A Week and a Half in Italy

Well, I have been in Florence for 11 days now (excluding travel time to get here) and the time is already starting to fly! I have been meaning to start this blog for a few days now, but we have been keeping so busy! I will give a little recap, and then try my best to post more regularly!

Getting Here...

Oh what an adventure the 20 or so other University of Connecticut students on my flight and I went through trying to get to Florence! We endured four hour plane delay in JFK due to thunderstorms in upstate new york, missed our connecting flight in Paris, had to wait in the Paris airport for about five hours, flew into Bologna (home of bolognese sauce), took a bus to the airport in Florence, and finally hopped onto another bus which took us to a hotel which we would be staying at for the night. What a long journey- but hey, at 2am and 28 hours after our trip began...we were in Florence!!

Orientation and Week one

Saturday we stayed at the hotel (The Hotel Aurora, overlooking the city of Florence) for orientation. We heard from the director of our school, the housing coordinator, the bursar, the school psychologist (who gave a very interesting lecture about removing our "American lens" and putting on an "Italian Lens" when viewing and interpreting the culture here) and the director of the police here in Florence (who made us a lot more comfortable about our safety while here, though did tell us girls to beware of the "Italian National Sport"...women).

Nicole and I also met our roommates and finally got to move into our apartment later that day! We are living with six other girls- one from Uconn, one from Marist, two from UVA and two from Penn State. Our apartment is beautiful- probably the nicest apartment of any of the students. Its location is also fantastic- just a few minutes walk to both the Piazza's Signoria and Santa Croce, and we have a view of the top of the duomo from our sun room! It is also very close to a lot of great restaurants, gelaterias, and bars. To sum it up- we lucked our majorly!


Yes we do have to go to class...

It isn't all fun and games here in Florence- we do have to go to class! I am taking two classes- each meets twice a week for three hours. I am taking Marketing in Italy and Architecture in Italy. Both are very interesting. Marketing is all Uconn students, and taught by a Uconn professor, so we are all very comfortable with each other. This class takes out to different types of Italian businesses or manufacturers to learn about how they run their business. So far we have been to a bottle producing company that makes glass bottles for almost any use, ranging from wine and olive oil bottles to food and makeup jars, a terra cotte factory, and today we went to a company which spins woolen thread to sell to the high end fashion companies (Dolce and Gabbana was one of their biggest clients). In Architecture, we useually spend the first two hours of class learning about the basics of architectural typology seen in Florence, and then for the last hour our teacher takes us on walks through the city to show examples of what he just taught us about. For example, it is very common in Florence when building or reconstructing to use the materials from the previous structure- perfectly seen in the curved streets and buildings which were built on the foundation of the old Roman Colleseum (which also happens to be about a block from where I live!)

...But we make sure to have fun as well (obviously)
My roommates and I have of course spent our time doing as many fun things as we can, and trying to get a bigger taste of Italian culture while we are at it. We went to Pisa to see the leaning tower. It was very pretty, but mostly a tourist spot. We took our silly pictures pretending to hold it up and that was about it. The next day, we traveled to Siena and San Gimignano. Siena is a very old city built by Remus (brother of Romulus who built Rome). It was all made out of red brick, and we got a beautiful view of the city after climbing to the top of a tower! San Gimignano is an old medieval city high in the hills, so the views of Italian countryside were absolutely incredible. While there, we visited a museum of torture, which was very interesting but also a little creepy! This weekend we are planning a visit to Venice for Saturday so I cannot wait! Nicole and I also booked tickets to Paris and Amsterdam for June, so I am unbelievably excited for that! More to come later!