just a note to say that my cell phone has only worked once thus far and never since. also, for some reason, hotmail is not working either, rendering me totally unable to contact anyone individually. sorry. sorry. hope things are resolved soon, i havnt spoken to anyone since before i arrived in florence. florence. first day i took the train from bologna and once in florence used my map to find my new apartment. once there, having no key, i called my site director and walked somewhere else to meet her. while waiting for her i had a good pizza and read up on my new book, "a cook's tour" by anthony bourdain. anyway, she finally came and i got my key. next stop was the laundromat. fun. after losing a sock and ruining a perfectly good polo, i packed up my things and headed for my school, just to scope the location out. it is directly across from the Duomo, the most famous building in all of florence. quite an impressive site. anyway, walked back across the city to my apartment, it's in a more residential/local shop type area. there are tiny stores that re-finish old furniture and hammer out new copper products - by hand. my apartment opens to a common area and stairwell where other residents can shuffle to their apartments. mine is on the first floor. it has an old, heavy, wooden door complete with iron hinges and dual door k*** . i open the door and immedietly i'm pretty happy with my situation, its much bigger than i expected and has everything i need including a washer, dishes, pots, sheets, towels, the works. it opens into my living room which has a tv and a couch and straight ahead is the kitchen, small but gets the job done. past the living room to the right is the bathroom and the bedroom. the entire place has high white ceilings and is very old but clean. there are no screens in the window, just old wooden shutters. no roomate in site, he is due to arrive past ten. i settle in and go to the grocery store. i cook spaghetti for dinner. later my roomie arrives. his name is Yang Yang and he's from greenbay wisconsin and stands just under five foot tall. the odd couple. all is well - we get along good and head to bed early. i sleep like a big baby and wake up ready (kind of) to go to school. first day is orientation and everyone in my class is nice. we go for a walk around florence and arrange to meet later that nite after the school dinner to go out for one of the girl's birthday. dinner was fun, i actually drank red wine. not bad, although they tell me it was cheap. nice dinner. then we head out to a bar where we all order peach vodka thingies that are tasty but WEAK. we get free champagne from our waiter at midnight and promptly toasted to "Firenze". we next headed to a lame "oonse oonse" club but its packed so half of us split for a less lame dig. we find a strangely philly-feeling bar with mostly americans and its nice. me and yang head home. today, my first real day of school, was just fine, i like my professor and my italian is flooding back to me like a leaky faucet. today is also the first day of rain i have seen since being in italy for nearly three weeks. after class i trudge through the weather to escape the center city. in wind up at an outlook on the outskirts with nice views of the city and took pictures and ate a mars bar. went into some old church and walked along an ancient wall that used to protect florence. came back and slept. woke up and made penne and bruchetta. mmmm. also finished off a can of pringles. anyway, thats all for now. im obviously leaving out a lot but there's too much to tell. one thing about florence though, there are a lot, i repeat, a lot of Americans. its kind of disgusting - and it's even worse that i am contributing to the problem. the locals pretty much hate all outsiders, except those who hawk cheap "ciao bella" t-shirts to pasty tourists. well, ciao bella!