First full day here! And already so many interesting (and a couple embarrassing) things have happened. To start out my night in a new place, my body (or subconscious? I don't know what controls these things..) decided to sleepwalk. So at 12:30am I woke up and decided that it was 8am and everyone needed to get up. So I left my room (waking my poor roomies as I did so) and went into the room next door to alert Courtney (one of my suitemates from Amherst) that it was time to wake up. Annoyed and groggy she mumbled that it was 1230, so I left, went back into my room, informed my confused roommates that no, it wasn't time to wake up yet, it's only 1230, and went back to sleep. Also, I ran into a pole today while trying to read an engraving on an archway. I'm really cool.
When it was actually time to wake up we resisted leaving our comfy warm beds for half an hour, because even when you're in a beautiful city like Florence, a warm bed always feels more alluring at 8am. Then we opened the two huge windows in our room to let in the sunlight, look at the gorgeous view, and check the temperature. We grabbed Special K bars on our way out (yay for grocery stores with recognizable food items!) and followed our Peer Advisor to the Odeon Cinema.
There we had a long orientation this morning. We were in really comfortable chairs (yes, we all fell asleep) and it was about all the dangers of Italy which scared all those awake from ever venturing out of the apartment haha and in just the ten minutes it took to walk there, I passed 15 stores selling leather, 1 man who gave us our first "ciao bella!" of the trip, 3 gelato stores (which I still have yet to go to! but i promise that will happen soon), 1 McDonalds, the Duomo, and 1 Merry Go Round in the middle of a Piazza. I like Italy...
After orientation we went on this "tour around the neighborhood" which was only slightly helpful, since we had no idea where we were to begin with, and our tour guide spoke really quietly. But pretty much if you head towards the Duomo you'll find anything you need, so we should be okay. Then we grabbed lunch at a local market, where I saw a bunch chicken heads, three boxes of phallic shaped pasta (for italian bacherlorette parties?) and a guy in our program who knows Chelsea from Emerson (though saying he 'knows' her doesn't quite paint the picture... ross says hi by the way, chels). I also had the guy behind the panino counter tell me that I speak Italian well, and then he said a bunch of other stuff I didn't understand... oh well, all in good time :)
and now my roommates and I are all sitting in the common room on our computers trying to catch up with all our friends who aren't quite awake yet, waiting for someone to come into our apartment and tell us things like where to throw our trash out etc. and then - more exploring Florence!
Ciao a tutti!
Oh and mom and dad I know you were curious - there are 374 students in the program here!
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