(no subject)
OK. I'm here, in Florence, and it is frickin amazing! But I'll come back to that...
Traveling was relatively uneventful, except for teh fact that I can't sleep on planes and we took a red-eye to london, and to avoid jet lag I just stayed up until about 9:00 London time, which meant that I was up for a total of abotu 30 hours in a row. I slept like a rock. Anyways, we got to London Stansted after staying with friends of Franny's parents in what can only be described as the English countryside, and found out that I had only signed up to check one bag with RyanAir. I had two. I had to go to another line and pay for another bag and then RUN to the gate (which was like, half a mile away. Stupid Stansted). Anyways, we got to Italy and got to the train station with no problem, and once we got to Milan, we boarded our train to Florence.
So, funny guy on train. This youngish italian guy (probably a few years older than us) came into our compartment and asked if he could sit with us. We said ok, and for the first few hours we pretty much rode in silence (Franny and I had iPods and books, he slept). Then, when the announcement came over that the train was going to be an hour and a half late, we all started talking. He spoke relatively good English, so we talked for the rest of the trip (2 hours or so) and found out that he had met a girl on this train the week before, but he went to school in Milan and she worked in Modena. Add to that the fact that she was Hungarian and didn't speak Italian, and that she invited him to visit her in Modena, and you have one excited italian guy. He wasn't sketchy or anything, he actually tried to teach us some italian, but then he got off at Modena. We didn't even find out his name.
OK, then we got to Florence and went to the apartment where we are staying. The people we're staying with are wicked nice, Giovanni and Patrizia. They have dog named Otto, and a nice apartment (our room actually has a loft with a little seating area). They are super patient and make REALLY good pasta (especially Giovanni's pesto... mmmmm).
School has been going fine. there are levels of proficiency with the language that you can test into (I think the highes is either 9 or 12, but the classes at teh school only go up to 8). I tested into Level 6, which is apparently pretty good. My class is VERY international (I'm the only american). There are 3 japanese people, 3 south koreans, 1 israeli, 1 mexican, 1 brazilian, 1 slovenian, 1 french girl, and 1 turkish girl. It's very strange to me.
A few days ago we found out that that the World Cup semifinal between Italy and Gemany would be playing on a big screen in a piazza near our apartment. We went down there (and Italy won, of course) and it was INSANE how many people were there. This semi-rude semi-sketchy guy from chicago started talking to us, and we were polite, and he finally grew bored with us americans. The World Cup (Italia contra Francia!) is gonna be shown in the same place, and I have my Forza Italia! shirt ready.
We've been walking all over the city and I don't think my feet have ever hurt this much,but it's totally worth it. I love this city!
Ciao, amici, I'll write more later (there's a cool chain of internet cafes in the city that have american keyboards... SO much easier than the ones at the schoo l.