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!
Love,
Lauren Grace
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