Mi Chiamo Andrew: "Things are gonna get weird"

The purpose for this snazzy title is that this is indeed the first sentence that I have learned to say in Italian! Well at least the first half of it, the second half of it comes from my housemates constantly saying the phrase whenever they're about to do something, and this weekend was indeed extremely weird, absolutely incredible, but just so weird beyond belief. My amazement, love, and infatuation with Italy continues to grow as everyday passes. My newest discovery is how incredibly beautiful the Italian language is. Sounds a tad girly I know, and I never thought I'd say that about a language, but comparing the little amount I have learned over this past week to the languages of English, Spanish, French, and German that I have dabbled in (well mainly in comparison to Spanish/English as I have only learned a few things in the latter languages), it really amazes me how well, amazing the language of my ancestors truly is. I have found its just incredibly fluid, smooth, and just simply off your tongue. I'm really looking forward to learning more about this language and hopefully being able to communicate to a certain extent with Italians I encounter. Such as the lovely Italian grandma who lives right below us. Doesn't speak a word of english, but she is quite the chatterbox as she talks to us for over half and hour in Italian while we just nod in agreement. But she is quite a lovely lady as she made our house fresh pasta sauce and gave us a box of pasta to enjoy.

This week I haven't been able to do as much exploring as I hoped, but I think I have almost made my body adjust to the time (most irritating thing about being here is that the first few nights I could not for the life of me fall asleep until 5-6am) and just been going to classes. Sunday was spent traveling the city with Russ in search for notebooks, which apparently Florentines only feel the need to have Beyonce and Unicorn notebooks, and then him, Pat and I ate at a local restaurant nearby, La Lampara, near the train station, where I had an amazing Pasta Carbonara for about 10euros. Having class only 3 days a week, with no class thurs/fri, may appear to be absolutely glorious, but ha that is just a facade my dear friends. Perhaps I am being a tad overdramatic and I'm sure I'll get used to it as the weeks pass, but oh boy, 2.5hrs of my Religion & Politics in the Middle East Class was quite painful (sorry myriah!). Not that the topic wasn't interesting, but the length, the fifty maps of essentially the same exact thing! and the lengthy delay of my professor speech as he's pretty fluent in English, but just takes him forever to find his words, adds to the pain. On the plus side, I've heard this class at Marist is quite rigorous and from the looks of it this class will be pretty easy. Moving onto my cooking class!

Brilliant class I must say, and seems like this is absolutely up my ally. As many of you know, one of my strongest passions in life is food and to cook, and this is exactly what this class is about. An intermediate cooking class that dives into the depths of what food is really about. We haven't done any cooking as of yet, but the professor took us across the street to the San Lorenzo Market which was incredible, essentially it's an indoor market that is absolutely gigantic. They have absolutely every type of food (well Italian) that you could dream of, and in such large amounts and such deliciousness to it. I have to hand it to these Italians (and not just with the food, but with basically everything), they really know what their doing. Everything was so fresh, from pasta, to entire chickens, to baked goods, and even a lot of fresh looking tripe that I would consider indulging in. My other two classes, intro to art history, and Europe after 1945 I don't have much to discuss as we merely went over the syllabus in my art class (which is excellent as we essentially tour places in Florence every class, and the other half of the class is spent discussing) and I didn't attend my history class as I switched into another class: The Social History of Renaissance Italy, for the reason that I wanted to take a history class on Florence instead of Italy/Europe as a whole.

All I have to say is that it's absolutely incredible having a four day weekend every week of the semester. Come 4:15pm on Wednesday, I'm a free bird and can roam the city as I please. Thursday was an excellent day as it finally warmed up a bit and was very sunny, so Pat and I decided to really explore the city to it's fullest. I packed my camera and wrote a few sights to see in my journal, and we were off. I'm slowly starting to reach my limit for my Flickr account, so I won't be able to continuously post my photos, unless you have a Facebook, then the skies are the limit for checking out my photos which provides a better description of my week. So we set off to our first stop on our list which was Piazza Michelangelo. The amazing part about Florence is that when you set off to do one thing, you see fifty other incredible things on the way there. As my pictures will show, we did not get to the Piazza until the sun was actually starting to set as we had numerous opportunities to take glorious pictures of baptisteries, the ponte vecchio, and statues galore. Unfortunately, we were not able to find the Pizzeria Gusto (the best pizza you will ever have in your life) but I did find the best panini shop that I have ever had in my life! Cafe Amerini on via della vigna nuova 63. I had a fantastic prosciutto and brie panini that awakened my tastebuds like nothing before in my life. After the second highlight of my day, we continued to the Piazza where I was able to encounter one of my top 10 highlights of my life. Words cannot describe the beauty of the view from the Piazza which provides a magnificent panoramic of the renaissance city nestled in the foothills of Tuscany.

That night, Courtney Meek (whos studying in Rome this semester) visited with her roommate Jess, and their friend Brittney. It is commonly known that Florence has the best gelato in the entire world, and of course when I meet up with them, they are treating themselves to a McDonalds icecream cone. Setting aside these differences and anger, I finally accepted her friends who are actually really sweet. That night was spent going to Pizzeria Gusto, and circling the Duomo a solid twenty times in search for a wine bar, but eventually returned back to our house to swap some good ole' stories. The following day we did the main touristy things, duomo, ponte vecchio, fake david statue, santa croce (where Michelangelo tomb is) and for the second day in a row, went to piazza Michelangelo where we happened to run into Pat. We didn't actually tour the inside of santa croce, but they had a chocolate festival going on which was absolutely incredible. I splurged a tad, and ended up buying a cup of chocolate covered strawberries, and I must say, strawberries, plus chocolate, never tasted so delicious. The night was spent attending a few local hotspots before retiring once again to my apt where things got really weird as my housemates stumbled back one at a time and caused mayhem. The perfect description of my house is that this is the Jersey Shore house as they all resemble a particular character and it can get just as weird and crazy as the stuff that happens on the Jersey Shore. Rather then describing everything, (a little sneakpeak though: liquid on the walls, glasses broken, puncture wounds, and dinosaurs) just watch an episode and it'll explain everything.

In a failed attempt to go see Cinque Terra, we decided to visit the town of Pisa, apparently its kinda a big deal here in Italy to see a building that was poorly designed. But who knew an architectural flaw could be so amazing to witness before your eyes. Of course the moment I stepped foot onto Italian soil I was jonesing to take completely corny and touristy pictures with the Tower of Pisa. For those of you who were eager to know which I chose, I settled on three that included the typical holding it up pose, the Fonz foot up against the wall/locker pose, and the intellectual reading a book up against the tower pose. Seeing the tower was an amazing experience, but our lunch that was shortly to follow was not far behind in awesomeness. Of course we needed to eat Pizza in Pisa, so we chose a little quaint restaurant right by the tower where I had a pizza by the name of Sfiziosa which was, what a surprise, wicked awesome. It was topped with salami, gorgonzola, and mozzarella cheese. The pizza was lovely, but it was the conversation that we had with these two ladies, a mother and a daughter, that was even more lovely. As my group and those two ladies were the only ones sitting in the restaurant, small talk was obviously going to occur. My initial thoughts were that these ladies were going to provide us with the routine advice to travel through Europe and just to have fun. The conversation lasted for a good half hour where towards the end of it, the daughter Michelle went to use the bathroom and the waitress brought us out an amazing bottle of red vino that was perhaps the best bottle I have tasted thus far. After a very pleasant and entirely enjoyable talk with them, she gave us her business card so we could email her and we departed ways. After we returned home, googled who she was (as she mentioned she was in the movie/music business), we found out that shes the founder and owner of the company that did the visual effects for the Matrix movies. Now, for those of you who don't know the Matrix series, the movie has become extremely successful essentially because of the incredible visual effects laced throughout the movie. Courtney and co's final night consisted of going to a wine bar across the river which was again, absolutely incredible. Called Bevvion Enteca Bar, on San Niccolo 59r. It amazes me how with every coming day, Florence offers me incredible experiences that continue to vary. The winebar was so quaint and we spent our time sharing a bottle of chianti amongst solely Italians, while eating this amazing salty thin/crispy wafer thing. Unfortunately, our decision to go here was made very late and we had to leave as the place was closing, so we once again retired back to the apartment where we spent our time chatting it up with a few of my housemates.

A few side stories to cap off this very lengthy blog post, one being that I am no longer residing in "The Chamber of Secrets" and have moved into my housemate Ryan's room as we now have a new housemate Jeff, who's from Marist and was studying abroad in Cairo, but because of all the turmoil, he had to leave and opted to study in Florence for the semester (unless the unrest settles in the upcoming weeks, in which case he will return back to Cairo). Also, Courtney and I decided that we would become travel buddies while studying here as we live fairly close together, so we spent part of the weekend deciding on where to spend our springbreak and easter break. After countless hours of Courtney slaving away at the computer, we finally booked our springbreak trip to Amsterdam, Budapest, Prague, and Geneva. Then we booked our easter break trip to Paris and Barcelona. Also, we are considering on a trip to Ireland and Scotland during the month of April which would just be the icing to the cake. Sadly, there are not enough weekends in the semester to travel everywhere, particuarily in Italy, so I will definitely have to come back again in the near future. Now time to make a nutella and banana sandwich and go watch the Superbowl, GO PACKERS!!!!!!

Ciao!