After 3 days

Ok, so it's been a lapse since my last blog and I'll see of I can fit everything into this single blog post. I ended the last blog with us going to dinner on the first day. Well, everyone from our school (that's in the program of course) except two girls, showed up to the dinner which was at Il teatro on Via Ghibillina. It's safe to say that the pasta I had as the first course was easily the best pasta I've ever had in my life. I got the 4 cheese macaroni and it was amazing. Actually I would probably say it was maybe the best good I've ever had in my life. I was just blown away. I did get a picture of it though: 

After that the second dish was chicken and that was still really good but not even close to the pasta. After that I went to John-Paul and Matthias' apartment and saw their rooms. Then we went out for Gelato, which was really good. I got striatchitella, and I have no idea of I spelled that correctly. We walked across the pointe vecchio, met my roommate Paul and then walked to a couple of the girls' apartment, got lost on the way home and then found our way back. I slept as soon as I got to bed. The next morning I woke up at 7 (thanks to my alarm, unfortunately I think I woke up Paul as well...), went for a great run, where I saw a lot of the Arno, and it was just really sick. Afterwards, I tried to get to a Supermarket but everything stays closed around here until 9 A.M. which is such a bummer for me because we had to meet at 9:30. But I got to shower and then Paul and I followed our noses to a bakery that is literally on the corner of our building, and it was pretty good.i got a cappuccino and a croissant and so did Paul but he got Nutella on his, which I thought was awesome. We had to stand at the bar to eat or pay extra. It was pretty good. 

We met at the Santa Croce which was 2 blocks away from us (it's awesome) turn we walked to school (it's like 3 mins from Santa Croce walking) and had a quick lecture. After that everyone went to a sandwich shop for lunch but I went grocery shopping and then I stopped at a small sandwich shop for a salami sandwich and cook. It was really good and then I met back with everyone at Santa Croce for a walking tour:

The walking tour was pretty sick, and I learned a ton about Florence and how to navigate through it, which honestly isn't too hard, so I shouldn't complain. These are some of the two tallest towers in Florence: 

After the tour I went to back to the grocery store to get all the things I forgot the first time. I also opened the birthday card from my parents. My mom wrote "don't drink too much", which I though lt was a little funny. And then walked around Florence a little bit. I went to the soccer team's official store and bought a scarf. Here were two jerseys I saw at the store, they were 70 Euros:

My scarf go Fiorentina!: 

After that Paul and I went to Subway did my birthday dinner. Subway is kind of the same, except they sell beer and their 30 cm subs were 7 Euros and not 5 dollars. It was very sad :(. After that we went for Geato and I got Tiramasu this time and it was just delightful. Then we went out for my birthday. We tried to go to a club the guy at Subway recommended but we didn't even go in because we thought it looked so bad. Instead we went to the Irish Pub "The Lion's Fountain." Living in London I went to a lot of pubs last year and that definitely wasn't a pub. It was an Anerica college kid bar that just happened to be in Florence. I'm not gonna lie it was pretty sick place for your 21st birthday though. My friends bought me jäger bombs and shots. I got a wrist band that gives me a free shit every tie I buy a beer it cocktail and I thought that was pretty cool. Don't worry Mom I didn't drink too much:

The place was packed with American college students, including a bunch of sorority girls from UMD and one of them had turned 21 that day as well and so that was pretty cool. They got a picture with me because I was wearing a UMD shirt by chance and it was my birthday, felt like the celebrity I secretly think I am. The bar also had some Germans I met, the subway dude, and skme Italians. The bar was cool though. It had writing from the students and shirts for a lot Anerican colleges on the ceiling and when those students would come in, they would sign the shirt. It was a good time ad we stayed until it closed at 2. 

Then I woke up this morning, showered, and went to the same cafe for breakfast. I got a kind of pastry sandwich that had some meat in the middle. I wanted to try a coffee latte today but when I ordered it I  only said "latte" and failed to say "caffe latte". Latte is Italian for milk so I was given just a glass of milk with some really weird looks at the cafe :l. I rolled through it though and Paul and I only showed up like 4 mins late for the cultural differences lecture. We then went to lunch which was pretty good. Here's what we had. The girl in the picture is from the Mount and her name is Darcy: 

I also was able to get a shot of espresso after the meal like a normal Italian.

We then had a travel in Europe lecture. Afterwards we went to the one Euro shop and got notebooks for our first class tomorrow morning. These are the three notebooks I got so I can try and be more wild:

The paper in these notebooks is so weird too, but we couldn't find normal paper anywhere. Here's what the inside of these odd notebooks have inside:

Well after all that Vicky, Lauren, Kathleen and I took the long walk to Piazza Michelangelo for the view and the pictures. I would say it was worth it: 

Some say I remind them of David:

And of course I got a picture in front of the ponte vecchio, how do you not?: 

Then I went back to my room, sliced some fresh bread,and used some cheese and mortadella to make a fantastic sandwich with doe nice red wine. The thing that looks like a martini glass is actually a candle (calm down mom):

Movements

So I know I'm posting a lot in my blog in a short amount of time but there is a lot to say in this small amount of time. I decided to walk around Florence for a little bit after I settled in my apartment. I searched for a grocery store although I was only able to find a mini mart that sold a ton of wine. I just got the cheap kind and it was 10 Euros for 4 bottles of wine (I was hyped). So that was pretty good and then I stopped at the Bus 2 Alps office which I didn't know existed and planned out my Budapest and Barcelona trip, I just have to pay for them, so I feel like that's pretty exciting. Now I'm back in the apartment drinking this really cheap Italian wine (it tastes just like Church wine) think in about what I will do for the rest of the night.  My roommate Paul, went to mass at Santa Croce, with his girlfriend (Gina) who also happens to be in our program. I will be meeting them and others in our program at a restarting tonight for some fine, and traditional Italian food. Luckily I have a meal voucher for this restaurant, so dinner is already paid for tonight. Tomorrow I turn 21, so I'm pretty excited for that, we'll see how it goes. Ciao kids. 

The cheap wine I got early today^

The first flight

Sorry this is so long, I started it on the flight after my third movie:

Well the first part of my journey wasn't as bad as expected. I had to ride 2 hours in a car to get to Dulles airport (and it's safe to say that wasn't the most exciting thing one can do in the world). Then I was in the airport for two hours, which also wasn't very exciting. This was all followed by my least favorite part of the trip, which was the 8 hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany where I have to wait a few hours for my transfer to Florence. 

All together it was 12 hours of travel and it wasn't even that bad. The car ride wasn't that bad because my parents talked to me the whole time. The airport thing wasn't too bad either because I never just sat around and did nothing. I have a huge fear of missing my flight but I got to the airport the standard of two hours early (because it was an international flight) and managed to get to my gate in only 45 minutes. So there is where someone that knows me would believe this to be torture for me. I have an  hour and fifteen minutes before my plane takes off and nothing to do. I didn't want to use my cell phone because I wanted to save the battery for the flight (eight hours is a long time), and I had no desire to sit and read the books I had because I was going to be sitting and keeping to myself for the next eight hours. Luckily, another Mount St. Mary's student was at the gate when I got there; even better than were three of us on the same flight! So I sat and talked to John-Paul for almost the whole time. For anyone who doesn't know John-Paul (and I'm certainly no expert) he is a rather extrodinary guy. He went to college when he was 16 (he was homeschooled) and he has a strong desire to be a priest. He is from Harrisburg, and he taught himself Italian and is nearly fluent in it (hopefully he can help me). I learned from John-Paul that he has never actually been on a plane which completely blew my mind at the time, but now I see that that isn't quite as crazy as I originally thought. I also spoke to Kathleen who is another Mount student who will be traveling in Florence with John-Paul and I. It turns out John-Paul sat in the row right behind me, and Kathleen didn't sit to far behind either.

John-Paul can apparently can sleep in cars and planned on sleeping the whole time on the plane. I like to pride myself on being able to sleep anywhere; however, I'm gonna be honest I can't sleep in cars and I can't sleep in planes. I don't know what it is but I just can't sleep  sitting up, and I really hate sleeping when I know other people are awake around me, especially when it's people I don't know , which happens on a plane (I feel like this makes me sound paranoid but I'm not too worried about it). I knew those going into the flight that I wasn't going to sleep and I tried to prepare myself. It's a red eye flight so I left at 5:50 p.m. Eastern time and arrive in Germany at like 8 A.M. German time. Which isn't too great. So it's kind of like 8 A.M. and I haven't really slept at all but it's whateves. 

The plane ride really wasn't that bad. There wasn't many people on it. I had an aisle seat, there was an empty middle seat next to me and then there was a guy who had a window seat. So we had plenty of room. John-Paul was the same way but he had a window seat. The guy that sat in the aisle seat in his row was from UCLA and was going to study abroad in Prague. In case anyone reading this didn't know I've been to Prague for a weekend last year and lived it. So I was really curious and even though it wasn't my business I got nosy and asked the guy a bunch of questions. He was pretty cool. The guy that sat in the window seat in my row was a Chinese guy named Patrick. I tried to pry his life story from him over dinner and I succeeded. I don't have to talk to people, in fact I like the quiet but I do like to talk to people that I think are interested in the same things as me and if you're traveling to Europe, then you probably qualify. Patrick was really nice, and very interesting. He was from Long Island but now lived in San Fran. He has a degree in Biomedical engineering and Business from Penn and he is traveling to Frankfurt to market some medical stuff at a conference. He also lived in Switzerland for nine months so he gave me some places to go to in Italy because he said he visited a lot. He was also fluent in Chinese, while knowing the basics of French and Spanish. 

Back to dinner on the flight. I was a little nervous about how dinner would be because I've never taken Lufthasen air (I can't spell it, it's way to German), so I was gonna buy some Chipotle and bring it on the plane with me but I got carried away on my conversation with John-Paul. The food was really good though, I got Chicken and mashed potatoes and I chased it down with a bailey's because I was hoping it had caffeine in it and would keep me up. I still don't know if it had caffeine in it. 

One of the best things about flying international is the great movie selection they have. I watched Red 2, Home Alone and then Runner Runner. All together it wasn't too bad of a flight. 

At the apartment 1st day

So I just got to the apartment I'll be living in for the next three months and I'm not gonna lie: it's not too shabby. 

The layover in Frankfurt was five hours of terribleness. Kathleen, John-Paul and I hung out with the kid that he sat next to on the plane, Josh. We stopped at a bar and I had a quick German beer and then got some chocolate. The beer was really good, although it instantly tired me out. I got some chocolate and then Josh set off headed to Prague. The chocolate was very potent and I couldn't eat a large amount of it. After Josh left we decided to go to our where we sat for two hours to wait for our flight to begin boarding (it was not fun). Another girl in our study abroad program that had flown from New York to Frankfurt and would flying from there, with us, to Florence. 

This was us at a German bar^

The flight from Frankfurt to Florence was honestly not as good as the other one, probably because I was so sleepy and my body was just really warn out. I had like a weird dream thing going on throughout the whole two hour flight, it was weird. 

As we got to Florence, it was raining quite a bit and our luggage got really wet, but it wasn't too bad. We actually didn't have to get our passports stamped which I felt was really weird, and then we waited for our ride to get to the airport and he was a really cool guy named Todd. He married a Florentine woman and then moved back to Florence with her and learned Italian through immersion, and now he gives tours on wine, which I feel like is pretty cool. 

My apartment is really very cool and I feel like it's pretty modern. A lot of the stuff in the apartment reminds us how expensive energy is in Italy and how as shouldn't waste it ever. We have a decent view of a typical Tuscan street:

I like the apartment a lot: 

Airport

So it's definitely been a long time since my last blog post, but now the time has come. I am in Dulles Airport preparing to fly out to Frankfurt, Germany. The flight will be around 8 hours and they will be 6 hours ahead of United States Eastern time. So that's a big difference. My flight supposedly takes off at 5:50, so I'll be boarding pretty soon. I've booked one trip for London on the weekend before I'm headed to Paris and it was about 115 Euros. Actually it has taken me so long to write this blog post, I am now on the plane. I will meet my old roommate from London (Sunshine) and his girlfriend from London (Jenny Shopper), and it's gonna be great. I'm super psyched. Still haven't found anyone to go to Paris with me, but I'm rollin still, and we'll see what happens when I meet these Cali kids. I will definitely miss all my friends at the Mount and I hope they have a great semester. 

I have found a whole bunch of deals on line and matched up my calendar for these trips with Bus2Alps. I'm hoping they all work out because if they do then I will be headed to Croatia, Budapest, Barcelona, and the French Riveria; in addition to the trips I'm already taking to Paris, and London. I also have the mandatory trips to Venice and Rome. Lastly my family is coming to visit for Easter and the weekend after Easter so I will see them then. Packing was pretty difficult because I run everyday so I had to pack running shoes and enough athletic clothing, while also packing formal clothing cause I like to look stylish. I packed all my socks and extra stuff in my shoes, so I had more room. The bags were really heavy. Well off I go, bye kids! Arrivederci America!

So this crazy thing happened after I made my last post. AIFS emailed everyone in our group to talk about an optional tour to Sorrento. Sorrento was the only tour that I really wanted to go on because it was headed to Capri and apparently it is stunningly beautiful, so I was pretty pumped. I was under the impression that there would be three optional trips run by AIFS. I thought they would be Venice, Sorrento and Rome. I was alright with missing the trip to Venice. I've been to Venice twice already and I've never really liked it for a lot of different reasons. It was not that pretty when I've gone because its been summertime both times and the water level was really low. So you could actually see all the green gross stuff on the canal roads. Also it smelled really bad, and there was no place to go to the bathroom, which a lot of people don't think about. It was mad expensive there as well, way overrated, and not much to do after seeing St. Mark's Square. Rome is pretty cool because there is so much to see there and I wouldn't mind going back and seeing it again especially with a tour guide from AIFS. I went on two AIFS type trips when I lived in London and they were pretty great so I was definitely looking forward to these trips, especially Sorrento. As I've said, I know it is important to plan really early and to just be ready. It seems this time I panned a little too early because the trip to Sorrento happens to be the same weekend I'm going to be in Paris. That is literally terrible. I really wanted to go to Sorrento with AIFS people and now I doubt anyone will want to go with me now if they are all going with AIFS and if they are all going to Sorrento the weekend I'll be in Paris, they will not be able to go to Paris with me and I really don't want to go to Paris by myself. The whole timing of that seemed really unfortunate, I honestly don't know if there is anything I can do about it, but I will check with Easyjet. Not only that but Sorrento will be the only optional trip for this semester, which is also terrible. I guess I will just roll with the punches and maybe somebody would rather go with me to Paris, but I doubt it.I'm still really excited to go to Florence and I'm still planning a lot of stuff. Oh crap, I think I meet with the AIFS lady like really soon so I should probably check on that. Arrivederci.

It's definitely been a while since my last post and a lot of stuff has been done. I went to a meeting where I learned that only like 2 people had bought a plane ticket and out of a group of like 15 only like 3 people were going to be using Dulles airport to depart (it is the closest airport to our school, besides BWI, which no one was deciding to use). his was unfortunate because after the people selected their flights and paid for them I sent the info to my mom so she could book it, but the plane tickets got extremely expensive, extremely quickly and she was like "we need to find you a different flight, so you can't fly over with the two people you know." I was like "that sucks" but at the same time I was cool with because my mom was still paying for my ticket to Florence and paying for my whole trip (and beggars can't be choosers). So my mom's company has a travel agent that handles important stuff like that and he was supposed to book my trip and make it much easier. At this meeting we literally just go through all that crap about how the country is different and how we need adapters and converters and to bring important stuff cause they might not have the same over there, which I kind of already knew but we're building here. At the same time I made a Facebook group for our Florentine group. Our instructor had not had a Facebook at the time of the meeting but he decided that he would make one so we could have a group. He made one and I was his first friend (which I was pretty proud of)and then for some reason he made another Florence group on Facebook and invited everyone, and he did this after I invited him to the original Facebook group. So I thought that was a little weird, but I don't think he quite has the hang of social networking yet. At the group talk thingy I didn't mention that I was planning all these trips, but I had been talking to people and since there are like 12 girls going everyone wants to go to Paris. I wanted to go to Paris because even though last semester I studied in England I never got a chance to go to Paris. So I wrote it on the Facebook group wall that if anyone wanted to join me they could meet me in the library at 4. Well, no one showed up, but two people said that they couldn't make it to the meeting but wanted to go to Paris with me. So, I was little disappointed but hey I already knew when I wanted to go to Paris and when people realize that I'm going to Paris and did all the work they will want to jump on that too, right? So I was like whatever. I went on sky scanner and saw a sick flight that would let me leave Friday afternoon and come back Monday afternoon. I'm like "3 days and Paris, lets get excited." The flight was booked for the last weekend in March with Easyjet, for $115 and I'm hyped. I found like two really good hostels but I didn't book any of them because I want to book with other people going with me, so we can book together and hopefully room together. We'll see what happens cause I have this odd feeling that people that I'm going with aren't thinking about Florence everyday like I am, which I don't know why they aren't. I just really want to take advantage of every second while I'm there. So I talked to some people that had been to Paris (2 girls, one had lived there for 2 months and the other had been to Paris 5 times), so I was like "hey ladies, tell me about Paris." They told me a lot. They gave me a bunch of things to do while talking about how great Paris is, which I doubt, but we'll see. So here I was with this flight booked for Paris, yet no flight to get me to Florence so I can study abroad! I was freaking out a little bit. Then my mom was like "the travel agent got your ticket and you get to fly over with your friends". So I get even more hyped and mom booked my plane trip back seven days later than everyone else's so I can chill for an extra week with them and no classes. The hostels I'm looking at for Paris are "The Young and Happy Hostel" and "St. Christopher's Hostels." Shouldn't be extremely expensive but I am a poor college student so we'll see what happens. I got one kid that said he would go to Istanbul with me so I gotta plan that next and I'm super hyped. Also this woman from AIFS that is apparently in charge of the Florence trip as a whole will be visiting the school this Monday, her name is Kirsty Isherwood. I don't have many questions, but we'll see how it goes and I'll probably blog it later. Anyway still a big week and I get to chill with some friends from London that still go to my school and the instructor that went with us last year, at the instructor's home this Friday. I'm pumped cause I think it will be a really good time. I'm also going to Colorado to see my roommates from London because they live there. Its gonna be a road trip with another girl that studied in London with me and still goes to my school. We plan on stopping at cool places on the way to see cool stuff and to see our friends in Chicago, Milwaukee, Des Moines, and Larramee. I don't think the kids I'm going with now realize how close we will be by the end of this trip. To be honest: they will probably hate me, but I'm ready for it. Until next time children: BE GREAT!