Masks & Vino

Buonasera everyone!

One month down, three more to go. I can’t believe that it’s just about been a month.. it feels like I just got here, but it also kinda feels like I’ve been here forever. 

The weather in Firenze finally decided to cooperate and warm up! It’s raining today, and its gonna keep raining till Tuesday, but after that highs are in the upper 50s and lower 60s!! This place is even more fun and beautiful when its nice out, and its really making me feel like I’m living in a dream.

So this week was pretty routine.. class, nap, class, bar, class, homework, blah blah blah.. I’ve been doing a lot of cooking, which I’m pretty impressed with - Sautéed veggies with chicken, eggplant parm with pasta and (semi) homemade sauce, turkey paninis, prosciutto paninis, last week I made chicken piccata with gnocchi, lots of salad & chicken. YUM. I’m getting pretty good if I do say so myself. I want to try to make bruschetta chicken and mozzarella & pesto paninis this week.. and maybe stuffed shells? (one of the few times that Pinterest has led to me being productive) OH and this for breakfast... who would’ve thought that I could be so domestic?

Now onto the highlight of the week – Venice Carnival. I was so excited for this day and it did not disappoint. Emma and I headed over to the train station at 8:45 AM, which sucked.. but we got to sleep on the bus. We got to Venice around 1ish and then took off for the island of Morano, which is famous for glass blowing. The island is small, but really beautiful. Glass shops are everywhere and I treated myself to a cute pair of glass earrings (don’t worry, mom, they were cheap). 

Glass flowers on the entrance to the glass museum

Flower box with glass flowers

After we explored around Morano for a while we headed back to the main island and St Marks Square. As soon as we got off the waterbus we were bombarded by huge crowds of people. It was the last weekend of carnival and the weather was absolutely beautiful so everyone – and I mean EVERYONE – was in Venice.

People EVERYWHERE

Carnival is more or less Venice’s Halloween, so there were a lot of people – young and old – dressed up for the holiday. There were costumes that you would see in the states like spiderman and other random things, but the most impressive (and common) costumes were couples dressed up in elaborate, matching outfits with masks on.. I can’t really describe it, but here’s a few pictures..

She was so cute!

After making it to St Marks, we were pretty overwhelmed by the crows and we were starving so we went to a restaurant for an awesome 3 course meal with wine of course… sorry mom, this wasn’t so cheap, but it was well worth the money. First course was gnocchi with cheese sauce which hands down my favorite. Then I had steak, which was pretty good, but I kinda wish I got the Salmon that Emma got, and then apple pie for dessert as well as a carafe of red wine. It was our one and only meal of the day, but we didn’t need anything else after that.

I'd like to think that this more or less sums up Carnival.

yum.

After finishing our meal & wine, we headed back out. Carnival was in full swing and the crowds were much less overwhelming. The rest of the night consisted of drinking more wine, dancing, people watching, live music and meeting randos. Everyone there was having such a good time just hanging out with friends, meeting new friends and dancing. They had a bunch of acts on stage that resembled a circus or cirque de soleil with people jumping through fire and doing acrobatics. Carnival is just one giant outdoor party, and the people there are entertainment enough, you really don’t need much else. When you put people together with good music (and masks and wine?) you’re bound to have a great time.

Rando dancing (badly)

More rando dancing

That’s all I got! Next week I’m hopefully going to the Accadmia and/or the Ufizi, and next weekend I’m either going to Milan or doing a wine tour, so get ready to hear all about that =]

Chocolate Tasting, Volunteer Training and Globe Trotting

…that’s more or less what my week has consisted of, and it’s been pretty perfect.

This week is the annual Chocolate Festival in Florence. It is becoming increasingly hard for me to understand how these people stay so thin. I mean the food they eat on a daily basis is unbelievably delicious, but a week long festival completely dedicated to the best chocolate around? Come on. So despite the bitter cold, we went to check it out today and we were not disappointed. There had to have been 15-20 tents set up in the Piazza Republica all dedicated to chocolate. Fruit dipped in chocolate, chocolate cakes, truffles, fudge, hot chocolate, hot chocolate with coffee, shoes shaped like chocolate… they have everything you could imagine and its all presented by the best chocolatiers. I had a piece of ridiculously decadent chocolate cake and strawberries covered in chocolate and it was absolutely the best I’ve had. We decided to stop there even though we probably could have cleaned out all of the tents (and our wallets). Better to sample all week than to eat it all in one day, right?

So moving on from the chocolate that I’m sure to dream about all week… as some of you may have read earlier, I’ve decided to do some community service while I’m here in Florence. I applied and was placed with the European branch of the Robert F Kennedy Center, which some of you may be familiar with. They have branches in DC and New York and just opened a branch in Florence. The foundation is dedicated to promoting and protecting human rights, and the European branch is especially dedicated educating and advocating those rights in European schools. The Florence branch is very new and is just getting on their feet so they’re asking for help from both American and Italian students. The main thing that we’re going to be doing for them is helping to organize their monthly advocacy events. Once a month they hold an event at a local café that features distinguished speakers that talk on behalf of a specific issue that changes monthly (February is environmental issues). We are asked to make & post flyers and handouts as well as spread the word and bring in an audience. It feels really good to be a part of something important, new and somewhat ground breaking while I’m here in Florence, and it’s adding a whole new aspect to my trip that I wasn’t expecting.

So off of the (somewhat) heavier stuff and onto a more typical part of a travel abroad students experience… travel!!! I’ve more or less finalized my travel schedule, and I could not be more excited. I haven’t even gotten to any of these places yet, and my mind is already blown. I really can’t believe the life that I’m living. If you had told me a year or two ago that I would be traveling the world and living in Europe, I probably would have laughed in your face. I mean, studying abroad has been a dream of mine since high school, but there was always a part of me that doubted that it would happened. I’ve never traveled or done anything remotely like this before, so wrapping my head around it was just about impossible. It still is hard to believe, but here I am, and here I go. These next three months are going to be the best I’ve ever had, and I’ve never felt so lucky.  Venice, Switzerland, Rome, Amalfi Coast, Pisa, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Croata, here I come!

Ciao everyone!

Week 1!

I’ve made it through my first week of classes! All of my classes are great. My two art history classes seem interesting and they’re set up so half the classes are lectures and half are onsite visits, which is exactly what I was hoping for. Photography is cool as well. My professor is a hipster man from Brooklyn, and he’s young and awkward and hilarious. Italian is also great, it’s more focused on conversational Italian and the goal of the class is to make us comfortable with talking to Italians while we’re here. We’re also going to have Italian language partners from the state university in Florence to help us with Italian and to help them with English. We also learn about Italian culture in that class and we’re going to have a cooking class, a trip to an antique dealer, and a shopping trip. So no complaints about any of that!

I also applied to do some community service. I figured I should try to give back since I’m running amok throughout the city most of the time.. I applied to one organization that focuses on integrating American and Italians and then doing various service projects. I also applied to do some volunteer graphic design work at another organization so I’ll get to learn more about graphic design and apply my skillz and give back to Firenze. Bueno.

Other than all the school stuff we’ve been exploring the city day and night. I found two cafes right by my apartment where I can get espresso for one euro, a wine store where I can buy four bottles of wine for ten euro, WINE JUICE BOXES FOR 1 EURO, and a really great Panini shop called Pino’s Panini’s. Pino runs/owns the shop and he’s a very friendly, very funny man. He speaks pretty good English and claims that his Panini’s “are the best in all of Florence”. So Far I can’t argue. I got a turkey Panini with roasted peppers, eggplant, cheese, pesto and “spicy sauce”. It was heaven.

Perfection! They have red and white =]

Pino's Panini!

Michelle's Pino's Panini

And nowww nightlife.. I’ve found that just about all of the cafes that sell café & food during the day turn into a bar at night. This is both a curse and a blessing. It’s great because that means there’s probably over ten bars within two minutes of my apartment, but not so great when you go to get food or coffee hung over the next morning and you’re starting at a fully stocked bar. Ugh. The bars we’ve gone to were filled mostly with Italians, which is awesome but very weird. We’ve met some interesting people to say the least. For the most part everyone speaks “a little” English, and a little means they’re almost fluent. They all ask the same questions, “do you study,” “what you study,” “how old are you,” “where you from,” The guys are generally more friendly for one reason or another, but I’ve talked to some pretty cool girls too. There’s also a lot of clubs here, two right down the street from my apartment. The clubs are very American, but very expensive. At this one club called Twice, beers were 6 euro, mixed drinks were 8 euro and shots were 4 euro… We asked the bartender if they had any specials and he laughed and told us that everything was special. I’ve decided just to stock up on wine juice boxes and save my money…

So that’s all! One week down successfully and a bunch more to go. I slacked on pictures this week but there will be plenty more coming