hello!  i'm so awful at updating this, i've just been so busy in the land of spaghetti.  so here's what we've been doing.  sunday we went over to palazzo pitti which was the palace originally built by the pitti family who were influential bankers in florence during 1400s.   the medici family bought the palace in the mid 1500s and ruled from there until the last bloodline died in the late 1700s.  the austrian lorraines briefly acquired it until napoleon took it over as a headquarters for all of his conquering.  now it's a museum with tons of artwork and modified rooms to show what the rooms would have looked like during the medici times.  i have never seen such extravagant and gorgeous ceilings and chandeliers.  we weren't supposed to take pictures there but i snuck a few to show you all.  

keep in mind i have language class everyday from 9-12:30, so when i refer to what i did in class i'm usually referring to francesca's italian culture class.  she took us to michaelangelo's family house, which, are you ready for this?  is on the SAME street i live on!  i'm famous!  we weren't allowed to take pictures there either :( and i had an even tougher time sneaking some as the curator was an ex-nazi who literally followed us around.  after that she showed us the only temple to be designed by a catholic architect.  (there is also a church around here designed by a jewish architect).  it was a gorgeous afternoon so we did some window shopping and began the great boot hunt.  jen was the only one who proved successful, but we all enjoyed seeing the sights.

tuesday was an in class afternoon where we discussed the "problema del mezzogiorno" which literally means "the problem with noon" but it actually refers to the regionalism in italy.  italy is divided into 20 regions (tuscay, bologna, umbria, calabria, sicily, etc)  and hundreds of years ago they were each ruled by feudal leaders.  a sense of nationality was created within each region, but it soon became so strong and confused with this superiority complex that it caused each region to hate their neighbors.  when roger II started trying to create one unified government he was met with such opposition that it took years to get the rulers and the people to act civilly and so the slow process began.  it's still going on, but there is lots of good associated with this bad.  she talked about how there isn't actually one "italian cuisine" but 20 different ones.  for example, the florentines like to use few and simple ingredients in order to taste each of them; as opposed to those in bologna (the bolognians? bolganese? anyone?)  who use tons of flavorful sauces on everything.   it was raining (only day this week! so we came in and did some homework and relaxed)

wednesday we had a tour of the san lorenzo market, oh my was this life changing.  when you first walk up to it there are alleyways of vendors with leather everything, purses of all kinds, belts, wallets, sunglasses, scarves, jewlery, keychains, souvenirs (put in your orders, my time here is flying by!) and tons of stuff like that.  you can haggle them for lower prices, you just have to be aggressive. (roar)  anyway, inside on the first floor are all the butchers (providing steaks, chopped meat, pork loins, chicken breast, whole chickens, cow intestine, pigs feet, cow brain, pig stomach lining, horse...stuff, are you getting the gist?) and seafood vendors on one side and the homemade pasta, fresh bread and little shops on the other.  i've never seen such an array of pastas and beans and oils and...pig heads?  upstairs are the fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, dried fruit heaven, chocolate, and tons of other things.  so the reason this is all life changing, is because everything in there is SO SO SO cheap!  it's on our way home from school (and only open until 2) so we stop whenever we're running on low.  not only is everything fresh, it's delicious and convenient and um, delicious.  later that day we did some more window shopping and i bought a fantastic purple coat.  i no longer scream TOURIST with my brown northface-too-small-winter-coat-liner.  i'm slowly becoming one of them!

thursday.  ah! midterm day.  had to write an in class essay and... i aced it.  only because we were so confident in our flawless performances did we stop on the way home to reward ourselves with some gelato.  i had chocolate chili and florentine vanilla, mmm.  came back home to study for the language midterm on friday.  as a break we made stuffed peppers and they were so good!  i tend to cook with jill, morgan and jen and they love that i know how.  they call themselves my sous chefs, asking how to do this and that, it's a lot of fun.  

today we had our language midterm and i got a 100% (toot toot!) after the test we had a chocolate party for san valentino's day and they played some great italian dancing music for us.  after class we stopped at the san lorenzo market to pick up some necessities and came back here for lunch.  we wanted to go see michaelangelo's david after, but when we got there it was closed due to a worker's strike!  no biggie, we'll just go to the uffizi, cue walking across town.  oh no, it's closed for the same reason.  those darn temperamental italians!  it was a clear (but very chilly) day so we just walked around and came back once we were thoroughly frozen. 

tomorrow we're off to rome (at 630am) for a cheap, packed trip we signed up for through our school.  i should probably get some sleep.  stay tuned for updates about rome on sunday!  until then enjoy these pictures: (again, click on them, they're albums)

09-02-08 italy 5

09-02-11 italy 6