Saturday morning - hopped on the train with some girls and decided we wanted to go to Cinque Terre for the day. We found a train to Monterosso, which is part of the Cique Terre - a group of 5 villages on the coast. It was definitely an experience taking the train... but when we finally made it, only 2.5 hours away, it was sooo worth it! Monterosso is incredibly beatiful. We decided that we wanted to stay over night, so we found an ocean front hotel room which was...

Ciao! Today was my first day of class - and I really wish all classes were like the ones I'm taking here. We met at the school, and then walked down to the Florence Cathedral / Baptistry / Duomo. We have readings everynight, and while we are at the actual landmarks or in front of the actual works, we discuss it. It's so amazing to stand in front of those buildings and see it first hand. The Gates of Paradise on the Baptistry are amazing, even though they are a co...

Ciao everyone! Today we had orientation at 10am, which seemed late to me, but the jet lag had me in a pretty deep slumber, so I decided to just go au naturel hair, which I think I will probably do everyday now. After school orientation we had "safety orientation" where the chief of police came and basically scared us, but I learned a lot, like to push the gypsies away and that I need to keep my shutters closed when I leave the windows open at nigh...

Ciao! I flew in yesterday (May 20) to Florence at 2pm - interesting flight experience to say the least, considering I had only been from Birmingham to New Orleans twice. I definitely set off some kind of "hazardous material" alarm in the Birmingham airport and had to be patted down and searched, nearly missed my flight from Philadelphia to Frankfurt by about a minute, and the gate number at Frankfurt to Florence had been changed without my knowledge. Re...