I Had the time of my life

Again I am two days behind on blog posts due to poor wifi and a busy schedule. 

Thursday was another normal day of classes and walking around. For dinner Olivia and I decided to take the ropes and make stir fry. Let's just say after the pepper cap falling off into the vegetables..no one will want us cooking for them ever again. No one could eat the meal without their entire insides burning so we resorted to peanut butter and crackers for dinner and nutella. We spent the night in with no wifi. It was a simple day/night. 

FRIDAY!! 

Yesterday was the best night I have had in Florence so far. My first class was at 1 which was so nice because I got to sleep in! On the way to class I ran into my 2nd cousins super randomly! I knew they were in Florence but the chances of me running into them in a super packed touristy area at a completely random time were one in a million. Everyone was in shock as we hugged and made plans to meet up for dinner the next day. Florence was giving off so many good vibes we just knew it was going to be a good day! After the run in I had to go straight to class. We had our first study tour trip which was the Uffizi gallery. Our tour guide Sarah was awesome. She took us to a few paintings and rooms and throughly described the meaning of them. It gave each painting so much more meaning knowing the story behind it! She definitely knows her stuff! After a few hours in the museum we were free to leave. It happened to conveniently be pouring out when we left so we ran across the street into a little cafe. In the cafe they had gelato ice cream...how could an ice cream fanatic like myself pass that up?! As delicious as it was I still do like American milkshakes better...sorry Florence. We then headed back to the apartment to eat a little dinner and get ready to go out. As soon as we walked out of the apartment to go out we all started freaking out. We had dressed up a little and it was still early so we stuck out even more. The four of us literally ran to the margarita place because of the creepiers and our own personal paranoia. We decided to check out this margarita place because it had 27 different kind of margaritas so we figured it was a good relaxed way to start off the night. The margarita place was empty but we still went in and were soon joined by a bunch of other girls in our program. The margaritas were huge!! By far the biggest margarita I have ever seen. Before you know it we were those loud Americans sipping on margaritas and screaming to Shakira songs. After we all had finished our drink we went out to meet up with the Florence for Fun guys at an American bar called the red garter. The red garter was packed! There was karaoke in the back, dancing in the front room, and a chill area on the side. We ran over to the karaoke stage an knew there was no way we were leaving that bar without going up! We met so many different people from so many different places which was so fun! Before I knew it Taylor was up on the stage belting out spice girls wannabe with another girl from our program Anna. I was screaming to just about everyone HEY THAT GIRL UP THERES MY ROOMMATE! Next up was Natasha and Amanda singing all the single ladies. I knew I needed to go up for my turn soon it was just too funny! As I made my way down towards the stage we meet a huge group of girls studying abroad from San Diego! They were awesome and before we knew it our new friends, Taylor, and I were all up on the stage belting out We Can't Stop by Miley Cyrus. IT WAS AWESOME! All these people in the bar were recording us...still trying to get my hands on that video! After our debut we talked to people from Dublin, London, and Switzerland. The guy we met from Switzerland was hilarious! He was such a funny dancer and we even got him to do the robot. He also helped us to avoid anyone who tried to dance with by saying he was our boyfriend. As 2am rolled around we decided it was time to head out and start our walk home. On the streets we met more Americans how are all from Long Island...seriously everyone is! Of course I asked every single one of them if they knew my roommate at home Kristen. As we continued to walk home we ran into two guys who were attending the NYU campus in Florence and were very lost. Actually they were walking the complete opposite way of their apartment! It turned out they seemed to live in the same area we did so they joined us for the walk home. Feeling better that we were now walking in a pack of 5 (Amanda, Taylor, the two guys and I) we again continued on but once again we got stopped along the way YET AGAIN when we heard a huge group of guys with so we thought British accents. Taylor immediately ran up to them screaming OMG ONE DIRECTION!!! Turns out after faking our own British accents and also screaming 'Arry Pottaaa at them they were not from Britain but actually from South Africa. They tried to convince us to go back out with them but we needed to get back it was now getting closer to 3! As we walked back we learned more about our new found friends one goes to Duke and one goes to William. We promised to teach them what we knew about Florence and it ended up they live like 3 houses down from our apartment. But this walk wouldn't be complete without Taylor daring me to run through the park sprinklers...me actually doing it...and getting another set of creepiers...thank god once again for being with the guys! By the time we made it back into the apartment it was about 3:30 and we were exhausted! When people say studying abroad is the best experience of our life I couldn't agree more and last night proved it! I am so excited for every single day to come! 

Ciao! 

*side note for any further information of how funny last night was see Taylor Post blog because it was so hard to include everything! 

 View from inside the Uffizi gallery looking out....

 Best sign ever!...

Creepy Italian mannequins....

Margaritas!...

 Twining...

Natasha and Amanda singing all the single ladies...

Before our study tour all the Fashion majors...

Classes and roaming

Not much has happened in the last two days besides experiencing more of my classes and more exploring of Florence. Tuesday was my first day of Fashion and the Media, and Italian Fashion and Culture. Tuesday was also the first day I experienced walking around Florence by myself (since I am the only one of my roommates in Fashion and the Media). Fashion and the Media was in a sweltering hot classroom so it was extremely hard to sit in a two hour class where I felt like I was being cooked in an oven. Italian Fashion and Culture was interesting we had an intro to some of Italian history, food, and norms. Our teacher if from California but has lived in Florence since 1995. She seems nice! The rest of the day we simply hung out and had an amazing pasta dinner cooked by Amanda. We spent the night dying of laughter through some casual facebook stalking and reminiscing about freshmen year at Kent.

Today I started off the day at 730am with some green tea (yes I actually learned how to like a hot drink other than hot chocolate!!) and peanut butter and banana on toast. I headed off to conversational Italian at 8:30 and finally made a class on time! I'm getting a hang of the 20-30min walk to class! In conversational italian we learned about pronunciation, the verb "to be", question words, and nouns. It was a lot to take in at once but is very similar to French so I'm catching on quick. After class Amanda and I went to watch Kyla get her hair dyed for the first time. The salon was awesome! It looked like a salon from straight out of a movie! After that we met up with Olivia and shopped around and ate pizza and gelato. The gelato place we ate at has been the best yet and conveniently the cheapest! I got one scoop of dark chocolate and one of chocolate mousse and managed to get it everywhere of course! I also met a cute little dog named Marlou. I also made my second shopping purchase here a pair of earrings from Brandy Melville (another American store...oops). When we got back to the apartment we booked flights to Ireland!! I am beyond excited to finally have that trip set in stone AND we got an awesome flight deal thanks to Taylor! The rest of the night will probably be spent in cooking a stir fry dinner and deciding on more weekend trips we'd like to book. I have classes again tomorrow and hopefully will be meeting up with my dad's cousins (who are in Florence) for dinner.
Ciao! :)

 Amanda's dinner of salad, pasta with mozzarella, zucchini, tomatoes, bread and olive oil, and sangria....

 Found this sign in a cute little store...

 ahhh the best gelato!!!!....

 We ate gelato by the river.....

Met a little dog named Marlou....

Another picture by the river...

Cinque Terre, Classes, and Futbol!!

I have two days to catch up on since I've been so busy I haven't had time to write!

On Sunday we all traveled to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is "the five lands" composed of five villages along the coast of the Italian Riviera. Cinque Terre was the most beautiful place I had ever been to. We hiked up the steep mountain which had breathtaking views. It was a combination of my two favorite things the beach and hiking. It is crazy to think people just live there everyday. We traveled across the five lands making stops is 3/5. The first stop we took we did a little mini hike up around the area to take pictures. After that we hiked down and took some pictures on the rocks closer to the water. Then we went towards the village and ate an amazing focaccia bread with spinach and cheese. It was much cheaper than the usual prices around Florence. The shop we ate at was so small but the man who owned it was so passionate about the food there and explaining to us "what is the best of" Cinque Terre. After about an hour at the first stop it was time to get back on the bus and go to the next village (none of us remember the order of the villages or which ones we went to :/ oops). The next village we hopped of the bus and just toured around cute little shops and saw some more amazing views. We only stayed here for about an hour or so as well. The following village we had to take a train to. The train was a quick ride accompanied by of course the beautiful view of the beach and ridged coast. When we arrived we had to hike up these crazy steep steps that seemed to go on forever to get into the village. Along the trek up the steps there was little kids selling painted rocks and other little things they had made. They were adorable! I couldn't pass up the opportunity to contribute to this young entrepreneurship so I bought one of the painted rocks and paid two euros for it because I had no idea what they were saying! The looked really happy to be making a sale so it was worth the rock splurge! When we finished hiking up all the steps we again just toured around the village until we could move onto the final village we were traveling to. The final village was the best!! It was an amazing beach day so we skipped the big hike and ran straight to the beach, which hurt because the beach was not sand it was a huge rock beach...my feet were not happy after that decision. The beach was super crowded but we managed to squeeze in the sheet we had brought in a prime stop..right next to the trash cans. It didn't matter though all of us were freaking out and ran straight into the water. It water was so clear and blue that you could see right through it! It was the perfect temperate and had repetitive waves. The rest of the time was spent lounging on the beach until finally it was time to eat. We went off in search of a restaurant that had sea food since we were on the coast. We found a restaurant that was perfect and got seated on the deck overlooking the water. We ordered a sea food platter and I ordered spinach and ricotta cheese raviolis in a tomato cream sauce. The food came and it was THE best meal by far that we had in Italy. After our meal it was time to say goodbye to these beautiful villages that we had fallen in love with. Mark my words I will be back for you Cinque Terre!!

Monday!
Monday was our first day of actual classes. My first class, basic Italian was at 9am and Amanda and I just made it on time! Gloria is our Italian teacher and she is adorable! Her first words to the class were "I am not like your normal professors at Kent, this is a very relaxed class and I want you to think of me more as a friend than a teacher...an old friend...because I am an old women". She taught us the Italian alphabet which surprisingly doesn't include the letters J, K, W, X, Y. There are no italian words that used these letters except for when italians adopt american words like "taxi" which in that case they do have pronunciations of the letters. I'm so happy that italian has started because I could really use some italian phrases around here! After class Amanda and I walked over to a grocery store Jaron recommended called Conrad. Conrad was awesome it had everything and when I say everything I mean they had skippy peanut butter and chickpeas so I was in heaven. We stocked up on groceries and then began our walk home to our apartment. I thought my arms were going to break off by the time we got back. It was the longest walk in the world! My grocery bag started breaking so I had to carry it like a baby through the streets of Florence. All these market vendors annoyed us as we walked by saying "oooo excuse me miss can I help you with your bag" "I will help you with your bag because you have blue eyes and they are beautiful.." It never ends! But we just ignored them and laughed. Finally when we made it back to the apartment we were happy to finally have a stocked fridge. We also realized after splitting the grocery bill between the four of us how much cheaper it is to buy groceries and eat meals in the apartment. Taylor and Olivia soon arrived back to the apartment after their classes and we all went back out to buy futbol tickets for Firenze!! Firenze is the series A soccer team in Florence. Soon enough it was on to the next class International business. Right off the bat we were not only late by spent every second of our 3 hour class being pretty much persuaded to drop since the teacher was mad he had such a big class. Conveniently for him it worked because he got me to drop out and which to Fashion Media instead. This made me stressed out for the night because of course I kept contemplating whether or not I had made the right decision. I am horribly indecisive. Before the soccer game we went over to Jaron's apartment with intentions of cooking a pasta dinner before the game but ended up running out of time and instead scarfing down zucchini and bread. We headed out to the bar to meet up with everyone that was going to the game (because we were supposed to take a bus there). Somehow we all ended up walking to the game which was about a 40 minute walk. The game was really fun! There were so many fans all chanting in Italian and Firenze won!!! Definitely an awesome experience to see the Florentine's pride for their soccer team. We took the long walk home and ended up starving in our kitchen at 12:30 making pasta before we went to bed. Today I start my next two classes!
Ciao!

Cinque Terre...

 

Spinach and Cheese Focaccia....

Painted Rock..

Futbol!!!....

Meeting our spirit guide

Today we head out for our final orientation day...thank god! Our teacher Gloria took us out to explore the northern part of Florence. We saw a few new good places to eat, more gelato stands (including Gloria's favorite) and a supermarket with more specialty foods. Gloria convinced us all to stop and get gelato at her favorite place. She ordered her own gelato which was more of an italian ice and asked us all if we wanted to have a taste, so we all had a bite and it was really good! Gloria than took us to a building that used to be an orphanage and also to a university in Florence that many famous artist attended including Michelangelo. There is so much of the city we haven't explored and it is so nice of a native like Gloria to have been taking us around this entire week. After our touring we returned to the apartment and got ready to go to a pool in Florence with a "swim up bar". It took us a while to get there because we had never ventured to that part of the city but the walk there was beautiful! When we got to the pool we as always had trouble trying to understand italian...thank sweet baby jesus we're starting italian on Monday because its such a struggle. After a maze of bathrooms and changing rooms we finally found the pool area! We had to take our shoes off before entering which was so weird and walk through a water puddle that spastically spurted out water..it was disgusting. As we entered the pool area we were immersed in a sea of speedos. It was too much to handle. We got lunch and the usual stares and hey sexy americans because we stick out like sore thumbs in a sea of tall dark and beautiful italians. I blame myself for being so pale. We soon discovered that the "swim up bar" which we thought was a place for drinks by the pool, turned out to be literally a bar in the middle of the pool that you could sit on. We hung out, got cat called by the usual creeps and then.. A combination of Fabio and Dumbledore in a thong cheetah speedo slowly strutted across the bar. With hands and fingers covered in jewels he carefully contemplated life before he took each dive into the pool. Never had I seen such a glorious sight...we died but no one else seemed to notice how ridiculous this guy was! Olivia than began to tell us that he was definitely our spirit guide that no one else can see but us and he was going to give us a mission. We were all so mad we didn't have our cameras to take a picture of him. After we had a full pool day we left and walked back next to the beautiful river! It was an amazing pool day! We returned back to the apartment where Taylor and I complained about how hungry we were until Amanda and Olivia wanted to kill us. We went out to a sushi place for dinner and let me tell you..sushi is not my thing. I have no idea how to eat with chopsticks and I made a mess, it was soo good though! Through our deep table talks at the sushi place we managed to scare the people sitting next to us out of the restaurant. Of course we needed dessert after and I got gelato for the second time...definitely is getting worse than my ice cream addiction! We're about to go out to an Irish pub (wooo finally i'll fit in!!) for a drink with some friends. It won't be a late night because tomorrow we get to go to Cinque Terre for hiking and a beach day!! Italy is the best place in the world and I couldn't have asked for better roommates!

Ciao for now! 

Tourists love segues....

 HEY MOM!!!...

 Exploring with Gloria..

Florence nightlife/recovery day

Another amazing two days have passed. On Thursday we had another orientation session which included a tour of the fresh food market and the side of Florence we have not explored yet. Our Italian teacher Gloria conducted the tour. Gloria is the cutest old Italian woman! We found two well priced little restaurants right by our second campus which will be perfect for meals in between classes. One again we shopped around when we were finished with orientation classes. We ended up in H&M (how very European of us) an the first non food purchases were made by all. After naps and an Italian home cooked meal of pesto, eggplant, and bread an oil made by yours truly we decided it was time to checkout the bar and club scene in Florence. We didn't know what to expect but as soon as we headed out we were being handed shot and drink deals by promoters in the streets. We took up a shot deal and went in took a shot and 30 seconds later left to continue on to meet up with our friends at the opening of a new bar. The bar was awesome it was filled with Ksu students. We met so many people from so many different places. A few New Yorkers, a group of Albanians, along with many kent state people we had never met. It was so much fun! From there we continued on to a club called space with out new friends. Space was a lot of fun a well! We got back around 4 and all immediately passed out. The night got the best of us for me and Amanda because when 10am rolled around we couldn't get up and make it to our first orientation class of the day so we slept on. When Olivia and Taylor got back we all made it out to the next class and then ate at the American diner. The diner was a much needed trip. We got overly excited to see a menu with pancakes, burgers and omelets, not that we don't love Italian food but it was a nice switch up and have a taste of home. The food was good the eggs I got were not that great but we'll definitely be going back! We spent the rest of the day recovering and napping from our night out. Which was exactly what we all needed. I cannot believe I have been here for almost a week! It seems unreal! I'm loving every minute of it so far and know already that this has been one of the greatest decisions I have ever made.
Ciao!

Florence night life...

American diner...

Exploring more of Florence..

 did anyone hear the iphone 7 is out...