where they make the cheese!

OKAY SO
I am here!
I will try to spare you every last detail of my trip

-I met up with a girl in the Rome airport before Florence because I was wearing my superfan shirt, so we were able to split a cab to our hotel
-I tried talking in Italian to the cab driver, but basically made a fool out of myself. Hahahah.
-toilet paper in the hotel is narrow, while the pillows are extra long
-our shower is the tiniest thing ever. I keep bumping my elbows
-when we got here my two roommates and I explored downtown Florence and saw the Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, San Marco, ecc. It was sweet but we walked soooo much and my feet were hurting.
-our on-site director is pretty awesome. She’s from Parma and is really hilarious, and planning amazing trips for us to go on
-I avoided jet lag in the sense that I didn’t fall asleep until it was Italian time to go to bed, but I woke up at 3:30 am for some reason and couldn’t fall back asleep.
-we had our first art history class today and the professor is GREAT. He went to Holy Cross and did his masters in Florence, and has been here ever since. Basically our classes will be really detailed tours of certain spots in Florence. Today we checked out Piazza del Repubblica, which was the center of ancient Florence, and went to the Palazzo Vecchio, the old town hall, in front of which stands a copy of Michelangelo’s David. We also get little headsets to listen to him when we’re in big crowds, so we look really cool.
-I don’t get internet access in my room, but I paid for some wireless that is super spotty. I’m psyched to get to Parma if not for that reason only.
-my roommates, Sarah and Erin, and I are planning some great trips around Italy and elsewhere. We wrote down the excursions Caterina had planned and we realized we only really have 13 weekends in Italy the whole semester…it was a weird thing to realize, even on the second day
-tonight we had our “welcome dinner” at this restaurant near the Duomo, and it was stupendous. The group seems to be pretty friendly on the whole.
-Also, we picked out our classes today! Right now we are taking the art history course, and in Parma my track will take a history of Parma with Caterina, a language course in Italian, probably a soc class in Italian, and a class in English. HOORAY
-I miss people back home but the people I’ve met and spent time with are really nice, so that’s helping. I just wish I had internet all the time instead of having to write these entries/emails offline and then post them later, to save my internet usage.

Italy is great. It’s like walking around Disneyworld all the time with all the tourists and amazing buildings. There’s a Disney store here! Probably won’t be going in. But I’m really enjoying it so far.

Molto amore!