La Pietra

Benevuti a Firenze!

We have been having orientation on campus.. long meetings about safety and living in Florence. We had an intensive italian class as well to get us ready for the country. Only one other girl in the class had taken Italian, so I had to take the lead. Luckily I remember the basics. I am starting to feel a little more confident. I can say "I want this (or that-- whatever it is)" or "I want a table for ..so many.. people." at restaurants. If I try a little Italian, they are usually pretty generous with their listening. We have only had a few incidents where the servers did not care for loud Americans.. even if we weren't being loud. At one ristorante, Alfredo, a large group of Americans left before us, so even with three of us, they did not tend to care for us. The restaurant scene is much different from America. You do not need to tip because they usually put a 2 euro or so charge on the bill for each person.. There isnt a tax listed either. The numbers are usually easy to divide-- 10.50 o 11.00 euro per person, instead of 10.53 or 11.34 per person. In New York, we always had trouble splitting the bills considering the restaurants did not like making seperate checks for each guest.

The long 25 minute walk to campus uphill is still killing us. Our legs are hurting, but we still manage to explore at night. We have spent a lot of time near the Duomo, even though it is near the center city, so it is more expensive. At night though, the city is not alive like in New York, so we try to find more populated places like that area. The duomo is only about 10-15 minutes to walk to from Piazza Isidoro. Here are some photos so far..
(above) Kristine, my roommate, on campus the second evening.

The building, La Pietra, in the distance.

The Duomo
The campus on one of the only sunny days so far.

un cappucinno! Fernando at the coffee bar on campus gives kristine and I our daily dose of caffeine..

(Above) This is me, very excited for the walk to Villa Natalia, one of the buildings on campus.

This is my roommate Kristine and me with the campus in the back ground..

This is Villa Ulivi, which is where all of my classes are located.

This is the church connected to the Duomo..

The hill at La Pietra.

Firenze, Italia!

I left Cincinnati Monday and flew to Philly to meet Drew. After that we traveled from Madrid, where no one enjoyed Drew's Spanish and the McDonalds didn't sell Milkshakes. We waited for nearly four hours there and flew to Florence.. We had a slight delay because it was snowing in Madrid, but nothing as terrible as many others who were traveling to Florence. Our view (below) was not that incredible thanks to the wing.)

It was around 20 hours of airports/flying for me.. and I barely got any sleep. We had a terrible time falling asleep until we flew Spain to Italy. US Airways was less comfortable than Meridiana's plane.

We finally made it to SPAIN..

We attempted to watch TV on the flight, but neither of ours would work at the same time. I wanted Sisterhood of the traveling pants, but apparently that wasn't his fav. We read some as well, but ended up attempting to pass out. Reuben and Nancy, our flight attendents, did not want us to sleep because they kept offering food and drinking and would turn on the lights in the middle of the flight.

We didn't realize a few others from NYU were on our flight. We all met in Florence's airport, where we followed the woman with the NYU sign and put our luggage in a mysterious truck and we hopped on a bus where we met some others. I was much too tired to communicate, but attempted. It was around 5pm florence time when we headed to La Pietra, which is NYU's campus. We could not see much other than a beautifully lit path, but it was a good first impression. We spent the next couple hours checking in, doing immigration, getting ID's, keys, calling home, and trying to find food. As I was getting my first bite of food, they called for me to leave. Me, and two guys from schools in Boston headed in a van to our apartments. It was quite the drive.. down the city streets and the drivers are crazier than New York. I watched out the window at the people in the streets.

The City is so much older than anything in the US, it makes it much more meaningful. There is so much history to a city like Florence, as well as the rest of Italy. I am spending my semester mainly focused on my history major, so the history of Florence is very important. I am taking a History of the Italian Renaissance Class and a Europe since 1945 class. I am also continuing my Italian-- with intensive intermediate. My final class is Drawing and Painting: Seeing Florence, which will be interesting considering I have zero art skills.

I am excited to be here! I live with 10 other girls in a flat at Piazza Isidoro del Lungo 3. Kristine, my roommate from NY, is my roommate here. We have a nice flat and our room has a balcony. It's around a 25 minute walk to campus, uphill. So that's going to be fun.

Now it's time to adjust to the time change and sleep off jet lag.