Where does time go?

I can't believe we are leaving a week from tomorrow. Where has the time gone.. seriously?

This weekend was unbelievable. 8 of us, all of our best friends here, went to Interlaken, Switzerland together. It was the most amazing weekend.. a perfect way to end the trip. We took a train to a little village in the mountains called Grindlewald, where it was snowing (first snowfall of the season that i saw was in the swiss alps, so great). we went ice skating, night sledding, skiing (i passed on that one.. snowboarding in the swiss alps when i totally forget how to is not such a great idea), and last but not least... SKYDIVING. i actually jumped out of a helicopter and free fell over the swiss alps.. and then parachuted to the ground. it was the most amazing experience of my entire life, i loved every second of it. 6 out of 8 of us went together, it was unreal. I'd do it again in a heart beat if i could.. especially over the alps. I still cant believe i did that... it wasn't even that scary, it was just amazing. The feeling is like your floating, and the adrenaline when you jump out of the helicopter is crazy, all of a sudden your just falling through the sky. un real.

we also went to Bern, the capital of Switzerland, which was gorgeous and old, authentic switzerland because since its a neutral country there hasn't been any wars to destroy the city. there was a huge chrismas market in the center of town and all around, so that was fun to walk around.

we had so much fun being together.. like a huge family for our last weekend. Switzerland was the perfect place to go, it was so fun but so peaceful and relaxing at the same time. it made me look back and realize how amazing this entire trip has been - being abroad is an experience of a lifetime. i really wish i could go back to august 23rd in greece and start all over again, i wouldn't change a thing... just re-live it.

1 month left

So we have less than a month left - it's crazy. I'm avoiding writing my third paper of the day by posting on here. Im watching the italian version of deal or no deal.. its kind of funny cause i can somewhat understand it. They get so emotional on this show its ridiculous! Its the same with who wants to be a millionaire. I just ate dinner w/Onelise (kb went to her house w/her family in chianti for the weekend) and Mario is at their house in the mountains MAKING olive oil. He's actually making it from their own olive trees, which is so cool. He's been there for almost 2 weeks now.. he's coming back home on Tuesday and we're gonna have a taste test.. onelise is going to make bruschetta. The guy on deal or no deal just won 500,000 euros! holy shit! hes crying now.. so is everyone else. haha anyways.. im pumped for the new olive oil. If you go into any authentic italian restaurants within the next month or two and the olive oil is especially green it means its probably new from italy. the greener, the newer. Thats also when it has the most flavor and sometimes it's a little spicy. I love how fresh everything is in Italy, they make their own wine, make their own olive oil and use it every day. This is the "olive harvest" season and half the country is out making olive oil. Its great.

So my mom came here to visit for a couple weeks.. it was amazing to be here with her, she fell in love with italy and took about 5000000000 photos. half of them were of the ponte vecchio. We went to cinque terra (5 towns on the coast so close that you can walk to each one). We hiked from one to another.. it took forever and was a legit hike .. we were sweating but the views were amazing. Mom went to Lucca and Sienna while I was in school, and then last weekend we went to Venice. Venice was amazing, it was so cool how it is a city built on water, just like I had expected. Michele's parents were here too and lena came along as the adopted child. Now lena, michele, katie and one of our other friends went to paris for the weekend and I was going to go with them but I decided to go to London next weekend to visit my friend Sarah from Syracuse instead. We're gonna have a thanksgiving dinner at her apartment.. so that'll be fun! I'm gonna miss thanksgiving at home, but its an experience being here.

This weekend I was pretty cultured out. One of my friends & I went to the Uffizi, we saw David at the Academia, did all the florence turisty things... and went out at night first to an italian bar and then to watch the celtics at an irish pub. Polar opposites, but both great places. Last night my friends and I went to a bar/restaurant for Apertivo. Basically you buy a drink, whatever you want, for 7.50 and you get as much food as you want. there was all sorts of pastas, vegetables, bread, some with meat, salads, etc. I know happy hour is kind of the same but they really should invent that in America. It's great for a student on a budget for dinner.

Ok.. gotta write my essay. I'll post photos another time. Ciao ciao

10 Days 3 cities

Ciao Ragazziiii.. here's a little update about fall break

Friday we went to pisa to see none other than the leaning tower itself. It was sort of anti climactic as we were walking into the piazza where it was and it was smaller than i expected, but still there and leaning in all its glory. We got some great photos with it, ate some pizza and left for the airport to go to dublin. If you ever go to Pisa - you only need about 20 minutes to accomplish being the ultimate tourist... but taking the photos with the leaning tower is so much fun.

Dublin: Amazing. My favorite city so far (besides florence). We ate comforting irish food (fish and chips, beef stew, soda bread), drank cider beer (bulmers, now my favorite drink in the world) and guiness, met a ton of awesome irish people (including about 50 guys our age at a high school reunion our first night... great time), went sightseeing and toured the city. We tourned the guiness factory where we saw how it was made and got to pour our own pint, saw the old jameson distillery. we saw trinity college, temple bar area and did a ton of shopping and wandering. We also met up with my irish friends who I worked with this summer at copley-- they all are back in ireland now living and working in dublin so it was crazy to see them. Dublin is just a gorgeous place, i'd love to go back sometime and see the country side too.. especially galway.

Then we all attempted to make our way to barcelona, but lena and michele had booked their tickets for the wrong day so they had to get on a flight the next day. luckily, kb and katie mac were staying an extra two nights in dublin so they crashed in their hotel room for the night. Barcelona was gorgeous but it was downpouring for most of the time so we didn't really get the full jist of it. We saw Parque Guell, Sagrada Familia and las ramblas which were all gorgeous.. went to a dali exibit and the picasso museum also. They were all amazing but I wish we could've experienced so much more, we probably would've been up for it if it wasnt downpouring all day. We also saw shana.. another theta who is studying abroad in barcelona!

Then we went to Madrid. After taking an overnight train (aka a box with some seats that somehow transported us.. it was so crappy and definitely an experience) we found this little cafe (which we later figured out was mexican, not spanish) and it was perfect cause all we wanted at this point was nachos con guacamole and they HAD it. so we got that and eggs for breakfast and sat there gross and dirty and tired from the longest night of our lives. We somehow made it to our hostel without any information except the name of it and we kind of remembered what area it was in. Our friend Alex had a blackberry so we could luckily look it up on there. We got to our hostel, and it was honestly the nicest hostel i've seen yet for so cheap (50 euro for 3 nights). They had 3 floors, it was soo clean, huge flat screen tv's, free internet with amazing computers, and our own bathroom that was actually clean and great (minus the -10000 degree shower). We went to SU abroad in Madrid to meet our other theta friends who are studying there (alicia, abby and angela) and it was soo good to see them too. We basically hung out with them, went out, slept, shopped, drank starbucks and toured Madrid the whole time. It was great - Madrid is a huge city with tons to do.. way too much for just a weekend though. We ended up eating nachos con guacamole about 5 more times while we were there.. funny cause nachos is not a typical spanish food. We had great tapas and sangria, and really enjoyed just paying for a drink and getting a lot of food because we're all starting to go broke!

After 10 days away from Italy we were all soo ready to come home. Its so nice to feel like florence is a "home" to us. It was also great to speak italian again, the spanish really threw us off cause we kept speaking spanish and italian at the same time.

And now begins the second part of our journey abroad.. my mom is here visiting now for 12 days which is great to be able to show her all around florence!

Fall Break

Ok so this week has been midterm week, we've been busy studying and avoiding studying... and taking midterms. The classes here usually don't have any work and then all of a sudden this week comes and they just throw tests at us.. so it's been a stressful and kind of boring week.

My dad was here last weekend, it was awesome to see him and get some quality fam time in. We went to some AMAZING restaurants, the food here just keeps getting better.

Next week is fall break -- We leave tomorrow for Pisa for the day and we're going to Dublin, Barcelona and Madrid. (KB and our friend Katie Mac are staying in Dublin for a couple more days while some of us go to Barca)

So you know where we are all week here's the sched.

Fri Oct 24: PISA for the day (flight to Dublin at night)
Fri Oct 24 - Mon Oct 27: DUBLIN (fly to barca at night)
Mon Oct 27 - Wed Oct 29: BARCELONA (overnight train to madrid)
Thur Oct 30 - Sun Nov 2: MADRID (flight back to forence)

Gotta go study for 2 midterms today! Updates about fall break when we get back.. there will be a lot to say im sure.

arrivaderci!

Amsterdam

Let me start off by saying that exploring the world is the most amazing thing I've ever done. So far I've been to Greece, Italy and now Amsterdam (Holland) and it just makes me want to see more and more. I cant even believe that we were in the Netherlands for the weekend.. I kept looking around and thinking wow, I am in a different part of the world in a completely different culture, and I am walking on the streets that my relatives have walked on before.

We went to the Van Gogh museum and the huge I AMSTERDAM sign, which was our playground for about 2 hours. You'll see photos cause I have hundreds in front of that sign.. and I'm not even really sure why it's there. Anyway, we wanted to go to the Heinekin Museum but it was closed for rennovation which was a bummer. We also went to the Anne Frank house, and that was so unbelievable to see the actual place where Anne Frank and her family hid during the Holocaust. The walls are covered in quotes from her diary, and there are videos of Mr. Frank speaking about his memories from that time. It was just really moving to be there.

The city itself was beautiful with a huge network of canals and bridges, all lined with trees changing colors. My favorite part were the old crooked houses and bridges and canals. There was also the red light district which was cool to see, kind of sad that all these girls make their livings by standing in windows but its their lifestyle so I guess you can't judge that!

We had so much fun just exploring a city unfamiliar to us. I love all of the people I hang out with here, we're basically like a big family, its great.

The world is so much bigger than I've ever realized before, I can't wait to see so much more.

Daddy-o's coming tomorow - I'm excited to show him florence and where I live, what I do and where I go every day. And for some quality fam time... and great dinners. Yum.

next week is midterms already, I can't believe it. This semester is FLYING by... I never want to leave. (Although im starting to miss america, the fam and my friends from home & syracuse) aaand after midterms is fall break! woohoo We're going to Dublin (where I'll see my Irish friends who worked at Copley with me this summer!) and Barcelona and Madrid to see THETA girls! cant wait for that. More later.. here are some photos from amsterdam --

ciao!

Traveling around Italia

Above is Il Campo (the piazza with the 9 divisions.. read about it below), the front of the Duomo in Sienna and me & lena on a tower looking over all of Sienna.

This is the Fountain of Neptune and the Two Towers in Bologna. Kristin and I climbed all the way up the one on the left, it was hard going up a ton of windy small stairs but so worth it... the view was amazing from up there. The one on the right is actually the crooked one... even though it looks the other way around.

This is the Duomo in Florence, the center of everything here.. all of the shops and restaurants are on streets surrounding this.


Grapes Fermenting at the Winery that we went to on the bike tour


Okay so it seems like I'm the only one writing on here -- kb might start to soon since her computer was broken and she JUST got it back but otherwise its basically just my blog! haha. anyways, kristin and I just discovered we actually have internet in our apartment (we're stealing it from something called "libero wifi" which means free wifi in italian... so who knows where its coming from, all i know is i am so excited to have internet at home.) we don't use it that often, mostly at night because during the day i'm either at school or exploring florence so its great! it gives us more free time around the city.

Last week I finished class at 12:45 and left school, walked down to the Duomo (the center of florence) listening to my iPod and wandered the streets of Florence by myself. It was one of the best days yet, i just felt so independent and free. I found my way to San Lorenzo which is this amazing market that sells clothes, shoes, pashminas, everything. I wandered into this little store and spoke only italian to the store owner, and ended up buying a gorgeous pair of brown leather boots and sandals. Aaaand since i spoke italian he gave me a great discount (i think). I love being on my own here sometimes, its so great to just really feel like I live here and not a tourist.

On friday Kristin and i took a day trip to Bologna. It is smaller than florence but definitely still a pretty big city. We explored the Piazza Maggiore, went into the Basilica which was gorgeous and had the worlds largest zodiac sundial engraved into the floor of the Basilica. We followed the guidebooks advice and went to eat at this little restaurant which had the BEST lasagna bolognese ever. it was to die for.. the food here is just un real. but dont worry i'm working out to work it all off haha. There are also two towers in Bologna, one of them is kind of crooked in the ground and leaning, but the other you can climb up and we saw an amazing view of all of Bologna.

Saturday Lena and our friend Katie and I took a day trip to Siena. it is much smaller than Bologna and Florence and really a quiet, cute town. I wouldn't even call it a city. We went to "il campo" which is the center and the huge piazza is divided into 9 sections to represent the Medieval council of 9, which was a council that ruled siena in medieval times. Its surrounded by restaurants, gelaterias and clothing stores. Siena's duomo is also gorgeous, although not as big as the one in Florence but the front is much more ornate and detailed. Apparently there is a constant battle between Florence and Seina and they are always competing to be better than one another. Inside the duomo there is completely gothic and for 10 months out of the year the marble floor designed with themes from ancient times is covered to preserve it, except for september and october so we got to see it!

Sunday 9 of us went on a Tuscan Bike tour through chianti. We went to a Cantina, which is where they make and bottle wine, got a tour and tasted wine and bread with the best olive oil in all of italy. It was amazing. Then we went on a 13 mile bike ride, which had a great lunch in the middle followed by the steepest, longest uphill climb. We had a choice to take the bus or attempt the hill.. and of course we all decide to attempt the hill because we can't say no. With a little riding and a lot of walking (except for the boys who had to ride the whole way) we made it up.. it felt great.

It's so gorgeous in Italy.. I'm really appreciating being here, every site and thing we do is just amazing and I'm loving every second.

Next weekend is Amsterdam... should be a crazyyyy time ---

ciao! love from italia!

Every day life

Hiii - its lisa again :)

Just wanted to say that life here is getting so familiar, we are finally in some sort of a routine and we are loving it. Last weekend we stayed and explored florence, it was amazing to just see where we live, experience the ponte vecchio with all the tourists while not feeling like one, going out to delicious dinners (kristin brought us to this place called Pizzaiolo, which is famous as being the best pizzeria in all of florence). It was amazing, we had an appetizer with lots of little bread like things and then a huge ball of buffalo mozzarella which was SO fresh and when you cut into it it just like spread apart and stretched ... it was so so so good. Lena and Alex didn't like it so much.. a little too "right out of the cow" for them haha, but the rest of us (me, mich, tracy and kristin) loved it.. it was an experience to eat. Then we all got different pizzas and shared... it was delicious. I love drinking wine with every meal too here, i wish we could do that in america legally because wine is so good with dinner!

We did some other touristy things around florence on saturday, but on sunday, since KB and i live RIGHT across from the soccer stadium (we can see it from our window), Lena and Mich came over to watch all of the Fiorenita fans completely dressed in purple go crazy for their favorite florence soccer team... it was chaos. the game itself wasn't open to the public because of some previous rioting that happened so we couldn't go to the game, but hopefully we will go to one in the future.

Otherwise life is great, classes are going well -- every day has become easier and we see more and more of florence. Onelise's dinners just keep getting better and better -- tonight Kristin and I are going to the market to buy stuff to make burgers and we are making Mario and Onelise an american dinner. I think they're nervous but we are so excited for them to try a burger with all the fixings because in Italy they just grill a burger and eat it with oil. We're also excited to cook beacuse we've wanted to this whole time.

This weekend all of our friends (about 9 of us) are going to Kristin's house in Chianti to have a relaxing weekend.. and then in a couple weeks we are going to Amsterdam! I'll let you know how that is -- we're really excited to all go on a crazy adventure together.

Ok thats all for now - more photos and such later! Miss & Love everyone

Lisa

Update on Life

Hey - Just an update on what we've been up to because I know everyone has been asking for one. (This is Lisa by the way)




















Our host families are great, Kristin and I live with a family that speaks no English at all, so it's a struggle but we are doing okay because we have each other to put together sentences. They help us out a lot as well and we use a ton of hand gestures to let them know what we're trying to say. Both of our classes are taught completely in Italian, in mine I even have to ask questions in Italian.. its really hard but at least we're learning a lot and hopefully by the time we go home we'll be amazing if not fluent.... hopefully.

The first weekend we went to Chianti because Kristin's family has a house there. It is BEAUTIFUL! We went out for an amazing dinner and lunch and laid out by the pool in the gorgeous sun.. it was great. We also went to a festival in her town with all Italians, it was really cool to see them celebrate life in Italy.

Last week was the first week of classes, it was a long week but our classes are pretty great. I'm taking Italian, Economics of European Integration, Managing in a Global Setting, and we're both taking Family & Gender in Contemporary Italy (a Sociology class about family in italy). Kristin will fill you in about her classes later. She got into a photo class she really wanted which is awesome, I am so jealous I wish I could take a photo class here or any studio art class.. stupid requirements in the business school wont let me.

Last weekend Kristin, Mich, Lena, our friend Katie from SU and I all went to the Amalfi Coast for the weekend. We stayed in Sorrento, and went to Capri on Friday by ferry where we went in the Blue Grotto (AMAZING) with this crazy guide who was determined to take 100 photos with us, and walked around the island and ate an amazing lunch at a restaurant off the beaten path (thanks to Kirstin's knowledge about italy). We went to Positano on Saturday which was BEAUTIFUL, had custom-made sandals made for us by a man named Paulo (so fun) and on Sunday we went to Pompeii, which was fascinating. It was so cool to see a city destroyed by a volcano and then uncovered.. there were people's bodies preserved by plaster in the positions they were in when they died, and bakeries that still had the brick ovens in tact. It was amazing. Everything was great besides the fact that we paid 220 euro to go through this program called Bus2Alps that sounded great because it was last minute (we planned it on wednesday and left on thursday night). It was worth it for the last minute planning... except the "bungalows" we stayed in were legit log cabins. The website made it sound like bungalows were going to be so great... they weren't. Our bus was pretty uncomfortable too for a 6 hour bus ride, and half of the group got a nice bus and nice hostel.. bad luck I guess. But we still had a great time, and for last minute planning it was worth it for all the transportation and "accomodation."

This weekend we might just stay in Florence to explore, see inside the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio, and maybe take a day trip to Cinque Terra, which is about an hour away. We'll let you know later on!

I have to go home to a home-cooked italian meal by our host mom now.. YUM. I love the italian food, culture and life, this place is amazing.

Ciao!

Photos from Greece

Here are some more photos of Greece, Sicily and Rome from the prequel - just to let you see how beautiful it was.

The first one is from the first night, over looking "Poseidon's Sea" where the temple of Poseidon, the god of the sea was.

The second is me & Lena in Greece.. I forget where this was, I believe after the Lions gate.. I'll fill it in later.

The third is most of the girls on the prequel standing at the top of a theater, when you stood in the middle you could speak normally and the whole theater could hear you.. it was so cool.

The fourth is the Acropolis.. not a great photo but one of the best I could get.

The last is the Ear of Dionysus, so cool. You can whisper in there and hear almost everything at the other end.

That's just a taste, there are so many more that everyone can see when we get back in Decemeber!

More Prequel & Florence

Hii friends & familia - aka amici e genitori! Its Lisa - we are sitting in the quad of la villa rosa, picking out classes that we're going to take this semester. Kristin already explained how crazy our Prequel trip was, and i have a ton of photos i want to put up right now but this stupid site isnt working! I'll do it later.

First of all, Greece is the most amazing place. Although we didn't make it to the beautiful islands, we fell in love with the culture and unbelievable historical sites. We made our way through the country studying about the ancient mythology of the gods, and did presentations on the sites themselves. Greece itself was our classroom, and it was incredible. We listened to the history of Mt. Etna in Sicily while physically standing on the volcano, and were able to dig into the ground and feel the warmth from the lava below. We learned about the acropolis while looking up at the beautiful temple with the city of athens to our backs. We saw temples, stadiums and theatres that have been intact for thousands of years. It was amazing.

The life in Athens, Sicilia and Roma is so perfect, everyone goes at their own pace and enjoys life day by day. The minute we got there we felt at home, even though we couldn't speak the language, it didn't matter. The friends we made were awesome, we loved everyone and didn't leave each others side for the entire 10 days. Words honestly can't describe this trip, it was the best time of our lives.

Now we are finally in Firenze, and we met our host families last night! Kristin and I are living with Onelisa and Mario, an older couple who live about 15 minutes from the school... and speak ZERO english. Figuring out how to talk to them is interesting.. between kristin and I we can somewhat form sentences. They are so nice, they have a little dog and their family lives nearby. There is an amazing gelateria down the street from us.. thats gonna be a huge problem. Dinner last night was amazing - italian food is soooo good. We'll basically be italian by the end of this trip.

k thats all, we'll write more later, now i have to teach mich & lena how to use this blog haha

miss & love, ciaoooo bellas

10 days 2 countries 7 cities 25 crazy kids and our arrival to Florence

CIAOOOOO!!!!! first off I miss everyone like CRAZY BUTTTTT Lisa, Lena and I had an AMAZING trip. We started off nice and early in the morning at Boston Airport and made our way to JFK to meet out prequel group for the flight to Roma. Not gonna lie the flight was horrible- longest thing ever a lovely 8 hour flight where I slept for about maybe 3 hours. We arrived in Roma and made our way to the gate to Athens. When we arrived in Athens we were immediatly on our way to our first site. Honestly I can't even remember all of the sites we saw- we legit saw EVERYTHING you name it we saw it. I can't even describe this trip it was incredible we made 25 new friends within two weeks and it made the whole process of coming to Florence that much easier- we had an advantage of knowing a ton of new people before we even came to the program. Sicily was by far my favorite part of the trip- maybe its just cause im so in love with italy but this city was beautiful. right on the ocean with cute little hill towns and we got to go to Mt. Etna and climb all the way up to the top in a huge van with wheels bigger then me. the views were incredible completly breath taking. Now we have finally arrived in Florence with 2 weeks worth of laundry and no idea where we are going to do it. The host familys only have washers, its very uncommon for italians to have driers becuase it is so expensive. We aren't sure whether to ask to do laundry or not- we were told not to however we need clean cloths- we are going to have to attempt to find a laundry mat somewhere. Right now we are all sitting around patiently waiting to meet our Host families- got the descriptions today Lisa and I are living with an older couple in campo di marte which is located near the soccer stadium and about 15 minutes away from campus. Speaking of campus- the SU campus in Florence is the most precious place ever- it consistes of about 4 small buildings that creat a very small quad like area- we would call it a piazza, I can't believe this is where I will be going to school here for the next 3 1/2 months. The past few weeks have been incredibly exausting and overwhelming but things are starting to fall into place and slow down a little bit. I'm really antsy to meet our host parents- nervous curious idk what else but still. Okay I'm going to get an apple to eat and then meeting them in 10 minutes!!! YIKES!

love and miss all of youuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!
Kristin, KB, Bersani

Hey its Lisa!

Welcome to our blog. If you want to know anything about the trip, you can find it on the SU Abroad website:
http://suabroad.syr.edu/programs/location/florence/
Everything else, such as photos and updates, we'll post here. Feel free to comment on anything, to say hi or leave us a message. You don't need a user name to leave comments on the site.

Lena, KB & I are leaving tomorrow for our Prequel trip called "A Mediterranean Odyssey." We'll be in Athens, Sicily and Rome for 10 days before getting to Florence for the semester. We probably wont be able to post on here until we get to Florence in September.. but we'll tell you all about it then. Michele is going straight to Florence on September 2nd, so when we're all together we'll make this site more exciting. We'll try to post as much as we can throughout the semester so everyone can see what we're up to in Italy and all throughout Europe (aside from classes...).

Ciao! Enjoy!