and a day trip to Zurich.  We haven't booked this yet but I think we are close to doing it!  I think we will be getting a discount since we have a large group of us going.

Feb 15-17: I officially booked my flight to Paris!!! I didn't think I really wanted to go to France that badly, but now I am so excited. I am leaving Friday morning and getting to Paris at 9 AM.  It's only a two hour plane ride.  I'm hoping to see the eiffel tower, and the louvre, and Versailles.  We come back to Florence on Sunday afternoon.  It should be a really fun weekend.

Ciaoooo!

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!

Today, I'm starting to become a little less jet-lagged   Some of my roommates and I woke up around noon, and we walked to the Palazzo Pitti.  Palazzo Pitti is an awesome museum, and with the school we received a museum card for all the museums in Florence and we can go to any of them for free.  Palazzo Pitti, also called the Pitti Palace, is an enormous palace owned by the Medici family.  The Medici family bought it and it was the residence of the ruling families of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.  In the 1700s, Napoleon took it over and used it as a power base.  The palace was unbelievable.  We were able to see the actual rooms they used for audiences, guests, bedrooms, and bathrooms.  The rooms were unreal, there was so much beautiful painting and sculptures in every room.  The ceilings in the palace were my favorite part because it's amazing they were able to paint so beautifully.  I can see why Florence is very well known for its art.

In the palace, we were also able to see some artwork, jewelry, modern art, and a lot of the kitchenware they used.  Everything was so detailed and there was a lot of diamonds, gold, and ebony used.  It's crazy to think that they were so rich.  It's also really cool being in the palace and knowing that people hundreds of years ago also were in that room.  My favorite room was a room they used for events, which was filled with at least 30 chandeliers.  The only thing I hated about this trip was that we weren't allowed to use our cameras in the museum, and I would love to show everyone how beautiful it was. However, we did manage to sneak a few pictures! Hopefully I can take my family and Matthew when they come to visit! We weren't able to do the whole palace in one day so we will definitely have to go back.  There is a whole huge garden area behind the palace that we tried to go look at, but it was locked.  We weren't that bummed because it was really rainy and cold today.

After we left the museum, we stopped by a ristorante and had a nice dinner.  I got penne with a spicy sauce and it was awesome.  It was a little cute place with just the older man taking orders and the wife bringing out the food.  After dinner, we stopped to get some gelato! I got caramel and chocolate flavors together and it was delizioso! We are now finally home and just relaxing and getting ready for class tomorrow. My first class is at 9:30 which means I have to get up early.

Ciao ciao