Buona sera! (good evening)

Florence has been pretty busy every day. Last week I started my classes. I am taking Italian, History of the Italian Mafia, and 2 cooking classes. My Italian class is every day but my teacher is awesome! She only speaks in Italian which is tough since I am in a beginner class but it helps us understand speaking a lot better. She is really nice and really funny so I am enjoying it. Also my classes are small which is awesome! Most of them are around 12 people. My mafia class is really cool so far. I've only had it once but she teacher also seems very nice and it seems like it wil lbe very interesting. The cooking classes I am taking are awesome too. The first day we made 2 types of risotto(one with tomatoes and one with asparagas + peas. We cook for 2 hours and then eat for the last 30 minutes. I have the same teacher for both cooking classes and he is really nice. Plus I have the cooking class at lunch time which is convenient! With the cooking class I get to take 3 field trips also which should be fun. One night we go out to a nice restaurant, the 2nd trip is to a chocolate festival in Perugia (a city about 2 hours from here), and the 3rd trip is to a winery. Classes are only monday-thursday which is awesome and gives me time to travel or see more in Florence.

In between classes I often go to the grocery store or to the market. Also there is huge market near my school that has everything from scarves to purses to souveniers which is fun to go check out. Often at night I go out with friends to get Gelato or walk around the city. Florence has had great weather so far although usually very hot during the day. Rain is very inconsistent here so it will pour for 5 minutes and then be sunny again. I definitely can't complain about that!

This weekend I had my first excursion through my study abroad program. I went to Rome! We left early friday morning on a bus. The trip was about 3 hours and as soon as we got there we started a tour. I got to see the trevi fountain, the spanish steps, and a lot of other monuments/important buildings. The architecture in Rome is gorgeous. After the tours we checked into our hotel and got the rest of the night free so we wandered the city a bit.

On Saturday we got a tour of The Vatican, St Peter's Basilica and St Angelos Castle. All of them were amazing. The vatican is its own country which is interesting. The line to get in St peter's Basilica was extremely long and went around in a huge circle along the pillars (which you can see in my pictures). The Basilica was huge and it was really pretty. It had tons of marble and everything in it was very ornate. The Castle was also very cool to see. The stairs lead up to the top where I got a great view of Rome. The rest of the day we got free so my roomate and I went to see some other historical parts of Rome. Saturday night we went to see the colosseum which was gorgeous!!

On sunday we got a few free hours before getting a bus tour around the city andof the colosseum. Sunday morning the study abroad directors told us about this huge market so we went to check it out. They weren't kidding! It was HUGE. We walked for almost 30 minutes through it and never reached the end, and there was another street parallel to it. The market had a lot of great deals and it was not touristy at all so no souveniers just stuff the residents would buy. I bought shoes for 5 euro (about 7.50) pretty cheap! A lot of clothes, purses, shoes etc. If you can name it they probably had it! Later we had the tour of the colosseum which was awesome. It was huge (notice the size of people in my pictures compared to the building). After that we headed home on another 3 hours bus ride and that was Rome!

One random fact that I found out in Rome. Often when the Romans were building major monuments they would use copper or other metals and marble to make them look good. The problem was they often wouldnt have money to purchase the materials they wanted. To solve this problem they would take the materials from things previously built, actually removing the marble or whatever else they wanted it and just transferring it to the new building. A lot of the buildings like the colosseum and pantheon are bare for this reason.

A few other interesting things I have noticed about Rome/Florence:

Tons of people ride motor scooters/vespas and bikes. The interesting thing is people ride to work or out at night on them. It is not uncommon to see men in suits, women in dresses or heels, or even nuns on vespas or bikes!

Utilities are really expensive in Italy so to use electricity in hotel rooms you have to stick your key card into a slot in the wall. If your key isn't in there you can't use any lights or outlets.

There are no dryers here so everything is airdried.

Regular paper is a different size.

Rome has a lot of Mcdonalds! I was very disappointed to see them!

Italians like exact change. Whenever you pay for anything you need very close or exact change for what you are paying for. If something is 13 euro you may get some dirty looks if you try to pay with a 20!

Thats all the random facts for now. This weekend I am going on a trip to capri/sorrento/pompei and then the weekend after I am going to venice & verona so it's going to be a busy few weeks but I am having an awesome time! I will write again soon!