That's so Brad...
Well its been almost 3 weeks since I blogged last, reason being: ITS SO BUSY HERE! So without further ado, let the explanation begin:
Last week Monday, we "started school" meaning we talked to a few of the professors and then figured out our trimester schedules with Antoinette. Then Tuesday we took a break from all the hard work we did of TALKING, and headed off to Cinque Terre! Cinque Terre means the five lands in Italian. It consists of 5 seaside fishing villages that are built into the cliffs of the Italian coast, and its stunningly beautiful. We enjoyed walking the Via del'amore - the road of love, from city 1 to 2. And then we took trains along the coast the rest of the way through each city. We chowed down on some sandwiches, cheese, bread, and pears, hiked through the tiny twisting pathways of the cities, and swam in the beautiful Mediterranean Sea for the first time in my life. What a view, wow. That night we got to enjoy the highlight of my year, its called, Vogue's Fashion Night Out! For the first time in history, Firenze hosted Vogue's Fashion Night Out, its like black Friday except instead of sales, all of the stores have premiere products and lines that aren't sold any other time! The whole city is open until midnight, with DJ's rocking the stores and people handing out free bottles of coke on the street corners! It was quite the adventure!
School work is interesting here. My classes are AMAZING. however, that's coming from an art and music history fanatic. Others found our classes to be boring, while I missed the end of the lecture because I was too bust scribbling down power point notes about the Medici family and renaissance artists. Our actual language lectures are tough, Milenna speaks Italian to us about 80% of the time, and if we don't understand we have to stop her and say "Che cosa significa?" and only then will she speak english. Me and my partner Michael spent a good 4 hours studying the other night. We made a new game where Megan and Constanza quiz us on Italian phrases and for every one we get wrong, we have to do a grueling exercise like lunges or... like... jumping jacks... yikes.
The weekend was pretty entertaining. Enjoyed another Italian vespers including a good hour of singing with the Italians afterwards and checking out one of the guys from the church who break dances like you've never seen! :) Church was short and sweet on Sabbath and then we spent the afternoon in choir practice. Well, five of us did. After an almost FOUR hour choir practice, I've pretty much decided thats not how I want to spend every Sabbath afternoon. Hopefully I can use that time to find other ways to get involved in the music here at Villa. Saturday we headed as a huge group downtown. Getting dressed up and heading into town was so fun, but also an interesting occasion. We have an amazing group of guys this year who care about our well being more than I ever expected. But this means that each guy literally has about 4 girls to constantly keep an eye on the entire night. Its weird when you're just walking along and then suddenly one of the guys has his arm around your waist and glares a creepy Italian down, Praise God for them. But overall, we got some food, walked through the awesome city, and had an awesome time! Sunday, we finally hit up the huge Ikea on the outside of town and got some new pillows, backpacks and dishes. Success!
On Monday we were up again at 5 am and loading the bus. The ride was good, Manny yelled most of it, but thats pretty normal... That's so brad, as we would say... This time, we headed out for a whole week to Napoli! Naples is in the southern region of Italy and its beautiful The mountains seem to rise out of the sea, the bus rides around those mountains are absolutely nauseating. Our first stop was Reggia di Casserta. This was the palace of the Napolean king and is modeled after Versailles in France. With over 1,200 rooms and gardens for miles, it made quite the impression. I walked around with Joey and Constanza, both photographers, and enjoyed ever nook and cranny of the indoor section we were allowed to enter. The ornate wallpapers and chairs were a little overwhelming. I have to admit, when I walked into the gold coated cathedral, I actually laughed out loud from how insanely beautiful and ornate it was. Takes your breath away. After the Palace, we headed over to the old City of Pompeii. We stopped at a beautiful Cathedral on the way there and observed a little bit of a service going on inside. I saw an elderly man there with his autistic and crippled son sitting in the very front row. He just sat there praying and petting his son's head in such a loving way, it broke my heart. Its just amazing what an amazing hope we can find in Jesus Christ.
Pompei was pretty incredible. Seeing the ruins of the Colosseum and the brothel were exciting views into the past life of this nation. However, my favorite part was definitely getting to see the ash covered figures that have been uncovered and reserved. Getting to see those is a real heart breaker as well, some of them are so well preserved you can almost make out facial expressions of fear and sadness. What a crazy thing to get to walk the streets of such a historical town. Afterwards, we headed to our hostel and got ready for dinner at a restaurant down the street. We enjoyed a 3 course meal, included some delicious Tiramesu. Afterwards, my table stayed and talked for almost 2 hours. Then, since we had no curfew, we headed out into the town to explore near the ports. The towns in the south of Italy are exciting because of the zest (dad would say) that they have for life. Everyone stays out late and wakes up early, so that's what we did too!
On Tuesday we hopped on a bus and headed towards the Amalfi coast. What we hoped would be about an hour bus ride to Amalfi was actually a 2 hour bus ride straight from that warm place the Catholics refer to so often. When we finally reached Amalfi we all cried tears of joy for land and put away our barf bags for the time being. The roads twist and turn so much, it just leaves your stomach churning. And the roads are so small that the buses can pass each other with mere inches between you and the other bus and you and the cliff. After arriving, Me, Constanza and Cicely decided to stay there long enough to rest our stomachs. So we shopped around a bit, explored new streets and ate our 1.20 euro Pizzas on the steps of the beautiful town Cathedral. After sufficient resting, we decided to head back in the general direction of Sorrento where our hostel was located. We stopped about an hour back in another seaside two called Positano. Here we found our friend and mentor, Joe. He walked with us down to the beach shopping a little along the way. Once we reached the beach, he headed off to get some pizza we we once again perfected our "changing in a towel on the beach" technique, to keep from paying 50 euro cent for every bathroom use! It adds up! After Constanza was completely man-handled by the MASSIVE Mediterranean waves, we all took turns swimming in the beautiful waters and observing the coast. We then headed back towards Sorrento. Unfortunately some of the girls had found "bed bugs" in the hostel we had stayed in the night before, so we headed back a little early to gather our things and head to a new hostel.
The new hostel was actually a little grouping of beautiful outdoor bungalows. I shared a bungalow with 4 other girls, and it was a lot of fun. After we moved in we were free to get supper on our own. A few of us headed down the street and got, you guessed it, more pizza! Delicious and cheap, that's our motto. Afterwards, we headed into town with Manny, Abraham, Constanza, and Cicely to find some delicious gelato. The guys have decided that they have to get gelato everyday this year. With their current status as extremely fit and attractive guys, were all a little excited to see how their figures end up... Again, we enjoyed the night life of Sorrento near the water and ended our nights with showers and bug free beds.
On our third day, we headed down to the docks, loaded a ginormous ferry, and headed on over the Isle of Capri. I believe this was my favorite day of the trip. As s soon as we arrived, we had an older man named Lugi coming up and offering us touristy tours of the city. However, we offered to take us out on a boat around the island, taking us to see some of the famous grotto's and allowing us to swimming in the crystal waters. Now that's an offer some of us couldn't resists. So about 15 of us quickly changed into our bathing suits and hopped along for the ride. AMAZING decision. The wind in my hair, the salty water in my hands, the sun on my face, it was amazing. And the views were stunning. We got to swimming in a little nook of all the crags and seeing one of the grotto's was really cool. Unfortunately, the water was extremely choppy, and since we weren't in a "big tourist boat" we had to turn back before seeing what some say is the most beautiful part of the island. But I'm still glad we got to see what we did. After getting back to shore, we headed on the trolley up the mountain to Annacapri. Once there we headed on a serious hike down the other side of the island to get to the beach. C-stanz, Cicely and I had packed some bread, fruit and cheese for our lunches, so we headed straight down to find a free beach, After some serious searching, we settled in the shade of some huge rocks and enjoyed our lunch. Then into the crystal waters we headed! it was magnificent. We spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach.
On our hike back UP the huge switchbacks up the mountain we stopped once or twice to take some pictures. Then a few of us headed down a side trail to the rocky coast below. It was beautiful. David came up behind us and suddenly we heard "WATCH OUT FOR FALLING ROCKS" as something went soaring past Joni's head. Thankfully, it was just David being a retard and throwing a water bottle down at us, barely missing Joni. Unthankfully, it was C-stanza's water bottle, and she was less than pleased. But we all eventually made it back to the ferry unharmed. The ferry ride back was quick and once on the mainland, we headed back to get our 3 course dinner at the same restaurant from before. I enjoyed sitting at the table with Michael, Abraham, and Manny. It can be extremely entertaining being the odd sex out, let me tell you. Afterwards we headed into town for the last time to enjoy the lights and people watching. We stopped along the way and talked for a long time before deciding we were all exhausted. time for bed!
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Finally day 4 came along and we headed back into Naples. We got to explore the downtown scene with Antoinette. She bought us all some authentic Napoleon pastries that turned out to be soaked in rum. Absolutely disgusting, but we all smiled and said thank you anyways! Then we headed into a really cool old Cathedral. It was once a Masonic Temple and Mosoleum. It now houses some amazing frescos and the famous Veiled Christ Statue. It also houses the grave and inventions of one of Napoli's finest inventors. Overall, it was a pretty small but cool museum. Then we were on our own for a few hours. We all headed separate directions to get our Napoleon Margarita Pizza's, invented in Napoli for Queen Margarita of France. After some good food, some 1 euro street vender purchases and some sips of Napoleon coffee, we met up in a Piazza and loaded up the bus to head home. the bus ride home was long, but we enjoyed it jamming out to music with my head phone splitter, or letting Cicely ask us Psychological questions to determine our personalities. We got to eat some really expensive gas station food, and get shoved out of the bathroom line by a bus full of elder Italian ladies. these women are mean!!! But finally we reached home. Time for some sleep and then packing again!
This trip was a really awesome way to spend our first week of school. :) If every week of school is like this one, I think I'm really going to like it here. We headed to Poppi that very next afternoon, but unfortunately that's another blog for another time! So many things to talk about with new trips to Paris, Bologna, and Como coming up! But what can I say, I have to keep you all on your toes! Keep me in your prayers and we continue to go where God leads on this amazing adevnture!
Last week Monday, we "started school" meaning we talked to a few of the professors and then figured out our trimester schedules with Antoinette. Then Tuesday we took a break from all the hard work we did of TALKING, and headed off to Cinque Terre! Cinque Terre means the five lands in Italian. It consists of 5 seaside fishing villages that are built into the cliffs of the Italian coast, and its stunningly beautiful. We enjoyed walking the Via del'amore - the road of love, from city 1 to 2. And then we took trains along the coast the rest of the way through each city. We chowed down on some sandwiches, cheese, bread, and pears, hiked through the tiny twisting pathways of the cities, and swam in the beautiful Mediterranean Sea for the first time in my life. What a view, wow. That night we got to enjoy the highlight of my year, its called, Vogue's Fashion Night Out! For the first time in history, Firenze hosted Vogue's Fashion Night Out, its like black Friday except instead of sales, all of the stores have premiere products and lines that aren't sold any other time! The whole city is open until midnight, with DJ's rocking the stores and people handing out free bottles of coke on the street corners! It was quite the adventure!
School officially began on Wednesday and it was an exciting beginning to our year. Our group of 27 has been broken up into 4 groups: The intermediate Italian speakers, the Spanish speakers, the Lingually inclined, and then my group, the obviously Americans. Each group has a Italian artist name and a different teacher. My group is entitled the Donatello group, and our teacher is Milenna. Milenna is the epitome of an Italian woman, she is tough, she demands attention and hard work, but at the end of ever lesson she gives us all good minute long hug and rocks us back and forth saying "molto bene". Precious.
School work is interesting here. My classes are AMAZING. however, that's coming from an art and music history fanatic. Others found our classes to be boring, while I missed the end of the lecture because I was too bust scribbling down power point notes about the Medici family and renaissance artists. Our actual language lectures are tough, Milenna speaks Italian to us about 80% of the time, and if we don't understand we have to stop her and say "Che cosa significa?" and only then will she speak english. Me and my partner Michael spent a good 4 hours studying the other night. We made a new game where Megan and Constanza quiz us on Italian phrases and for every one we get wrong, we have to do a grueling exercise like lunges or... like... jumping jacks... yikes.
The weekend was pretty entertaining. Enjoyed another Italian vespers including a good hour of singing with the Italians afterwards and checking out one of the guys from the church who break dances like you've never seen! :) Church was short and sweet on Sabbath and then we spent the afternoon in choir practice. Well, five of us did. After an almost FOUR hour choir practice, I've pretty much decided thats not how I want to spend every Sabbath afternoon. Hopefully I can use that time to find other ways to get involved in the music here at Villa. Saturday we headed as a huge group downtown. Getting dressed up and heading into town was so fun, but also an interesting occasion. We have an amazing group of guys this year who care about our well being more than I ever expected. But this means that each guy literally has about 4 girls to constantly keep an eye on the entire night. Its weird when you're just walking along and then suddenly one of the guys has his arm around your waist and glares a creepy Italian down, Praise God for them. But overall, we got some food, walked through the awesome city, and had an awesome time! Sunday, we finally hit up the huge Ikea on the outside of town and got some new pillows, backpacks and dishes. Success!
On Monday we were up again at 5 am and loading the bus. The ride was good, Manny yelled most of it, but thats pretty normal... That's so brad, as we would say... This time, we headed out for a whole week to Napoli! Naples is in the southern region of Italy and its beautiful The mountains seem to rise out of the sea, the bus rides around those mountains are absolutely nauseating. Our first stop was Reggia di Casserta. This was the palace of the Napolean king and is modeled after Versailles in France. With over 1,200 rooms and gardens for miles, it made quite the impression. I walked around with Joey and Constanza, both photographers, and enjoyed ever nook and cranny of the indoor section we were allowed to enter. The ornate wallpapers and chairs were a little overwhelming. I have to admit, when I walked into the gold coated cathedral, I actually laughed out loud from how insanely beautiful and ornate it was. Takes your breath away. After the Palace, we headed over to the old City of Pompeii. We stopped at a beautiful Cathedral on the way there and observed a little bit of a service going on inside. I saw an elderly man there with his autistic and crippled son sitting in the very front row. He just sat there praying and petting his son's head in such a loving way, it broke my heart. Its just amazing what an amazing hope we can find in Jesus Christ.
Pompei was pretty incredible. Seeing the ruins of the Colosseum and the brothel were exciting views into the past life of this nation. However, my favorite part was definitely getting to see the ash covered figures that have been uncovered and reserved. Getting to see those is a real heart breaker as well, some of them are so well preserved you can almost make out facial expressions of fear and sadness. What a crazy thing to get to walk the streets of such a historical town. Afterwards, we headed to our hostel and got ready for dinner at a restaurant down the street. We enjoyed a 3 course meal, included some delicious Tiramesu. Afterwards, my table stayed and talked for almost 2 hours. Then, since we had no curfew, we headed out into the town to explore near the ports. The towns in the south of Italy are exciting because of the zest (dad would say) that they have for life. Everyone stays out late and wakes up early, so that's what we did too!
On Tuesday we hopped on a bus and headed towards the Amalfi coast. What we hoped would be about an hour bus ride to Amalfi was actually a 2 hour bus ride straight from that warm place the Catholics refer to so often. When we finally reached Amalfi we all cried tears of joy for land and put away our barf bags for the time being. The roads twist and turn so much, it just leaves your stomach churning. And the roads are so small that the buses can pass each other with mere inches between you and the other bus and you and the cliff. After arriving, Me, Constanza and Cicely decided to stay there long enough to rest our stomachs. So we shopped around a bit, explored new streets and ate our 1.20 euro Pizzas on the steps of the beautiful town Cathedral. After sufficient resting, we decided to head back in the general direction of Sorrento where our hostel was located. We stopped about an hour back in another seaside two called Positano. Here we found our friend and mentor, Joe. He walked with us down to the beach shopping a little along the way. Once we reached the beach, he headed off to get some pizza we we once again perfected our "changing in a towel on the beach" technique, to keep from paying 50 euro cent for every bathroom use! It adds up! After Constanza was completely man-handled by the MASSIVE Mediterranean waves, we all took turns swimming in the beautiful waters and observing the coast. We then headed back towards Sorrento. Unfortunately some of the girls had found "bed bugs" in the hostel we had stayed in the night before, so we headed back a little early to gather our things and head to a new hostel.
The new hostel was actually a little grouping of beautiful outdoor bungalows. I shared a bungalow with 4 other girls, and it was a lot of fun. After we moved in we were free to get supper on our own. A few of us headed down the street and got, you guessed it, more pizza! Delicious and cheap, that's our motto. Afterwards, we headed into town with Manny, Abraham, Constanza, and Cicely to find some delicious gelato. The guys have decided that they have to get gelato everyday this year. With their current status as extremely fit and attractive guys, were all a little excited to see how their figures end up... Again, we enjoyed the night life of Sorrento near the water and ended our nights with showers and bug free beds.
On our third day, we headed down to the docks, loaded a ginormous ferry, and headed on over the Isle of Capri. I believe this was my favorite day of the trip. As s soon as we arrived, we had an older man named Lugi coming up and offering us touristy tours of the city. However, we offered to take us out on a boat around the island, taking us to see some of the famous grotto's and allowing us to swimming in the crystal waters. Now that's an offer some of us couldn't resists. So about 15 of us quickly changed into our bathing suits and hopped along for the ride. AMAZING decision. The wind in my hair, the salty water in my hands, the sun on my face, it was amazing. And the views were stunning. We got to swimming in a little nook of all the crags and seeing one of the grotto's was really cool. Unfortunately, the water was extremely choppy, and since we weren't in a "big tourist boat" we had to turn back before seeing what some say is the most beautiful part of the island. But I'm still glad we got to see what we did. After getting back to shore, we headed on the trolley up the mountain to Annacapri. Once there we headed on a serious hike down the other side of the island to get to the beach. C-stanz, Cicely and I had packed some bread, fruit and cheese for our lunches, so we headed straight down to find a free beach, After some serious searching, we settled in the shade of some huge rocks and enjoyed our lunch. Then into the crystal waters we headed! it was magnificent. We spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach.
On our hike back UP the huge switchbacks up the mountain we stopped once or twice to take some pictures. Then a few of us headed down a side trail to the rocky coast below. It was beautiful. David came up behind us and suddenly we heard "WATCH OUT FOR FALLING ROCKS" as something went soaring past Joni's head. Thankfully, it was just David being a retard and throwing a water bottle down at us, barely missing Joni. Unthankfully, it was C-stanza's water bottle, and she was less than pleased. But we all eventually made it back to the ferry unharmed. The ferry ride back was quick and once on the mainland, we headed back to get our 3 course dinner at the same restaurant from before. I enjoyed sitting at the table with Michael, Abraham, and Manny. It can be extremely entertaining being the odd sex out, let me tell you. Afterwards we headed into town for the last time to enjoy the lights and people watching. We stopped along the way and talked for a long time before deciding we were all exhausted. time for bed!
.jpg)
Finally day 4 came along and we headed back into Naples. We got to explore the downtown scene with Antoinette. She bought us all some authentic Napoleon pastries that turned out to be soaked in rum. Absolutely disgusting, but we all smiled and said thank you anyways! Then we headed into a really cool old Cathedral. It was once a Masonic Temple and Mosoleum. It now houses some amazing frescos and the famous Veiled Christ Statue. It also houses the grave and inventions of one of Napoli's finest inventors. Overall, it was a pretty small but cool museum. Then we were on our own for a few hours. We all headed separate directions to get our Napoleon Margarita Pizza's, invented in Napoli for Queen Margarita of France. After some good food, some 1 euro street vender purchases and some sips of Napoleon coffee, we met up in a Piazza and loaded up the bus to head home. the bus ride home was long, but we enjoyed it jamming out to music with my head phone splitter, or letting Cicely ask us Psychological questions to determine our personalities. We got to eat some really expensive gas station food, and get shoved out of the bathroom line by a bus full of elder Italian ladies. these women are mean!!! But finally we reached home. Time for some sleep and then packing again!This trip was a really awesome way to spend our first week of school. :) If every week of school is like this one, I think I'm really going to like it here. We headed to Poppi that very next afternoon, but unfortunately that's another blog for another time! So many things to talk about with new trips to Paris, Bologna, and Como coming up! But what can I say, I have to keep you all on your toes! Keep me in your prayers and we continue to go where God leads on this amazing adevnture!
Soon you will be writing in Italian!
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