Week 1: My life is a cartoon.

1/30/11
    I spent winter break missing Australia and helping out my family. I cleaned, I cooked, I cried... When the time came to get on my plane to Florence, I was READY. I switched flights in Germany and introduced myself to some girls I could tell were in my program. They were all really nervous, and this being my second time studying abroad, I couldn't relate. I just felt really tired.

     There must have been over forty students from my program at the airport and we all got picked up on a huge charter bus. The program staff was organized and friendly. I felt i was in safe hands. We checked into our hotel, a surprisingly fancy hotel with beautiful architecture and two very small elevators. Two Italian bellhops, both in fancy green uniforms, one short and fat, one tall and skinny, had to organize how all of our luggage would get up the tiny elevators to our rooms. They were yelling at each other in Italian and shoving bags and students into elevators- and that's when I knew my life was turning into a cartoon.

     My roommate was in the hotel room when I arrived. We got along right away and decided to venture off to explore the city. We decided to walk to the Duomo because it was easy to find (you can see it anywhere in the city). It was breathtaking, I couldn't believe where I was. Even though it sounds cliche, It felt like a dream. On the way back we got lost and were stressed we wouldn't make it to the welcome dinner on time. We made it back to the hotel within ten minutes of dinner. All four hundred students in our program walked over to a conference center and had our first orientation presentation before dinner. During this presentation I started to feel sick... really sick. It must have been from all the traveling and not drinking enough water. I felt dangerously close to vomiting. There was no bathroom in sight and I was scared. I was going to be "that girl who vomited the first night" and you just can't bounce back from that. I could not pay any attention to the presentation, I was too busy PRAYING not to vomit. Luckily, I did not vomit. I made it through the presentation and ate my first Italian dinner: a salad, oranges and water. Not the beautiful pizza and pasta I had envisioned.

     The next day of orientation was nice, a walking tour and more presentations. The following day we moved into our apartments. The program was preparing us for a tiny apartment with possibly no oven, a tiny refrigerator, no microwave, not much of a living room, pretty much a shit hole apartment. What we ended up with was insane. Really spacious, big dining room, big bedrooms, three bathrooms, an upstairs loft and terrace with a view of the DUOMO! We were shocked. We joke that it's the MTV Real World Florence apartment. It's on the top floor, so we also refer to it as "the penthouse."

     We spent the next few days getting to know the city and going to more orientation presentations. We live a block away from the central market so we started doing our grocery shopping there. The vendors don't speak English, so it can be challenging to get what you want in the quantity you want it. We are still figuring it out, but have gotten much better. One of the women from our program taught us how to order breakfast in Italian and I did it successfully at a famous cafe where the Futurists would hang out. It was a really cool cafe with Futurist art everywhere and I think the guy who worked there was very impressed with me because it is such a touristy spot and lots of people in my position would have used English. We're really just getting into the swing of things, starting to know the area better.

     The food I was eating was just average and overpriced and I was starting to feel disappointed, I'm in ITALY after all... but then I went to Pizzaiolo. Best pizza of my life. I think the key to good eating here is just to go far far away from the touristy parts, which is out of the way for us because our apartment is three blocks from the Duomo. That pizza rocked my world. I had a pizza hangover the next morning and slept in until two.

     The next night (last night) my roomie Jocie and I went out to get a drink with some other girls from our program. The bar we had planned on going to was out of business so we found another one. We were intimidated to go in because all the people smoking outside looked really cool, but there was no cover charge and it was raining outside, so we went in. After we all got a drink, one of the girls waved over a group of five really cute Italian guys. Only one of them spoke English so he acted as a translator. We had a really fun time chatting with them. When Jocie told them she had a boyfriend they told her "right now, he is with another girl", I said "her boyfriend is not Italian", and they told us "all men are the same everywhere." True, but Jocie's is a keeper. Jocie told them off in Italian. The mood was light, it was fun. They were really sweet guys, not the Italian creepers everyone warns you about. Jocie using her Italian and our new friend Duccio, the boy who spoke English, created some funny scenarios. Jocie told Duccio that I liked his friend, and Duccio told me that his friend liked me and that he could teach me "the art of sex." Oh Italians! We all had a good laugh. The boys left to go to a dance club, then Jocie and I went home shortly after.

     This morning I by accidently slept in until two again and missed my chance to go to the Ufizzi Gallery (home of The Birth of Venus), so instead I went to Ikea with the roomies. We had a really difficult time navigating the busses, but we finally got there and bought warm blankets (apartment gets COLD at night). Tomorrow we start class!

Roomies

The people are so animated, the architecture is so stylistic, and people sing and whistle ALL the time. I live in a cartoon.

Caio!

Johanna