Hi everyone :) I am finally in Florence and finally have wireless internet in my apartment! Traveling sucked, but the city itself is great! I feel like I'm in Epcot at Disney World and not that I'm actually in Italy.

Our apartment is really nice. I live with Jill and Jessie. Jessie was a random roommate. It is her very first time being away from home because her hometown is actually Kent, Ohio (I can't even imagine living there for years upon years! haha) She is doing really well though and is really nice! Me and Jill are taking good care of her. The apartment that I am in is a 3 person apartment. In my same building, is two other three person apartments shared by Kent State fashion students. We are situated in the apartment building on the 3rd floor all behind a large door in the stairway. Because of this, it seems more like a 9 person suite rather than 3 separate apartments. My apartment has two bedrooms (I share a room with jill), a full kitchen, a really nice bathroom (with one of those seperate toilets that cleans your butt!), and a really nice porch. The porch off the back is big enough to lay out on or sit and visit!

The area of the city that our apartment is in is about a 15 minute walk north of our school. Near our apartment is one of the biggest markets in the city called the San Lorenzo Market. It is a food market and an apparel market. The food market is indoors and is comparable to the West Side Market in Cleveland. It has fresh pasta, THE BEST PRODUCE IVE EVEN TASTED, and any kind of meat that is skinned with its head cut off. (Seeing it makes me consider being a vegetarian!) The clothing market is all outside and has some great leather jackets, gloves, purses and other things. Hmm... I wonder where I will be buying everyones christmas presents this year?

Right by this market is a little town square that we spend a lot of time in. There are about a dozen restaurants surounding the center that you can eat outside at. We've already eaten there twice!

The first night we arrived in florence all nine of the people I live with went out to eat together at a really great place in our center. We explained to the waiter that it was our first night in Italy and we will be staying to study for four months. Because of this, he treated us to a glass of champagne to begin and a shot of limencello to end our meal! :) No one I was with new what limencello was, but I explained to them that I was quite the expert thanks to Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Rosaria! Before leaving the restaurant, we all signed a journal that they keep with messages and signatures of people visiting the area. We took a picture at dinner that night and anticipate adding it to the book near our message!

The following night we visited the little center again and ate at a pizzeria, it was really good! After eating at the pizzeria we went out to a bar that was very close by. The bar was called fish bar. Located in the back of the bar there was a small fish tank so I guess that is where they got the name from? The bar was packed with all kinds of people our age. There were many good looking italian men there! The italian men seem to be very comfortable with their sexuality because I think half of them were wearing purple shirts that were skin tight. They also LOVE to dance! hahaha. Later in the night, while at the bar, a group of American students came in that ended up being students that are studying with us at our school. They were from Colorado and are taking general classes at our school. They were really nice, and we finally got to hang out with some american men! Something interesting about bars in Italy, they are about a year behind on the "cool music" so we spent some time with the DJ telling him what songs to download for next time. Most the songs we were hearing we felt like we heard last summer! Also, if you decide you want to leave a bar and still have a full beer, you can take it with you! Thats right, no open container laws here! That night we stayed at the bar till it closed! No worries mom and dad, one of the american guys we were with walked us back (which was only a couple of streets away to begin with).

As far as school goes, theres nothing too exciting to tell. We dont start classes till next week, so this week has just been orientation. The orientation has been really worthless and pretty much a waste of time. We did a walking tour with a tour guide that probably said two words the whole time and I eneded up feeling more confused about the city somehow by the time we were done. We've also had some of the school staff give countless speeches on adjusting to florence which has been rather redundant. There are 101 students total studying at KSU Florence. About half are fashion students, some are graduate students in the architect department, some Miami students studying architecture, and others that are from random states studying art history or the Italian Language. There will be more info about school once our semester gets rolling!

That is all for now! We are hopefully going to cook some of our fresh pasta we bought from the market tonight. Its almost 7:30 PM here. No set plans for the rest of the night. We have more orientation tomorrow and will be visiting the city of Verona on Saturday for an opera festival. Should be interesting! Hope all is well back in the states!

Ciao for now!

Carrie <3