I'M HERE!

buon giorno principeschi!!

i hope you weren’t worrying your pretty little heads about me because two in-flight movies, three ginger-ales, one chicken dinner, and half a book later, i landed in roma, safe and sound. they weren’t kidding when they said it was hot and humid here in italy.  i don’t care what you say, but there is just no way i can dress like these insane italians in their long sleeves and jeans in this 90 degree 1004% humidity weather. no matter how many italians check me out, i’m wearing shorts for christ’s sake!

on the second leg of our trip, jason, max, and i found alyssa two rows ahead of us, and we met two awesome girls from san diego state, seren and sarah.  we all dragged about 1000 pounds of luggage from the airport to the train station by the airport from which we took a 45 min long train ride to central rome and then another two hour ride to florence.

once in florence, we took a cab to the hotel meridiana and seren, sarah, and i got a room together.  a bunch of us then figured we would explore the city [amazing. please hold for pictures to come] and grab some lunch (and some vino), and around 3-ish, the exhaustion started taking over. we practically fell asleep against the triumphant arch at the piazza de la liberta but made it back to the hotel just in time for a little afternoon siesta before dinner. dinner was pretty horrible, but maybe it was just the delirium kickin in… and we were so tired we didn’t even really care. it was sleep time for sure after that. i was so proud of us for making it through til night and none of us really felt jet-lagged the next day! benissimo!

on friday, the whole crew walked to the csu campus, and we met the staff. everyone seemed super helpful and nice. the day got even better when we decided that searching for apartments in the heat of the day would be a good idea. i don’t really recall how many places we saw, but my feet hated me, and i basically ended up walking the dirty streets of florence barefoot for two miles. sick. i know. tell me about it. nothing a good scrubbing and a gallon of extra strength prescription neosporin-type stuff couldn’t handle. we didn’t make any decisions about living anywhere just yet, but we definitely got a better handle on the city.

that night, we trekked back down to il centro, and stopped in this bierria—murphy’s pub. definitely the most american bar in the city. probably the entire country. beer pong tournaments, american hip hop music, and mtv on 10 different screens. it actually surprised me when italians started showing up. seren, sarah and i met some italian boys outside and we tried practicing our italian.  i’m not as lost as i thought i would be with this language, but i definitely have a waaayyyys to go.

when we’d had enough of murphy’s, we ventured out to the duomo and just chilled on the steps with 20 other csu kids. i can’t begin to describe how surreal it was to be sitting on the front steps of one of the most architecturally and historically significant buildings on the planet. absolutely surreal.

seren and i found some more italians to talk to and they ended up taking us and all of our friends to this bar called “fish pub.” i needed some back up from my boys because these italians are ruthless!

maxpretendyou’remyboyfriendanddancewithmethisguyisfreakingmeout!!

but we all made it back to the hotel just fine. what an amazing night. i love this city!!

today, we went on another house hunt. the walk through il centro was incredible. the city is so full of life! we saw about 6 or 7 places and ended up choosing the first one we saw that day. a 3 bedroom 2 bath on via dei neri across the cobblestone street from a gelateria—yeah you know we are becoming bff with the owners a-sap—on the fifth floor literally one block from the uffizi and palazzo vecchio, 4 blocks north of the arno river! the location is to die for and we are so excited!! operation find-place-to-live: success. oh and we all have phones. it’s free for me if you wanna call! ha.

well that’s all for now i suppose. tomorrow we’re probably going to do a walking tour of florence with refugio, one of the heads of staff at the campus. more walking. suuuper. ;)