La Chica Dell'Apartamento 51

I am in LOVE... with my apartment.  Yeah there may be a funny sewage smell at the entrance to the apartment complex and like 4 doors I have to open before I actually get into my apartment along with a very very sketchy corridor, but it is TOTALLY worth it.  


Before even getting to the entrance of my apartment there is an adorable italian courtyard that I can not wait to spend time in when it gets warmer.  My apartment is on the 2nd floor, but in italy the 2nd floor is called 'il primo piano' (the 1st floor) because the 1st floor to us in the states is called the ground floor here or 'pianterreno'.  
So we open the door to our apartment which leads us to a staircase up to il primo piano.  

This floor has the living room, dining room and kitchen combined into one along with a huge 2 door window that over looks the courtyard.  My bedroom and bathroom are also on this floor.  I share them with the lovely Teal Johnson :)

It really is unbelievable that we are finally here and moved in.  Of course, as teal says I'm the 'mom' of the group, I may deny this multiple times on the trip, but I will admit that I already have a list going of things we need to get for the apartment such as laundry detergent, hand soap for the bathrooms, groceries, etc. It is a pretty hefty list that will be accomplished over the next few days.  


I am sad to report that I left my cute (small enough for my face) $10 imitation Ray Ban sunglasses on a roof top terrace overlooking Il Duomo this morning :(  We went up to take pictures on the top of our hotel and I had set them down on the ledge because I was positioning my camera for a timed photo.  I got distracted, picked up the camera and left the glasses there.  Did not even realize it until this evening.  Will definitely try to be WAY more careful the rest of the trip... and I guess that gives me an excuse to buy new ones here ;)


In other news... Today, I caved and bought my first thing that was not food.  I bought a bag that would hold my laptop along with a few other things for my academic trips.  It even matches my long boots. As Tealy says every time we pass a store full of boots or leather jackets... "Oh, I'm in trouble."  I don't want to break the bank when I am over here, but lets be honest, I am going to buy somethings because 1. I am a girl and 2. I am in freaking ITALY!

We went on a walking tour of the main city center of Firenze... unfortunately no real site seeing just yet, but I do know where the english speaking doctor is, where to buy a temporary european phone, where there are 24 hour farmacia's (pharmacies), that tip is included in the price for food and other convenient things to know in Italy.

Tonight, 8 of us went out to dinner for Monica's 20th birthday.  We ended up at a nice sit down Pizzeria which was extremely american friendly.  All the menu items had smaller text in english and the waitress spoke english very well with a cute Italian accent.  Thank goodness the food was still very ITALIAN.  We ended up getting a liter jug of white wine and one large bottled water to share between all of us.  In Italy, the house wine is usually cheaper than the bottled water and they do not serve free tap water at restaurants.  Also to the shock of many of the people at my table, when ordering a pizza in Italy, you do not order them by the slice, you order them whole.  The crusts are not as thick as normal to-go or delivery pizza and they are a manageable size that would probably give someone 6 slices if they did want to cut it.  Most Italians also eat their pizza with a fork and a knife rather than cutting it into slices and eating it with their hands.  I can understand why this would be good if the pizza is extremely hot, but when you are a group of jet lagged and hungry college students, cutting every single bite of the pizza just TAKES TOO LONG.  Needless to say, the food, water and wine was delicious, just like the other 3 meals I have had here.  This could be a problem considering there is only so much walking can do in a day, especially after classes start. 

SOLUTION: ask Beth [the program coordinator] where it is cheap to go to the gym, to do laps and possibly pilates.  

well ci vendiamo amici e famiglia