Buonasera People!!! I miss you all so much (I actually have no idea if anyone reads this so.....) but anyways it has been a very busy week since I have last updated you all. It finally feels like I have started my real life here in Florence. I have only been here 8 days but it feels like forever, which is bittersweet. I feel like I already have a feel for this amazing city that I am SO fortunate to live in and I am really enjoying myself. On Friday we had to go to the school to get our permission to stay work for the Italian police which lasted all of five minutes but we had to wake up at the crack of dawn!!...aka 9am... After an amazing nap my roommates and I decided to venture out to find the pizza place where Jersey Shore worked (Mom and Dad: this means Snooki and her Guido friends, the ones you hate) and the pizza was delicious...no surprise there, seems to be a common theme in my life. The place is called O' Vesuvio Pizzeria and has a bunch of the casts clothes hanging up on the ceiling. It has definitely become a tourist type place since the show aired and you could tell the real italians in there were not amused by my friends and I snapping pictures of Snooki’s bras that were hanging from the ceiling. Later that night we ventured out onto the town to a local american bar because we are still not comfortable enough to go to the real italian places. We ended up meeting a lot of different kids from different programs and making some new friends. Saturday was our leisure day and we were fortunate enough to sleep in and finally try to not be so jet lagged. Later that day we took an Art History Tour with an American who now lives her. She ended up being super nice and even asked me and some friends to babysit her 3 year old! Strange but I may take her up on the offer...a couple extra euro’s never hurt anyone! We walked around for 2 hours to different famous places within the city and I definitely learned a lot and took tons of pictures. Here are some of my favorite pictures: 

Piazza Della Repubblica

River Arno

My Roommates and I 

Little Market!!

Fresh Fruit!

The tour guide told us that it is a tradition that if you are in 
Florence and are in love then you buy a lock and lock it to 
somewhere on the Ponte Vecchio bridge and throw the key
 into the Arno River. So cute, these locks are everywhere!

Later on Saturday my roommates and I hung around because we had an early wake up call to go to IKEA then Pisa for the day. IKEA is literally my worst nightmare. Everything is everywhere and people just run around with bags full of crap and there are no signs. My anxiety was through the roof!! I did manage to get some towels, a pillow and a blanket which made my room seem much more settled and home like. After this we went got back on the bus and headed towards pisa.......Ohhhhhh Pisa...I despise you. There is LITERALLY nothing to do in this town. We arrived and walked through the worst part of town just full of people trying to sell you stuff and then we saw the leaning tower and the cathedral. That was it. Obviously everyone takes those really dorky pictures of themselves trying to hold up the tower. I really tried not to do one but was peer pressured....Here it is...... 

Soooo Dorky!

Everyone stood in front of the tower taking these pictures doing different positions of holding it up for hours! Like SO dorky and SO weird! We then found it funny to take pictures of random people doing it....

So Funny

After we stared at the tower for 20 min we decided to go grab something for lunch and luckily found a small little deli with a delicious panini. After that we walked through the Cathedral for a couple minutes...then we got so bored and cold that we went to McDonalds to sit in the warmth. Pisa is THAT boring. I’m pretty sure I got this point across already but for those of you who didn’t get it...Pisa was not my favorite. 

Monday was our first day of classes and so far so good kind of! The classes are definitely a little bit more challenging than I expected and we are not allowed to skip 2 or we get automatic failures. Hopefully this will change throughout the semester because that makes it really hard to travel around as much as we want. I also have my first painting class tomorrow and I am really nervous for that since I do not have an artistic bone in my body! But I guess I will just have to learn/learn to laugh at myself. Today I had my first Italian class and it is seminar style so there are 8 of us that sit around a table and attempt to say Ciao correctly. I am definitely really excited to at least learn a little bit of Italian in order to make life here a little bit easier. It also snowed today, which I guess is a HUGE deal. My one roommate heard that one year it snowed less than an inch and bus drivers abandoned the buses and people turned their cars off on the highway and just slept there....Definitely confusing for me since I grew up in Antarctica aka Cleveland, OH where I was used to 4 inches of snow a day. We got two separate emails from the school warning us of the impending half an inch of snow and warning us that we need to not be dependent on the bus system within the next few days. Stores are already planning on closing. Crazy Italians. It’s just snow!! 

Speaking of snow, some friends and I have officially booked a couple trips. We booked a trip to Interlacken, Switzerland! We plan on going night sledding and some skydiving..Don’t worry Mom..not me, too much of a chicken! Tory and I also booked our flights for Spring Break, we are going to London, Galway (to visit Mary!!) and Dublin. This upcoming weekend we are going to Assisi, Perugia, Siena, and San Gimignano with our school. The next weekend I go to Rome and the following weekend is Carnivale, which is basically a big parade/carnival throughout Italy, so my friends and I are going to Venice and Veraggio. So I have some pretty exciting stuff coming up! Keeping busy and planning these trips are definitely helping me not think about being so far away from home. This is all definitely an adjustment and people don’t really talk about how it can be difficult sometimes. It is all worth it in the end! You just have to keep your eye on the final goal; growing up and learning more and more about myself! Can’t wait to talk to you all soon! Con Amore, Erin

Friends, Family, and Stalkers; Ciao from Florence, Italy! I have finally arrived and settled in, thank god! We stayed in a hotel on Monday night (our first night in Florence) and it was a miserable experience to put it nicely. Between lack of sleep, nerves, lost luggage, and boring orientation seminars, 95% of the kids on the trip were all unhappy, hungry and ready to go home.  We all definitely got to know each other at our worsts but i guess that’s how you make friends fast. On Tuesday we finally moved into our apartment and it feels great to be finally moved in. I live right off the Piazza Santa Croce, which is absolutely gorgeous and I cannot wait to see it at it’s best once it gets a little bit warmer. All of the other student apartments are within a short walking distance so it really is the perfect location. We were quick to discover that most of the streets in Florence dump into Santa Croce, so it’s very hard to get lost. 

Santa Croce

 I’m meeting a lot of girls from PC that I never even knew existed and I couldn’t be happier about that. On Wednesday some of my roommates and I decided to get a panini and wander around. We got lost somewhere along the way and ended up at the Ponte Vecchio. We got some gelato and crossed the Ponte Vecchio to explore the other side of the city. Then we stumbled upon the Boboli Gardens, which we get into for free with our student card, as well as other museums (Super Dorky but so excited to use this throughout the semester!!!). The Boboli Gardens are beautiful. We went all the way up to the top and saw some really cool views of Florence. Later on in the day the school sponsored a walking tour of the city with some italian students and we went to the Duomo, a classic Florentine landmark and tourist trap. I hope to climb to the top of it but between the close quarters and extreme heights, I may need to bring a barf bag up with me, so I will see how that goes... 

Shannon, Me, Kelly, and Amie (My roommates) outside the Duomo

Anyways! That night we got our first italian pizza........I literally die for it. This is definitely going to pose a problem for my attempt to eat half healthy....along with the gelato....and the paninis.....and the wine....Guess I will just have to give that goal up!! So tragic...except not at all. Here’s a picture to make all of you die of jealousy. 

This ones for you Sammy J

 Today, Thursday, we went to a supermarket in the outskirts of Florence and it was so big. They even had escalators that you could take your shopping cart down, so euro people, so euro! I went to the register and this was the first time I encountered someone that couldn’t speak english and it was hilarious. We both stared at each other and laughed, eventually we figured it out with some luck but I believe it’s definitely time for me to learn some more Italian, not just ciao, gelato per favore, grazie, and vino blanco (even if those might be the essentials). Later on in the day we found a famous small panini place that was absurdly amazing. I can’t wait to take any and all visitors here. We have all begun to start planning some trips around Europe but I found it to make me extremely stressful and had to immediately pop in a valerian root vitamin. So far we plan on going to Pisa, Assisi, Perugia, Rome, Switzerland, Tuscany, Ireland, Ravenna, Greece, Cinque Terre, and Prague, some of which are day trips but nothing is set in stone. 

I am so lucky to be able to have this opportunity and I plan on living my life to the fullest while I’m here, even if I do get a tad bit homesick sometimes. I miss most of you all SO much! If any of you have an iPhone or an iTouch we can text for free with the app “Kik” and I’d love to be able to stay in touch. I will post again soon! 

Con Amore, Erin