Oh wail.... I'm here to go to school...?

So this weekend went by pretty fast and fun.

Friday night I went out with a couple of friends and well, it was freshman year all over again. I met up with Lizz and her roommates, and everyone, including thier "building mates" were going out. If I added on to this all the Syracuse people I knew were going out.. well it would have been a crew of about 30 people. I decided to hang out with Lizz's crew for the evening and it was super fun. Earlier I had found out that my friend Laura (from DU) lives ONE BLOCK away from my house. So perfect. So we planned to re-unite and head home together. We finally did, but on the way Lizz and I had to help a "poor" american lady who was locked out of her friend's apartment because her HUSBAND had way too much to drink and left with the key (talk about a gentleman!). A cop had stopped her thinking she was trying to break in. When I explained (in broken Italian/Spanish) what was going on, the cop laughed and just left this lady banging on the door. So funny.

Saturday I meet up with some friends, walked around, successfully used the ATM and added more minutes onto my phone.  Then Laura called. She and Lizz wanted to go to the beach. I was so in. We tried our best but it turned out that Laura and I had to be back for dinner around 8.00 pm and even though the internet said the train ride was only 1 hour long it turned out the train had one too many stops and took almost two hours. We decided to leave the beach for another day and explore some more of Firenze. We tried locating some bodies of water on the map to cool off (can't really swim in the Arno) and all we could find were fountains that were oh so far away. So we hit San Lorenzo Market instead.

Lizz managed to spend all of her money on a wallet, vespa-riding handkerchief (or something like that) and some other stuff, Laura got a purse and a scarf and I got a key chain (self-control at its finest). When we were at the end of the market I was dying of heat exahustation. So I decided to simply sit on the floor in the middle of San Lorenzo Market. Turns out, you can't really do that here. I had been sitting for about 2 minutes when one of the vendors pulled a chair out of nowhere, told me to sit in it and started fanning me. After a few laughs, we said thank you, Lizz paid (what ever she was buying at this point) and we moved on to find some shade. We hung out for a while longer by the Duomo and then Laura and I walked home. I had a relaxing evening at home, ate some great dinner (as per usual) and got a good night's sleep.

Most weekends we don't get dinner and we are free to do what ever we want but this weekend was different because it was the first one so it was "full imersion" weekend, where we spent more time with our host family. On Sunday we got up late (thanks Silvanna!), took Pippo for a walk and got some coffee, then had a typical Italian "brunch" of melon and proscuitto and capresse salad (a variation of it) and headed to Piazza Michelangelo, with Pippo of course. We took some pretty great pictures of Firenze by day, had some Gelato and headed home. We relaxed for a bit and then headed a little bit more north (away from the center) to Silvanna's favorite place to have an Aperitivo.  Aperitivo is a drink (hard liquor Molly and I learned) at a bar between 6.00 to 10.00 where with that drink you get food. There was cheese, proscuitto, cus-cus, pasta salad, etc. It was a nice, relaxing Sunday and Molly and I were both happy Silvanna showed us a Cafe (that would be equivalent to an American Bar) that was 100% tourist free (we don't consider ourselves tourist, we are almost locals by now) where we could come for a relaxing drink on a weekend when we felt a little bit more confortable with our Italian.

Lizz was a total travel agent this weekend and figured out a bunch of trips for us. I actually have quite a few day trips within Italy with school, so I am going to have to sit their trip to Croatia out. I am very bummed about this BUT that weekend I get to to go Wine Tasting with my Mediterranean Diet  class up to Chianti and I might venture down to Perugia. This weekend I have Assisi and Ravenna to look forward to for my Antiquity to Michelangelo class and next weekend hopefully we will get to either see the last of the Swiss Alps during the summer season or maybe the Amalfi Coast. We'll see what our travel agent Lizz McGehee has in store for us. On a slightly more amusing note, turns out Pilar (one of Lizz friends who is originally from Peru) and I cannot go to Morroco without a visa. The girls also want to check this place out. So since getting a visa would involve Pilar and I taking a trip to Rome, dealing with an embassy, not knowing how long they will have our passports, etc... we decided we would have Pilar-Cami weekend full of latina stuff. They are going to be soooo jealous. Luckily its not just me!

So up until now its all been fun and games and it has actually been more like a vacation that school....so today was a reality check because turns out I HAVE SCHOOL.

This is my schedule so far and hopefully it won't change (Italian class is subject to change times, we'll see about that though):

Monday - Italiano from 10.55-12.50 and Mediterranean Diet from 4.40 to 6.10
Tuesday - Antiquity to Michelangelo from 9.00 to 10.30, Italiano from 11.15 to 12.30 and Managing in a Global Setting from 3.10 to 6.10.
Wednesday - Italian Community and Culture from 10.55-12.50 and Mediterranean Diet from 4.40 to 6.10
Thursday - Antiquity to Michelangelo from 9.00 to 10.30 and Italiano from 10.55 to 12.50.

I have liked both my classes so far and we'll see what happens tomorrow!

Hope I didn't bore anyone with the detail explaining the weekend adventures (the the updates will probably get shorter once I actually have work to do..... )

Love,
Cami