Last day in Firenze :(

Today is it. My last day here. This five weeks has literally flown by and I cannot believe that I am heading back home tomorrow. I have been running around town (in the very hot sun) trying to cram in all the last things I want to see and do and buy.
I still have to pack up everything and figure out how I am getting all my fun souveneirs back to the States. The gang is all going out to dinner tonight and I will probably get pretty sad. I have been kind of emotional the last few days. haha Some of us leave at 4:00 AM (me, Beth and Caitlin) so I think I am just not going to bed tonight! We have reserved our taxi and are all set to go...I just don't want to leave!!
This has been such a great month. I love Italy. I love Florence. I love the people I have met. I have loved my classes. I love API. Everything has just been wonderful!! I am so blessed to have had this chance to do something completely on my own in a brand new place! It has been an adventure and has taught me so many things about myself, about life, about other people and about other cultures. OK I am starting to sound like a study abroad brochure, but it is all true!
I am looking forward to coming home and sharing everything I have done with family and friends! It is just going to take a while for me to want to be in the U.S. again! haha
Arrivederci!

"I'm from Tennessee!"

I just took my final for Intercultural Communication. It's over! Sad. I have my other final for Food of Italy this afternoon, but it shouldn't be hard...we are cooking.

I have decided that it is going to be weird to come back to the States. We were discussing how we are going to have to re-adjust to everyone speaking English. Because when you are here in Italy, everytime you meet someone that speaks English you are automatically friends. You usually have a little conversation that goes something like this:


"Oh are you from the United States?"
"Why, yes I am!"
"Oh really?! Wow! What part?"
"I'm from Tennessee!"
"Oh! I am from (enter whatever other state here)"
"Oh wow! That is soo great!"
And then it continues on to figure out how long they have been here, where else they have been, what I am doing here, what I am studying, etc. It is fun and I have made lots of random American friends this way.


So therefore, I think it is going to be slightly awkward because I will probably still start to have these conversations with people even though everyone will speak English! I will probably do it wandering the Atlanta airport and get several strange looks. Oh well, reverse culture shock.

Winding down...and very sad about it!

So yes, I am leaving in 3 days...boo
But I am cramming in as much as possible in these last few days!
Monday I went to the Baptistery and San Lorenzo. Both were quite impressive and I really loved them! I took pictures, but havent uploaded because I give up on uploading them before I leave...maybe when I get home! The Baptistery is across from the Duomo and is a huge building that has an intricate domed mosaic ceiling. It is absolutely beautiful! I really wanted to just lay on the ground to look at it for a while, but I restrained myself.
Yesterday I went to the Uffizi, which is one of the most amazing art museums in the world! It houses hundreds and hundreds of important Renaissance art and several famous masterpieces. I saw Boticelli's "Birth of Venus" and "Primavera" and work by Da'Vinci, Michaelangelo, Rembrandt's self portraits (I thought those were really cool) and so many others! I bought a book so I will be able to show you all my favorites and tell more about them and the artist! My favorite painting was called "Madonna with the Long Neck." haha It was beautiful, but it was mainly my favorite because of the name! And she did have a pretty long neck. I spent a solid 2 hours there by myself just wandering around and finding famous paintings. I felt like a total tourist because I had one of my handy Frommer's Florence guidebooks (thanks Mom) that outlined each room and told me where to look and everything! It was pretty fun.
Oh and by the way, Florence has suddenly, this week, decided it was summer! It has been soooo hot!! I have definately found a new appreciation for air conditioning in the States, because I haven't slept in the past 3 nights because it is so hot in our apartment! And just walking around during the day is so exhausting and I get so hot and sweaty, it is pretty gross! haha I come home and just rinse off with freezing cold water, then Beth and I lay on the cold tile floor in our room to try and cool down...I am really glad it hasn't been like this the entire time though! I think I would be much more ready to leave if the heat had been so intense the whole time!
Yesterday afternoon in my cooking class we made my favorite meal so far! We made our own fresh egg pasta! I'm talking flour, eggs, kneading for 20 minutes, rolling pin until its super thin- homemade pasta!! We made ravioli with our own spincach and ricotta stuffing. It was so fun! And also DELICIOUS!! We also made a tasty ragù meat sauce and a cream custard for dessert. We all felt like accomplished chefs after our hard work! Stefano also told us that for our final we needed to make a menu and give him the ingredients because we will just be cooking a meal with no help from him! So we chose our menu and are all pretty excited about it. I love that class.
OK I am off to lunch at one of our favorites, Trattoria Mario. It is only open for 2 hours for lunch everyday. It is run by about 3 generations of family that are all avid soccer fans. The mom/waitress knows us now because we have been so often and usually just brings us our favorite pasta! It is so wonderful too! And we always just laugh at the tourists who get confused about what to do. There is one menu handwritten that is posted by the kitchen, everyone just grabs a seat where there is an available spot so people share tables with strangers and everyone just kind of orders whenever the mom feels like taking your order! It is great!!
Ciao!

Yes, I just did a post, but that was more about the literal activities of my past few days...
Oh and I uploaded 2 new albums, you can click on the links that are on the side of the blog!

I am quite sad that this is my last week in Italy!! I have loved it so much and really quite honestly don't ever want to leave! I am going to try in every way to find a way to come back and live here! I have loved every minute of my time here and am going to try and fully enjoy every minute I have left! I don't really like to talk about actually leaving on Saturday...so we all are just avoiding it! haha

It has just been such an amazing time here...I have learned a lot about myself. And I have had some awesome times just to be alone and soak in life.

I found this verse in one of my quiet times here and just wanted to share it because it has really given me strength when I needed it here:

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness
be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in
everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to
God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard you
hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." -Phillipians 4:4-7

I know that this has been a once in a lifetime experience and I am so thankful for every moment I have had here! There have been moments of doubt, fear, lonliness and just sadness, but I have still loved it all! I have been forced to rely on the Lord for so much more than I am used to and it has been wonderful. I am quite stubborn at times and having to let go of control of my life has been pretty hard, but I am so thankful that I have seen God so much while I have been here.

OK, just wanted to update you on my heart a little too!
Talk to you later!

Busy, busy, busy

Sooo...it has been a few days since my last post! (Thanks for checking on me Callie) And a lot has happened in the past few busy days!! Last week I had to finish a paper for my interculutural communication class, which I wrote about the difference between Italians value of food vs. the U.S. Pretty fun and interesting!
Thursday we got to go to the opera! It was really cool, even though the opera was in German and there were Italian translations, I just sort of made up what was going on! It was a very contemporary and modern troupe doing the opera, so it was really interesting! The opera was called Las Rhinegold (I am not sure about the spelling) and it was around 2.5 hours...with no intermission, so I will admit that I dozed off a couple of times, but overall I really like it! It was just a cool experience to have in Florence. We all got dressed up and felt very cultured.
Friday I went to a wine farm with my cooking class. It was really like something out of a movie! The land has been in this family for generations. The man giving us the tour was so nice and his wife and daughters live on the farm. He showed us the wine cellars and all over the property and then took us to a beautiful yard area with huge wooden tables set up covered in food and wine! We were nestled under trees and overlooking the vineyards and there was an awesome gazebo covered in honeysuckle...and I am pretty sure I want to get married in this yard! The wife made us all sorts of tasty appetizers to munch on while we tasted the wines. I loved the wines because the man has named different ones after each of his daughters and his wife. It was just so perfect and picturesque!
Friday afternoon we took a train to Cinque Terre, which are a set of little coastal villages along the northern coast of Italy on the Mediterranean Sea. We stayed in La Spezia Friday night at a great hotel and then spent the whole day Saturday in Monterosso. We wandered around the pretty little village and relaxed on the beach. It was absolutely wonderful! I even got a little sunburnt! We stayed most of the day and headed back to Florence around 7 that night.
Sunday morning Beth and I went to the Italian mass at the Duomo. It was a really awesome experience. Obviously, it was all in Italian, but I could still follow along and basically understood what was going on. I loved hearing the music and voices during the service in that massive cathedral.
After mass, we went shopping and I got some pretty great clothes! I have done surprisingly well on controlling my shopping here, because there are soooo many amazing places to shop!! So I finally gave in and bought some stuff for myself at this great store called Zara.
Beth and I did some much needed cleaning of the apartment Sunday afternoon. We suited up with plastic gloves and everything! After cleaning we were pretty pooped, so we just laid on our couches and had a music fest, listening to tons of songs on Beth's ipod. It was so good to just chill and sing and dance!
It was a great weekend!

A few photos from this weekend!

Beautiful Sirmione!

Me in front of Garda Lake enjoying some gelato

Me, Jean and Beth with our wine bibs

The statue that is supposed to drop the ball if an honest person walks under



Oh yes, Juliet's statue! I am going to be lucky in love

The wine valley!

All of the gang on the gondola!

A little traffic jam

I loved Venice!

The Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal

OK there are tons more...but I have to go to class now!! Hope these get across how wonderful and beautiful Italy is!!

Rocky beaches, funny legends and gondolas...

So my weekend was pretty much amazing!
We left early Friday morning and headed to Garda Lake, the biggest lake in Italy. We made it to a little town called Sirmione (which is not pronounced like Hermione, but I liked to say it like that anyway! haha) It was a beautiful village on the coast of Garda Lake! We went and found the beaches and had a fun time playing and sunning and eating. The beaches were not so much sandy as they were rocky. There were huge rocks all along the shore and into the water that you basically had to jump from rock to rock to make it into the water. You could be swimming in water that you couldn't even see the bottom and then just come upon a rock that you can stand up out of the water! It was so pretty and fun! I did prove my clumsiness as usual and came out with scraped knees from trying to re-inact a scene from Little Mermaid (I couldn't resist the huge rocks rising out of the water!) Afterwards we threw on our clothes (which I only had my jeans because thats what I was wearing and my other stuff was on the bus, so I was pretty uncomfortable the rest of the day in a wet-seated jeans!) and then we took a ferry across the lake. The ferry took us to another wonderful little village on the coast of Garda Lake and we had some gelato then jumped on the bus to take us to our hotel.
As we pulled up our hotel looked like a slightly shady Motel 8...but once inside the actual grounds it was awesome! There were beautiful pathways lined with flowers and arches with honeysuckle growing! Our rooms were pretty basic, but there was a huge pool in the middle of all the buildings along with a bar and a restaurant. At night there was live music and it was pretty fun to just sit by the pool and hang out listening to Italians singing American music! It was obviously a very much European vacation spot, because we were the only Americans there (about 80 of us maybe) but it was really fun to people watch at the pool and try to figure out where people were from based on their speedos and accents.
Saturday we went to Verona! It was a pretty little town that has much more history than Romeo and Juliet. We had an awesome tour guide, Andrea (a man), who was full of fun-filled and interesting facts about the city! We visited the proposed sites of Romeo and Juliet's houses (which I still loved even though I know it is fiction and they just randomly declared these places their houses for tourists) and also Dante's sqaure and saw where he probably wrote his Divine Comedy. It was really cool!! In that square there is a statue that legend says if an honest person walks under the archway it is above the statue will drop the ball it is holding...obviously the ball has never dropped so apparantly nobody in Verona is honest! I thought it was a pretty depressing legend! haha At "Juliet's house" I took pictures of her balcony and with the statue of her in the garden. Again, "legend" (which isnt as much of a legend, because the statue is only like 30 years old and was just put there after the movie, and is a TOTAL touristy made up thing) says that if you touch Juliet's left breast 3 times then you will always be happy in love...so yes, I have a picture of me doing that! Hey, I don't want to take any chances when it comes to love! haha We continued around the city and had some free time to do some shopping. I had some delicious limone granite (basically shaved ice) and then headed back to the buses. On the way out of town we walked past a Delorian convention of sorts. (Delorian= the car from Back to the Future!) There were about 30 of them just lined up and a few had their doors up! I got prettty excited...and took pictures.
We went to an amazing winery that afteroon. It is in a very famous wine valley of Northern Italy, Valpolicella. We went up to a little village overlooking the valley and got to go inside a 900 year old church. The church was all stone and still had flowers leftover from a wedding that made the whole place smell very fragrant. It was so peaceful and pretty there! There werent many people in the village and everything was just so calm and wonderful! The actual winery was so cool!! I felt like I was at Willy Wonka's, only with wine. They make Campagnola wine and they make a lot of it. We saw all the different rooms and the process and then we got to do a wine tasting! Our tour guide led us step by step of looking at the color, then smelling it, then tasting it. Soo fun! I wrote down the kind that I liked so I can buy some for everyone when I get home! (Because I asked if they sold it in the States and they do! I'm a little nervous about getting a bottle of wine home in my checked luggage...)
That night we had dinner at the hotel and it was delicious! We went back into a little village that night to just hang out and have fun...and we did! My friends and I were wandering the streets and came to the marina where there was this live music and a new wine launch. There were big tents and lots of people. We checked it out and got a glass of their yummy peach wine. The best part about this purchase was that the wine glass came in a little pouch that you can wear around your neck! Hands free wine night...haha I dubbed the contraption a "wine bib" and we took lots of fun pictures of us enjoying the practicality of the necklace-o-wine. Fun times.
Sunday we went to Venice and I absolutely loved it! It is such a unusual city and it really is amazing! I think the U.S. needs more all pedestrian cities! We got a tour and again saw many fascinating and historical sights, (my favorite was St. Mark's Sqaure...gorgeous!) We had a great lunch in the city and I had a really light pasta with olive oil, garlic, and chili pepper with a side of baby artichokes marinated in olive oil! YUM. The obvious highlight of my day, my weekend, the week, maybe one of the highlights of my trip so far, was our GONDOLA RIDE!! I was so excited and the 6 of us (Beth, Caitlin, Jean, Anna Margaret and Ann Hughston) split the cost and had a wonderful 30 minute-ish ride! Our gondaleer's name was Massimo and he was a slightly jaded Italian man who was very nice and friendly, but very honest about his city and his job. I told him I loved Venice and thought it was beautiful and he said "Not as beautiful as it used to be...it is like a Disneyland now." I asked how long he had been a gondaleer and if he liked it and he said "I have done this for 18 years...it is my job...I must like it." Pretty funny, but I still loved every second of the ride! After the ride we went shopping and I got lots of fun things!
The whole weekend was quite warm, but totally awesome weather! It was supposed to rain all weekend and the forecast was quite wrong...I got sunburned basically every day (even though I did wear sunscreen, we were just outside ALL day every day and it was HOT.)
This probably was one of my favorite weekends so far and I took TONS of pictures! I will try to get some up of the weekend soon!!

This weekend!

I am going on a group API planned trip to Venice, Verona and Garda Lake this weekend! It should be pretty amazing! The weather is supposed to be nice for us and I hope we will get to do a little sun bathing by the beautiful lake!!
I will have a full account of the weekend next week sometime! We leave bright and early tomorrow morning and get home on Sunday!!
OK...off to take a mid-term!!

Pisa Pics

I am slowly but surely getting more pictures uploaded...it's a process! these computers are pretty slow...but here's the link (and it is on the side with my other links too)

http://picasaweb.google.com/laura.mohead/Pisa

Sorrento & Capri...and the scary journey home

OK
So I had an amazing weekend! beth and I felt completely independent for traveling in italy on our own! we took a train from florence to naples no problem, then took a smaller local train from naples to sorrento...slightly creepy but totally ok because it was daylight and lots of other tourists and such. we were just kinda freaked out because we were reading beth's trusty rick steve's guide to italy and he described how dangerous the train that we were riding actually is! pretty silly. (we had pretty much planned the whole weekend with this book, and he did a pretty good job of giving helpful hints and such.)
we got to sorrento on friday and found our lovely little bed and breakfast! our room was all blue and had a little balcony that looked over the street. sorrento was so pretty! it is on the coast of the Mediterranean (bay of naples) but it was much calmer and we didnt feel as touristy.

apparently sorrento is a big vacation spot for british people, so we kinda blended in better. we wandered around sorrento all day friday and friday evening we went to find a restaurant up on this high cliff overlooking the city. we had a beautiful view and an amazing meal! we even splurged and had an italian style meal with two courses...i had homemade pasta with shrimp and zucchini then grilled swordfish!!! it was soooo good!!

that night we also found the foreigners club, which was this great place that completely was catered to well, foreigners, but mostly british middle aged people! haha Let me just, this was everything i could expect and so much more. they had "live music", which was these two italian guys -one with a guitar and the other standing behind a keyboard and would press one button to play the pre-recorded songs that are like programmed into the keyboard. hilarious. so we just hung out there for a bit, watching slightly drunk middle-aged british people dance the night away, then went home. we were the youngest ones there by at least 20 years. it was like we were at a british wedding reception. my favorite person was a cute little bald man who we named "hips" because that is all he liked to do when he was dancing! wow good times.

saturday morning we took a ferry to capri. WOW! i want to live there for the rest of my life! it is this tiny little island off the coast of sorrento that has these massive cliffs and it is sooo pretty! it was pretty touristy but i loved it!

we wanted to find the blue grotto...so we took the local bus up the mountainous roads (literally clinging to the edges of cliffs) and then another bus once we were up there down to the other side of the island to the blue grotto. apparently we were really doing it local style because we were the only ones who spoke english the entire day! it was still pretty fun though. we finally made it to the stop and everyone got out so we figured we were going to be able to find the blue grotto. there were just a few little pathways along the cliffs and random restaurants scattered but none of which were busy. i found a random lady at a table and asked in my best italian if she spoke english and much to my surprise she simply said NO. so i again tried in my best italian to ask her where the blue grotto was. she eventually understood me and pointed us toward another little path. we went down and finally came to a small stone stairway with a littel gift shop thingy at the top. we looked down and saw a handful of italians taking pictures and such. so we went down and figured out there it was! the entrance to the blue grotto!
but sadly the water was way too choppy to go in, and we wouldnt be able to see inside it that day! (thats what all the italians were yelling at us, because i guess they thought we were crazy americans who were going to risk our lives and jump in the huge waves crashing against the massive rocks) so we took many pictures then headed back down to capri again. we had some lunch and got some souvineirs then took a ferry back to sorrento and from sorrento a ferry back to naples.

OK here is the BAD part of the weekend, but just so you know I am safe and sound and nothing bad happened and I AM OK NOW! haha

ok so we had to find the train station and we were at the marina. we asked a lady in a store how to get there and she told us to take tram 1 to the station and showed us where to catch it. we uneasily went to where she told us and it was little tiny trip of sidewalk in between two crazy lanes of traffic. Naples is this dirty, crazy, busy, crime-ridden city, apparently the home of pizza, but i would never want to go back to that horrible place. some creepy guys nearby heard us say train and as soon as this one bus pulled up he said yes! train! so we jumped on the crowded bus. now when i say crowded i mean, several smelly italians all around us and we could hardly move. a family of gypsies came out of nowhere and was pressed against us on the bus. there were 2 baby buggies with babies, some little kids with accordians and then some men and women. i was kinda nervous but figured we were jsut going to ride it for a few minutes until we got to the train station. well we were standing there and all of a sudden i felt something behind me. i truned and looked to see a man unzipping my backpack!! i jerked my backpack aroudn to my front, re-zipped it, and glared at him. luckily he did not get anything out because i caught him so fast and as soon as i turned the backpack around he just got off at the next stop. i was really freaked out and pretty shaky. I AM OK AND HE DID NOT GET ANYTHING. all of my important stuff was in my purse anyway, which i was clinging on to for dear life. beth and i were basically just kinda freaking out temporarily and trying not to let anyone know we were freaking out. at the moment i was VERY scared and fighting back tears, so we just jumped off the first time we heard the word train. but we got off and walked into this small station which wasnt the one we were looking for. but nice train man told us the central station was only a five minute walk. so we walked down the street and found the central staion and along the way while i was trying to not cry and freak out we passed on the dirty streets a pet store of sorts that had hundreds of birds caged along the sidewalk on the left of us and to the right was group of men gathered outside a knife and gun store. at this point i really just wanted to run as fast as possible to the station. we made it into the station after navigating around construction and battling crazy traffic and found the departure board. we were looking and looking and didnt see a firenze stop. so again, we went to the info station and i asked, and our train was actually an overnight train that ended up in MUNICH! haha so i was like great, no sleep for us, because i didnt want to miss the florence stop! so we made it safely on our train car which was very harry potter-esque except dirty and scary. there were two other young guys in the car, both spoke italian and no english. one spoke spanish and the other dutch, so i could somewhat communicate with the spanish one. we figured out their names and ages and the dutch one tried his best to use what little english he knew. we had fun trying to communicate to the non-english speaking guys in our car with our little italian dictionaries. several times our train would just stop for like 20 minutes. we just thought it was normal or whatever but one time we were stopped for over 40 minutes. we were supposed to arrive in florence at 12 and around then i looked up and saw we were in rome!! our train had been 2 hours delayed!! so when we finally made it into florence it was around 2 a.m. and we werent at the station we were familiar with so we just got a taxi back to our apartment!
so needless to say it was an eventful journey home...but we made it finally ! and everything is fine! but the first half of the weekend was great! i loved it and took so many pretty pictures! the journey back just sucked! i have decided that the following two pictures basically sum up the entire weekend:

And that was my eventful weekend!!

CIAO!!

Beautiful Sunday!!

Wow! Today is absolutely amazing!! The sun is shining, it is warming up and I got to sleep in for the first time in Italy!!
Beth and I had a great weekend in Sorrento and Capri (don't worry I will post a full account of the weekend-good and bad- tomorrow when I have more time!) The weather held out for us there and we had a great time! We just had a crazy time getting home...but we made it safe and sound, don't worry Mom and Dad! haha
Today has just been so great because after we slept in, we got up, cleaned up, did some laundry, went to the grocery store and then have just been strolling through Florence window shopping and eating gelato. I told Beth that I just was so content this afternoon! I was completely relaxed, didnt have anywhere to be and knew exactly where I was! I have been kinda overwhelmed with this whole experience and living in a new city, but today I finally was 100% comfortable and completely felt like a local! I didnt even have to think about using a map! And I totally was getting annoyed by the tourists...I just am really happy and loving this place! I am really thankful that I am here and after a crazy weekend, I am glad I had the time to just breathe and take it all in!
OK, I am going to go because I am cooking dinner tonight!! Homemade tomato sauce and pasta with bread and yummy olive oil!! Homemade! haha I know how to make a homemade tomato sauce!!
Ciao!