My Italian pride has soared through the roof! And I don't even have any Italian blood in me. Just to tell you guys about the regular stuff... This morning we had to give oral presentations. Blah. The idea of doing school work has completely evaded me. Then we traveled to our final destination, FLORENCE! We got settled into our apartment. I'm pretty sure this apartment is bigger than the house I am renting in Albuquerque. We have the entire bottom floor of a building and we even have a back yard! There are six of us girls living here and there are three bedrooms and three bathrooms. Though I don't really know if you can call my bathroom a bathroom. It is probably the size of a large port-a-potty and has all the things mixed into one. The shower head is almost directly above the toilet, which is right next to the sink! But hey, it's all part of the experience, right? The best part about our apartment, though, is that we have a huge fresco painting on the ceiling of our living room. It's almost like living in the Sistine Chapel! We also have an orange tree in our "back yard." I'm interested to know if the oranges will be any good. They all look like they have warty things on them.
Anyways, after we got all settled in we went in search of a market. After seeing what is in the market, I've come to accept that I will be living off of pasta. Not really that I'm complaining, but I still don't know how typical Italians get their protein everyday. Everything is carbs! There is pasta oozing out of everywhere. I guess I should have expected this, but I almost thought that it was a bit of an exaggeration when other people said it. It's not.
Today was probably the best day to arrive in Florence. It is a city holiday for the day of the patron Saint of the city. In order to celebrate the Florentines had a medieval soccer game in the middle of one of the piazzas. Unfortunately, we did not have tickets to it. But we did catch a glimpse of it on TV. I'm pretty sure it was soccer without rules on a dirt field. There were people going crazy and some were dressed up in the proper medieval attire for the festivities. Once it got dark, there was a wonderful fireworks display over the Arno River. Not to anyone's surprise, all the fireworks were red, white, and green. I did feel a little flutter of pride whenever they threw a blue firework in there. But the goal of this trip is to integrate myself into being Italian. After the fireworks we sought out a little cafe that had a TV so we could watch the end of the Italy vs. England Eurocup game. It was so intense! Especially being here. There were dozens of people crowded around the two windows that looked into this cafe just watching the game. We celebrated together when our team made a PK and anxiously waited as the Brits shot. When we made our last PK the entire street erupted. Cheers were heard everywhere and people were flooding into the streets from all around. It was quite exciting! Needless to say, I felt very Italian. Even though I have British blood in me, I had to root for Italia.
Well there is another eventful day for the record books! More pictures will be coming on Facebook soon.
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