Alora

Buongiorno!

On Sunday evening, I went to IKEA! Haha. I've never been before, even though we have one in ATL, just a 15 minute drive to midtown, or a 5 minute drive from the 85. I went because I needed a lamp... my room is really dark. The flat needed things like a drying rack, a bath mat, toothbrush holder. So we all went and met up with Renee's friend Megan, who is attending an art school here. She and her other artist friends needed to go too, and Justin from Malta was here last semester, so he knew how to get there. However, we missed the bus! So we stood outside in the cold for almost an hour waiting for the next one to come, because IKEA is far away, in a more suburb-y sort of side of Firenze. We missed the bus coming back too... so we had to wait another hour. But at least that time we got to wait inside the warm store.
Once we were back in the more central area of Firenze, we had to walk about another twenty minutes to find the bus stop that goes by our house. It seriously goes right by it, and when it goes into the city center it's on our own road. But the buses sometimes take longer in Firenze than walking, so unless I need to go somewhere hella far away, I won't be using it. However, CAPA does provide a monthly bus pass. In fact, I'll be using it on Saturday to get to Fiesole, a little town outside of Firenze, because there is a CAPA hike out there.

I sleep all the time here! On Saturday everyone went out, but I was too tired. I slept from about 6 PM to 2 30 AM, from 4 30 AM to 9 30 AM. Sunday I fell asleep around 10. Yesterday I took a nap. Honestly, I'm really glad for it, because I think this is a great time to fix my sleeping schedule.

Yesterday was my first class. Italian1. It was pretty neat, but maybe Spanish will do me more harm than good when it comes to spelling and similar words.
Emily and I went out to the leather market after class. They have interesting tactics to try and get you to come to their stalls. For example - "How many colors are in your hair? Would you like to get a nice jacket to match them all?" A man deliberately tried to run me down with his Vespa, and the market laughed at me. It felt like Paris and the pigeons.

Last night the girls and I, plus the CAPA guys who live just down the road, all went out for our first authentic Italian meal. We chose a little restaurant a road over, and it was delicious! I had gnocchi con burro e salvia (with butter and sage) and it was seriously the best gnocchi in the world. Everyone's meal was really good. We all shared what we were eating, except for the guys because they ate so fast. Emily just had spaghetti e ragu (meat sauce) and it was way better than anything from home. Renee had ravioli della nonna (grandma's ravioli) and Gina's was called Pici. I think it was some kind of egg noodle dish with bits of ham. Whatever the noodles were, they were great.
Last night I stayed up until 12, which is impressive. I finished North and South. I don't know if I like the movie or the book better, but I appreciate my new insight into Mr. Thornton. If you like Victorian novels, read this.

Airframe, however, is proving to be really boring. By tomorrow, I should be done. Two books in... 5 days. Well, I found a store called the Paperback Exchange, and it deals in English books and I can trade in Airframe for store credit and get a new one!

Today in Italian we learned all kinds of greeting and other phrases like that, such as-
Mi chiamo Jessica. Sono americana di Tallahassee. Sono studentessa di storia dell'arte e inglese. Abito a Firenze, in Via .... but I'm not going to give that out to the internet.
Antoinetta is our professoressa's nome, and she said we can call her Anto, which is simpler and easier to pronounce, so that's what I'm sticking with lol.

Some notes about Firenze-
You have to watch where you step. People rarely put their animals on a leash, and they let them do their business everywhere. They don't pick it up.
They don't seem to like exact change. Everytime I have tried to fish it out, they always just demand I round up.
A lot of people think you speak Italian, and in the outskirts where I live they don't speak English. There's a whole lot of smiles and head shaking and No capito.
The men in Italy are more insistent while hitting on women than the men in America because they are used to having to work hard. However, they give up more easily too, if you make it obvious that you don't welcome the attention. Two men hit on me yesterday. The first one I sort of hemmed and hawed and the conversation took place in a weird mix of English, Italian, and Spanish. He said I was very beautiful and he'd like us to be friends, can we go out tomorrow night? But when I finally just said I'm not interested we exchanged cheek kisses and he left me alone. When the next one hit on me, I just said, "Please not right now" (cause I was stressed out) and he said, Scusi, have a nice day.

Tomorrow I have my Italian lit class. I would also have an art history, but it was canceled for this week.