made it!

well i finally made it to Italia!! and we have lots to catch up on ... starting with the flight over here

It was actually a pretty easy trip. I made it to Charlotte, no problems. Then I had a flight from Charlotte to Frankfurt, Germany. I was super pumped for this flight because I had gotten my seat assignment and it was the bulkhead (lots of leg room) aisle seat and no one else was supposed to be on my row... or so i  thought. Well we board the plane and i take my seat, and no one is sitting next to me. The last 2 people board and I see these 2 morbidly obese women walking on with a screaming 1 1/2 year old. Where do they go to sit..... right next to me. The plane is WIDE open too. So instead of having the entire bulkhead for the 8 hour flight, i faced the reality that I could have the leg room, but sit uncomfortably next to these 2 women with a crying baby, or move into the row behind me (which was empty) and sacrifice the leg room... which i did. It worked out for the better, minus the fact that the baby NEVER stopped crying and so I probably got an hour maybe 2 hours of sleep on that flight. No big deal. Everything else went perfectly though :)

When I arrived in Florence there were a TON of study abroad students at the airport. 2 of the girls im living with in my apartment were on my flight from Germany so we took a taxi to the hotel we had to stay in the first night. So we get to the hotel, check in, and decide to go wander around the city. We didn't have anything to do until dinner at 7 that night. We did some exploring, ran in to more of our girls and have a good time. There are a total of 18 of us from TCU here and its a really great group of people! The organization we are working with here, Accent, is awesome and they have 2 ladies, who are essentially in charge of us and they are so cool! Anyways we went to dinner with the whole group.

Naturally, after a day of traveling, we were all pretty hungry. When it came to dinner time, we were definitely ready to eat. We all went to this small little restaurant not to far from our hotel. After we sit down, they brought us each a plate of pasta. Thinking this was the whole meal, we all devoured it. Little did we know they had another course of chicken and potatoes waiting for us. Oh and and then they tried to make us eat desert too but we couldnt handle it. I had totally forgotten how Italians eat like 4 course dinners here and was not ready for that. Needless to say next time we do a big dinner, we will prepare ourselves and not eat the day before. we had a blast though, and then went back to the hotel to crash. Well there were 4 of us in this room. We each had a bed smaller than a twin size bed. and it was FREEZING!!!!!!! oh and the walls are paper thin so we heard every drunk italian going back home all the way until about 4 in the morning. it was awesome.... not. and did I mention freezing..... im talking leggings, under shorts, under sweatpants, with tshirt and sweatshirts on. Yeah not a good night.

So we woke up this morning super excited because we were supposed to check out of our hotel and they were going to put us in taxis and take us to our apartments! we are living in apartments all throughout the city! Our housing director, Daniela, had told us earlier that our apartment was her favorite because of the location and other things. Its on the other side of the river from the duomo... the more residential less touristy part of the city and its awesome! we have a 3 bedroom/2 1/2 bath with a living room, kitchen, and other little sitting/dining area. Its perfect for us. There are 6 of us total in here and were having a blast. It didn't really sink in until we started moving in and unpacking that we are actually here and here to stay for the next 3 1/2 months!

 So after we unpacked we went to go grab lunch. definitely got kicked out of a cafe because some of us brought food in from another cafe.... yeah classic stupid american move. go us. but the rest of the day was fun. We had a walking tour to find some of the important places around town. Then we had a super long orientation with our program coordinators. After that we went on a mission to get go phones. After some arguing with the phone guy we got it all figured out and decided to get dinner! We had our first italian pizza tonight at a precious place called Gusta pizza. it was phenom.... margherita pizza is so much better here then it is at home. Probably just because we were eating pizza in Italy and it seemed cooler but yeah. definite win :) apparently they have amazing desert pizza but we didnt try it tonight. We will have to save nutella pizza for another night haha.

Today was exciting though. First full day in my new home. We are starting to get a sense of direction (sort of...) we look so dumb standing on the corner, all 6 of us, huddled around a map, looking all over the place, but we are slowly figuring it out. We realized that you can pretty much see the duomo wherever you are... and if you can get to the duomo you can get anywhere.

Tomorrow we have our academic orientation... yes school... still have that going on. We start class on monday! oh and were learning how to shop at the supermarkets tomorrow as well. apparently its a lot different here. shocker. We are just ready for the weekend so we can do some planning for some trips we want to take and more exploring (duomo hiking sounds like a good idea to me... aka climbing hundred of stairs to the top of the duomo for the view). Anyways, my jet lag is kicking in and we have to be up at 7 tomorrow morning so its bedtime for me. Ill be posting pics at some point and will update soon. Oh and be sure to look on facebook in the near future. I brought my Flip video camera and ill have a little tour of the apartment up there soon :)

until then... Ciao!