First day of class

So we had our first day of class today! Last night, my roommates and the girls across the hall and I all walked around to find the buildings where our classes are. The Lorenzo de Medici campus is spread out over a large portion of Florence, so all of the buildings weren't just next to each other. Luckily this morning, I had no trouble finding mine! I'm taking a Printmaking class since I still needed a studio art class to finish my major (and I figured I could do studio art anywhere if I ever wanted to study abroad!). Turns out, there is only 5 people in my class...including me. Although I think I like it better this way because then I don't feel so lost among the class, and the small group of us will probably get to know each other pretty well! The one bad part of Printmaking is that I had to buy art supplies. So today I spent 80 euro all on art supplies (which is about $112). My class is only from 9-11:30, so it's nice that I have the rest of my day free. Today we all just came back to the apartment after class, but usually we'll probably use our free time to do some sight-seeing around Florence.
Tonight we decided to cook dinner for ourselves. We had pasta and eggplant along with garlic bread. I'm not sure how much pasta I'll end up eating this month...but it's not getting old yet! Tonight we also had a pre-departure meeting for the trip I'm going on this weekend. I'll be going to Monte Carlo, Nice, and the French Rivera along with 50ish other students. The only part I'm not excited about is that we have to leave at 6am. Hopefully the rain in the forecast won't interfere with the trip!

Oh yeah! Italy yeah!!

The past two days have been crazy! Yesterday morning we had to go to orientation for school, so we sat through a couple long presentations about safety and going to school here. Then we split up for lunch. Three people and I went to a small pizza place where the cast of Jersey Shore just happen to be working :) Me and another girl went in (after being greeted by Vinny at the door!) and ordered some pizza. When our food was ready, Pauly D called my name and then asked to see some ID to make sure I was Liz. Yeah, I didn't show it to him, but he gave me a hard time about it haha. After we ate, we walked around for a while and tried to get a sense of direction in this city. While in one of the squares, Ashley and I saw a mime and watched him for a while. We started to walk past him when he "fell down" and wanted us to help him up. We did, but then he wanted to thank us, so he pointed to his cheek...meaning he wanted me to kiss it! I was thinking, NO WAY, but there were a lot of people watching and egging him on, so we did the whole European-touch-cheek-kiss. Which got white face paint all over my face. Gross. Then last night we had a welcome dinner for all of the Lorenzo de Medici students (my school). So it was fun to dress up a little and actually see other students here.

This morning two of the girls and I decided to venture out to find a grocery store to actually make food here instead of eating out all the time. Luckily we found a good one not too far away. It was an experience to try to figure out what the food was because the packaging is in Italian! Luckily, one of the girls Alessia knows Italian, so she helped a lot. Then this afternoon we decided to explore more of Florence. We walked for a long time and actually don't really know where we went, but we saw some cool things along the way and we made it back to the apartment without getting completely lost, so all is good! 

Amy and I in front of a fountain that we found on our adventure around Florence!

PS: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE BEST YOUNGER SISTER EVER!! Love you Lexie :)

Pictures!

Ashley and I in front of Duomo (my favorite building here!)

 My and Amy's room - my bed is against the wall...and this picture was taken from our private balcony!

 Me in front of the fake statue of David in the square near our apartment. Don't worry, I'll see the real one eventually too!

View from the balcony off of my room

Longest day ever

Quiz time! How many hours can Liz stay awake without sleeping?
Answer: 30 hours...and counting

Yeah, guess who didn't sleep on her plane rides today? But it's ok because that was my own doing haha! Here is how the last 30 hours have gone: So I get to O'Hare, and after finally getting through security and such, I sat down in the terminal. There was a nice lady that was sitting near me who was apparently going to Greece to see her mom, so talking to her was fun! Then when I got on the plane (after a 50 minute delay) I was happy to see that my seat was next to a younger guy, and not a crying baby! (Who was a few seats away from us.) We talked most of the plane ride...except for a while when we watched movies. He was on his way home to see his family in Austria, which was really cool to hear about! So yeah, it was nice being social, but not getting sleep probably wasn't the best choice :)

Then I arrive to Munich (which is BEAUTIFUL from the air) and find my terminal to chill at for a while. Also sitting there were three other girls going to Florence, so it was nice I wasn't the only one. We took a tram to the plane, which was a little sketchy-looking since it had old-school propellers. After sitting on the plane a while, we were told to get OFF the plane and go back to the terminal because there were technical problems with the engine. So we all rode the tram back, sat for 30 minutes, and rode the tram again back to the plane and finally took off.
The plane ride was really cool because the ground went from really flat, to completely mountainous! After this plane landed in Florence (!!!), two of the girls I met and I all decided to get a cab together since we were going to the same place. We found our check-in building ok, but then we decided to walk to find our apartment. One of the girls (Ashley) and I were in the same building, so we ventured off together. After wandering for 40ish minutes with our giant suitcases and getting lost numerous times, we FINALLY found our apartment...with our roommates waiting for us outside! Long story short, we got settled and walked around a bit to get food and such. The apartment is awesome, and pictures of everything so far will come up soon. But for now, I desperately need sleep. So I will fall asleep to the sound of live orchestra music playing in the nearby public square! How I love Florence already :)

Here we go!

Hey all! In 7 hours my plane will be leaving O'Hare and I will be on my way to Florence!! After months of planning I can't believe I'm actually leaving today. All my suitcases are packed...well, almost. My flight is about 9 hours, and then I'll have a couple hours in Munich, Germany before going to Italy. Hopefully I'll get to sleep a little on the plane, except it would be fun to be awake to watch the sun go down and back up again! I can't wait to actually see Florence in person. (I also saw that it's in the upper 80s there, so it'll be nice and warm!)

So I'm going to update this blog as often as I can so you all can see what I'm up to. Comments are always welcome because I would love to hear from all of you as well! :)

Here's to hoping they don't lose my luggage at the airport.