Lucca and Mexican!

Ciao everyone! Hope you had a splendid Valentine's Day, and if not, It's a stupid holiday anyways :) (that one's for my mom, ha!)

Saturday Maddy and I along with 4 other girls decided on a whim to go to Lucca! It is a city surrounded by a fortress-like wall that was built for protection somewhere around the 16th or 17th century, but the city itself dates back much, much farther - it was founded by Etruscans (pre-Roman) . To enter the city we had to walk through a narrow tunnel and up some stairs that allowed us to get inside the walls, and shortly after that it started raining, ha! Just our luck. But we spent a good part of the day exploring in the rain anyways so it was still fun :) (also none of us thought to bring an umbrella, and to heck if I have to buy one, so don't judge the bad hair in the pictures please...) We visited the main basilica, and then stumbled upon the baptistry. Sounds a little boring to you, right? Think again!! We noticed you had to pay to get into the baptistry, and we didn't get why, but thought heck, it's raining and what else are we going to do? So we go in and surprise! You can walk underneath the church and explore old Roman ruins from the 4th century!!! It was so cool. We were all alone exploring a cave-like atmosphere. I have pictures of course...

After exploring the ruins, we wandered around the city for a while in search of a place to eat lunch. We ended up searching and just wandering for a long time, and ran into some pretty cool trees and buildings...

We also ate at a small restaurant that was soo good (best bread ever, literally) and not long after that we headed home to escape the rain.

This mentos picture is for my mom, because we share a love of mentos, and yes, these are cola flavored!!

Later that night we went to Ikea for a few items, then stopped for what we thought would be a real hamburger! It was not, Italy does not do hamburgers well. We will stick to Italian food.

Sunday was a "be very lazy but get some homework done, kind of" day. I did manage to do P90X legs workout.... horrible idea when you have to climb 80 stairs all day long. I was dying. I did the abs workout too, and the cardio yesterday (which by cardio, they mean legs and butt) so today has been interesting to say the least. Lets just say if I manage to sit in a chair I better not have to stand again for a while. What made Sunday special was OUR NIGHT OUT TO A MEXICAN RESTAURANT! We had to make reservations early in the day (otherwise you don't get in... this is the ONLY Mexican restaurant around), and we ate at 8pm. It was magical. I had a strawberry margarita and went to heaven. Finally some non-Italian food for a night!

Yesterday was boring and full of homework, except that it was Valentine's Day and I got to talk to Tate for like 2 hours! He ate dinner while I ate lunch, so we kind of had a dinner date :) I can't wait for him to get here soon!! And I also got some mail (thanks dad and grandparents!) so it was a good day :)

Okay finally, today! I met my 9am class at the Bargello museum right around the corner from me (which sad to say I didn't even know existed... bad Ali.) WOW. SO much of Donatello's work is there!! Like his bronze David, marble David, bronze Sacrifice of Isaac door pieces from the competition for the baptistry doors, and so much more! There are also many pieces by Michelangelo... long story short I will be back and feel like a horrible art history major for not knowing of its presence previously. I also got to visit the Museum of Photography here (the Italian name for it is a mouthful so I'll spare you) in my history of photography class, and I really though it would be a boring visit but it wasn't! It was extremely cool, and I am going to try to convince my mom and aunt to go see it when they visit me here in a month because it was a unique experience. So many amazing museums and cathedrals to see! Ahh! What to do.

                                                       Santa Maria Novella Cathedral

                                                   This is the photography museum!

Well tonight is my night that I have to eat dinner alone, sad :( but I have a paper to start and a painting to finish (it's turning out horrible but I have no intentions what so ever of starting over). So until next time, buonasera!

David is my homeboy.

Sooo lets rewind to Wednesday night. Maddy, Shandie, a few other girls and I all decide to go out for a drink at a local pub where it is karaoke night. We go downstairs to hang out and listen, when all of a sudden a guy starts talking to all of us. He is very loud and somewhat obnoxious and obviously thinks he is funny. He is actually cracking us up because we think he is a little...off... and he starts asking us questions. We lie of course, about where we live, what we do and so on. We even have fake names to give people we think are creepy. My fake name is Kitty. Maddy made it up, blame her. So then one of us asks him what he does or works. He says its a little weird so he doesn't want to tell us. Obviously we are going to get this out of him, it has to be good because he's so weird. It takes about 10 seconds for him to spill that he is a "dancer". HA! This is good. "Dancer where? What do you mean?" A dancer for a gay club. Not lying. But no! He's not gay, he assures us. Yeah Right!! There's no way. He then goes on to tell us that his club is a little strange... I'll spare you the details and leave it at that. It did not sound like the place for us. Soo this is when we go upstairs while cracking up that this conversation actually happened. We liked upstairs much better. I said ciao and winked at the bartender and just like that! Free shot for everyone! Ha! We decided this was our sign to go home before we met anymore weirdos, it is a school night after all. A VERY interesting night indeed. Watch out for those gay dance club creepers ladies!

Thursday was also interesting. I had Italian class, and once again I stress the issue that my Italian teacher doesn't speak English. Period. Makes for quite an interesting class of students staring at her like she is speaking another language we don't understand... oh wait... she is. Ha. We were "learning" how to order food at a restaurant, and the words for certain foods. I guess she though the best way to teach this was to make us set a table with plates and everything, sit around it, and order off of menus she printed off while the only guy in the class pretended to be the waiter. And then we learned to count to 100. Does anyone find this at all strange? Because we do, haha! Oh well, it makes class interesting.

My second class went on a tour around Florence inside the Baptistry (oldest standing building in Florence, around 12th or 13th century) and then inside the Duomo across from it which was AWESOME... I have pictures.... and then to a few other cathedrals that I never would have known about had our teacher not taken us. It was fun and very cold :) We went out for dinner, which we never do, because we heard of a really good restaurant across the river with a discount for students called Dante's. Did I mention the student discount is a FREE bottle of house Chianti wine worth 20 euro?? And also free bread that is amazing. It was wonderful! I had pasta filled with potato in meat sauce, yum! We will definitely go back there. Free wine? Yes please!

                                                                        Baptistry...

                                      Veryyy old Roman tomb as the bottom part... awesome.

                                                             Duomo! Inside and out!

                                                                        The dome!

                                                       Had to put this one... Tiffany's :)

                                                       Tiramisu from dinner! Sooo good!

                                                        Out Piazza from across the river

                                                                  My yummy dinner!


Today we went to the Academia and saw Michelangelo's David along with his unfinished marble slave series and can I just say WOW. I literally could go spend a day looking at these statues. Especially David. It is awe inspiring, just perfect, amazing, beautiful, monumental, huuuge, and will take your breath away. It's hard to walk away from it! I'm in love. We also went to the San Lorenzo leather market again, just because it is fun to walk through, and I found a purse! Yay! We cooked meat tortellini with tomato sauce and peas for dinner (got to have those veggies) and are going to go out to a place with a fun atmosphere and great happy hour tonight (or so we hear!) so hopefully it will be fun! Ciao!

                                               The nice coffee barista man made me this!!

                                            Here he is with Maddy and Shandie's "to go" cups...

                                                                 San Lorenzo market!

Chocolate, painting and class, oh my!

Well I'm sorry I haven't updated in a few days but I wanted to wait until I had enough things to tell you, otherwise I would just keep typing and typing and typing and put you all to sleep. So CIAO! Here is what I've been doing this week :)

Sunday we slept in, exhausted from our days of traveling. Sometime later in the afternoon Maddy, Shandie and I took a little stroll over to the chocolate festival in Santa Croce Square and oh my goodness, I almost died of decadence. So much cioccolato. It was wonderful. I ended up eating half of a banana covered in chocolate and nuts on a stick, and also bought 3 truffles. Heaven. Maddy got the traditional "hot chocolate" which in America seems lame, but here it is literally melted chocolate in a cup. I have a picture...

                                                                     Hot Chocolate...

Speaking of pictures, I had to paint a still life using different shades of one color on a canvas for my foundations painting class. Do I look like I know how to sit down and whip out a still life painting? No. So three hours later, I was done. I am the next Michelangelo.

As you know Sunday was also SUPERBOWL SUNDAY! And it was in my home town. And I missed it. I don't want to talk about it. Moving on. We found a club that set up huge projectors and played ESPN America all night so we could watch it. It was literally a huge club dance floor transformed into an American football party - they even had American flags hanging and American food (which was horrible, Italians don't do hotdogs). But the night was fun and we left after half-time, aka 3 am here, ha!

Monday was boring. I did homework eventually. I finally ventured to the gym 20 minutes away (yay!) and cooked a really good dinner of pasta (I know, some things never change). Yesterday I had class from 9 am to 5:30 pm... my long day, but in my first class of the morning we ventured across the river to the church of Santa Spirito where Michelangelo's wooden Crucifix is! It was so cool, I didn't even know the church existed. Ahhh I love art history! *Sigh*

Today I had foundation painting all day and painted a sunflower three times, but each in a different technique: Impasto (like impressionism where you can see the strokes), normal oil painting, and translucent... watercolor like. It was fun! I have a picture... Then maddy and I ran some errands, payed  a million dollars worth of stupid lab fees for classes and took a quick stop at the chocolate festival again (not surprising). Now we are cooking dinner :) So that's all for now, enjoy the pictures! Ciao!

My paintings today...

                                    I wanted to cook peas from a box. This is what happened.

Volterra!! For the Twilight fans...

Ciao!

Today was another adventure altogether on our way to Volterra! But here are the rest of the Pisa pics...

                             My Favorite! Maddy kicking it over...

Apartment Roomies!

Okay so today we ventured to the very old city (and famous thanks to the Twilight movies) of Volterra! It was beautiful and very cool, but my favorite part was the view of Tuscany and it's hills because the city is located at the top of a mountain/large hill... it was unreal, the hills and tiny towns were so beautiful.

To actually GET to this tiny place was another story. Stay with me here. First we got on a train from Florence to Pisa. Then got on a train from Pisa to Cecina (pronounced "checheena" and no, you probably have not heard of it because it is a very small random place... it has about 3 train platforms total to give you an idea) and then we were "supposed" to get on a train from Cecina to Volterra but oh no! Our train is canceled. Crap. No one speaks a lick of English in Cecina. Not even "hello". Okay well don't worry, another train comes in an hour! (One hour later). Canceled again??? Okay come on.... We were informed by the little train man that trains don't run to Volterra in the winter, only busses. So bonus! Now we get to search for a bus. With the help of a very nice Italian man who grew up in America and his 2 year old child we found the bus haha success! Oh but then the bus stopped half way and we had to find bus number 2. Luckily we did and we made it!! And it was actually a blessing because the ride up to Volterra on the bus was BEAUTIFUL. Rolling hills and Tuscan towns for almost an hour was perfect. And by the way yes, we made it home somehow as well.

The city itself is very medieval with dramatic ups and downs on the street (nice leg workout) and very small, but we got to see the bell/clock tower where they filmed New Moon! We actually went "super tourist" as we call it and followed a "Twilight New Moon" map around the small city to see places they filmed at... yeah we are those people. But it was a very cool experience exploring on our own in a town with hardly any people walking around! And there was sooo many owls in all of the shops. I think Chi O should take a field trip there. We also bought local wine and ended our day at a chocolate and wine bar, which was the best idea we have ever had. It was amazing, I have a picture. 

Tomorrow we are taking a day of rest, but not before we visit the Florence chocolate festival going on this week. Yum!! More chocolate - just what I need... ha! Ciao!

Lean on meeee..... Pisa!

Today we decided to visit Pisa since it is really close, and it was so fun! But first I'll update you on the last few days...

Two nights ago Maddy and I went to dinner with our friend Lauren and her roommates. Lauren's dad had sent her a list of Florence's best restaurants and wherever we ate (no clue on the name...) was SOO good. One of my favorite meals thus far. It was pasta with some red spicy sauce. I have no clue what was in it but it was delicious. And of course we had some house wine :) It was also extremely packed with people which is kind of rare here so you know it's a good place when Italians actually wait for a table. It was actually so packed the my back was touching the back of some man eating at the table behind me. As you can imagine it was a little uncomfortable/interesting when I finally had to get up and use the restroom. After that we all went and got crepes with nutella and bananas (and yes, nutella is in my top 5 favorite foods as of one week ago). Looove Italian food...

Yesterday (thursday) I had class, Italian again and a new one called "The Medici Family; A Florentine Dynasty" which obviously I already love because it deals with the Italian Renaissance. Maddy, Shandie and I made pesto pasta with chicken for dinner (and some sauteed potatoes by Maddy which none of us had ever cooked before... it was an experience). We attempted to go out with some friends later in the night but they took us to an all American bar where everyone was drunk, so we decided to not be the obnoxious Americans and instead go visit out new favorite little Italian pub by our apartment. It was a great idea! Because not only did we met a few genuinely nice Italians with whom we talked with for a very long time, but it was also karaoke night! This means Italians who don't speak English attempt to sing songs such as "I Will Survive" and "Opps I did it Again" - hilarious to say the least. We also got to educate the Italians we were talking to on America and our food, customs and laws, and they did the same for us. Plus we practiced speaking Italian so it was an all around fun night :) The main English speaking guy said something like this: "We see in America, you must bring your beer in a brown bag outside - I want to do this!!" If you didn't catch on he is speaking of how we have laws against drinking in public so people have to drink their liquor in brown bags to keep it hidden (or at least he believes we all do this haha!)

So today, PISA! I have to admit I wasn't all that excited about Pisa, but it turned out to be much more fun and beautiful than I thought! We got on a train around noon and arrived an hour later and spent about an hour and a half making our way through the little town and over to the Pisa Complex (Basilica, Baptistry and Tower). We shopped around and ran into a little place that makes homemade waffles with nutella on them... so guess what our lunch was!? Don't worry, I took a picture of them. When we finally got to the leaning tower it was breathtaking! So we went MEGA tourist and took all of those silly pictures with the tower falling on us and us holding it up with our hands. But it was fun because everyone looks retarded together trying to be positioned in the right place and so on... don't worry you will see these pictures as well :) 

We also toured the inside of the Basilica which is stunning and eventually made our way back to the train station and back home. But not before we all gave in and took a little side stop to McDonalds. I know, we are pathetic, but we were all missing American food so much!! Don't get me wrong, Italian food is the BEST, but we are all used to having different types of food every day, much more variety, and in Italy we just eat pasta, pizza, pasta, pasta, bread, wine, salami, pizza, pasta, pasta... you get the point. We needed an American fix, and it was satisfying :) Tomorrow Maddy and I are going to try to visit Volterra (spelling?) but we need to find a bus!! Hopefully it works out! And then next weekend the plan is PARIS! But again, I'll keep you updated... so buonanotte! 

P.S. Tate booked his flight to visit me in the beginning of March!! Yay! He is meeting Maddy and I in Venice for Carnivale (the huge world famous masquerade festival they hold for 2 weeks every year) and we are staying a night there and enjoying the carnival! We are soo excited! Then he is staying in Florence for a little over a week for his spring break... I'm excited!

Let the classes begin!

Buona sera! 

Yesterday I took on my first day of classes in the city of Florence and it was much different from having a University all in one place, but it was an adventure! Because there is no room in this ancient city to just plop down a huge university, Florence University of the Arts is located in about 8 different buildings all over the city - and I mean all over. If you have been here before, you know that buildings are very old and only end to make room for streets. Shops, stores and restaurants line the street level while apartments line the 4 or 5 stories above the shops. So how do we enter these apartments? Little tiny wooden doors appear out of no where every so often that require a key, and unless you are looking for the doors you never really notice them. Well, this is not only for apartments, but for our university buildings as well, ha! So this is why finding your class building is such an adventure. Just imagine a student holding a map, staring up at a building saying "There should be a door here!! Where is it??" With this said, I have still never gotten lost! Woo! My classes included "Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Bernini", "Begining Italian" and "History of Photography". It was a long day to say the least, but the classes are fun and will be interesting. I am most excited about the first class because during every class we visit a different museum and works of art done by the artist we are studying, so fun! And one of the classes we visit an artist in his workshop who restores Caravaggio paintings... yeah. We get to study them up close and personal. This is just one of the small advantages of studying art here instead of in Tulsa :) 

So then last night Maddy and I were planning out weekends for Travel (yes!) and at about 11pm decided, hey, lets go get a drink. We found a little pub on our Piazza and had some wonderful Italian drink with crushed strawberries and brown sugar. So good. Then I met a local blonde! (This is rare.) Okay well she was not really local. She was from Turkey but has lived here for 3 years and is a modern dancer in the Florence Dance Company. Obviously we hit it off, and Maddy and I spent the night practicing Italian with the Turkish girl and bartender. It was an unexpected fun night!

Okay so finally, today I had only one class but it lasted from 9am to 2:30pm: Foundation Painting. Now, I may study art history, but I am no Michelangelo. So this was an experience haha, but a fun one! We learned how to paint a still life today (by learned I mean the teacher painted one while we watched, and then he made us do it on our own... talk about being thrown right into it) and I have to say it didn't turn out THAT bad. I was kind of proud :) And then I found out our homework is to do it all over again but in black and white. Awesome. I have no easel. Should be interesting. But I did have fun with the other girls in the class because none of us really knew what we were doing. And bonus, there was a wonderful coffee shop next door to us. 

Now I am about to go out to dinner with Maddy and a friend we made, Lauren (another art history major!), and her roommates to a real tuscan restaurant. I'm hoping it will be delicious! I will let you know! So that's all for now :)

Ciao!