I love Italy....but I hate Italian....grr..

My only class on Wednesday was Italian. I was looking forward to learning Italian before I got here. See, I'm not really that into foreign language, but Italian seemed like it would be fun, that an just the fact that I would be learning Italian for fun, rather than because I had to, made it much more appealing. Unfortunately, my teacher is slowly but surely crushing any previous enthusiasm I had for learning the language. She's a pretty terrible teacher: if we don't understand something she says in Italian, she tries to explain it with....more Italian, and she doesn't get why we don't understand her....grrr...Emily and I are pretty sure she hates us because we kept trying to come up with the Spanish equivalents of what she was talking about so that it would make more sense to us...I don't think she likes that very much, but oh well, she'll get over it.

After class, I headed back the apartment for a quick lunch of scrambled eggs (with pepper and basil, yum!) and then headed out to enjoy the afternoon off. I decided to go wandering around the Uffizi to look for some paintings. A lot of local artists hang out here on nice days and just paint all day long, and they have some really beautiful work! I wandered around looking for something I liked. It's really hard to decide because there are just so many! But I ended up buying three really pretty watercolor prints from a lady we had talked to before who worked near the Boboli Gardens. After buying my paintings, I wandered around the shopping area on the other side of the Arno, which turned out to be a pretty ritzy area. There were a lot of upscale antique shops and art galleries. There was something interesting to see around every corner. I am seriously starting to feel like one could spend years in Florence and never see it all! It was fun, and I got a little lost, but somehow I made it back to Andrea's restaurant, so I found my way back from there. haha.

After exploring the other side of the river, I decided to go for a walk along the Arno to check out another running spot. I walked down to the next bridge crossing in the opposite direction that I had gone running a few days earlier, and decided that this was a way better spot. After about an hour, (about 4 hours after I had left the apartment), I decided to go back. I took a short nap and then joined my roomies for dinner and a movie.

Thursday I slept in a little bit, and then went to Ballet, my only class for the day. We're starting to get into some more complicated barre combinations and some center work. Fun as usual. Me and my neighbor (we talk during class all the time, but I still don't know her name!) did really well in all the exercises. Gold stars for us! lol! At the end of class, our teacher collected the rental money for our costumes for the final exam/performance. I'm not going to lie, I just really don't even want to think about what that's going to entail....ugh...

After ballet, I went home and ate a quick lunch before heading out to do some shopping with Shannon and Marla. We started out at Zara. I got a couple of realy cute shirtdresses, and Marla found an awesome belt- it kind of looks like chain-mail, but she totally rocks it. haha!

While in Zara, Andrea texted Shannon and invited us to go get coffee with him and a friend. We met him in the Piazza della Republica and walked to a nearby coffee shop. He stepped out for a minute, to go get his friend, who worked at the store "next door" he said. The three of us waited in the coffee shop for a few minutes before Marla remembered that the shop next door was a really trashy lingerie store. Awkward!

We went to the counter to try and order, which was a really chaotic and confusing process. The coffee shop was just an unnecessarily stressful place. I didn't like it very much. Every minute we stood in the mob trying to get coffee, I kept wishing we could just leave and go to Giovanni's. haha.

Andrea finally came back with his friend Gio, who turned out to be kind of a jerkface, but whatever. After we finished our coffee, Andrea walked us down and showed us his friend's store- which was actually the leather store two doors down from the coffee shop. Andrea got really embarrassed when we told him where we thought he was all that time! haha!

Then, we all took a walk across the river so Andrea could show us a club that he thought we might like before he went to work at the restaurant. On our way home, we stopped into a really cool handmade jewelry shop. The owner's name was Guido, he was very gay, and his work was beautiful! Marla bought an awesome pair of gold and moonstone earrings, and I had my eye on a gorgeous bracelet in the window. We will definitely be back!

We called Julia and told her we would be back in a little bit, so she decided to start dinner. However, on the way home, we ran into an H&M. I found a really cute dress, and my roomies found some cool stuff as well. We stopped at a Calzedonia closer to the apartment to get me a pair of bright purple tights to wear with one of the dresses I'd bought. (Crazy colored tights are really big here. It's kind of awesome. haha).

We finally got back to the apartment (probably about 45 minutes later than we had intended to), and found dinner waiting for us on the table getting cold. It was a little sad- kind of reminded us of tv or movies when the wife makes a special dinner and the husband comes home late to find everything still laying out, the wine already broken into, food getting cold. We felt really bad, but Julia didn't really care! She had made us tortellini with red sauce and some shrimp tossed in, and bread with tomatoes and mozzarella on the side. Which was delicious, but did have to be popped in the microwave for a few....we're bad roomies....:(

That evening we went out with Ari, Allie, and SJ to a music club called BeBop to listen to an Oasis cover band. The club was slightly shady, and the band might have been ok, but we were a little creeped out by the old black man who hopped on the stage and may or may not have been molesting a nearby microphone stand.......awkward...

So, we went to Astor for a little bit. It wasn't quite as much fun as the first time we went there. Apparently, Italians don't really buy into Thursday nights out. Weird....

We got home and I called Jackie- and talked for an hour and a half....uh oh...that's probably not going to be pretty....

Friday (the 13th! uhoh!) Julia and I met Ari for...you guessed it! More shopping! We were out for most of the afternoon. My big find of the day was a pair of really cute FLAT black suede boots for 15 euro! Oh yeah! We tried to go to the travel agent close to Ari's apartment to get train tickets, because we planned to go to Pisa on Sunday, and apparently they're more expensive at the station. Unfortunately they were closed. Oh well.

When we got back to the apartment, Shannon and Marla invited us to go meet Andrea and his cousin for coffee. Julia was tired, but I tagged along. We met Andrea and his cousin (didn't catch his name, but to be honest, he looked more like Andrea's uncle...anyway...) and went to an Irish pub near the Republica for espresso. Andrea's uncle...I mean cousin...haha...was really friendly, but a little full of it. He worked at some kind of store in the area, and he kept mentioning famous people he apparently knew. When I mentioned that I liked football, he went on about how he had met both of the Manning brothers and that Eli was much nicer than Peyton (which didn't get him any brownie points with me!....grr...stupid Eli Manning) and how he and his friends hung out with Eli a lot while he was in Florence, and blah blah blah. Then we mentioned how much fun we had at the soccer game, so he told us that he knows the Fiorentina coach. Then Marla just happened to say that she really likes tennis- let me guess, you and John McEnroe run in the same poker circle?!....oh, no?....oh it's Serena Williams' bodyguard....of course. lol But he was very nice, and talkative, which was a nice change of pace from Jerkface Gio. :)

We were supposed to meet our landlord at the apartment at 5, so we headed back. He never showed up, so Marla gave him a call. He said that he was out of town and would be there Monday. We were really disappointed because we had been looking forward to having internet in the apartment. But, we had seen some workers setting it up in the last few days, and there appeared to be a functioning wireless router hanging outside our door, so on a hunch, I got my computer out, and sure enough, we had internet!!! YAY! Finally! So, then we spent the next few hours enjoying the internet which we had been missing so badly! :) So, the good news is, hopefully I'll be able to update my blog a little more often instead of updating a week's worth of blogging all in one day!

Ciao!