Florence and Pisa

Sorry I haven't been keeping the blog very well up to date! It seems like there is no time for anything now that I'm on the downward slope of it all! So, let's see, what all have I done since I wrote last?? Oh, Florence and Pisa! :D
Okay, so we went to Florence via train, which was pretty exciting in itself for me, because I had never been on a plane before! It was sooooo nice riding on a train. It's not really noisy like a plane, and way more comfortable than either a plane or a car. We had a little booth-room thing to ourselves for part of it, and had to share with a 2 other people for part of the way. But it is so smooth and relaxing to travel by train.
We got off on our stop at Florence Rifredi, which is the train station outside of town. We then switched trains to a small local one that just goes back and forth from the Rifredi station to the Central station in Florence. We accomplished that without any problems, and were finally in Florence four hours (maybe more) later. We first tried to find the bus depot so that we could take it to our hostel, but we passed by a shooping center inside the station, and found a place that did manicures and pedicures. We REALLY wanted to get pedicures (our feet are horrible from all the walking!), but they required appointments. Though that part sucked, we did ask them about the bus depot, and told them which part of town we needed to go to. It turns out that it was actually a lot closer to the train station than we thought, and she said we should have no problem walking there! She was really nice, and even gave us some maps for free with loads of information on them. :D
So, we headed off on our trek through the very historic Florence (or Firenze, as the Italians say). It really is a beautiful city located in a valley of the Tuscan Hills. Truly beautiful. So some time later, we FINALLY arrived at our hostel, and proceeded to the 3rd floor where the front office was. We got all checked in, took "the lift" (aka elevator) to the very top floor, and were shown our room. By the way, that is the smallest elevator I have ever seen in my life. Three people can barely fit inside if they all cram in and stand sideways! So he let us into our room, and we were shocked! It was actually really very nice and very clean, too! We had a private 4 person suite (because we have all seen waaaaay to many horror movies about mixed dorm hostels!), and hit the jackpot. It had an entryway room with a balcony looking over Florence, a bathroom complete with clean sink, toilet, shower, and bidet (a very Italian bathroom fixture. Google it.). The bedroom had two queen sized beds in it that They really fairly new and very comfortable. However, the absolute BEST thing about this hostel was that it had air conditioning! I was so shocked and soooo happy! No where has ac, let alone a hostel! It all worked out very well, because divided between four people for two nights, it turned out to be only like €15 a night per person! It was sooo cheap!
So after we all got settled down in the hostel, we decided to try to find some dinner and do some sightseeing. They have so many wonderful buildings and sculptures in Florence, I couldn't even begin to describe all of them to you! When it was a little later, we decided to grab a quick glass of wine and head back to the hostel. However, wine lead to cocktails, which lead to dancing in an amazing club! No worries Mom, none of us were drunk or anything--just having a good time. :D Piazza dei Miracoli
The next day, Gloria and I got up extra early to catch the train to Pisa! Sarah and Julia wanted to sleep some more, and since they live in Europe, it's nothing for them to pop down here for the weekend. It is so cheap to get around inside Europe it makes me sick thinking about how much I spent on my ticket to fly over here!
So anyway, back to Pisa. It was about an hour long train ride to Pisa, which was not bad at all. Once we were there, we caught the bus right out front of the station that took us directly to Piazza dei Miracoli, where the tower, the catherdral, and babtistery all reside. It really took my breath away seeing these building that are sooooo old and sooo close together! Better yet, they have done a truly wonderful job of keeping the area from getting too comercialized. There are still large areas of grass surrounding the three buildings, which is very rare in Italy. Gloria and I did the typical tourist thing of taking pictures holding up the tower! It was a blast, and we really enjoyed our stay there. We stayed about two hours, then turned around, went back the the train station, and caught the next train back to Florence.
Once back in Florence, we met Sarah and Julia back at the hostel. They had spent the moring shopping at all the wonderful Italian shops. Gloria was really tired, so she opted to stay back and sleep while Julia, Sarah, and I went to see the Santa Maria del Fiore, which is Florence's trademark domed church that towers over the city. The inside is truly beautiful, but we did one better: we took 463 steps clear to the top of the dome to over look the beautiful Tuscan city! The stairs were murder. They were hundreds of years old, the stairways were narrow and crooked. Sometimes they were spiral staircases that went several stories high, and other times you had to duck and lean to one side to avoid hitting your head on the inside of the dome! Halfway up, though, we got a breather. We got to walk around the inside of the church and see the beautiful painting ceiling up close and personal. It's said that Dante got his inspiration for The Inferno from staring at the depictions of heaven and hell on the ceiling of this very church. Then we continued to climb up the inside of the dome. The dome has two layers with a small gap in between the two: this is where we were climbing! It was all very dark and it felt like I was in a medieval prison! But the result was soooo worth it. The view was absolutely stunning. We stayed up there for well over half an hour on the top piece of the dome, just looking out over the city and the hills. When we finally did leave, we again took 463 stairs back down. Then we continued to walk around town and see all the beautiful buildings and churches, and finally ended up on the Michaelangelo plazza on one of the hills on the outskirts of town, with a complete replica of the statue David in its center. Even better, we got to sit back, relax, enjoy some gelato, and watch the sun set over Florence and the Tuscan hills. I will never forget this heart-stopping sight as long as I live.
The next morning, we got up, gathered our belongings, and headed to the train station to catch our ride to Rifredi, before catching our actual train back to Venice. All and all, I absolutely loved this trip, and really wish that we had had more time there! There is soooo much to see, and sooooo little time to see it!

All is well

All is going very well here. Classes were much better today. We discussed things around the house. Thankfully I had labeled everything at home with sticky notes, so I knew most of what the things were! :D Thank God for post-it notes! So all is going well there. After class, Sarah and I went to the Lido again to work on our tans and to study Italian. I gotta say, if I have to study, a gorgeous beach is not a bad choice!
So tomorrow night, we are going on a trip through the school to the Rialto Bridge. I have already seen it (and loved it!), but we are going at night, and they have some sort of activities for us! I'm not completely sure what all is going to happen there, but a night at the Rialto Bridge can't be all together bad.
Then, on Friday, we are going to leave for Florence early afternoon! :D The cheapest train tickets were for the train that leaves at 1:00, which is exactly the time that our class gets out! So we talked to Silvia (our nice second teacher) and she said that it was absolutely no problem for us to leave class 45 min early to get to the train. She said that the experience in Florence is something that we CANNOT miss! She is so great! So, we will leave class around 12:15, get to the train station around 12:45, and have 15 min to get settled before the train takes off. We already bought our tickets round trip, so we have nothing to worry about there! The train ride itself is only about 2 hrs, so that is not bad at all. But I have never been on a train before! I'm actually really really excited for this weekend, because (1) I get to go to Florence! (2) I get to ride on a train, and (3) I get to see the leaning tower of Pisa! Pisa is not that far away from Florence, so we are going to take a side trip over there to see it Either Friday afternoon/evening or on Sunday morning. Our train leaves again at 1:36 from Florence to come back to Venice. I wish that the train was later in the day, but for a later train we would have had to pay €16 more per ticket, which is quite a bit of money for broke students! Thankfully there are four of us going, safety in numbers! I am going obviously, and so is Sarah, Gloria, and Julia.
Well, it's nearly midnight my time over here, and I am pretty tuckered out from a wonderful day at the beach. Keep in touch everybody, and I'll be seeing you soon! :D
Ciao, Becky

The First Weekend

This weekend, we decided to see the sights of outlying Venice, mainly the islands of Murano and Burano. Murano is famous for their glasswork, and Burano is famous for their hand made lace. These islands were much more run down than Venice itself, but were still beautiful. They actually had grass! :) It had been a while since I had seen honest to God grass. All of the glass work was amazingly beautiful, but very very expensive! After Murano, we went to Burano. Not only is Burano famous for its lace, it is famous for its multi-colored houses! They come in every color of the rainbow and are definatley a sight to see! We (Sarah, Gloria, and I) ate at this little restaurant in Burano, and had a actual dinner for the first time since we've been here! Mostly it's just pizza on the run! I had the tuscan grilled chicken, which was great, Gloria had a shrimp and zucchini pasta, and Sarah got spaghetti. :) Dinner was good, the house red wine was amazing!~ The funniest thing happened while we were there though. A stray cat kept walking under the tables, not so much looking for food, but more like it was its natural path it always took. However, it saw Sarah's purse, and curled up right on top of it! It was even funnier because she is afraid of cats! He eventually went away, which was sad cuz he was so cute. After dinner, we saw a concert in the park. The Italian band was singing mostly American songs, though, like CCR and Bon Jovi! I loved it and knew almost all the words, and Sarah and Gloria just laughed at me doing impersonations of the singer. :) Good times! After the concert, we caught the boat to the Lido again to see Sam (my English friend who is coaching the rugby team there on the Lido). We hung out for a while, had a few cocktails on the beach, then headed home.
On Sunday, we just relaxed on the beach all day, working on our tan and studying Italian. It is so much harder than I thought it would be! I was doing okay for a while, because my background of Spanish was pulling me along, but now I am just so lost! Our first teacher of the day, Bette, does absolutely nothing to try to catch you up again though. She acts like you are an idiot for not knowing the words she just wrote up on the board (which we have never seen by the way), then just tells you to study. THere is one little problem though, if I don't know the rules or the words that we will be studying the NEXT day, how in the world can I study? Like with the rules for conjugating verbs with adjectives and nouns. Some of them you change the ending and use the verb essere, but some of them you do NOT change the endings and use the verb avere. I have no idea how to tell which one to use when, and she will not explain to me. She just says "Studio." Thanks, thats a load of help.
Thankfully though, our second teacher is very very very helpful. I wish we had her the whole day instead of Bette! Her name is Silvia, and she is full of spunk and always willing to stop what she is saying until everyone in the class completely understands. She is amazing! Our first period today, I was just about ready to throw in the towel because I had no idea what was going on , and Bette kept calling on me to make examples of me. Almost everyone in the class has taken some Italian before, except me, Sarah, and Julia. So, she makes examples of us in front of everybody and treats us like complete idiots. I cannot stand her.
However, Silvia was our teacher after the break, and I understood every single word in her class, and if I did not understand a word or two, she was more than helpful in explaining it to me until she was sure I had completely grasped the concept. She is so nice when she does it too, not like Bette who might as well be burning you to death with her stare. :S
So long story short, I am taking an afternoon in, doing laundry and studying up Italian. My class decided to meet up for dinner tonight, and afterwards, we are going to have a huge study session. Anything that we do not understand, we are bringing to the study group so that someone who DOES understand that part can make it much clearer for us. We considered taking a private lesson or two to clear things up, but the cost was out of this world. For an hour of lessons, it was €48, which is about $70 American. I don't think so!!! So we are going to try to cheat the system by answering each others questions, then if there is something we all just don't understand, we can ask Silvia after class, because we know that she will help us. :) :D Thank God for helpful people!
Sometime this week we are going to go around and see the museums and churches in Venice. This weekend, a group of us is heading to Florence from Friday night to Sunday night! :) Should be a blast! The weekend after that, we are going to fly to Rome, and then the next weekend, I will be flying home! :) It is going by so fast I can hardly believe it! See you all soon, and take care! Ciao, Becky

End of the First Week

Well, today is Friday and the end of my first week in Italy. I can't believe it is already 1/4 over! It really does not seem possible, and I don't want it to end so quickly! Yes, I really to miss everyone back home, but I found a solutiotn: you can all just come over here! :D
So with classes, they are much more difficult that I originally thought. The classes are taught all in Italian and one of the two teachers won't even let us talk to each other in English, even if we are just trying to figure out what we need to be doing. We spend most of the time lost, and kind of try to find our way along in the lesson as it goes. We started verbs on Wednesday, learned a ton of new verbs on Thursday, and learned to conjugate them today. It is very, very, very similar to Spanish in this sense, but with just enough differences to still leave me confused! They also started doing this thing where they will give us a huge list of words and tell us to match it up with the appropriate adjective. The nouns and adjectives are either feminine or masculine, singular or plurale, and you have to match it up with the correct adjective on the list. It is so hard though, because the verbs and nouns have already been changed out of their root word. In Italian, when you say, "I" do something, the root of the verb gets an "o" on the end. This is true if the verb is and -are, -ere, or -ire verb. THey want us to describe the meaning of the word shile speaking Italian, then tell whether it is an -are, -ere, or -ire verb. First of all, I HATE how they just automatically assume that we know the meanings to all of the words they throw at us, then they make it seem like we should already know the answer when we ask. Second of all, it is impossible to tell if a verb is and -are, -ere, or -ire verb when it is conjugated in the (I) or (you) forms. The (I) verbs all end in "o" and the (you) verbs all end in "i." So I asked the teacher how you can tell. All she told me was that you need to memorize them. Great.......becuase I know every single verb in the Italian language. Right.
Sorry, I will end my rant now! :)
But other than that, I had a ton of fun going this week! On Tuesday and Wednesday, I went to the Lido (a huge, very famous Italian beach) with a few friends. It was so beautiful! The beach goes on forever, and it has the FINEST sand I have ever seen! The water is so blue and so clear it feels like you're floating in a bottle of deja blue! But the water is very very salty. You can float without even really trying at all! The salt just holds you on up there! We have plans to go back again tonight with a big group.
Yesterday, though, Sarah and I went on a self guided tour of Venice. We started right after class got out (1:00 our time), and walked everywhere! We went down to the Accademia (which is closed for remodeling or something), continued down to a GORGEOUS catherdral called Chiesa di Santa Maria della Salute (literally it means the church of Saint Mary for heath). It is absolutley stunning! I couldn't even really get all of it in one picture! It is right on the Grand Canal, and is by far one of my favorite places.
After seeing the catherdral, we backtracked, caught the Accademia bridge accross the canal, and went to Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square). It is beyond words for how beautiful it is. Even the pictures don't even begin to give it justice. It is massive and gorgeous and there are so many people! The perimeter of the square is surrounded by buildings that are a tall, white, and ornately decorated. But the main attraction is the Basilica di San Marco. ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL!!!!!!!! If you ever get the chance to see it, say yes without a moment's thought!! The architecture of the building is beyond compare, and as if that weren't enought, it has paintings on the underside of the arches that are inlayed with gold! Completely breathtaking! We didn't get to go inside any of the buildings yet though. It was way more expensive to buy them on the spot. If we go to our school and get a museum pass, we can see all the museums and churches in Venice for only about €12!! Each museum on its own charges €6! I really can't wait for next week, because that is when we are going to the museum tour!
After seeing San Marco, we made our way over to the Ponte di Rialto (the Rialto bridge). It is so funny, because TJ and I have a picture of this bridge hanging up above our couch in the living room, and now I'm seeing it in real life! It is really gorgeous too! I saw it once at night on the way back from the beach, and it looks amazing all lit up at night, a near perfect image of it reflecting in the Canale Grande below. Just perfect. It's just as neat in the day time too. I never realized it, but when you see the divisions on the bridge construction, it is the back side of shops that are actually on the bridge! There are three walking paths on the bridge--one on each outside edge, and one throught the middle, with shops lining the path. I was a little dissapointed though, because side of the bridge that is facing away from San Marco is covered in grafitti! Grafitti is a really big problem here, and you can't go 10 ft without seeing something that has grafitti on it.
After seeing the Rialto Bridge, we started on our way back to my apartment so we could change to meet up with friends that night. However, along the way, we found a little cocktail bar! Cocktail bars are almost non existant in Vencie! Better yet, it was happy hour with buy one get one free drinks! :) :D We each got 2 margaritas and a sangria. :) We stayed there a long while talking and just chatting about everything (especially the differences between England English and America English). We later headed back to my place, got dressed, and went to the student district to meet up with tons of friends from class. We had spritz, which is like THE drink of Venice! It has bitter Aperol, white wine, prosecco, and sparkling mineral water. You mix the three ingredients in a large glass and add an olive or a slice of orange and an ice cube. People here usually go out for spritz before dinner, around 6:30 or 7, have 2 or 3, then eat dinner around 8 to 9. The spritz was ok, but not as good as everyone made it out to be. :( A little bit of a let down. But we stayed there a long time and had a ton of fun getting to know everyone better. I know 2 other girls from the US, 4 from Germany, 2 from France, 2 from Croatia, 1 from Poland, 6 people from England, 1 person from Austria, 1 person from Austria, and one from Holland. It is so amazing getting to know people from all over the world! And it's pretty funny that I came here to learn Italian, am picking up a British accent, and am learning tons of words in French! :D Talk about a global society......
But we are planning weekend trips, too. We have nothing planned this weeked, but next weekend, a big group of us are going to go to Florence. We plan on getting the Eurorail to Florence Friday afternoon so we can get settled in our hotels/hostels and all, and then head out to see the sights. Then we will have all day Saturday to sight see, and part of Sunday too. Then we will come home Sunday afternoon/evening to get ready for classes on Monday!
We are planning another trip the Rome the following weekend, with about the same format, only we will be flying. It's only €50 to fly roundtrip to anywhere in Europe! I wish I had more weekens available! Oh I would go see everything!!!
So this afternoon, I am taking a nap. It about 90 some degrees outside, and no one around here has air conditioners. How the day schedules usually go, is that businesses open around 8, close around 2, open up again around 4 or 5, and stay open til 9 or so. They all go home for lunch midday and sleep throught the hottest part of the day. It is such a weird schedule for me to get used to! But after my nap, our big group is going back to the Lido for some great swimming, and after the sun goes down, we are going to head to the club on the beach! :) I can't wait!