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...
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!!!....
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