Beginnings

Ciao bellas!

Our first few days here in Florence have been such a whirlwind and we JUST got internet in our apartment so sorry for such a delay in updates!

Last Friday I said my last goodbye in the cities, drove to Rochester and packed like a mad-woman. Saturday morning my whole family drove me to the airport and I left on a flight from Minneapolis to Philadelphia. From Philadelphia, I flew to Munich, Germany:

This is my plane flying over the ocean!

Once I arrived, I slept for 18 hours. I woke up to my roommate knocking on our hotel room door! We eventually found our other 2 apartment-mates, and over the last few days we have had so much orientation. So far we have just walked around the city alot, been given many tours, and received an overload of information about living here. So instead of giving you a play-by-play of every day of the last week, I will just tell you some of my favorite things so far via pictures :)

The beautiful scenery-

This was the view from the roof of our hotel, the Grand Hotel Baglioni. This was the view of the Duomo (the dome-shaped building) we saw while we ate breakfast during orientation. At night, we came up here to drink wine. The view is breath-taking, the picture barely does it justice.

This is the view along the Arno River from the Ponte Vecchio. It is absolutely beautiful, especially as the sun goes down.

This is nothing special, just a little taste of Italian architecture.

The food and wine-

This is me and two of my roommates, Sam and Katie at the Mercato Centrale. Here they have incredible amounts of fresh fruits, incredible meats and warm bread. Everything is fairly cheap too and very authentic.

Meet aperitivo. The way aperitivo works is you pay around 5 euros for a glass of wine, and you get unlimited appetizers foods. Since we are on a budget, this is a great way to get wine and dinner for fairly cheap.

These pictures are from our cooking class we did during orientation. The first picture is of Eggplant Parmesan, which was delicious! The second is of some pasta that we made from scratch! We made the dough and flattened it and then put it through a machine to cut it into strips. Don't worry, I'm bringing home the recipes. The last picture is of my cooking group with our chef, Roberto.

The random things you see-

When we were walking back from our cooking class, we ran across a modeling session for what appeared to be an Italian wedding magazine. If you know how much I love weddings and wedding magazines, you'll know how excited I was to snatch this photo :)

I hope all is going well with everyone. I love getting e-mails, and I promise I'll write back as soon as I can! When I get more time, I will post pictures of our apartment.

Ciao,

Sarah