La Mia Vita a Firenze: Buona Sera!

Buona sera! Well, I guess for most of you it's buon pomeriggio! (Good afternoon!)

This past week has been a pretty typical school week. Wednesday I went with my little research group to a library and we learned how to use it (at the University of Florence), It has an old school dewey decimal catalogue! Should be interesting :) Thursday was our big Italian test for the end of month one, determining whether we move up to level two, and presumedly counting towards our grade. We don't really know though, since Italians apparently don't care about grades, so they don't understand why we want to know how much these tests count for!

Friday was Siena and San Gimagnano, which was so fun. Both of those places are so beautiful, and I saw once of the most amazing sunsets in San Gimagnano. We started early in the morning and it was only about an hour ride to Siena. We saw several churches and museums, and I love the large piazza in the middle of the city. It's on a curve, and there are so many hills in that city. I bet there are no overweight Sienese!

We had lunch at a good pizza restaurant and then left for San Gimagnano, which was also amazing. We saw a church and museum, and climbed to the top of a large tower. The view was amazing from there. Afterwards, the art history teacher surprised us with a wine and cheese tasting. She got several bottles of San Gimagnano white, cheese, and salami and took us up to an overlook, just as the sun was going down. It was so amazing.

Today (Saturday) I spent most of the day planning the trip for next week to Rome. It's me, Allee, Kelly, Will and Erin going and we have tickets so far for the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Vatican. I think it will be a lot of fun! I also worked a little bit on my paper due. Tomorrow, is ALL work ALL day. First big essay due for Ringelberg's class and a reading/response paper on Monday. Wish me luck :)