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
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
taglio di capelli
i just got my hair cut.
it was the best hair cut of my life!
italians just do everything better. lol.
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!
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!
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