Chapter 7: Residents for a semester, Shameless tourists for a day

I've been incredibly lucky to be raised by parents who love to travel, and who are good at it. This is semester is completely different than any vacation I've ever been on though, for lots of reasons. First of all, I'm used to my parents planning everything: doing the research, buying the tickets, mapping out transportation, time management, and of course, financing it all. This semester I'm on my own! I have great guide books and maps, but the best part is that for the first time in my life, I don't have to pack an entire city's or country's attractions into a day or a few days, I have all semester! And Florence really is an absolutely amazing city. It's the birthplace of the entire Renaissance, and as Rick Steves put it in his guidebook, "Imagine guys like Michelangelo and Leonardo going to high school together."

Dana and I decided we wanted to see (some of) the best Florence had to offer on a day-long walking tour of our new city, so I had my first taste of what my parents have been doing for years- and sunk my teeth into my guidebooks and maps to plan out a day of being shameless back-pack wearing, camera clutching tourists in our own town. We started out at the Accademia Gallery, where some of the most important art of the Humanist movement are housed, including Michelangelo's David. I can't believe I live two blocks away from this! The David is amazing, the definition of the Renaissance man, and so much taller and more impressive in person than I realized.

Next, we walked from the Duomo, the most prominent feature of Florence's skyline. The Duomo Cathedral is home to Brunelleschi's dome, the very first Renaissance dome, and a model for every one that came after it! One of my guidebooks says that when Michelangelo was plannning St. Peter's in Rome, he rhymed (but not in English), "I can build its sister- bigger, but not more beautiful." It's fantastic from the outside, breathtaking from the inside.

An exact replica of Ghiberti's Doors (the Gates of Paradise, as Michelangelo nicknamed them) are on the baptistry right across from the cathedral. Ghiberti made the doors to mark Florence's deliverance from the plague. I think the original panels are in separate museums today, but I'd love to see them while I'm here.

After that, we walked to the Uffizi Gallery, home to amazing paintings from the 14th to the 17th century, including several by Caravaggio, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raphael, and my favorite, Botticelli.... amazing.

I could have stayed all day, but it closed at 7pm, when we headed outside to the edge of the Arno River. We watched the sun set over Ponte Vechhio (literally just means Old Bridge), which is the only historic bridge across the Arno in Florence still standing. The rest were destroyed during WWII. Ponte Vecchio is lined with fancy little shops selling gold and silver, and a statue of Cellini, the most important goldsmith of the Renaissance, is right in the center of the bridge.

After yet another delicious dinner at yet another charming little outdoor cafe, we stopped on our walk back home for more gelato to eat on the steps ofthe Duomo after dark. I couldn't be happier! I feel like I'm living in a postcard.

Two days later, an ATM ate my debit card. So it goes.

Chapter 6: Scuola!

Just when I felt like I was starting the best vacation of my life, I was reminded that I did, actually, come here to go to school. My first days at LdM were amazing! I'm taking Italian Language for Beginners, Greek & Roman Mythology, The Making of Modern Europe (a history class), The Food of Italy (a hands-on cooking class), and The Age of Heroes: The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. I absolutely love my classes and professors so far, especially my patient Italian teacher, Mariangela, my hilarious history teacher Jacopo (YAH-ko-poh), and my Italian cooking teacher/chef Michele (mih-KEL-ay).

The classes are really different from my ISU courses. They're much smaller, with kids from all over the United States (very few from the Midwest), and they meet once a week for two and a half hours. I only go to school Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, but those days are intense. I couldn't be more excited about this semester, especially after buying all my new books!

Chapter 5: First weekend in Florence

My first full weekend in Florence was a blur of various adventures and misadventures. Briefly, they involved: A sweaty and wrenching quest to find, purchase, and assemble (using the only tools in our apartment: Scotch tape, hemp, and a steak knife) a fan in our room to fend off our impending heat strokes, a welcome-to-Florence bar crawl from which myeslf a few other girls from ISU left early and got spectacularly lost for a considerable amount of time, eating my first (of what will be MANY) comes of gelato while looking up at the Duomo, being constantly and shamelessly flattered and flirted with by many handsome but laughable Italian gentlemen, and last but not least, my first trip (also first of many, almost daily) trips to the amazing central market to buy Florence's freshest bread, cheese, fruit, vegetables, olive oil, spices, wine, and pasta! A few days in this country, and I am completely sold. I love it.

Chapter 4: Orientation to Lorenzo de' Medici

On Thursday morning, Dana and I were to attend an all-day orientation session to learn about the city, our classes, and other various pieces of information we needed to know from LdM staff members and advisors. After sitting in the wrong room, wrong session, and wrong building for three hours (we really are winners), we finally got it right. All of our staff members have very thick Italian accents, and seem really excited to help us make the most of our time here. Later that night, we were invited to a welcome dinner for new students put on by the school. We met up in front of one of the academic buildings (they are all scattered around a few different streets and buildings), and walked from there. Over 100 students showed up, and we couldn't imagine what restaurant could possibly hold us all. After being led across the city on foot by staff members ( we were basically a very large, loud, embarrassingly obvious group of Americans parading through Florence like helpless tourists), our walk ended abruptly. We were suddenly on a gently sloping expanse of grass between an ivy-covered restaurant and the beautiful Arno River, with an amazing view of Ponte Vecchio at dusk! Dozens of tiny tables and chairs lit by twinkling candles were scattered around the grass, with long tables of free food and free wine against the wall of the restaurant. What a welcome to LdM!

Chapter 3: It was all worth it!

When our treacherous journey finally ended, the destination was worth every painful, sweaty step. We absolutely love our humble Italian abode! It's a third-story, one-bedroom little place with big old-fashioned wooden shutters, no screens, and of course, no air conditioning. The first few days were unbelievably -almost unbearably- stuffy and hot. After our harrowing travels, we each took a refreshingly cold shower, got dressed, and set off on foot to find somewhere to eat. Turns out, "finding" a place to eat would be someone we would have NO challenge doing for the next four months. There are multiple outdoor cafes on virtually every street in the city. We sat down outside and looked at the menus...entirely in Italian, of course. We randomly pointed at two items on the menu when the waiter came over. Moments later, we found ourselves relaxed, cooled off, legal beers in hand, with a delicious pasta feast in front of us. Completely recovered, we could finally look around and realize that we are the luckiest girls in the world!

Chapter 2: Jet-Lag Rears Its Ugly Head

When Dana and I piled out bags into a taxi and handed the driver the address of our school, we had a pretty clear plan: check in at Lorenzo de' Medici school, get our keys to our apartment, and crash. Little did we know, we were hours away from sweet, sweet sleep.

After a terrifying ride in what can only be described as a death cab, we somehow got out alive in front of our new school.. give or take a couple confusing blocks. We checked in, got our apartment address and a map to find it, and headed outside. Looking at the map, we only lived about three or four blocks away from the school, so we decided to walk (this was also because our first cab ride had cost us 25 euro, about 40 American dollars, and we weren't interest in paying any more). So we headed out in search of our new residence. Keep in mind, we had been traveling for over 36 hours with NO sleep, making us deliriously jet-lagged, we were sweating profusely in the unbelievably hot Italian weather, and we were both carrying extremely heavy backpacks in addition to pushing and pulling two suitcases, weighing about 50 pounds each. When when I say pushing and pulling, I do mean both- because Italian sidewalks are so bumpy and narrow that we had to have one suitcase in front of us and one behind us.

I don't think I can accurately describe the physical hell that was the next two hours, except to say that several times throughout our exhausted, confused, sweaty, painful trek, I genuinely wanted to lay down on the sidewalks of Florence and pass out, hoping I could just catch a ride home from an ambulance. We got lost and disoriented more times than I can count, the noise of our our embarrassing suitcase wheels was deafening as locals stopped and stared at us passing by, and NO ONE that we asked for help could speak English, or point us in the right direction.

I would like to forget this part as soon as possibly, so I'll wrap it up here and just say that eventually, we did find our new home... and three flights of narrow cement stairs to carry our luggage up. Nice.

Chapter 1: Four airports, three flights, two layovers, and one ocean

Ciao from Italia! I'm making this blog so family and friends at home can keep up with my adventures abroad without having your e-mail inboxes flooded with messages every day. I've officially been in Italy for over a week, so I'll try to back-track. On Tuesday, September 1st, my parents drove me to the St. Louis airport to meet up with my roommate and travel companion, Dana, and board our first flight, at 3:45pm. I was so sad to say goodbye to them, because this is by far the longest time I've ever gone without seeing them, and because part of me wishes they were moving here with me! Of all the things that make moving to a new continent for four months a challenge, the only thing that scares me is being away from my friends, my sister, and my family for so long.


We flew on what felt like the world's tiniest plane to Chicago's O'Hare Airport and boarded our 8 hour and 30 minute flight across the Atlantic. We were so excited and anxious to get there that the time passed pretty quickly, but I didn't sleep at all, which turned out to be a huge mistake. We landed in Frankfurt, Germany on Wednesday morning, and had a three-hour layover before flying to Florence. We were extremely sleep-deprived at this point, but it was fun to meet some othere American students on their way to study in Florence; they were from all over- California, New Jersey, Minnesota, Texas, and even ISU! We flew into Florence around 2:30pm on Wednesday, and it was absolutely beautiful, just like every picture or postcard I've ever seen of Italy. The landscape was so different from the perfect yellow rectangles of American cornfields that you see from planes, the fields are all different shapes and sizes, with huge hills covered in vinyards. After a brief panic about not being able to locate our luggage, we found it and headed outside to hail a taxi...