CHRISTMAS PALOOOOOOOOOOZA!!!

So one of the big similarities between Europe and America is the enthusiasm generated for Christmas. They love Christmas, we love Christmas, and we love that they love Christmas! So these past two weeks we've been having a "Christmas Palooza" to celebrate the coming of Christmas (and to take breaks from studying for finals - which I am OFFICIALLY DONE WITH - YAY!!!!!)

Before I show you our glorious pictures from Christmas Palooza, I'd like to wish my Aunt Dana a VERY VERY VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! She's thirty five, for those of you who don't know her. :)

The German Christmas market at San Lorenzo:

Allison and I with my really super warm hat:

 A CAROUSEL!!!!!

I just found out that we have malls in Florence. They are AWESOME

Yea, they have reindeer. Moving reindeer. 

These are some really cool graffiti in florence where they spray paint a man to make it look like hes carrying the bar, or leaning on the bar, etc.

The Florentine Christmas Market was indoors, and since they don't get snow they made balloon snowmen (and there wa s fake snow outside, that turned out to be snow)

 Us posing with Santa! It's the real Santa!

.... and so my journey ends. I don't know when it's going to hit me that I lived in Florence for a semester, because it definitely hasn't yet. But it was a wonderful semester and I cannot wait to be home for Christmas :)

¿Bonjour, yo necessito il conto por favore?

Ahh beautiful Paris! The land of the Eiffel tower, baguettes, and nutella crepes. Had it not been consistently below freezing, I may have enjoyed it more, but I still loved it.

 This is my tribute to my first visit to Paris: it was when I was in second grade, and I refused to eat anything that wasn't a roll, hot chocolate, or sugar cubes. And yes, I ate both of those sugar cubes. They were delicious, thank you very much.

 Thomas and I had matching hats! And attempted to stay slightly above freezing with them on...

 The BEST baguettes in the world! Absolutely delicious. Freshly baked and very filling :)

 So... we couldn't find the metro. We even saw the sign that said "metropolitan", but since we associate metropolitan with something else, we wandered around for a while trying to find it. We're not quite as intelligent as we look.

 Obviously we went into the Disney store, and had I had any more room in my bag to take take that donald duck home, I probably would have.

 The Arc De Triomphe! Yes, we are standing in the middle of a very busy intersection... why do you ask? We even climbed to the top of it! Beautiful view of Paris from up there!

So unfortunately all these pictures from Trocadéro turned out blurry since we went at night, but this is us holding the Eiffel Tower. IN OUR HANDS. Impressive, I know.

 On top of the Eiffel Tower! Apparently they don't want you to take super pretty pictures with the background of Paris, so they put up a fence. Hopefully my joy is covering the extreme cold I was feeling for the thirty seconds we stayed up there!

Sacre Coeur! About two minutes from our hostel, we climbed up to this church on our last morning for our goodbye to Paris :)

I also went to three museums there (mom still didn't believe me), but I like the pictures of Disney toys and sugar cubes better so those were chosen to be on the blog :)

Right now I'm diving into finals week (my first one is tomorrow - wish me luck!) up until Thursday when I have TWO finals and Friday I depart for the States! Time has flown! I will still have one last blog post of all our "Christmas Palooza" activities in Florence, but for now - Au Revoir!


P.S. the blog title is a mix of french, spanish, and italian - all of which were used on our trip to try and convey meaning!

I Fought the Law and.... the Law Won (prague style)

Hey everyone! Sorry it's been so long since I've updated, I've had a lot of end-of-semester work piling up!
Here is my part 2 to prague!

 Allison and I hiding in the pretty fall leaves...

 Gorgeous. Beautiful. Captivating. Breathtaking.

 The John Lennon Wall!

 Making the peace sign :)

 LEAF PICTURE!!!! It's the cool new thing.

 Staring off into the distance with a beautiful river at our feet and doves (okay, pigeons) flying through the air....

 I really couldn't stop taking pictures of Prague.

 My favorite picture OF ALL TIME. Allison and Amanda were going to get a leaf picture together, and as Allison pondered the best way to do that, Amanda pushed her in.

Shout out to my uruguayan father :)


So after Prague we took an 8hour train to Frankfurt to spend the night and catch our super cheap flight the next day (probably would've been cheaper to fly a real airline and stay in Prague, but oh well). Unfortunately we had to share a compartment with people, one of whom was a sketchy old Sudanese man. In fairness, I think all non-related older men are sketchy. I grew up in the dirty jerz. If he wasn't from church, and he wasn't one of your friends dads making you both pancakes in the morning, he shouldn't be talking to you. Especially if you're a teenage (or now 20-something) girl. Well, Allison felt differently and started chatting him up. She asked about his life, what kind of music he listened to, etc etc. At one point they landed on majors, and he asked her what she was studying. She responded, "History", and he asked, "What kind of history?", to which she said, "American history", "Oh" he said with a very disgruntled look on his face, "American history. Very short."

She then of course explained to him that that's why she was focusing on it, haha. When the train ride was over, he asked for her personal information like where she lived. Thankfully she was smart enough to only give him her email... we're expecting pleas to house his starving son any day now...



P.S. I should probably explain the title of this post. See, I grew up outside NYC. That means, I grew up with the outlook that one ALWAYS ignores people on the street trying to sell you things. I have actually spent days walking around Florence in the pouring rain, and still refused to buy umbrellas from the guys selling them on the street (as my family knows, I am very stubborn). So we're in Prague and we're headed down these long escalators to the metro, and I see these guys at the end of it trying to sell pins of some sort. So, out of New Yorker instinct I brush past them, even when the guy calls after me to get my attention. But then he goes "Excuse me! Police!", and I turn around to realize that the men are policemen, flashing their badges to have us show them our metro tickets. Oops! Thankfully I had mine!

We're Off to See the Checkers... the Wonderful Checkers of Prague!

Prague. The Most Beautiful Place in the World. In our three days there, I took 897 pictures. I'm gonna break it up into two blog posts, so here are the first 11 of 22 pictures I narrowed it down to.. (soo difficult!)

 Just one random beautiful building in Prague. With a beautiful blue sky. I love Prague.

 Actually the biggest mall I've ever seen. 5 levels. And on the top level they had something called "LA Finger Food" and it was all sorts of fried food haha... it seems that fast food is what we're most often stereotyped for!

 At the Opera. In Prague. We're fancy like that. No idea what happened. Seemed to be some sort of demonic Little Mermaid.  We liked it though, it was a really cool experience.

 THE CASTLE!!!!

 View from the Castle, hello beautiful Prague :)

 Actually my favorite poster ever. This is hilarious.

 Gorgeous view, too may beautiful views of the river in Prague...

 Just another gorgeous nook...

 Jesus on a bridge! We had to touch something at his feet for good luck, but apparently i did it wrong so some woman tsk-ed me and showed me how to do it

 Old Town! At this point Allison goes: It looks just like Disney Land!

 ... And then we saw Amanda. And I love her. The end.

Prague Part 2 is on the way! More gorgeous views to come!

...And then we slept a lot :)

Vienna! Beautiful Vienna. So we were pretty much in Vienna for a half day because the other half of the day... we slept haha. We were really exhausted from travel and tours and pretending to be various members of the Von Trapp family!

 Here we are at a church! That's all I know about it.

 Something pretty and golden! yes!

 They were having a festival! It was really cool and there were all these fun booths and things for kids to climb in haha, and balloons of course, which are the best.

 Allison and I playing in leaves :)

 Riding the pony. This was as a shout-out to my FAC Board friends, because there's this amazing FAC Board ice breaker called "ride the pony"

 And then a beautiful train ride the next day on our way to Prague...

Such a pretty lake :)


Sorry this is such a short post but we really weren't there for long! I promise the prague photos will more than compensate!!

Our Own Sound of Musical!

As promised, here we are posing at all the famous Sound of Music places!!