All here and accounted for.

Ciao ciao ciao!  

Me despiache for the delay, but I made it, torturous 14 hour travel expedition and all.  Arrived incredibly exhausted around 2pm on Friday and took a taxi to the Hotel, dropped our stuff off, zombied back down the 116 winding stairs and out to explore.  Took lots of pictures, see links below, and began learning some many italian lessons, fast.  For example, obey pedestrian walking signals...it's cut throat here.   We were taken out to dinner by our program director, Nicholas, to a little local place where they served us a wonderful 3 course meal with lots of bread and wine.  Lesson #2: Italians don't do butter on bread.   After birthday cake, or should i say chocolate covered creame puffs for one of the girls 21st, they sent us back up to pass out for the next 13 hours.  

Saturday we woke up...in the afternoon and ventured out for some breakfast before orientation.  Learned a few important italian lessons here.  We walked into the bar (bar=cafe, snackshop = cafe, pub=bar) and stood there standing out like the sorest of thumbs.  We were hoping to get coffees to go, which is taboo here in itself.  The italians really value their food and like to enjoy the time with each other, hence no take out, ever.  Thanks to Jill's order we learned another lesson, hot chocolate = hot chocolate.  No, like I mean, melted chocolate chunks that would be great if we had strawberries to dip, but not so great to drink.  This was where I had my first espresso, deliciosa.  It came in this interesting little white plastic cup with a clear top which i proceeded to put the sugar on top of instead of inside (it was really clear, okay??).  Next was orientation where we were shown important places, our schools, filled out paperwork, etc.  They took us back to the same restaurant and we were served our first pizzas.  I liked!  Not so different from home, just a smaller crust.  Later on I had my first gelato, melon flavored, I'm hooked!  That night we checked out a local American pub, they had a live band which was cool, heard from Billy Joel all the way to "Build me up Buttercup."  Back to bed to get over the jetlag, which for the record, was actually pretty non-existant.

There's 48 of us on this program and Sunday we were all moved into our apartments.  When the (Mercedes) bus came we had to pack 10 girls, and luggage for ten girls (did I mention they were girls?) on it.  They dropped us off and told us to get settled.  Jill and I got the smallest room in the joint, complimentary broken closet,  random sink, missing lamps and a lack of internet service, hence it being affectionately named, "cellula di prigone" (Italian for jail cell).  No I'm kidding, well, kind of.  It's not so bad, we made it very homey.  This apartment used to be an old bed & breakfast so it's HUGE, and yes we do frequently get people knocking on the door to "book a room."  We think our room used to be the owner's room and had a kitchen in it because behind my bed (a fancy cot, yes, Jill's has already collapsed) there is a random counter with an even more random faucet and oven hood sticking out.  Speaking of ovens, we don't have one.  The kitchen is nice and big with a loft (everyone has a loft in their room actually!) gas burners, 3 fridges, sink, no oven.  However! Nick said that will soon be coming, haven't quite figured out where they'll put it yet.  Oh, and the coffee maker is on it's way as well, phew.  Ventured out to the supermercadi Sunday afternoon.  Ha!  Ha.... no, not so much.  We get in there and, well, everything was in Italian.   Cue Mom and Eric's "I told you so" on the "Oh I'll be fine not knowing a lick of Italian."  Ugh.  Had I not had Jill with me, this adventure would have probably ended in tears.  It was very difficult to even buy laundry detergent, we were literally standing there with our Italian-English dictionaries.  Got home and ate, then went to bed.  Oh wait, had to use my dictionary to translate the directions on dinner, ate, and then went to bed.

Monday! First day of school.  It's a hike, about a 20 minute walk, but I love it.  Beautiful scenery and nice fresh air to wake me up.  From 9-10:30 (break for a half hour, to the local cafe for my cappuccino since the apartment has no coffee maker) then 11-12:30 of intensive Italian language class.  Love the professoressa, she's a 45 (and a half!) year old feisty-yet-motherly woman.  So much fun, she acts all the words out instead of telling us them in English.  Learning a lot, REALLY FAST.  Then off to school #2 for Italian culture class from 2-4:30 with Francesca.  She's a native Florentine, but she too is feisty and incredibly knowledgeable about, um, everything.  We're assigned a reading the night before every class about whatever it's going to be on.   The first day we had a walking tour and a tour of the local library, definitely going to frequent it.  Second day we went to Dante's house which is a museum dedicated to him now.  Really neat.  Today (Wednesday) was in the classroom and all about Davinci.  There is so much about him I never knew.  So cool!  There's a museum near here with many of his hundreds of  inventions still functioning, I'd love to go check it out but apparently it's hard to get to.  

I won't wait so long to update next time, this was a lot!  I'm going to go make me some dinner now and then post the pictures.  Hope everything on the homefront is good, updates please!! (jesgulutz@gmail.com) 

Much love,

Jessie