Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend me your Ears

Well, we just got back from Rome!





Rome was a very busy place, and we had a VERY busy weekend! I think we walked a culmination of about 30 miles for the weekend (friday-sunday).





We started our trip on Friday morning, taking the fast train from Florence to Rome. After we dropped our stuff off at MJ Hostel, we went to the Vatican where we had a tour of the Museum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peters Basilica. All of which are essentially connected by walkways, which is amazing! I have never seen so much beautiful art concentrated in an area like that before. To say that I have stood under Michaelangelo's fresco in the Sistine is something I never thought I would find myself saying.



(photo: standing near the Pope-hat fountain)

After that tour we walked all around Rome, finally ending at the Spanish steps (and there are a LOT of steps by the way). From there the group parted ways, and we all had dinner and gelatto and went back to the hostel. This was my first Hostel experience, and it was an interesting one. Our room was up like six flights of stairs and let me tell you that Roman stairs are VERY STEEP. The showers were grimey, but were a necessisty after walking that much! My bed was a sight for sore eyes except that it sloped to one side and that made for an interesting two nights sleep.

-- more pictures and the rest of Rome soon!

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

Highlights. . .

Everything is going well here in Florence and I am commencing week three of my stay so I thought I would give you all some highlights.

So far I have visted three other towns, Fiesole- a quiet Etruscan town minutes away from Florence. We also visited Pisa to see the leaning tower and Lucca (right) for a nice afternoon stroll. I have climbed the Duomo here in Florence and I visited the Uffizi and the Boboli Gardens with my museum pass.

I have been sad that there are not very many animals in the center of Florence, especially cats. However when I went to the Boboli gardens on Saturday, I discovered that all the cats in Florence are there and it is quite a haven for them!

Sunday a group of us took a trip to Cinque Terre and what a grand day that was. I was swimming in the Ligurian Sea I realised that was THE highlight of my trip. The day was beautiful, and the sea was as clear as could be - you could see the fish swimming between you as you floated along.

Well, I'll have more pictures and maybe some video up soon, tomorrow if not wednesday!

Ciao

here I am Italy!

Hi!

I am in Italy finally! It seems like just march that i was just applying for the program. So our flight from PDX was 6 hours, then we had a 5 hour layover in JFK. Let me tell you about JFK- its one hot and muggy airport, with no air conditioning. It's really not all that interesting either, and you cannot buy stamps there. Our flight from JFK to Pisa was about 8 hours, which was not that bad at all. The turbulance ripped my stomach up!

We arrived in Pisa around 11 AM, and took an hour drive and got dropped off at our apartments. Ours is a nice apartment, very modern and we only have one flight to go up. The whole apartment and entrance is marble, which makes for a chilly evening.

We have had two walking tours of the city, and yesterday we went and viewed everyones apartments.

We had our first pizza and italian wine at a restaurant called La Campane! it was very good, and seemed to be the very hip place to be on a sunday night.

commence exploring

Well, I leave for Florence Friday morning! I have been wishing, if I only had one more week at home, if I only had one more week. But I had two weeks to get things taken care of, and pretty much just lazed about the entire first week. I'm very excited to leave though!

I have my plane tickets to Dublin for November 7th-9th - I'll be seeing a favorite band of mine, Flogging Molly there. It is truly a pleasure to say that I'll be seeing them there!

my mom is planning on meeting me in Italy for the last leg of my trip, then we'll spend a few days in Austria, then back to Italy, and back home around December 18th.

I've been toying around with maybe a trip to Barcelona or Monaco. My first priority is to see all of Italy though.

I am almost done packing, toiletries-check, underware/socks-check, "summer clothes"-check which is mainly tank tops, a skirt and 2 capris; and i'll be packing my "winter clothes" and electronics soon.


Oh, I am not looking forward to 19 hrs of combined plane time! (6 hrs to JFK +5 hr layover, 13 to Florence).

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!

Good News + More waiting + Crazy

Well! It's true! I am a future recipient of the Gilman Scholarship- at the value of 3,000 dollars! Fortunately I am also relying on our federal gov't to cover another large chunk, and am going to be "loaning" from my mom to cover the rest. I am very fortunate and feel that I am very blessed in many different ways to be able to go on a trip like this.

Unfortunately I am still playing the waiting game (few months before I leave) and am still trying to teach myself Italian. I have found this whole experience to be pretty stressful and I have not even left yet! It's a new experience for our financial aid director at LBCC and I am sure that our travel abroad advisor thinks I'm a nutcase. I am not even going to cover AIFS and the difficulties I have come to experience with them.

I am SORRY but this whole thing, this traveling abroad thing is NEW to me. I am very green, very very green when it comes to applications and deadlines and scholarships and dealing with programs and trying to make everyone happy! I think I have pissed a few people off, and probably annoyed others- but I want to make sure all my bases are covered, ya know? So excuse me if I email you 5 times in one week.

*sigh* that was my rant.

In other personal news: I got engaged on June 14th and we are planning our wedding for August 1st, 2009. I have discovered the best website on earth The Knot via my best friend Lindsay who is also getting married next year!

Also, it seems like when the meatball starts rolling down the spaghetti of life, it rolls fast, downhill and collects dirt chunks along the way. We have had concerns of health for my nephew who has CF- contracted a bad virus that messes up his motor skills. Two of my cats have needed veterinary care, I have been mildly job searching, planning a trip to Canada with mom this summer, trying to clean my real room because we're in the middle of a remodel, and just trying to figure out my life in general. Things are crazy and stressful and God decided that I work better under a lot of pressure. He must not realize it makes me cranky, snappy and my hair fall out.