Sunday was the first day that we had nothing planned, since orientation week was coming to an end. Heather, Jenna, and I decided to take advantage of the free time and walk around, shop, and get a better feel for getting around Florence. Since we've been here there have been signs in every store that read 'saldi', which means sale. In Florence the big sales are in January and August (I think?) so we wanted to do a little shopping before those end. After walking around for a few hours we went back to Jenna's apartment and watched a movie and relaxed for a couple hours. Some of us decided that we wanted sushi for dinner, so Alexa, Lauren, Heather, and I went to a place between our apartments to try it out. On the walk over we were just hoping that the restaurant would be open since it was late Saturday night, and we were happy to see it was. While the sushi was good, the service was even slower than usual (if that is possible). Three of us got our meal 20 minutes before Lauren got hers. So far, most restaurants we have gone to have given us bottled water when we ask for water, and it's getting pretty pricey. I'm pretty sure you can get tap water anywhere, but they're just trying to make a few extra euros off of the Americans. From now on, I'm asking for tap water. After dinner Heather and I went back to our apartment and hung around with our roommates. I was excited to catch up on all of my TV shows from the week, but I was surprised to see that the majority of them weren't on last week.
Monday was the first day of classes, but seeing as I only have class on Tuesday and Wednesday, it was still the weekend for me. By the time I woke up Heather was done with class, and we decided to visit the market and the grocery store. The market had a lot of meats, cheeses, fruits, and vegetables, but after comparing prices between there and the grocery store, I think I am going to stick with the grocery store. The rest of the day was spent napping and just hanging out until it was time to get ready for the night. We had a welcome dinner for LDM, which was basically a huge buffet of mediocre food. Not really worth the far walk, but I'm over it. Onto the later part of the night. Monday nights are pretty big here, and it was Daniel's birthday, so it was a crazy night. We all pregamed at the guys' apartment upstairs and then went to Yab. This club has definitely been one of my favorites, reasons beings it is very close to our apartment and not nearly as crowded as other clubs so there is actually room to breathe.
I had my first class at 9 A.M. the next morning, so you can imagine how much fun that must have been. Heather, Daniel, Dave, and Ross are all in my class, and we were all riding the struggle bus. This first class is called The Built Environment of Florence, and part of each class is designated to a lecture, and the other to a field trip. Throughout the semester we will be visiting multiple museums and landmarks around Florence. It seems like it's going to be a great class. The classes I am taking all meet once a week for 2.5 hours, so I was nervous I would have a hard time sitting through classes that long. When you are learning about the things I am here, it shouldn't be hard to keep myself interested. After our first class Heather, Dave, and I had a 30 minute break before our Wine Tasting class. We stopped and got a slice of pizza near the Duomo, and then made our way to our next class. Wine Tasting is by far going to be my favorite class. Our teacher is absolutely nuts, which makes it that much better. During our first class we tasted four different wines; a white, two reds, and a dessert red. I already learned there is so much more to drinking wine than the act of putting it in your mouth. You need to observe and smell the wine before you taste it, and from doing this you can tell a lot from a wine. It was difficult to drink some of this wine on a hangover, so I ended up giving a lot of mine to Dave. The last wine we tried, the dessert wine, was definitely my favorite. It was a fruity, sparkling wine, and I loved it. I titled this post wine, win, and more wine, because I feel like they treat wine like water here. We have drank it with a majority of our meals, and now after a night of drinking wine and I am going to wake up to drink some more for class. Wine overload. After class I came back to my apartment and took a nap, cooked dinner which consisted of linguine with ricotta sauce and caprese salad, and got ready to go out. I'm not sure what possessed me to want to go out again before I had another 9 A.M., but I did it. We went to a bar called Red Garter where they had beer pong games going on. This was an actual bar, not a club for a once, which I am definitely a fan of. As fun as the clubs are, sometimes its nice to actually be able to hear yourself talk and not see flashing lights all night. I called it a night around 2 and came back to get a couple hours of sleep before class.
My 9 A.M. class on Wednesday is Food and Culture, and I again have it with Dave, Ross, and Daniel. This class was not as interesting as the others, but I still think it is going to be great. We got let out a little early and I came back to take a quick nap. It may sound like I'm napping a lot, but trust me, I've napped less here than I did last semester at school! Not sure if that's such a good thing, but oh well. After my nap I met a few of my friends at the train station so we could buy our tickets to Rome for this weekend. It's so cool that all we have to do is hop on a train for 1.5 hours and we will be in another amazing city. After we bought the tickets Jenna, Colleen, and I decided to grab lunch quickly before we all had class together. Yet again, I got a slice of pizza. All of these slices have honestly been some of the worst pizza I've ever eaten, but it's all you can get when you need something quick. We made our way to our Public Relations class to find it full of people that we know from our program. The teacher was really funny and seemed like a very cool guy. I can already tell that I am going to be learning a lot that will help me, especially because I will be doing some PR at my internship this summer. It is nice to finally take a class that relates to what I want to do when I graduate, since they don't offer classes like this at U of I. By the time class was over it was 5:30 so I met Heather at the apartment and we went to the grocery store to get food for dinner. I had decided it would be fun to make chicken parmigiana, so we bought the necessary ingredients, and some spinach as a side. After having some doubts about how good this food would actually taste, we were pleasantly surprised. I think I did a great job with the dinner, and am looking forward to cooking some more. Homemade chicken parmigiana is much better when you actually use good tomato sauce, not pizza sauce (sorry mom!) (shout out to Mitchell). After dinner Amanda and I wanted to watch Gossip Girl because we heard it was a great episode. The internet was not working in our favor, so it kept pausing every few seconds. It took us over two hours to watch one 45 minute episode. Not fun. I got sucked into going out again (so unlike me). I'm pretty sure I've gone out more in the last week and a half than I did all of last semester. I guess Red Lion just wasn't cutting it for me anymore. It was a very small group of us last night and we ended up coming back pretty early (1:30 A.M.). For school, that's not that early, but here we go out even later. We were all dying for some late night food, which does not exist here, so we scrounged up what was around our apartment. It was a productive late night, because I even did my laundry. I watched One Tree Hill in my bed, and it was an amazing episode. For all your haters, I don't care, it still is my favorite show. Once again I was up until 5 A.M. I need to fix this sleeping schedule of mine, but between going out and napping, I don't foresee that happening.
Heather and I woke up to someone vacuuming our apartment and talking extremely loudly. Our landlord and a cleaning lady were in our main room cleaning the floors and doing our dishes. Not sure why or how they did that, considering we didn't ask for it and didn't pay, but it was quite annoying. The only good thing is that our apartment is spotless now. It's about 1 P.M. now and I have nothing planned for the day, so I think I am going to get a few books and school supplies and relax before I am off to Rome tomorrow.
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