I'm a little bit behind. We're supposed to be keeping a 'field journal' of sorts for my Intercultural Communication class and as always I've procrastinated. We've been go, go, go since we here. i've had a hard time reminding myself that I'm in Europe. Florence is a lot like Charleston, but with crazier drivers. (Remind me to never complain about the streets of Charleston again). Its still all cobblestones and historic buildings. Maybe I was expecting the air to taste differently or something? We had our first day of class on Thursday, June 3. Nothing much different there... class is class. Afterwards we took a walking tour of Florence. The city is beautiful but I still think I was expecting something more. I blame advertising. All the tourist destinations are definitely made to seem more glorious.

Yesterday (Friday, June 4) our group decided to take a wine tour in Chianti. For 56 euros we took a bus to the wine region, making pit stops in Greve in Chianti and Radda in Chianti before heading to a villa/winery for dinner and wine tasting. Our trip seemed to be a bit of a misadventure at first. After being on the bus for about an hour, we stopped in this little Italian town (Greve) and were simply told to be back at the stop in an hour and a half. Without much choice we obeyed. Two postcards are about all I can say I got out of that little town. Then we bumped on the bus (thinking we were heading to wherever we were supposed to sample the wines) for another 45 minutes, give or take, before being dumped off again in Radda and told to meet back in 50 minutes. At this point we were all pretty annoyed and somewhat anxious. This wasn't what we had signed up for (or so we thought). Annoyed after being about 4 hours in our 'tour' still sans wine, we pulled an American-move and bought mini bottles of wine for 1 euro each from a small store in Radda. A bit more satisfied, we trekked through the steep streets of Radda (we were now up in the hills), mini bottles in hand (legally drinking in public... aahhh Italia).

We were told our next stop was a farm. Where we ended up wasn't exactly my idea of a 'farm.' The farm was a terra cotta farm. Terracotta is Italian for "baked earth" so naturally terra cotta from Tuscany is a pretty big deal. We were taken through the process of making the pots and sculptures. I learned that terra cotta starts gray, turns red after being heated in the oven and iron is added to naturally make the terra cotta redder if desired.

Its about 6:15PM here and we're heading to Ponte Vecchio, the bridge with all the shops over the Arno River! Back later. Ciao!