ermkay, weekses
Bwahaa...this week.
Saturday was a trip to Urbino, which ended up being 6 hours in a bus through curvy mountain roads (hence, drammamine and sleeping so as to not want to die) for 5 hours in the city. It was a good trip though--they only made us do one tour through the ducal palace (a cool place to wander through) and then we got the rest of the day off to wander! Urbino's gorgeous and is really small and cute, but my camera died, so I have to get the pictures off of someone else.
Sunday Hannah and Kathryn came over and the three of us + Sarah went up into the woods near my house for a nice long afternoon of hiking and getting ourself happily lost. The forest isn't that impressive, but it's a welcome respite from CITY. I was a little amused when we had to traverse a blackberry patch that wasn't that impressive and Kathryn looked like a deer in the headlights. I guess they don't have blackberries on trails in upstate New York. When we got back to my house we grabbed our money and walked back up to Settignano for some gelato and hot chocolate. It was a strange effect, the blood sugar being low from an entire afternoon of hiking and no lunch and then suddenly pure sugar injection to the bloodstream. We went back to my house and let the solution of plasma and glucose bubble happily as we watched 10 Things I Hate About You and mourned the loss of Heath Ledger.
This week has gone by really fast, I think for everyone. Like my host mom said, it's like Monday was this morning and suddenly it's Friday! I've been playing tag with a number of annoying bureaucracy gigs in order to get my ticket changed for coming home. Originally I'd bought it for next Tuesday, thinking I'd have everything scheduled and know when I'd need it changed to by January at the latest. However, as I still don't know when my finals are, I'm winging it and did the change for May 30th. That makes it sound easy. Let me elaborate:
I spent the weekend and the beginning of the week emailing back and forth with the professor whose class I want to take to find out what its schedule is. Taking his time with all of this, he finally tells me that he doesn't think I'm "advanced" enough (in Art History o.O) to take his exam...I say whatever. Perhaps I'll fight for it if I begin to feel passionately about it.
Anyway, after that I gave up on the University of Florence to give me anything and just decided to change my ticket without their clearance on dates. Call Orbitz Wednesday. They say I can't change the ticket over the phone with them because I've used half of it, even though such stipulations are NOWHERE on their website. So I have to go directly to the US Airways ticket counter at the airport. Simple, right? WRONG.
Thursdays are my busy days, so I got up at the crack of dawn this morning to make it to the Sede for something, and then begins the real trek. First I had to find the obscure bus line that I could take for free "to" the airport. When I get to the end of the line I find out that the airport is about a km away and get lost once trying to find the road that goes there. Finally get there and find out that US Air doesn't have a ticket counter at the Florence airport. I talk to Lufthansa because my first flight is to Frankfurt and they tell me, no, I need to call US Air to change all of my flights, and the patient man (not once did he try to speak English to me) gives me the toll free number for the Europe version of US Air. I traverse the casino to get back to town and as I'm already a little ragged I decide to buy a cappuccino in the train station, finding one of the best cappuccini I've ever had. I then was hit with a craving for french fries, so I sold my soul and went to McDonald's, which turned out to be much more exciting and worth it than I'd imagined because they had (NEW!) CURLY FRIES!!! Madonna, was I excited.
Get back to the Sede and they let me call US Airways, but due to a miscommunication I thought for a while I was going to have to take an unexpected weekend trip to Milan, as the only US Air ticket counters in Italy are in the Milan and Rome airports. Luckily, after about 45 minutes on the phone and searching around we get my ticket changed.
The rest of today I did nothing, unfortunately.
My activities have picked up their pace as well, as this week I had 2 days of pool and choir (which I've decided was a little silly to schedule for the same day, as I'm DEAD by the end of choir at 11), I started my internship at the Marino Marini Museum in Pistoia (I went twice this week because they wanted to get me orientated) where all I did on Wednesday was transcribe English letters to Marino but the job proves to be interesting, and have been getting into classes. I decided to just take Poetry and Cinema and then my University class because I'm wanting to do extracurricular things that I need time for. I actually enjoyed my volunteer job this week too, as I wrestled with a 7 or 8 year old boy and a 4 or 5 year old girl for a while and got to joking with a couple of the adult volunteers. I learned more about where the refugees come from and what their stories kind of sound like, and I really think I'd like to start coming one more day a week for a couple of hours. We'll see how my class at the UoF pans out.
Okay, well, this has become a little long and I need to get ready to go out. Maria's having her birthday celebration at a Japanese restaurant and then a few of us are splitting from the clubbing group to go hang out at the Jazz Club and drink sangrias, or something else just as delicious. Have a good weekend all! By the way, it was REALLY strange being in a non-capitalistic country for Valentine's Day...I didn't even realize it was here until I heard the date yesterday!!
Saturday was a trip to Urbino, which ended up being 6 hours in a bus through curvy mountain roads (hence, drammamine and sleeping so as to not want to die) for 5 hours in the city. It was a good trip though--they only made us do one tour through the ducal palace (a cool place to wander through) and then we got the rest of the day off to wander! Urbino's gorgeous and is really small and cute, but my camera died, so I have to get the pictures off of someone else.
Sunday Hannah and Kathryn came over and the three of us + Sarah went up into the woods near my house for a nice long afternoon of hiking and getting ourself happily lost. The forest isn't that impressive, but it's a welcome respite from CITY. I was a little amused when we had to traverse a blackberry patch that wasn't that impressive and Kathryn looked like a deer in the headlights. I guess they don't have blackberries on trails in upstate New York. When we got back to my house we grabbed our money and walked back up to Settignano for some gelato and hot chocolate. It was a strange effect, the blood sugar being low from an entire afternoon of hiking and no lunch and then suddenly pure sugar injection to the bloodstream. We went back to my house and let the solution of plasma and glucose bubble happily as we watched 10 Things I Hate About You and mourned the loss of Heath Ledger.
This week has gone by really fast, I think for everyone. Like my host mom said, it's like Monday was this morning and suddenly it's Friday! I've been playing tag with a number of annoying bureaucracy gigs in order to get my ticket changed for coming home. Originally I'd bought it for next Tuesday, thinking I'd have everything scheduled and know when I'd need it changed to by January at the latest. However, as I still don't know when my finals are, I'm winging it and did the change for May 30th. That makes it sound easy. Let me elaborate:
I spent the weekend and the beginning of the week emailing back and forth with the professor whose class I want to take to find out what its schedule is. Taking his time with all of this, he finally tells me that he doesn't think I'm "advanced" enough (in Art History o.O) to take his exam...I say whatever. Perhaps I'll fight for it if I begin to feel passionately about it.
Anyway, after that I gave up on the University of Florence to give me anything and just decided to change my ticket without their clearance on dates. Call Orbitz Wednesday. They say I can't change the ticket over the phone with them because I've used half of it, even though such stipulations are NOWHERE on their website. So I have to go directly to the US Airways ticket counter at the airport. Simple, right? WRONG.
Thursdays are my busy days, so I got up at the crack of dawn this morning to make it to the Sede for something, and then begins the real trek. First I had to find the obscure bus line that I could take for free "to" the airport. When I get to the end of the line I find out that the airport is about a km away and get lost once trying to find the road that goes there. Finally get there and find out that US Air doesn't have a ticket counter at the Florence airport. I talk to Lufthansa because my first flight is to Frankfurt and they tell me, no, I need to call US Air to change all of my flights, and the patient man (not once did he try to speak English to me) gives me the toll free number for the Europe version of US Air. I traverse the casino to get back to town and as I'm already a little ragged I decide to buy a cappuccino in the train station, finding one of the best cappuccini I've ever had. I then was hit with a craving for french fries, so I sold my soul and went to McDonald's, which turned out to be much more exciting and worth it than I'd imagined because they had (NEW!) CURLY FRIES!!! Madonna, was I excited.
Get back to the Sede and they let me call US Airways, but due to a miscommunication I thought for a while I was going to have to take an unexpected weekend trip to Milan, as the only US Air ticket counters in Italy are in the Milan and Rome airports. Luckily, after about 45 minutes on the phone and searching around we get my ticket changed.
The rest of today I did nothing, unfortunately.
My activities have picked up their pace as well, as this week I had 2 days of pool and choir (which I've decided was a little silly to schedule for the same day, as I'm DEAD by the end of choir at 11), I started my internship at the Marino Marini Museum in Pistoia (I went twice this week because they wanted to get me orientated) where all I did on Wednesday was transcribe English letters to Marino but the job proves to be interesting, and have been getting into classes. I decided to just take Poetry and Cinema and then my University class because I'm wanting to do extracurricular things that I need time for. I actually enjoyed my volunteer job this week too, as I wrestled with a 7 or 8 year old boy and a 4 or 5 year old girl for a while and got to joking with a couple of the adult volunteers. I learned more about where the refugees come from and what their stories kind of sound like, and I really think I'd like to start coming one more day a week for a couple of hours. We'll see how my class at the UoF pans out.
Okay, well, this has become a little long and I need to get ready to go out. Maria's having her birthday celebration at a Japanese restaurant and then a few of us are splitting from the clubbing group to go hang out at the Jazz Club and drink sangrias, or something else just as delicious. Have a good weekend all! By the way, it was REALLY strange being in a non-capitalistic country for Valentine's Day...I didn't even realize it was here until I heard the date yesterday!!