Back to school

A fairly uneventful Monday followed a crazy fun weekend! It's a little hard to come down off an amazing weekend and kick back into school mode, but that's life!

My Italian teacher was back in class, but I kind of wish we could have the substitute back. My teacher is nice, but she doesn't explain things well, and overall, just isn't a very good teacher. (I think Emily and I made her mad because we kept having to refer to the Spanish equivalents of everything she was teaching us because she wasn't explaining anything well, oh well...she'll get over it haha)

It was a fairly nice day, so I quickly checked my e-mail and then headed back to the apartment for a quick lunch (scrambled eggs! haha), and then went out to run a few errands with my roommate Julia. We stopped at the school to send an e-mail about our internet setup, then went to a shop to buy postcards, and then to the pst office for stamps (which are kind of expensive (85 eurocents each), and the ones we got were HUGE!). On the way back to the apartment, we stopped at Giovanni's for cappuccinos. We hadn't been to see him in awhile, so he was happy to see us. :)

I had a substitute teacher in World Religions, so once again, it was really boring. I have hope that it will get better, though.

My mafia class is AWESOME. Mr. Stefano is a really interesting teacher, and he's got a good sense of humor. I can't wait until we start really getting into the material!

Mom gave me little bad news on the homefront, which upset me a bit. When you leave for such a long period of time, you just kind of have the mentality that nothing really happens at home while you're away, but this episode just brought me back to reality a bit. It was something unexpected as well, so that just opens you up to the fear of something else unexpected happening. A scary idea, but not nearly enough to ruin the wonderful experience of being here.

Yesterday, my Renaissance Art class took a field trip to the churches of San Miniato and Santa Croce. It was really cool to have a lesson about the different architectural elements, actually see them in person, and have class in such a historic place! It felt so cool to walk around these places, which are works of art in themselves, and take notes on the artwork that surrounds you.


San Miniato


Santa Croce

Ballet was really fun once again. Two new students added the class, and I would be lying if I said I didn't feel slightly vindicated when they showed up in their street clothes. :)

After catching up on some internet time, I headed back to the apartment. The weather which had been rather dreary in the morning, had turned pretty nice, so I decided to go for a walk/jog/whatever I could work up the energy for. (I had already had a pretty intense workout on the walk from San Miniato to Santa Croce and then back to school for ballet!). The hardest part turned out to be finding a place to run. Along the Arno seemed to be the longest stretch of uninterrupted sidewalk, so I checked it out. It was just so strange to go running, to do something so ordinary, in such an extraordinary place. I mean, I went for a jog through the Piazza della Signoria, past the Uffizi Gallery and the Ponte Vecchio, and along the Arno River. It was an awesome run. AWESOME.

I got home and fixed a quick dinner for all of us: tortellini filled with spinach and ricotta, with red sauce and diced tomatoes, and we all watched a movie and I wrote some postcards (since the only channel we get that is not completely in Italian is MTV, we've been watching a lot of movies! Because really, how many episodes of Room Raiders can you watch before you start to go a little crazy? haha!)

Ciao! :)