La mia vita a Firenze: October 29, 2011

October 29, 2011

This morning I slept in until 9:00, getting about nine and a half hours of sleep, had breakfast, got ready, and caught the bus into town. I met Erin in front of Linguaviva at 10:45 and we went looking for an internet café. We found a cute little diner-type place that had wifi, not far from school, and set up for our study session there. Before going to bed last night, I made a PowerPoint with all of the images we need to be able to identify for our midterm along with the dates I knew. This morning, Erin and I went through it and added the missing dates, the patron, the location of the artwork and the material used for the work. We have to know quite a few pieces of art, by ten different artists, so it took us about two and a half hours to finish it all up, but it was definitely nice to have someone to study with. I had a cup of tea while we were there, which was lovely and made studying a little better, as well.

After we had finished up the PowerPoint, my brain was spinning a little bit so I decided to take a break from it for the rest of the afternoon and go back to studying at night. Besides, it was a lovely day—about 70 degrees and sunny—so I figured I should enjoy the warmth and sunshine before it left for the rest of my time here :P I decided to walk home to drop of my backpack and computer before I spent the rest of the day out and about so I did just that. On my walk home, I discovered trees with leaves that were changing colors and crunched my way through leaves in a few parks! It took a while but fall is finally sort of starting to come to Florence :) Once I got home, I dropped off my stuff, and headed back to the city, walking back through the parks. There were so many people out today, especially in the parks, which was so nice! Once I had made my way through the parks, I decided just to wander around the city, as I so often do. I walked across the river to Santo Spirito and explored the neighborhoods around there for a while before heading back to the other side of the river. I wandered over toward Santa Croce and explored that area for a while, and then headed back toward the Duomo. I decided to stop in the Paperback Exchange—an English bookstore that had been recommended by our professors—and was so glad I did. The bookstore is half like a normal bookstore and half like a Half Price Books, for those of you familiar with that. Kind of their point is that you buy a used book, read it, and then exchange it for credit to buy other books. I spent probably about an hour there, looking around and reading the backs of so many different books. I love bookstores and it was nice to have an English one. They have couches in there, as well, so I sat down and read a little bit, as well. It was just lovely :) While I was there, an American couple who were living in Florence for a few years came in and I overhead the girl who worked there telling them that she was from Wisconsin but had gone to college in Minneapolis. When I was checking out, I asked her where she had gone and she told me the University of Minnesota. Small world right? But wait, it gets crazier—I told her I was from Minnetonka and she said that she had done her student teaching at Minnetonka High School in the art department when she was in college! IT’S A SMALL WORLD!!! Anyway, that was pretty cool :) After that, it was around 5:00 and I had done a lot of walking, so I decided to head home.

When I got home, I decided I should probably get back to my homework and studying, which I was not super excited about, but figured it had to be done. Instead of going right back into studying for my midterm, I decided to finish up my reflectory for Purgatorio first—crazy what a “study break” is this weekend…I never would have called reading Dante a study break before! Once that was finished, I decided to take on the studying and used my PowerPoint to study until dinner.

It was just Franzi and I eating dinner this evening, because Andrea and Daniela had eaten lunch around four or five. And, because Daniela is sick, Andrea prepared dinner for us because Daniela was sleeping, as she had been doing most of the day. We started off with a type of lentil/barley soup that was very creamy and delicious. For our main dish we had green beans with olive oil, bread and those yummy “pizza pockets” with tomato sauce and mozzarella. For dessert, Andrea had set out special Tuscan biscotti (that was delicious), dessert wine and clementines. It was quite a lovely dinner and Andrea did a wonderful job :) He does a really good job of taking over for Daniela when she is sick although it was kind of funny when he tried to give us new sheets for our beds. He opened up the closet and really had no idea which sheets were which. He originally gave us three pillowcases (instead of a pillowcase, fitted sheet and top sheet) so we had to help him out a little bit. It was funny :)

Well, now that dinner is over I suppose I had better get back to studying. I’ll probably just study for another hour or so and then do some ready before I go to bed. I found my mind racing a little bit too much last night as I went to bed, having worked on my Inferno worksheet/essay and midterm PowerPoint for many hours leading up to that time. I am going to try to give my mind a little bit of a break tonight. Then tomorrow I will probably sleep in a bit and then it will be back to studying! Gosh I am so excited for this midterm to be over…Tuesday at 11:00 cannot come soon enough (that’s what time it will be all over with!) I look forward to a *hopefully* less stressful weekend next weekend. Oh well, I’m learning a lot, right?! :P I hope you’re all having very relaxing Saturdays! Oh and I almost forgot! Tomorrow starts Daylight Savings for us here in Italy so I get to sleep an extra hour! AND that means that, for an entire week, I’ll only be six hours ahead :)

All my love,

Kari