where they make the cheese!

It's been a couple days! Everyone's probably really excited that I haven't posted for awhile.

The day after we had the splendid wine tasting, we had a bit of a disappointment. We wanted to go to these gardens which we thought would be like Fiesole, but the bus dropped us off pretty much on the side of the highway and we had to walk a long, sketch route to these pretty pathetic gardens. We didn't stay long, because we had had such high hopes DASHED, so we left after we did our class reading and went instead to a flea market. Much more entertaining. I love how old junk is pretty much the same everywhere you go -- you wonder why certain things even EXIST, they're so ugly.

Yesterday class was at the Palazzo Medici and San Lorenzo, which my mom would have loved. The old residential palace of the Medici family is now the city police center, I guess, and there was this HUGE protest going on outside of the building while we were having class. Rocci told us if they breached the gates to tell them that we didn't work there and that we were Canadian. But alas, nothing so exciting even transpired. The church of San Lorenzo has the bodies of a lot of the Medici fam, which was cool. THEY WERE SO RICH.

It was one of the girl's birthday last night so we went to the kareoke place we went to last week. After awhile, a group went to this club to see MIMS (this is why I'm hot)...there are so many random artists that come here. Last week Chingy was here and next week is Flo Rida. Hahahahaha what. I didn't go (obviously) but apparently he was disappointing anyway.

TODAY we did the Museo dell' Opera del Duomo, which is where a lot of the original stuff that was in or on the Duomo is housed. We saw some famous door panels, St. John the Baptist's jawbone and index finger, and the second of the three Pietas that Michelangelo carved (number one is in Rome, obviously, this one he smashed because he found an imperfection in the marble. YIKES MAN). Oh, and Brunelleschi's death mask.

Also today was Jeff's birthday so we went out to lunch at this restaurant Perseus, which apparently has the best steak in Florence. Jeff and Nate split this 48.00 steak which was delishhh and huge. Sarah Erin and I split some pasta and also some meat, which we now believe to be liver. Really gross, our tummies hurt afterwards. OH WELL WHAT AN EXPERIENCE.

ALSO we got train tickets to Cinque Terre for this weekend (we're doing a day trip on Saturday) and to Assissi for Sunday! These are the the plans we made in place of Munich, and I'm really stoked. CT looks GORGEOUS and Assissi is supposed to be pretty sweet as well.

Right now I'm looking up hostels in Poland and trying to figure out what to do with the 5 weekends I have not planned anything for. Oh traveling; never realized what a hassle you are.

ANYWAY I hope all is well with everyone -- shoot me an email to say how you're doing please! I miss you all!
LOVEEE