Our last quarter has now arrived

Our fourth apartment-mate has arrived :)


Welcome to apartamento 51!!!


Earlier today we had to get our permit of stay... so now we are LEGAL to live in Italy :)  At least for the next 3 and a half months.  Teal and I ordered our first italian breakfast pastry this morning and ate it standing up at a counter.  In Italy, it is culturally accepted to have cookies and cake for breakfast... oh boy.  Also, usually it is extra to pay for a table thus the standing.  Felt sooooo Italian!  


GROCERY SHOPPING @ the COOP:
We were able to go grocery shopping today, thank goodness.  I don't think I could have made it out of the apartment to eat dinner tonight because I was so exhausted, so I am extremely glad to have some food here.  Grocery shopping was very similar to shopping at a Central Market in the states.  Although, here you MUST have a glove on when picking out your fresh fruit and vegetables.  Oh and if you forget to weigh it and get the price sticker... they get really angry, make you lose your place in line and go weigh it.  THANK GOODNESS Beth, our program coordinator informed us of all this beforehand.  Another point about shopping for food in Italy is that everything is INCREDIBLY fresh.  They have day old bread, cheese and meat discounted for sooooo cheap.  It is not even bad, but is not as fresh as the stuff baked, cut and made that day.  When ordering fresh break, meat or cheese, YOU NEED TO TAKE A NUMBER.  According to Beth, you could be the only person in the supermarket, but if you do not take a number, they will NOT serve you.  They have their system and it seems to work.  


It is cute to people watch at the supermarket.  There are so many cute old people that bring what looks like a small rolling backpack to put their groceries in after they buy them all.  So they store their rolling food backpack (not sure of the actual name for them) in a little cubby that they rent while they shop for groceries.  After they finish shopping and purchase their groceries, they go back to their temporary locker/cubby and get their rolling food backpack, load their groceries and go back home.  Also they have these scanners that I THINK (mind you I am not for sure) you can check out or rent out to scan all of your groceries and see how much you're spending before you arrive at the check out.  An old man got frustrated with two of my friends doing the self check out because they did not have a scanner thingy.  Hmmm.  We also thought it was possible that older people use the scanners to pick out all their food and have someone else come by and collect it all since we saw this very adorable yet frail elderly woman without a basket just going around and scanning stuff.  


Teal and I ended up getting a sizable amount of food that will probably last us 3-4 days.  We did not realize that the walk back to our apartment with this amount of groceries was going to be so brutal.  Italians do not usually shop for main meals except for the day of, otherwise the fresh food would go bad and it would be an unreasonable load to carry back home through the winding streets of Florence.  We both had brought one reusable bag from the apartment and had to get another plastic bag each to carry everything, but we definitely stuffed them to the brim.  So we did not look ridiculous since it was only 2 bags and a purse, but the weight got to us even after 10 blocks and we weren't even half way back yet.  [I may have looked a tad bit funny carrying the carton of 6 eggs in my hand since I did not want them to break bouncing around in the bags]  We successfully made it back and we were very proud of our Italian grocery shopping.


Today we finally visited where the main building of Lorenzo de Medici is located :)  The buildings are scattered throughout the city; fortunately for us, Florence's city center is not that big.  We did take our first interior design italian picture  :D

Well that is all for now... arrivederci