Livin' la Vida Dolce! (Livin' the Sweet Life! for you loud Americanos)

It has been TOO long since I’ve blogged. After Rome, we headed to Florence for move in. We had orientation and all that jazz but nothing worthy of speaking about. My apartment is right in the heart of the city. Florence, or Firenze as it is called in Italian, is a relatively small city. There are only about 350,000 residents and anywhere is pretty much walkable. I live smack dab in the high end shopping part of town. A few of my neighbors include Gucci, Bvulgari, Dolce and Gabanna, Pucci, Celine, and Salvatore Ferragamo (as in Ferragamo shoes). Not a bad deal! School is only about 10 minutes walking and the train station is close too. I really can’t complain except that the weather is COLD! But then again, most of you have multiple inches of snow on the ground right now. It’s all relative I guess (We did get snow today---but it didn’t stick). My apartment itself is what my roommates and I like to call “chinky.” The definition—our apartment. It’s quaint, but funny quaint. It’s kind of like kitchy but there’s no real explanation. It’s more or less what would be expected in the center of Firenze where every building in hundreds of years old. I have sea green walls and a red suede couch. Quite the combination! My kitchen and living room are combined, but I don’t know if you would quite call my kitchen complete. It’s got 2 burners (that recently broke), a microwave (that was provided 2 days after move-in), a toaster, and—THE BEST PART—a dishwasher! For those of you who know my conditions in Knoxville, they are nicer accommodation but dishwasherless. Let me tell you, I LOVE having a dishwasher and of all the conveniences I miss from the US, I am thrilled I’m not handwashing dishes. My bathroom is small but fairly up-to-date. And then there’s the bedroom. Imagine the musical Annie with multiple tiny beds in a row and no personal space for your things—That’s my bedroom! I have two roommates and I sleep right in the middle. Luckily, my roommates, Sarah and Whitney, who I will discuss later, and I all get along well. We share one dresser and an armoir; however, Whitney bought a clothing rack that has found a home in our living room. Overall, I like my apartment though. It’s chinky!
As I said, school is just a 10 minute walk, which is closer than staying on campus in Knoxville. The walk is nice. I pass great window shopping and Piazza Vecchio, which is where the (fake) David statue stands. The sculptures are incredible, and it’s all just kind of surreal. Classes are long, but I only attend each class once a week except for Italian. I go to FUA (Florence University of the Arts), which is pretty much a school designed for 3rd party programs to send American students. I am taking 4 business courses that I get credit for at Tennessee, so I’m not just having the time of my life but learning (a little bit) too. My Italian class is SLOW and I haven’t learned anything yet that I didn’t learn before I got here. It’s a little disappointing, but I have signed up for “intercambio” which is where I will be paired with an Italian student. I will help them with English, and he/she will help me with Italian. I really do want to learn Italian but my self-discipline has been slacking. Everyone speaks English, and if they don’t, hand guestures can do the trick.
As far as friends go, I love the people in my program. There are about 60 of us from all over the states. My roommates, Whitney and Sarah, are both from the San Francisco area. Sarah goes to Berkeley, but is not the hippie I expected. She so fun and is DYING to learn Italian so she’s a good influence for me. She’s really genuine and so sweet. Whitney goes to San Diego State University. She’s more of the sorority girl and total California. The three of us make a pretty good team I’d say. Katie also kind of lives with us. She’s from Sacramento but goes to school at John Hopkins in MD. She lives in a homestay with one other girl, but stays on our couch fairly often. She, Sarah and I are trying to make Italian friends instead of just sticking with the loud Americans like ourselves. Speaking of loud Americans, there are a ton here, myself included. I feel like the more you try not to be that American the more you are. Maybe I am just super conscious of it, but it’s hopeless. The other people in my program are all really cool too. Not one of us is fluent in Italian, and the majority of us have never taken Italian before now. When we’re out and about and English doesn’t work, Whitney and I usually just resort to Spanish. It’s at least kind of similar to Italian, which is also super confusing at times. Catherine Bodie, one of my sorority sisters is also here. I am so glad she’s here to be that little piece of home. We went to Venice together last weekend, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
A couple times a week about 20-30 of us get together and do dinner. Father Bruno, or Padre Bruno as we call him here, is a Catholic priest who used to work for ISA (my program) here in Florence. He is a native Italian, and the nicest man ever. We are all still unsure of what exactly he does, which I know sounds sketchy, but he’s not at all. He lives in a youth hostel outside of the city and just hangs out with different people all day. At any time you can give him a call and he’ll meet you in 5 on his bike, commonly referred to as his Ferrari or Mercedes depending on the day. Anywho, Padre Bruno will take whoever is hosting dinner for the night to the market to get groceries then cook for the masses. The best part, he pays! At first we felt bad, but I am pretty sure that ISA reimburses him since he cooks 4 nights a week. He makes delicious Italian dishes that really aren’t that hard to make. I am slowly learning. Everyone comes with bread or a bottle of wine and we feast.
Ironically, wine is cheaper than water here. Not that I’m drinking wine all the time and not water, but when you’re out it’s a money saver. Wine is so cheap, and it’s just a part of the culture. At first, it seems like people drink a lot here, but really they drink often but not a lot. It’s so different from the American view on drinking. Lots of people in America, especially college age, drink to get drunk. Here people drink socially and being drunk is a social faux paw (sp?). This is certainly not to say that I drink with every meal or drink to get drunk in America or anything like that, it’s simply an observation.
Now onto my adventures! The first weekend I was in Florence, we had a walking tour and saw the Ponte Vecchio, which I’m pretty sure is the oldest bridge in the world. It has stores on it and people even live on it. Quite a strange concept the first time you see it, but it’s just part of my everyday walk now. The Duomo is also gorgeous. It’s a huge church right in the center of the city. I could stand and stare for hours. I notice something more incredible about it every time I go past. There are so many other amazing things in Florence and so many people are from here. Galileo and Michaelangelo are buried in Santa Croce, which is a church by my school. The Mona Lisa was painted 5 minutes from my apartment. Michaelangelo studied 4 minutes from my apartments before painting the Sistine Chapel. It’s just wild how much history there is within a few minutes of me.
I have also been to Pisa and Lucca. In Pisa, naturally I held up the Leaning Tower of Pisa and took millions of those tourist pictures like you’re supposed to. It’s cool to see but a little overrated. That’s about all there is in the whole town. Lucca is a small city known for it’s walls. I’m not so sure of the history behind the walls, but the majority of the town is within the walls. You basically go to Lucca to walk on the walls (check) and eat good food (check). I had the most incredible ravioli-type dish with wild boar meat, which apparently they are known for. It’s definitely top of my list for meals from Italy and that’s saying a lot because everything here is good. I could talk about the food here for days so that will need to be another blog in itself.
I have also ventured to Venice, which was my first excursion without ISA. Big deal! I actually didn’t do any of the planning, but I still felt cool for taking the train and venturing to a new city! We found cheap train tickets and a hotel super close to San Marco (the city’s only official piazza) for just 25 euro/night each. AND they provided breakfast, which is rare to come by. That’s another thing, Italians aren’t big on breakfast, which is not okay with me. I like my eggs, bacon and toast daily! I have found Special K Frutti Rossi though, which is similar to Special K Red Berries but with raspberries too! Once again, food is for another time. We arrived in Venice, or as the Italians say Venezia. It was rainy and cold and miserable, but seeing the city was cool. We had an awesome set up at our hotel with a kitchen that had granite countertops and 2 bedrooms. Definitely not chinky! I went with Bodie and 2 of her roommates, but Whitney is friends with another one of her roommates from school so there were 8 of us but Whitney and 3 others stayed on the mainland and had quite the time getting back and forth. I am glad our place worked so nicely. BUT they did hate us. Our “hotel” was in another building where Venetians actually lived. They left signs for us asking us to be quiet and that we weren’t welcome. It was laughable, but once again, we fulfilled the American loud mouthed stereotype. Oh well. We can only do so much. We went to Venice for Carnavale which is kind of like Mardgi Gras, but different. People just dress up and hang out in San Marco. Imagine creepy costumes that are like a mix among Moulin Rouge, Mardi Gras and Phantom of the Opera. Practically everyone is a tourist and the streets are tiny! Overall, I would say Venice is overrated. I am glad to say I’ve been there and seen it and experienced Carnavale, but I don’t think I’d go back.
This has only been a brief update of my life for the past 2 weeks, but I am honestly sick of typing and feel like I live on the computer. I skyped for a total of 6 hours yesterday, which is not healthy for me or any other human. SOOO, I am off to be social with people that are on the same continent as me.

In summary, I'm just livin' la vida dolce! I love it here!