Viva Viola!

I know this is a bit delayed in being posted, but I couldn't possibly fail to update you all on my trip to a Fiorentina soccer game! Fiorentina is the local team for the city of Florence. Although they play in the top division of Italian soccer, they have not had overwhelming success in the past few years. If I were to compare them to an American sports team, I would compare them to Rutgers Football. You know they have the potential to be great, and their fans are diehard, but they are definately not the best of the best.

However, when we went to see them on Wednesday night, they were in top form. They played a team from Genoa, Italy that was ranked 1st in the league. Amazingly enough, Fiorentina won the match 2-0! The energy of the stadium was fantastic, with everyone in purple and white singing elaborate songs that make little to no sense when translated into English... Here is a video with the Fiorentina anthem:




That's all for now!

-Liz

If I wanted to make you jealous.....

If I wanted to make you jealous, I could tell you all about my weekend trip to Pisa and Cinque Terre.

If I wanted to make you jealous, I could tell you that despite forecasts to the contrary, we had blue skies and summer weather in Pisa. I could tell you that we spent the day taking ridiculously touristy photographs in front of the tower, and that they all came out great. I could tell you that it truly does not look real until you are napping in the shadow of the tower.

If I wanted to make you jealous, I could talk about my trip to the beach later that day, and swimming in the medditeranian with huge waves, blue sea, and the alps casually chilling out in the background. I could tell you about the four course meal we were treated to at the hotel, or seeing a beautiful sunrise this morning out my balcony of my hotel room.

If I wanted to make you jealous, I could describe, in detail, the feeling of seeing Lord Byron's cave on the coast of Italy where he was inspired to write his best works, or the taste of what was, without a doubt, the best pesto I have ever eaten, fresh from the Cinque Terre region.

However, I am tired of receiving comments from my faithful readers about how jealous they are. I am not a mean person, I do not want to make you jealous. So instead, I will tell you that it is currently raining and that I am currently exhausted from a very busy weekend.

Hope that makes you all feel better!!

Photos to come as soon as my internet speeds up.

LOVE YOU ALL!

PS. Sorry for the lack of posts/contact recently, I understand I may have worried some of you a smidge... but I assure you I am safe and sound and secure in Firenze.

First of many epic weekends to come.

Buona serra, tutti!

I hope everyone had a good weekend, because I know I sure did!

A few of my roommates and a bunch of other people in my program took off for a trip down the amalfi coast to capri and pompeii, but in order to save money for future travels, and in order to get better acclimated in florence, my friends and I decided to stay here and explore all the city has to offer. I could not be more glad with our decision because it turned out to be a fun weekend for everyone!

Friday was spent relaxing and buying books for classes, and since we had had a great night out on the town the night before, we (me and my friends erica, christine, and jess) decided to stay in, cook a nice meal, and plan our future travels. We must really be getting the hang of living in italia and cooking for ourselves, because we managed to scrape together the last contents of our colective refrigerators and cook a scrumptious meal of balsamic+garlic marinated chicken, pasta with a white wine/garlic sauce (yes dad, a-white-a-whine-a-garlica-saucea.), and nutella fondue for desert!

While we ate, we talked about where we all want to travel this semester and luckily we were all pretty much in agreement of our ideal locations. While in a perfect world we would go to every country in Europe, we are unfortunately prevented from doing so due to time restraints and the fact that we still have to save money for things such as oh, ya know, food.

However, we planned our fall break and it looks to be very exciting, with trips to Dublin, Galway, Barcelona, Madrid, and Paris. 5 cities and 3 countries in one week should be tiring, but it will sure as hell be worth it. In addition to fall break, we have penciled in tentative trips to switzerland, greece, austria, germany, and perhaps prague. Whether we actually accomplish these trips are beyond us, however. We also all left plenty of time to be in our home city of Firenze for friends and family to come visit, which will be significantly easier on the wallet but just as fun!

The next day we took a city bus to Fiesole, which is an old, walled town on the hills around florence that overlooks the entire city. It was absolutely beautiful, relatively free of tourists, and a very inexpensive way to have a fun day trip. Check my photo website for pictures of Fiesole as well as some new shots of day-to-day life around the city.

I am working on posting pictures directly to this blog so that you 3 readers I have don't have to constantly check both websites, but for now, you will have to deal with my technilogical ineptitude. This is a rather long post so I will have to cut it short here.

Ciao!
Liz

La Dolce Vita

Hello again my faithful readers!

This week has been very hectic, so sorry for the slight delay in posts! It was the first week of classes so needless to say I have a lot to write about!

In general, my classes are as interesting and exciting as I had expected them to be. Both of my history classes are going to be significantly easier than my classes at Stonehill, which will prove to be a nice break. My 1960s: Global Counter Cultural Movement class is going to be a breeze, with most class sessions dedicated to watching movies and documentaries! Va bene! (It's all good!) My other history class, The Quarters of Florence, is going to prove invaluable because every class we have a walking tour of different parts of the city! According to my professor, we will all be expert tour guides by the time we leave, which should be great!

Italian language has also been going quite well. I am excited to learn and practice more, because although most people speak English, I am getting tired of being a stupid American. So it will be nice to maybe carry on a conversation in Italian! Unfortunately, I find myself accidentally speaking in French when I don't know the Italian word for something. I have found that this is ineffective.

By far the most exciting class that I am taking, however, is my cooking class! (I know, life is hard.) The name of the class is Celebrating Italian Style, which is exactly what we will be doing. We have tastings of products from all over the country, discuss local hoidays/feasts, and talk about trends in cuisine. And at the end of each lesson we cook a delicious Italian meal! For this class we also have several field trips (which I am surprised and pleased to report have all been pre-paid for by Stonehill!) One is to Eurochocolate, which is essentially Oktoberfest for chocolate held in Perugia, Italy. The other two are wine tasting trips to different regions. I am SO excited, to say the least.

I am also fortunate enough to be in my cooking class with two of my friends here, so we are all excited to show off our skills for our roommates and other friends!

I will be posting pictures sometime in the next day to my photo website (webshots.com/photosfromabroad) but for now, my internet is being irritating.

Love and miss you all! Hope all is well in the States!

Ciao Bella!!

Wow! I can't believe I am actually in Florence! I have been here for four days now and it just keeps getting better and better! I keep thinking that I am going to wake up back in my bed at Stonehill with this past week being a total dream!

Since arriving, I have taken tours of the city, meandered the Mercato Centrale (the large central market for produce/meat/delicious foodstuffs), and generally learned my way around the city! It seems like a big maze at first but I was talking to one of my roommates today and we agree that we seem to be getting the hang of it now.

We spent the first few days at a nice hotel near Piazza Santa Maria Novella, which had a rooftop garden overlooking the city and an awesome breakfast every morning. When we first saw the rooftop restaurant/terrace, none of us believed our eyes. The view was incredible and we arrived just as the sun was setting. I wish I had had my camera at that moment if just to capture the look on everyone's faces as we gaped open-mouthed at what will become our city.

On our second day in the city, we were treated by API to a dinner at a restaurant that is directly next to the ponte vecchio! it was a great view and seems to be a pretty nice, reasonably priced restaurant so perhaps we will make it back there.

We finally moved into our apartment yesterday and it is MUCH nicer than I expected it to be. It is in a quiet, pretty safe neighborhood with a park right outside that we predict will be perfect for doing homework on nice days. My roommates are all very nice and it's good because we all have our own groups of friends but everyone gets along. We had a bit of a housewarming party last night and it was fun to get to know even more people in our program!

Classes start on Monday, but since I don't have monday classes I will be spending the day relaxing or perhaps getting to know the city a bit better.

I hope that all is well with whoever (if anyone) reads this blog! Love and miss you all!

Ciao
Liz