Ciao Bella!

Well Hello! Last week was terribly busy! Lets start off by our guided Uffizi tour on Thursday by our wonderful Angela. Angela is a German women, who is fluent in German, English and Italian - and she is probably the most intelligent person I know! She is an Art Historian so she does most of our tours as well as our ILC lectures. I dont know how she stores all this information in her head but she does!

photo: Me in Lucca

Friday we as a group went to Sienna and San Gimignano. Sienna is a rival of Florence, and they were at war with each other for about 300 years. Finally Florence conquered Sienna, but the Sienne's still hate the Florentines. (Really, all towns are rivals- just because). Sienna was a beautiful little city with a unique and fantastic history! Everywhere you went in that town had the smell of good food being cooked and it definitely made your mouth water.

We then went to San Gimignano, and it was another equally lovely peaceful little town. San Gimignano sits on a hilltop, like most of the towns, and it had gorgeous view points of the valleys of Italy. I enjoyed San Gimi a lot better, and it was then when I realised how much I love being here and how much I don't miss the United States. Then I got pooped on by a pigeon and quickly changed my mind! After that though a group of us went to a torture museum which was really a waste of 6 euros because mostly it was just drawings of examples of torture.

photo: me in San Gimi with all the towers behind me

Firenze, Firenze!

Well this is a small unlabeled street map of Firenze, and the area where I'll be spending most of my time. I'll be attending classes at ABC school and living within 15-20 minutes walking distance.

I went to an informational meeting on Saturday the 23rd and met some of the people I'll be schooling with. They warned us women of pick pockets, to heavily guard our purses. Also we'll need to bring toilet paper as some public toilets are kind of like outhouses.

Things I am hoping to do:

• Go to all the museums I can: Uffizi, Accedemia, the Science Museum, etc.

• Shop for fresh produce at the markets

• Attend Sunday Mass once at Il Duomo

• Acquire recipes from the locals
• travel on the Italian Coast (esp. Almafi)
  

• Go to 1-3 other neighboring or close countries: France, Austria, Spain, Germany, Greece, and Ireland are some of my choices.
  

• Speak Italian with some locals
• Go to a European Chocolate Festival
  

Well. . . This is it for the time being. I'm sure I'll ad more to my list later!