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!