Our first weekend living in Firenze!

Thursday morning dawned bright and early in Florence.  Katy and I, however, were not so ready to arise with it.  Neither of us slept very well in our new environment.  Between the newness of everything, the noise of the streets, and my broken bed, sleeping wasn't exactly the easiest.  Yes, I did say broken bed.  The entire underside of my bed is sagging and sunken in so much that it feels like there is a giant crater in my mattress that I'm trying not to roll into while I sleep. 

Here is a photo of the bed itself just so you can get a little idea of what I mean when I say broken bed.  We finally decided to shove a suitcase under the sag to keep it up a little bit so I don't feel so much like I am just going to fall right through the bed in the middle of the night!

 I promise I didn't do it!

  

Thursday and Friday were two days of orientation for all the students.  There were scheduled things to do and lots of information given out to help us start to get ready for the first day of school that was coming up on Monday.  We were given our student cell phones, which enables us to receive free incoming calls from the states (that's YOU GUYS) So, if you want to call us, we'd love to hear familiar voices.  Just use a calling card would be my suggestion, I think it's probably the cheapest way for you to call. 

Katy's # is 335-714-6248

My # is 335-714-6120

Over these past few days we've done a LOT of walking around, ALL over Florence.  I don't think either of us were ready for so much walking so soon.  Transitioning our legs from sitting on airplanes for 24 hours to walking all over cobblestone streets was surprisingly painful.

We went out to dinner for the first couple of nights, just to avoid finding a close supermarket to buy groceries.  The first night we just went to a little place right below our apartment with our new roommate.  It was nice to have a real meal and start to get to know the other girls too.  It was also quite the experience to order our food in Italian.  I was pretty hopeless and just did the deer in the headlights look and pointed at the menu.  Katy was a little better than me, thanks to her knowledge of Spanish.  I ended up with some chicken dish and Katy got tripe.  If any of you don't know why tripe is, well, you probably are better off that way.  Let's just say it's just an Italian delicacy...

  The next night that we went out, we took about a half and hour getting lost in order to get all the way across town to go to this one restaurant that we were told was very good.  It was very nice, a little on the spendy side, but a  real Italian experience none the less, with a huge full course meal including appetizers and even champagne on the house!  

The rest of our time seemed to pass by quickly.  We did lots more walking around the streets of Firenze(Florence), attempted to organize our new place, and met some new friends from orientation!  So far things are going well!