November 5, 2011

November 5, 2011

This morning I slept in and then had breakfast in my pajamas :) After breakfast, I got ready and decided to do some homework before I left for IKEA. I actually got quite a bit done and then headed into town around 12:45. I met Becca and Katie at 1:15 and we waited for the free bus to IKEA together. Willi ended up not being able to come and Alex thought we’d said Sunday so it was just the three of us, although Alex took a later bus a met us there. The IKEA bus is hard to miss because it is one big advertisement so we had no trouble finding it. Much to our surprise, the bus was full, although I should have known, being a weekend. The bus ride only took about twenty minutes, which was very nice and it dropped us off right in front of the store. On the bus ride Becca and I had been talking about how excited we were for Christmas and how much we loved Christmas; then, when we walked in the doors of IKEA, our jaws dropped—it was all decked out in Christmas decorations! We hadn’t even thought about that! There were garlands with snowflake lights on all the banisters, Christmas trees in almost all of the room set-ups, fake wrapped gifts…EVERYTHING! Becca and I were so excited. We decided to make it our goal to take our photo in front of every Christmas tree in IKEA. We succeeded until we got to the warehouse on the bottom level and there were at least twenty all in a row. Anyway, we saw MANY Christmas trees :) We had a wonderful time walking around, deciding which bedrooms, kitchens, dining rooms, bathrooms, closets and studies we wanted and, of course, enjoying the Christmas decorations. It’s amazing to me how much fun you can have in spending a few hours at IKEA! We met Alex in the cafeteria where we had some Swedish lunch. I had Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes that were absolutely delicious! We sat and talked for a while, resting our feet (IKEA is really quite massive) and then headed down to the lower level.

We didn’t buy a whole lot but, as I said, it’s just so much fun to look around there and take everything in, picking things out for your imaginary apartment :P Katie did buy a cheap set of kid’s silverware so she could have utensils for her lunches that she brought to school and I think she also bought a towel. I found some golden gift boxes to use for a final project that I am doing for my Weaving the Tale class (it’s an art project!) so I bought those as well, as they were very cheap. Before we left we, of course, took a peek around the Swedish grocery store. I bought some pepper cocker cookies (or ginger thins…whatever you want to call them) to have around as a little snack and to share with my host family. We also each got a cinnamon roll for the ride home! They don’t have the big frosted ones like they do at our home IKEA but they were yummy little ones, and only fifty cents, so still good! On my way out, I grabbed an IKEA catalog for Umberto, my Italian professor because, when he heard Becca and I say we were going to IKEA this weekend, he got all excited and asked if we would bring him back a catalog :) We caught the 4:00 bus home, arriving back in Florence around 4:20 and each headed our separate ways.

Once I got home, I decided I would work on homework until dinner and then, after dinner, reward myself by watching a movie. I finished up The King’s Speech last night and really loved it. If you haven’t seen it, you must. Daniela and Andrea went over to Andrea’s brother’s house for dinner this evening but Daniela left us a wonderful dinner, as usual. We started off with shell pasta with a creamy cheese and tomato sauce that was very yummy. We followed that with pizza pockets, green beans, bread and cheese, and finished off with fresh fruit. A lovely dinner :) It was also kind of nice to relax and not have to speak Italian, as both of us were pretty exhausted and didn’t quite have the energy to do that.

I can’t seem to really get my head around this whole having three-day weekends every week thing. On Friday I thought it was Saturday, today I keep thinking it’s Sunday and now I keep thinking that I have school tomorrow, but it’s only Sunday tomorrow. Like I said, since I have done quite a lot of homework this weekend, I am rewarding myself with watching another movie. I think I am going to watch Love Actually :) I don’t really have any plans for tomorrow except to rest my foot and get ahead on some of my homework so I don’t have a lot to do when I am out of town all next weekend. I did wear my new boots today and my foot didn’t hurt at all, even with all the walking around IKEA! So I guess these were a good investment :) I hope you’re all having a wonderful, relaxing weekend, and that your weather is a little nicer than it is here. It’s been very dreary today, raining on and off. It was a good day for IKEA but not a good motivation day. I guess I’d better get used to it—November is the really rainy month here in Italy. Have a lovely rest of your Saturdays!

All my love,

Kari

p.s. Here are a few photos from our day. I took far too many Christmas tree photos to be able to put all of them up. But I'll put more on Facebook and Shutterfly if you really want to see all of them :)

The first of many Christmas tree photos :) 

Posing with the fake presents!

SWEDISH MEATBALLS!