DAVID BECKHAM, and other less important things

On Wednesday the 24th I went to another soccer game, Fiortina vs. AC Milan who temporarily has DAVID BECKHAM. So thats obviously the only reason 100's of american girls went. We lost in the last five mintues 2 to 1 and David Beckham never even went in but, I did take about 40 pictures of him streching in hopes that he might go in. I only posted one because I didn't think anyone else would be as intrested in the copious amounts of pictures of his butt as I am.

Saturday, the 27th I went to Fiesole with Emily and Ally. It was like a 10 minute bus ride up the mountains a little. We were in search of a nice relaxing little hike but instead, taking the road less traveled, spent a few hours walking up and down rather steep rocky hills in the forest. It was fun though, good exercise and beautiful views of all of florence. When we made it back to the town center we were tired and STARVING so we downed large pizzas and went home. Of course we did not make it home before we got Mcdonalds McFlurries... so much for having a healthy day :)

Today, Sunday, me and my roomates did nothing. We all booked a trip to the Amalfi Coast though for the last weekend in our program. Should be amazing but also sad that its the end!!! This week I have to complete 3 research papers that are approx 9 pages each so wish me LUCK. And then Kevin comes on Friday so I'm obviously very excited for that. He better bring me peanut butter

Rome... A little late

So, I have taken my time putting up this post because I wanted to include photos but for some reason it won't let me so everyone is just going to have to deal with it. DAY 1: Thursday the 18th, we woke up at 7am to get all our stuff together and run to our bus that was waiting outside the Ferragamo store. We made it, I was quite sweaty though. Yuck. The bus ride was 4 hours and I tried to sleep but coach busses, no matter how luxurious they are suppose to be, are not that comfortable. We arrived around noon, checked into our hotel and got pizza for lucnch. We got these HUGE slices that they fold in half for you so you eat it like a sandwhich. Of course I dripped the oil from it all down my shirt so that was nice. At 2 our first tour began. We took the subway to the Spanish steps which are right in front of this street with all the expensive stores on it and it always seems to be crowded but it was a lot of fun. Then we walked to the pantheon which is essentially just a really really really really old church with a hole in the ceiling. Oh and Rapheal the painter, not the ninja turtle, is burried there. Outside of the Patheon there were these men dressed up like ancient roman worriers. One of my roomates was trying to get a picture taken with him and he said that she had to pay. But then as I was causally strolling past he said "for the sexy one, free" so I took a picture with them and of course felt very special for like 30 seconds. We then walked to the Trevi Fountain which was packed but beautiful. We threw coins over our right shoulder because thats what everyone does. What we gathered was that if you throw one coin you will return to rome at some point in your life and if you throw two you'll fall in love, or something cheesy like that. Then we got gelato yum! The rest of the tour that afternoon was a long precession of churches that all blended together and none that were too exciting of famous so I've blocked all details of that out of my head. BORING.
That night we met up with Allie and Allison who are studying there and we went on this organized bar crawl. We all met by the Colossuem (pretty cool at night) and had a sort of happy hour where there were "free drinks" (we paid 15 euros to join) we got a t-shirt and we played some games that were entertaining to watch. Emily, Marrissa, and Michelle all played one game where they were partnered up and had to push a beer can, while blindfolded, up the leg of thier partners jeans, and down the other, then open the beer and try to get their partner to drink the whole thing without spilling as fast as they can. The one girl in the competition that wasn't one of my friends won. Then we went to three other bars, danced, drank, and had fun!

DAY TWO: 7am wake up...again. There was a bus strike so we had to be at the subway at precisely 7:45am because the strike began at 12 and we had to make it to the Vatican!! When we met our tour guide, Fredarica (who was acutally really cool except for this little incident) she took attendence like 5 times. No joke. We were all ready to murder her and wander around the massive building by ourselves. But she eventually got her shit together, got us "Whisperers" aka headphones and we were off! We saw a bunch of broken statues in the first couple rooms that did not impress me. Then we saw some of the old popes living quaters and all the paintings done by raphael like the School of Athens which is that painting with people walking/sitting/chilling on some sort of steps. I'm sure if you saw it you would know what it was. Then we went into the sistine chapel in which you are not allowed to take pictures but I snuck a few. After taking like 15 I got caught on the last one and one of the guards yelled at me. Its okay though cause I had no idea what he was saying. Next stop was St. Peters which is BEAUTIFUL. It is also enourmous, the largest church in the world! Everything in it is overly decoratated with gold and mosaics and all sorts of things. Our tour guide pointed out that everything that looks like a painting is not a painting at all but a mosaic and thats why its okay to have lights on all the time because it can't fade. Looking at the pictures then was incredible because these things were so elaborate and huge. The last popes body is still on display there which was slightly distrubing. I got pictures of that as well which felt wrong but it was allowed and I was intruiged. His face was covered in wax though so he still looked like a human as opposed to a rotting piece of flesh. YUCK. We climbed to the top of the dome after which was more steps than the Duomo! There were gorgous views up there. I lost my friends though, thought they had walked down with out me. It turns out we were just circling on the top in search of eachother at the same time so we never ran into eachother. I then sprinted down the stairs thinking they would be waiting at the bottom but no such luck. I just chilled at the bottom and then approx 7 minutes later they came busting through the crowd yelling my name so I guess everyone was a bit paniced. The rest of the day we spent relaxing. We had a long, expenisve, lunch which was not good (Rome's food kind of sucks) and then we took a very much needed 4 hour nap. We had Mcdonalds for dinner and then we went to Campo di Fiori which was this really fun little square with lots of bars. We started the night in this bar called Drunken Ship and a bunch of us girls got these pitchers of long Island Ice Teas yum. Then we went to a couple other places and thats about it!

Day Three: We went to the Colesseum. Its really cool looking. I'm mad at one of the popes though from back in the day because he wanted to recycle the marble so theres no seats left cause they were all taken out! It probably would have still looked more like a stadium today if that hadn't happened. LAME! The rest of the day was spent looking at ancient roman ruins which were cool but very little was left so it was hard to picture what it was like. For lunch me and Emily got CHINESE!!! It was nice to have a little change. I ordered way to much though so for the rest of the day i felt like a fatty. Then we took another long nap and went to the same place as the night before.

Day Four: We signed up for an optional tour which was of these "villas" they were also ancient ruins and one of them was this fountain garden. There were some 30 fountains and it was amazing. So pretty. It was crazy to think that people in the 1500's were able to figure out how to get enough water pressure to shoot the water so high! For lunch we got kabobs which are just chicken wraps kind of but they were delicous. Then we went home!!

Oh and I forgot the mention that besides a few moments of rain, it was like 60's and Sunny... in Feburary. JEALOUS???

Stairs, Confetti & Masks

So, this weekend was a TON of fun :) Saturday morning Emily and I climbed the Duomo... all 463 stairs of it. The sky was bright blue and it was sunny, so pretty much the ideal weather to go to the top! It was 8 euro to get in and some of the stair cases were more like ladders. It was absurb how many flights of stairs we had to climb and how croweded it was. But it was well worth it because once we got to the top we could see the entire city... we were even able to find our apartment and I zoomed in really far with my camera and took picture of Michelle and Marissa who were standing out on our roof top patio. Saturday night we went to YAB which was so much fun. Not many people went out so it was just me and my roomates and we danced our way into this little italian VIP area. At one point me and michelle had to run away from the italians cause they were getting creepy but we were on top of the speakers so she jumped down and then i jumped on her back and she gave me a piggy back ride. It was really funny at the time.

Sunday was Carnivale! We went to Viareggio which was a town on the ocean that supposidly has the best Carnivale in Italy. I have never seen cooler/bigger/more elaborate floats in my life. Everyone is dressed up from infant babies to old old people. Some of the floats were really poltical though, like there were two with Obama on them and they were essentially shitting on America but it was still cool. We all got masks and wore them around all day and I bought confetti and threw it at everyone... just fitting in with the locals. We also ran down to the water and took some fun pics there. It was really a great experience, probably one of the most fun things I've done since I've been here!

Oh my David

Today I went to the Galleria Accedemia and saw the DAVID. It is enormous. I don't understand how one person could carve something so large with such detail, i mean you can even see the veins in his hands! The rest of a museum is kind of a bore. Besides 4 or maybe it was 5 unfinished scultures by michaelangelo that were pretty cool too, everything was paintings of jesus... I'd say 99% (maybe even 100% since the David is obviously based off the biblical character david who killed gollioth) of the art there was Christianity related and it kind of looked the same to me, lots of dark colors with gold embellishments. Oh well, Seeing the david made the trip there worth while. Unfortunatly you can't take pictures :( This weekend we might finally be getting ineternet installed in our apartment so cross your fingers! and i'll be going to Ikea so that i can get a mattress pad and acutally sleep through the night. I have to go research plane tickets now, Ciao!

Couple pics of my apartment & the duomo!

The first picture is of my roof top patio, its a picture from inside so you can't really see it, The picture with the stained class windows is my kitchen eating area, the table is covered in wet clothes so you can't really see it but you get the idea. If you go through those stained glass doors is the cooking area which also has our laundry machine in it. The picture with the couch is obviously the living room. Its taken from the front stair case so you can't see the three large windows that also look out to the duomo. the picture that looks like a cruise ship is my bedroom. Ha. Its a little messy in this picture but it would be hard not to have it messy with how small it is!! The top bunk is mine... most uncomfortable bed ever. At the bottom are just some pictures of the Duomo, which is litterally a block from my house. Its nice to wake up and walk to class with this monster staring at you. Soooo pretty :)

PISA! and soccer...kinda

Saturday we woke up at 10, ate breakfast and caught a train to PISA!! its about an hour long trainride and costs 5.70 euro. We didn't realize that we had to validate our tickets before we got on the train so when they came around p unching our tickets, we almost all got fined 40 Euro. They guy was nice though and told us just to make sure we did it next time. The walk to the tower was about 20 mintues so not too bad. Seeing the tower though aftering hearing about in school all your life is really cool. It was strange though, there are huge ears of grass in front of it and the other two buildings that are to the left to it. I took close to 30 pictures of it which was compleltely unnecessary but I wanted to make sure I got every angle! We ate lunch near the tower later and thats about it. Pisa is not the most exciting place so thank God we just went for the day. We wanted to climb to the top but by the time we went to get tickets they were "sold out" for the day. That was dissappointing. We got home at 7ish, so it was a long day. After dinner at il teatro I just chilled at home, and did things like painting my nails.

Sunday I slept in until 11ish and then me and Emily went to the market. Our intention was to get a leather purse but we both ended up buying leather jackets! The lady at the store made us try on a bunch of different styles and sizes looking for the perfect fit. The one I wanted was still to wide in the waist and the seleves were too long so she altered it for me in a hour... impressive. Then a big group of us went to a chocolate festival. There were about 40 different booths that had hundreds of different chocolate things. I got a piece of cake that was covered in hot fudge, yummy. Later that night we got ready for the soccer game! It was Florence vs. Rome so a huge game. We took a bus there and back and it was a lot of fun. We lost though. I was going to go to watch the superbowl but I was to tired so I just passed out.

Gotta run, Bye!

Average week

So Tuesday was my first experience with the supermarket. Esselunga is A. difficult to get to and B. HORRIBLE to walk home from when you have bags full of groceries. When I got home I realized I didn’t buy a single complete meal but whatever I think I am going back soon. I bought yogurt and cereal for breakfast, I bought some fruit, and I bought everything to make a salad. The walk is a good 25 min. though soo it was interesting especially since I had to keep whipping out my map to see what street to take next. Tuesday was also my first Italian class and now that I have had two (its Friday) I officially know that I will learn no more this semester. Not that I don’t want to, but my teacher is like a second grade teacher on crack and I can’t help but laugh every time she makes a facial expression trying to get her point across. We know what shes talking about so hopefully she starts moving faster before I punch her in the face for treating us like 6 year olds.

Wednesday night we went to Cavalli club (the fashion designers club) which was really cool. Of course there were projection screens of fashion shows playing in the background and the club was full of older(ish) Italian men. I just went with Michelle and some other girls that I don’t know that well but it was so much fun. We danced all night long; I don’t think I’ve ever been that sweaty in my life! Me and Michelle were dancing on stage in one of the booths for a while and at the end of the night we got up into the VIP section and could watch the rest of the club from the balcony.

Thursday I ran into Allison Cipolla and Allie Sipple at lunch it was so nice to see people from school. They came over at night and we took a bunch of cheesy pictures (Including the dg salute) in front of the duomo off our balcony. Then we went to Red Garder and then to this club called twice. I wore the wrong shoes and my feet were killing me so I went home early. I got lost on my way home and had to ask like 3 people for directions. I had to keep asking “dov’e lo Duomo” I’m sure they laughed to themselves after because its hard to not see it, and I was like a block away.

This morning (the 5th) my roomies and I went to school to for internet. Emily and I booked our flights to Paris, Madrid, and Barcelona!! I’m sooo excited!! Then we got Panini from this like place called Gusto Panini and you get to create your own sandwich, its delicious. Tonight we all went to Red Garder again and it was karaoke night. Emily, Marrisa, Michelle, Ally, Anna, and I sang Wannabe by Spice girls. It was pretty funny, Michelle recorded it on her phone but you can’t see us that well. After that we went to a club called Glamour. We got a VIP booth again and we got some bottles of champagne for free! On the way home I was walking with my coat over my head because it was raining and some Italian guy just ran up to me and smacked my butt Emily and I were like wtf just happened ha. I guess it happened to Michelle the night before… oo silly Europeans.

5 posts in one day... why not?!

so I have to add some pictures. The first one of the water and bridge was just a snap shot I took strolling on home from school, no big deal right you see stuff like that in wisconsin all the time?? ha Just kidding its obviously beautiful here. The second is the view from my roof top patio, yeah I for sure got the hook up...like always this picture does not do the view justice . The next picture is of a group of Wisco kids which was a failure and the last picture is one of me and my 4 other roomeis! yay! From left to right its Michelle, Emily, Me (OBVIOUSLY), then Ally and then Marissa who is too close to the camera and looks really pale ha sorry

Dolce Vita

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m posting like a million posts at once since there is no internet. SO it is… I think… Tuesday (feb 2) EARLY EARLY morning (aka just got home and its 2ish). Saturday night I went to YAB which is a club that was a lot of fun, I ran into a ton of Wisconsin people which was ironic/weird. We danced a lot and had some drinks and I may have taken a little nap ha I still need to get use to sleeping in my rock hard bed. Sunday I went on a walking tour to see some “art history” and it wasn’t that interesting. I couldn’t hear the guide and I’ve walked past these sites by myself before. I did go shopping later and bought TWO pairs of shoes for only 30 euro because there are some MASSIVE sales going on…sweet! Sunday night we went to some Greek restaurant for dinner. I got a trio special with lamb and chicken gyros, chicken kabobs, and fried meatballs + a greek salad…kinda gross but kinda delicious. MONDAY: FRIST DAY OF CLASSES. I had Italian fashion in which I learned the major designers we’ll be studying. It seems like its going to be really interesting. Then I had the Italian Mafia, and we watched two short movie clips and that also sounds really cool… kinda makes me secretly wish my family had some mafia connections. Last, I had history of Italian migration. Ironically we’ll be watching the sopranos during one of these classes (jealous dad?) but our mafia teacher told us to forget about the sopranos cause its not real. Oh well. After class I did a little shopping and then I had dinner at Golden View. It was AMAZING. With our meal tickets we got a first and second course and the waiter threw in some glasses of champagne. I had vegetable soup followed by steak and it was so good. And the restaurant was right off the Ponte veccio (bad spelling) but right next to the bridge and right on the river. After that we went to lions fountain. It was an Irish pub FULL of Americans and decorated with American colleges, there was a Delta Gamma shirt hanging… I feel so cool ha. It was packed though so then we went to some other place that was cheep and had music. Everyone else went to YAB again cause I guess Mondays are they popular night there but I went home with Emily because she has work and I hope to get a lot of things done in the morning. I need to go grocery shopping and do laundry and RUN! (hopefully) Anyway, didn’t sleep last night cause of course my bed sucks, SO I’m tired and going to try to sleep now. Nighty night

What else could go wrong

Looks like I’m going to have to make a lot posts all at once with no this no internet business. Anyway so yesterday (Friday the 29th) we left Siena. Right as we were pulling into Florence we had this AMAZING view of the city that got me soooo excited. I had to take a cab by myself, and I told him my address and he said to me “Oh we can not drive there” but then he shut the door and drove off with me inside anyway. I didn’t understand that you can’t drive on the street I live on at first so I was like whats going on ahhh. But it was fine he let me out and I walked to my apartment, its on this cute little street with lots of shops. I’m on the third floor and the elevator is about two feet by two feet so getting my luggage in it was a quite an ordeal. But once I got my stuff up I was like OH MY GOD. The place, while it is a little outdated and in need of maintenance, is AMAZING. You walk in and there’s a decent size living room and if you go up the front stairs it leads to two bedrooms. One of the doubles only has one big bed!!! That is not mine thankfully. If you go down the hall way on the main floor theres a bath room and then my bedroom that I share with Emily. Its very small and I have top bunk… At the end of the hall way there is a linen closet/room that we all use as closet space. I gusss this apartment use to belong to a big time clothes designer so I’m assuming that this linen closet was his main closet. Then if you go up the back stairs to a seeming third floor or a another 2nd floor, theres the main eating room and our kitchen. The kitchen has our washing machine in it!! There’s a door when you first get up the stairs that leads to our patio! Its like a roof top patio that has a table and chairs and a little garden like thing. The most amazing part about it is that it over looks the DUOMO. IT IS SOOOOOOOO COOOL. I cannot wait until it warms up so we can start cooking ourselves dinners and eating them outside. Its an absolutely amazing view and from what I hear about the other apartments we for sure got the hook up!!This excitement did not last long. I don’t know what it is about arriving in new places BUT I have the most terrible experiences. About two seconds after seeing everything I wanted to text everyone to brag but guess what… I MUST HAVE LEFT MY PHONE IN THE CAB. Arghhhhhhhhhhhh I was soooooo frustrated and I’m still so mad. I tried to have the land lord call my number and had several friends try it later but no luck. Lame, I wish I hadn’t been so anxious to get home and made sure I had my stuff with me. Later everyone else came and they were all ecstatic. All my roommates seem really nice and fun to be around. We had dinner with everyone in the program in this very nice private dinning hall. The place was beautiful and we had a 6 course meal. STUFFED. Then we had some people over and then we went out to club Twenty One. OOO I forgot that getting ready to go out I realized how much I’ve been eating since none of my dresses fit well anymore! Oy vey. Anyway, the club was way over crowded, we had to wait for like 20 min just to check our coats and then you had to push your way through sweaty smelly people just so you could get your drink spilled all over when other people are trying to get past! I ended up leaving with Emily at 1 and Mallory and Conner slept over on our couches because they didn’t know what their addresses were, which was kind of funny. I also forgot to mention that while we had everyone over before we went out our lights went out. It is now almost 3pm on Saturday and our lights are still not on. Coming home to a pitch black room is an interesting experience when your trying to find where your PJ’s are. And then of course this morning we couldn’t find clothes to wear, we had to do our make up in the dark, and finding our keys and such was a game of feeling every surface hoping to find what we needed. Our landlord actually just got here to try to fix it. She only speaks Italian so this should be interesting. But I have to run, I feel bad sitting here watching Marissa struggle to get her point across ha. Ciao!

And were OFF!

So, yesterdays post didn’t get posted yesterday because once again the internet in the hotel SUCKED. Big surprise. So all of these are getting posted at the same time after I copy and paste from word. This morning I had my FINAL. It was a piece of cake. The “hour and half test” took 30 minutes and we were out by 9:30. Good deal. We all went to the piazza and had a picnic, drinking some wine on the ground. THEN the coolest thing happened. We were just chilling and then all of a sudden all the pigeons took off and of course we all ducked (yuck pigeon poop). We couldn’t figure out why until this guy with a parachute landed like 20 feet from us and then we looked up and some other guy jumped from the tower right above us and parachuted down too!!! The police in the piazza immediately started chasing them and they frantically tried to collect their equipment. The latter one had to run with it dragging behind him and the male cop was stepping on it. It seemed for a second that the cop was about to get him but then the cop TRIPPED on the strings and fell up the stairs and the second guy changed directions. By this time the first jumper was out of site but then the woman cop grabbed the second guy but was not strong enough. We watched the male cop get back up and then chase the 2nd man all around the forum. He had to drop everything he had which sucks for him cuase I’m sure it was expensive but still cool that I got to see my first police chase. Then I went to my last lunch in Siena and got some delicious cookies for desert. I just got on the bus and of course its running a little behind schedule. Though getting a giant bus like this to our hotel is definitely a difficult task considering mini cars have some difficulty navigating these tiny roads. I’m SO EXCITED FOR FLORECNE!! I guess my apartment is in a pretty hip location for night life and its right between St. Lorenzo and the Duomo… pretty sweet if I do say so myself. So far on this bus I’ve only been listening to Michael Bolton… Steel bars is obvi my favorite. Pretty embarrassing, but I blame mom for playing it all the time back in the day. We’re moving now though and I’m getting car sick… gotta run!

End of Siena

Tuesday night we had wine tasting class… we were given a tour of a wine cellar that use to be a fortress back in the day and it was pretty cool. They had some scanner thing that would read the bar code of the wine and then tell you all about it. A big light up map would show you where exactly the grapes were from and all its little details. Then we got to taste three different wines, one white and two red. One of the reds was honestly horrible, there was sentiment in it and even the leader of the tasting was like oh something is not right about this, which was pretty funny. It also smelled peppery, but I guess it was suppose to be like that. We learned how to look at the color of the wines and smell them, look at the legs of it and of course taste so that you find every little flavor. I didn’t really believe any of it / I couldn’t tell you the difference between one wine or another. Afterwards we had our “last night out” in Siena. We went to gallery again it was actually more fun than last time. A lot less crowded… probably because it was a Tuesday night. We danced a little and chilled on the couches, and I think I experienced the full on creepy Italian man hitting on the American girl story that I was warned about before coming here. There was legitimately a circle of locals around all the girls and they would take your hand and try to get you to dance with them. I’m pretty sure that all the girls would grab one of the like 7 guys on our program and claim that he was their boyfriend to get the creeper away. I wonder if the Italians caught on after the 20th girl said the same guy was their boyfriend. Probably. Yesterday, Wednesday, we had our farewell dinner. It couldn’t be today because we had to pack and study for finals! It was interesting. Of course the first night dinner was all classy; each plate brought to you with food on it, 4 course in a nice restaurant. WELL, that was not the case for last night. Apparently they were done trying to impress us. We got basically cafeteria food. We sat at loooooong tables and served us food in big bowls and we had to serve ourselves….(omg serving ourselves yuck). I guess we have become a little spoiled here. Today we had a double class 9 to 5 with two breaks. It was brutal. And we had our oral and comprehension test. Needless to say I some how butchered the one question I was asked. Oh well, hopefully she’ll grade easy. Then she asked me read out loud (not part of the test) and for some reason every time I read the word po’ I would burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. My teacher thought it was a dirty word in English but I told her, between my outbursts, that it was actually reminded me of one of the names of the tellitubbie and then everyone else in the class began to laugh as well. I think we were just all delirious at that point. Tonight I had my last dinner, it was not a ticket place even though I have tickets left… looks like I’m having a very expensive (in tickets) lunch tomorrow before I hop on the bus. OO and I’m on the first bus which is sweet because I get to leave at 150 and the last bus leaves at 4!! I would be so anxious if I had to wait. Supposedly I have a sweet apartment and sweet location. I guess we will see. My final is tomorrow morning. I didn’t study much. I’m waking up early though so I can, we were told its going to be pretty easy. WISH ME LUCK!! Off to bed now, goodnight!