Reminiscing One Year Later...

So... I kinda let the whole BLOGGING thing go once i arrived back in the states last December. And now that a lot of people I know have gotten into blogging as of recent, I decided to re-read some of my blogs from Italy and reminisce. When I opened up the page, i was taken a back that the date of my last posting was Oct 9, 2007..... 2007.

One year ago now!!!  I dont know if I am heartbroken or shocked that its been that long. Maybe a little of both...

Either way, for those of you who are reading this now and never knew this blog existed, I encourage you to go back in time and share some of the greatest memories of my life with me. Read them, don't read them... but here they are if you so happen to want to journey through my adventure via the words I had to offer.

And as far as blogging goes.... I'd like to get into it again. Incorporating more of my photography... and whatever stories happen to cross my mind. Could be fun!

Try to remember to live your life as the Italians do.... day- by- day, hour- by -hour, embracing the moment.  Let go, INDULGE, and love. . . love ' la dolce vita,' ... the sweet life.

Grazie mi regazzi. 

Fare la bella vita.

i | r a c c o n t i

Lots going on right now, but I will try to keep it simple.

About a month ago (the beginning of September), we had a 40 year old woman move in with us to fill the vacant spot that our initial roommate, Jane, had left. Luckily, she got the single bedroom so none of us had to share with her. HOWEVER, she was one crazy lady! I’m not sure if words will quite do her justice because she was one of those people you just had to meet to actually believe how …unique… she was. I think she was born in Canada and then lived in India for the past 6 or 7 years. So she was very big into Indian traditions and foods. She burned incense a lot, and I am somewhat allergic to it so I asked her nicely not to burn it. Instead of saying, “ok I’m sorry, I didn’t know” or anything like that, she responds with “well I can cure you of this allergy if you want. You can come to my room later and I’ll examine you and rid your body of the allergy.” Yeah. Exactly.
She also would not allow us to play music whenever she was home. At the time we didn’t know why, but respected that…and reluctantly agreed not to play it. She also ALWAYS left the bathroom floor SOAKING wet after she used it…no matter what. And I mean soaking. If we weren’t careful, we could have easily slipped. Basically, her presence in our apartment was very uncomfortable and frustrating and we couldn’t tolerate her very long. We complained at our school and had a meeting with the housing coordinator. Eve (the woman) was also at that meeting, where we found out that the reason we couldn’t play our music was because “her body swells up and she vomits” whenever she hears music. And apparently our bathroom wasn’t “clean enough” for her because it made her “body swell” and “in India, her floors were so clean she could eat off them.” I mean, you would think that if all these things bothered her so terribly, she would have wanted to move. But no. she wanted to stay. The housing lady wouldn’t allow it though after that meeting. I think she realized just how nuts this woman was and had to tell her to be out by the end of the month. So she’s gone now, and you have only heard the half of it all! (I guess she lied about being a student at Lorenzo and was studying elsewhere… but just wanted to have our school help her I guess…which is very illegal here. Ugh)
Anyway, point of the story… we got a new roommate, OUR OWN AGE, who goes to the same school. Her name is Claire and she’s awesome! We love her and she fits in well with us! So that was a blessing!

Midterms are next week!! Already! I can’t believe it. Yesterday, I spent 8 hours straight in the darkroom! UGHH!! I actually need to be spending every day there in order to get all my work done on time…so I will be heading there soon to spend, yet another, entire day, printing. I have to keep telling myself it will be worth it…

Some fun stuff we did this past week/ weekend:
- Went to a cultural fair in Santa Croce square. You know…the fests that have booths from different countries selling their specific foods….crafts…music. We loved it because we had a chance to have food that wasn’t Italian for a change.
- Went to a Mexican restaurant called Tiajuana (sp?) which was actually pretty decent
- Went BOWLING with Keith, Andy, and one of their friends, Eva. (and of course Sara, me, Claire, and our friend Erin) Yeah that was awesome. Bowling in italy. Psh. The alley was called “Crazy Bowling” LOL. Anyway, i won with measly 101..yay? Then we spent about another hour in the arcade and watching the boys play this airsoft game. Haha. Bowling alleys are pretty different than they are back home.
- Went to the Boboli gardens! Beautiful!!
- Went to an American style brunch. It was awesome to have pancakes and syrup!!! Oh how we take advantage of food in the U.S. but man do I miss it!

I think that about sums it up. I’m sad that I missed the Chicago Marathon, but congrats to all the runners and props to the people that went to cheer them on!!! I think there is a Florence marathon coming up that im excited to see. Break is coming up! We are headed to Milan, Greece, and Venice. Then hopefully we can hit up some more of the “must see” Florence sights and see Michael Buble! We have our fingers crossed for that.

This weekend I am going on a field trip… but we’re just going around in Tuscany. We are going to see some of the sights where they filmed “Under the Tuscan Sun” and “Life is Beautiful.” Then I think we are visiting some other famous small towns for a little wine and cheese tasting. Not sure, but I will let ya’ll know how that goes.

Keep my dad and mom in your prayers.. there is something wrong with my dad’s optic nerves. It happened after the eye doctor gave him the wrong prescription…and I guess now he is having a lot of migraines and can’t eat any solids because he can’t keep them down. I just got word from my mom that he has been in the hospital for the past 2 days. I’m sure this is taking a toll on my mom, what with me being gone…joey being in Indiana and my dad being sick. So pray for her too!
Pray for my midterms and that I use my time wisely…and for my upcoming travels. For my room mate, Sara, because she is headed back to the U.S. this weekend for a wedding and is very nervous about the flights.
Thanks and God Bless!
All my love, Ciao!
Lauren Grace

taglio di capelli

i just got my hair cut.
it was the best hair cut of my life!
italians just do everything better. lol.

pezzi

(fun fact: after I finished writing my previous blog, I left the student point and was walking down the street and I ironically ran into Andy! We ended up hanging out for a few hours and he showed me some cool little places/shops/restaurants around town. Then we got some coffee on the roof top of this department store where there was an incredible view of the country and city! It was fun! I just thought it was crazy and wanted to share that with ya’ll)

So after weeks of trial and error, trying to post pictures online, I finally discovered a way to do it. Facebook wouldn’t let me…other various photo album sites wouldn’t let me… and then I remembered good old flickr. So here is the link to my flickr account so you can view some of my photos now! Yay!

http://www.flickr.com/gp/7653333@N02/L7T93C.

Anywho… lets do a little catchin up.
This past weekend I went hiking in the Italian alps. It was amazing…to say the very least. They told us it wouldn’t be any ‘intense’ hiking… but I guess the Italian’s definition of ‘intense’ is different than ours. I mean, it wasn’t rock climbing or anything, but it was definitely a vigorous course. I absolutely loved it. It was cloudy and misty all day…and the closer we got to the top of the mountain, the colder and foggier it got… as well as snowier! It was so cool. To go from Florence, where it gets pretty warm everyday, to the Alps, where there is snow everywhere and we had to be all bundled up was crazy! It was just an incredible, invigorating day. That was on Saturday.

On Sunday we were scheduled to just visit various towns up north. We stayed in Trento, but left early to go to Garda and see the lake. We spent about an hour there…which was entirely too long since the town is so small and it was a gloomy day. But it was still cool to see. Then we went to Sirmione, where we ate lunch (I hate homemade gnocchi that was delicious!) and went up in a tower of a castle. It wasn’t a very cool castle though… which seems almost wrong to say because heck, its not like there are just castles around everywhere in the states, but once you’ve seen a great one, the ones like the one in Sirmione is just blah. Anyway, since we had 2 and a half un-necessary hours there, we just took a lot of pics and walked around aimlessly. Beautiful town… way too much time there. I guess you will understand why I am saying that once I tell you about the next part of the trip….

Our last stop was Verona. Yes, Verona…the Romeo & Juliet town where there are a BUNCH of sights to see. So there we were, after wasting time in these other small towns all day, eager to see Verona (one of the main cities of italy..) and guess how much time they gave us to spend there…A HALF HOUR! I was, well…unhappy to put it nicely. We got there and we passed Verona’s ponte vecchio (old bridge) which really isn’t all that spectacular in comparison to the other things there are to see in Verona, but our tour guide insisted that we see it. There was no place for the bus to park so they made us run off the bus, run down to the bridge to take pictures, and run back while the bus pulled over illegally. I really didn’t feel that was necessary, but I went with the “flow.” After that chaos, the bus drove us up to the look out point, which was really beautiful but we were all really anxious to see the ancient village that they kept talking about. So finally, we leave the lookout point and ventured into town. We piled off the bus and our guide was like, “ok everyone. Use the restrooms and try to grab a bite to eat and then meet back here in 30 minutes.”
I’m thinking, “30 minutes!?! That’s NOTHING!!”
What makes it even worse was that they handed out maps for Verona with a list an entire page long of the sites to see there… and I’m just thinking in my head how poorly the day was planned because we could have spent atleast 2 hours in Verona alone…why was it so necessary to spend all that time in Garda and Sirmione when Verona was over flowing with things to do.
So anyway, I really wanted to see Juliet’s house and the infamous balcony so we pretty much sprinted there, took pictures, went in the gift shop and lost track of time. Before we knew it, it was time to be back on the bus but we were still a good 15 minutes from there. Of course we panicked and ran back only to find that no one had arrived yet, save for the two guides. They didn’t look happy… but since no one else was there, we asked if we could quick run in McDonald’s to go to the bathroom and grab some food. Reluctantly, they allowed us to go but urged us to be quick. We assured them that we would and ran back to McDonalds… bad idea. To our surprise, that’s where basically our entire group was…and every last one of them was lined up out the door to use the washroom. So I hope that the guides got the hint that they planned that out poorly, because they definitely did. We could have seen Romeo’s house, Juliet’s tomb, amongst other worth while sights… but never got a chance. Que sera sera…
But I really shouldn’t be complaining. I did get to see a lot of cool things and I had Saturday in the alps, which is what I mainly wanted to do anyway. It wasn’t a HORRIBLE Sunday.. it was just frustrating the way it was planned, as I think ive mentioned several times now, so I think I’ll just stop there. Haha.

BEFORE my weekend trip, on Friday night, my roommates and I went out with Keith and Andy again. They had us meet them @ Santa Croce and then they took us out to dinner. We had a blast, yet again, w/ those guys. We never would have known about this restaurant if it had not been for them. It was a small nook on the corner…authentic Italian food. When we got our menus, we just looked at the guys and told them to order for us since that would force us to try things we never had before. So that was neat! We spent a few hours there just talking and laughing and eating. Some more good genuine fun… the best part was that they had ridden their bikes too, which didn’t surprise us, we just found it ironic. After dinner, we stopped at an Irish pub because Andy was meeting a friend there, so we stayed for a little while socializing with them and a few other random people, which is always exciting, and then headed home for the night. Good times..

I could probably go on forever about the things I experience here, but I’m sure you’d eventually clock out and get tired of reading. I’ll save the best stories to tell you in person…or you can email me if you want to know more.
I DID go running this morning though for the first time here…it was quite nice. I basically ran all around the outskirts of Florence and along the Arno river. It was a rewarding run, and a beautiful morning!

But that’s about the most exciting stuff. I saw Atonement last night at the theatre. I highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet!

Miss everyone and cant wait to hear from you! What’s going on back home? Anything new and exciting? It would be cool to hear about things going on back home… I feel like I’m just talking about me all the time. Let me know. Drop me and email or something. I look forward to it. Until then, ciao ciao!

vida... e una bicicletta

Hey guys! So sorry its been a while since I updated. I find it to be harder than I had expected to keep up with this blog. Between emails, class, and traveling, my time is precious. I keep a notebook though, writing down all the fun things I have been doing and seeing so that I don’t forget to tell you anything.
So since the last time I wrote, I have done quite a few wonderful things.
I had one of the best days of my life 2 Fridays ago. My roommates and I went on the “Tuscany Bike Tour.” We met at the bridge just north of the Ponte Vecchio at 9am where we met our tour guides. They were young Scottish guys, full of vigor and excitement for the day ahead. We, on the other hand, were tired and nervous with anticipation…unsure of what we were getting ourselves into. Little did we know, we were going to come back that night ecstatic about how we will never forget that day…
Anyway, once all checked in, we piled into these old, volkswagony type vans and headed out of the now familiar city of Florence, into the hillsides of Tuscany. Sara (one of my roommates) and I got stuck in the back of the van next to this friendly guy, named Rowan from Scotland. We asked him where he was from and his name…it was only cordial as we were basically sitting on top of him! Anyway, we asked him what brought him to Florence and he replied, “well you know the guy with the gay pink sweater on?” and of course , we knew he was talking about one of our tour guides we had met earlier on the bridge…so with a smile on our faces we replied, “yes….” And he goes, “yep. That’s my brother.” It was at that moment that we knew we were going to have a fun day.
Once we were completely out of Florence, Keith (other tour guide driving our van) decided to pop a cassette, yes, a cassette, into the sterio. A few moments later, blaring from the speakers is classic 80s music. Thrilled and even more excited, the entire van starts singing along to “Lets Hear it For the Boy.” My roommate thought she would go ahead and try to hit the infamous high note in the song and had the entire van shocked! Another girl took credit for it, but we shrugged it off and laughed anyway.
After a beautiful scenic drive, we arrived in Chianti at a beautiful Castle. The first few hours of the tour were spent inside the castle, learning how they make wine and olive oil ( we of course, got to try it at the end!!). They also let us up into one of the towers for photo ops. We could see miles and miles of rolling Tuscan hills from up there. It was a sight to say the least.
After that, we were all assigned our bikes, helmets, and water bottles. We were happy to see that the bikes were all in good shape and had bags attached to them behind the seat where we could put our wallets/cameras…whatever. I know I was satisfied because I didn’t have to bring my backpack with me for the next 13 miles!
And then we were off, cycling through the countryside of Chianti. It was relaxing… invigorating… amazing.
There were a few stops along the path to take pictures and rest..and then we stopped at an authentic tuscan restaurant for lunch. By that time we were starving, so we loaded up on the food that they kept bringing out. Well, that was a bad idea. NOTE TO SELF: do not eat Italian food in abundance before getting on a bike. Haha. So to wrap it up, we finished the tour, stopped at a café for water and then biked back to the castle. It was lovely. Sad that the day was coming to an end, but happy to rest, we piled back into the vans and drove back to Florence…this time with Christmas music to carol along to… Just us American girls, a few Scottish guys, and a woman from Australia. It was quite the experience!
We ended up becoming friends with the tour guides and taking a bunch of pictures with them afterward. For some reason they were really eager to pose like cheerleaders….so if u ever see those pictures, that’s what that is all about. Two scots and an Irishman…wanting to pose like girly cheerleaders. Hey, im not arguing ;)
(side note, the guys we made friends with were Rowan and Andy Mackie, aka “the Mackie bros,” and Keith, the Irishman)

Ok so that was the bike tour on a Friday. Saturday was our resting day because the following Sunday, we headed to Cinque Terre, which means the Five Villages. I think I will butcher this if I try to explain it, so just look it up on wikipedia or something because you’ll get a better feel for what it is. I’ll try my best though…
Basically these five villages, just off the coast of the Mediterranean, are only accessible by train or foot. So we took a train to the first village, hiked the next 3, and took a ferry to the last. We were literally hiking through the mountains to get from one town to the next, cliffs and the coast to the left of us, mountains to the right. It was another breath taking experience that pictures just don’t do justice. We got really sweaty, but in my opinion, that’s how you know your having fun right? Haha. I cant speak for everyone, but I had a great time. Hiking isn’t for everyone, and I’m sure there were some people who went that weren’t expecting such an intense hike… but I was thrilled! Granted, I did wear flip flops, I found it easier to go nearly barefoot. But that’s not important to the story…
At the third village, we stopped for gelato and to spend some time on the beach. Then we got on the ferry and went to the last village and then got on a train home. It was another tiresome day, but one of the best weekends I have had yet. I got exercise. I got pictures. I got ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunities. I had a lot of good thinking time. I’d say all in all, a very healthy, therapeutic weekend spent with friends.
Now you would think that after such a physical weekend, we would have went home and crashed Sunday night…psh. You would THINK. But our friends from the bike tour had called us at around 9, when we were getting back to our apartment, and asked us to hang out with them. Knowing how much fun they are and also knowing that Rowan, the brother visiting, was leaving the next day and we might not ever see him again, we had to agree. We all cleaned up and managed to look decent enough to go out with the boys. Needless to say, they were tired as well since their job is , well, biking… so that was good for us because we only hung out for a few hours before they too, wanted to call it a night. It was fun though. Rowan did impressions of Craig David and made fun of us “yanks.” They also mentioned that they thought I looked like a “wee Gloria Estefan,” which made me laugh because my grandpa used to tell me that I looked like her… They also kept calling me a “wee bit Lauren.” It was sweet. So once again, the Mackie boys and Keith didn’t fail to entertain us and show us a good time. We parted ways and THEN finally crashed so we could go to class the next day…

Those are the exciting stories for now. I have other stuff that I’ve done & seen, but I will leave you with the Highlights. I have a list started of the little things I want to share with you all...but I’ll save that for a rainy day. Until then, keep in touch! Love to all from Florence!!
Ciao amici!

~Lauren Grace

p.s. thanks for all the prayers and support! Everything has been in God’s hands so far. I can tell. I have been blessed in so many ways so far. I thank God for all these opportunities and all the new perspectives on life that He is allowing me to discover.

culture shock?...

wow ok sorry i havent been keeping up with this as much as i should ... im trying to reply to everyones emails as best i can. i dont always have access to the internet so its kind of hard... but here goes..

i did get my luggage..thank goodness!! i was ecstatic when it came. i dumped it out all over my bed and laid in it for a while.. taking in the familiar smells of my ever so missed clothing! not to mention my BLANKET. i was so worried i would never feel the warmth and comfort from my favorite blanket ever again...but it came and all is well!

...i hope i can remember everything that has happened since i last blogged... lets see... so far my roomates and i have just been wandering around florence trying to see all the sights that are right on our front door first... so we saw dantes church and house, the duomo is practically in our backyard, we went to michelangelos point (where you can see the entire city from up there...beautiful!!! it was the most amazing sight!), the ponte vecchio...pretty much all the piazzas...the italian mcdonalds lol! its been a real blast. i think we have eaten gelato almost every night....maybe except for 2 nights. haha. its an easy thing to become addicted to here.

last weekend my one roomate, sara, and i decided to venture outside the familiar walls of florence and go to the beach. we chose Viareggio because it seemed to be the closest. so we figured out how to get tickets...which were only 12 euro roundtrip ! not bad. anyway, an hour and a half later we arrived to viareggio, walked to the beach, got there and realized the whole thing was reserved...except for this tiny little sliver at the very very end of the beach. that small part...that was public. so we settled for that. but it really wasnt this simple at all. i just put it all in a nutshell. if you want the unrated version....sara and i experience our first pangs of culture shock. no one knew like any english at alll...save for one man that was somewhat helpful. atleast he was nice. we didnt have a train schedule so we started to panic about if we would make it home that day. then we had to pee so we finally found a fricken bathroom and it was just a hole in the ground. i will spare you the details on that...
so after an hour and a half of being absolutely frantic and frustrated...and peeing in a hole, we STILL hadnt seen the beach. we wandered on to this one beach thinking it was fine, and sat down. this staff member came up to us and we assumed we werent supposed to be there because she looked angry so thats when we left to go find somewhere that we were allowed to be. thats when the culture shock kicked in and both of us were just completely full of rage and frustration. after finding the public sliver of beach, we decided to make the most of it...and relax. so all in all it was a good adventure for lauren and sara.
the best part of it all was that the next day i was telling a classmate of mine about our little journey and she was like, "why didnt you guys just buy a seat for 5 euro?".....ughh!!! no one told us we could do that. the signs everywhere just said "reserved". haha so that was that little trip.

mcdonalds. sara and i had some coupons. so we went. we thought it would be some comfort food american style. it was fabulous and greasy. needless to say we had horrible stomach aches afterward because we are so used to eating fresh everything... but it was much needed.

umm... so yeah i cant sit here and possibly gather EVERYTHING ive done in the past week and half. i would love to, and i really should try to just keep up with this more often. im trying to post pictures, but i have had problems uploading them for some reason.... but as soon as i can, the pictures will be able to tell more of the stories.

all in all, i am doing well. the gelato is delicious, as is the food and wines. the people are incredible. ive made a lot of new friends...some that i know will be for life :) and i am so excited to see what the next day will have to offer.

there is one more thing i do want to share because it happened today and i was soo excited...ok so my cooking teacher heard i was in photography and then talked to me after class about possibly working with the head of the cooking department shooting photographs for a cookbook. intrigued, i told her i was interested and told her to pass along my email and phone number to the guy. he called me this morning and asked me to meet him at his studio at 6pm. so sara and i walked to this studio that was about a 15 or 20 min walk from our place and arrived to find this sweet little old man photographer. he was precious. he wasnt very good at english, but we did pretty well communicating. we even shared a few laughs. but ok, so the scoop is he is a professional photographer who publishes his pictures in a cookbook...a real, nice, actual, cookbook, that u can buy in the stores! he showed me his work and then explained in a round about what i would be doing. im basically assisting him in photographing a How To cookbook...so he would be making the food and i would be taking pictures of the processes. im only really available on tuesdays, but when i told him that he said "molto bene!" so thats cool that he was happy with my one day of availability. he wont be paying me.. but itll be a good learning experience and he said he would help me learn italian!!! and then i can teach him to speak better english! aw im so excited. its like i have my very own italian grandpa cook / photographer here!!!

so yeah. now that this novel is dragging on and on, ive worked up yet another appetite for gelato...and the roomies agree. im out for now. Ciao friends! i will try to keep you posted more often!

miss you all at home! keep in touch and send emails if you want!!! i would LOVE to hear from you guys and hear about whats goin in your lives!

lauren.vitiello@gmail.com

Love,

Lauren Grace

I'M HERE!!!!

Hey Everyone! i finally arrived. the flights were long, but i slept on both of them. met a lot of cool girls on the group flight, which was really nice. all of my roomates were there... so yeah that was good.
i dont have luggage though. i have been here three days with no clothing. it sucks!!! but im in italy so its hard to stay upset for very long. our apartment is so beautiful. i will post the pictures of it soon. its very old, on the fourth floor, with all old wooden furniture. its a lot bigger than i expected. its huge actually. we have a wonderful view of the duomo from the kitchen area. all the windows are big with big giant green shutters that we keep wide open all the time. i love it. it couldnt be more perfect. i love the location of our apartment too because we are right in the city of florence and a ten minute walk from school....depending on the building. one of the school buildings is about 10 doors down from us so thats awesome too!
we ate out the first night we got here... there was a special where you could get a pizza margherita plus any drink for 8 euro. so i got that and a glass of the house wine. it was so good!!
i love it here. florence is even more amazing than i ever could have imagined. the weather is comfortable. the people are friendly...well...some of the them. our landlord is a young guy named chris who is super helpful. he carried all of our suitcases up 4 flights of stairs. talk about generous.
so...im going to try to keep this short for now... everything is going well. i arrived safe and sound...so now lets just hope the luggage comes and then ill be high flyin!
miss everyone lots!! keep in touch!! email me at lauren.vitiello@gmail.com or send me something at this address

Scuola Lorenzo de Medici
Via del Malarancio, 6R
50123 Florence, Italy
atten: Lauren Vitiello

i also have a cell phone here. if you call my virtual US number, its free for me, but costs you. the amount varies according to your phone plan. i also have an international phone number, so i will list both of them and you can decide which one you want to call!

US virtual number : (773) 649-5318
International number: 39 (331)570-8713

Hope to hear from you all soon!
Ciao!