FIRENZE

I love life in Italy. I have only spent a few days here and I am already wishing I could stay here forever! Here's a little bit of my experience as a Florentine so far:

My pensione has 12 people in it, and is run by our awesome hosts Max and Sylvia. They are an Italian couple with an 11 month old baby, Sophia. They are sooo great and they make the best food! They feed us 3 dinners, 4 lunches, and 5 breakfasts a week. The food is phenomenal. There is pasta pasta pasta, fresh fruit at every meal, amazing cheeses and sauces and the occasional Italian dessert. Lunch is FOUR courses.  They feed us so much food and expect us to eat it all! But after experiencing our first lunch here we realized that there is no way to eat it all, so we just eat a little bit of everything. Yesterday it was blue cheese gnocchi, my favorite so far.

Today I hiked to a small area outside the city called Settignano with Brittany. It took us 3 hours and it was mostly uphill.. yikes! It was really great to get outside and be active, though. All this traveling has made it hard get to a gym so I've been resorting to walking EVERYWHERE and climbing as many church towers as possible (sight seeing and exercising, a beautiful combo).

Earlier today, I roamed the city center for two hours after my morning classes. I usually don't go anywhere alone, but Florence in the day time is so busy with tourists and tours and locals and everyone else you can imagine, that I feel really safe. Plus, there are a ton of Americans in Florence so the bad guys will focus on the careless ones, not on me. However, I will NEVER go anywhere alone after dark (don't worry mom!!). It was so great wander and taking pictures and roaming the open air market at my leisure. Groups are fun to travel with, but it's so nice to go and do what I want to do, for as long as I want. For example, I'm going to go to mass in the Duomo this week and I'm really excited about it. Speaking of....

The Duomo is the most BEAUTIFUL thing I have ever seen. Pictures just cannot do it justice. I have never seen a building so massive and beautiful and awesome all at once! I could stare at it for hours. I can't wait to go inside of it, I would have today but the line was too long. There are sooo many tourists here!! And I also can't wait to go to the top of it and have the most amazing view of the most amazing city in the world!!