Arrivederchi Italia, Ciao Alaska!

Good morning from Italy!

It's Thursday morning here in Florence and Katy and I just woke up to our last full day here.  We leave on an early morning (6:35 AM) plane out of Florence tomorrow, and are scheduled to get back into AK early Saturday morning, around 1:20 AM. Lots of travel, but I think we're ready!  

Katy and I both have one more final today, at noon, and then we both have to return our cell phones and internet before 5 PM Italy time. So after around 7 AM on Thursday morning in Alaska we will be out of reach until we get back.  Most of the rest of today for us will be spent packing up and cleaning up our apartment. 

Italy has been quite the experience, to say the least!

We're both so excited to come home. To see friends and family, to see mountains, to be able to drive and to be able to communicate in english again!  I think it's safe to say we've really appreciated the times that we've had here, but are both so happy to be coming home and are definitely looking forward to seeing everyone SOON!

Prayers for our flights, connections, and safe travels in general are always appreciated!

Thanks for reading, and we look forward to seeing everyone soon!

Fiorentina Soccer Game!

This shouldn't be a long post, but I thought even if it's just a shorter one, the event is still definitely blog-worthy.  In case you couldn't tell yet from the photos or the title, this past Sunday I went to my first soccer match here in Florence.   This was something both Katy and I had been wanting to do all semester long.  Unfortunately, the game schedule didn't work out for Katy to go too, but I was able to go and even met up with some people I knew from school.  It was quite the experience.  I had a slight scare the morning of the game, however, when I went to the ticket counter in the square near our apartment at 12:40 only to learn that they closed at 12:30 on Sundays.  Thankfully though, I was able to buy a ticket at the gate of the game, so it was worth walking over, even without the ticket.  The stadium is a just about a 20 or 30 minute walk away, just a ways outside of the city center.  The closer I got to the stadium the busier it got, people were all over the place, all ages, young and old, all wearing jerseys, scarves and hats proudly displaying their team pride.  There was  TONS of purple - Florence's team colors are purple and red, and everyone seemed to be shouting and cheering in Italian.  There was the most adorable little boy behind me too that was cheering in Italian the whole game long, SO cute.  I wasn't however, as impressed with the man right in front of me who decided to light up three separate times in the first half of the game alone... but, this is Florence we're talking about, so it didn't really surprise me that it happened!

 Florence ended up winning, 1-0 against one of their rival cities, Torino.  The game itself was, of course, very similar to any other soccer game, but just the fact that I was in Florence, sitting in their huge stadium, watching this game, was pretty cool.  It certainly was a great and memorable way to spend another beautiful and sunny day in Florence.