Go Greece Lightning...

So here’s getting you caught up on the last few days. Today I started classes so I’ll have more access to internet, more consistent access at least.

Let’s start with Saturday because that comes before Sunday…so it just makes sense. Saturday I slept in till noon, which I don’t even know why I did that, well we all slept in really late. I think I was just sleeping off jet lag, because I haven’t been lagging since. And then we were pretty lazy, just slow getting ready. But once we were all ready we went! Found where our advisor Nikki lives and went shopping around there. Well while we were shopping a monsoon came along, just busted through our bright sun and clouds in a horrible down pour that left us trapped under a small awning of a store front. Nikki called her wonderful Italian husband Marco to see if he would be kind enough to bring us some umbrellas so that we would not get soaked and then look like five stray kittens. While we waited, when the rain would subside a bit we would run to the next covering and then stand and watch the rain while chatting. Just before Marco came with the umbrellas (which were SO lovely) Missy saw a salon that had hair care products and wanted to run in. So we just waited across the street, then Marco came and just dropped off the umbrellas and we stood there waiting a little longer for Missy. Well…while we were waiting Nikki warned us about Italian women and their distaste for American women. And no kidding, just after she got done telling us all this and how we could make it better, my umbrella starts squishing down on my head, I scream and jump out into the street (as do the rest of the girls). That’s when we see that the woman (Italian) in the store had started shutting her metal gate, just to be a jerk. So Nikki goes into the store and asks if the store was closing and the woman says no, you’re not allowed to stand in front of my store window. Nikki told her we weren’t blocking the door, and that it was pouring outside that we were waiting for a friend, and then in English (mind you these two Italian women were having this conversation in Italian) the woman tells Nikki that she was just giving us a little education, while tapping her forehead. Nikki was so pissed off. She was like don’t talk to me in English, we are having a conversation in Italian, if we were four Italian women you would have never shut that door on us, you could have hurt those girls, you just didn’t think any of us would be able to come in here and communicate with you. It was crazy. Her Italian was going a mile a minute! So we walked a few stores down and then Missy met us and we went to a little café and had a cup of Caffé Americano (basically just coffee but if you don’t order it like that they will bring you a baby cup of espresso). Italians like to sit, for really long periods of time. I am still wondering how they do it, with out fidgeting all the time and without their butts going numb…I mean like a LONG time. Like HOURS after the coffee is already gone. Don’t get me wrong it’s wonderful, because I love people and I love having conversations and stuff. But seriously…My butt gets tired of sitting. Haha. So after a while, Nikki was still getting over how angry she was at that Italian woman for being so rude to us, right after she had been telling us all this stuff and encouraging us to be polite to the women even when they were somewhat standoff-ish, and then some of her friend walked into the café. They decided to sit down and have a coffee with us, it was two Italian men who speak pretty good English but are still learning. They were so much fun to talk to. And they said they really enjoy practicing their English. So we sat for even longer…now my butts really done for.

Of course when we went to leave it was raining again, but only drizzling so us girls decide to just head to our apartment and get shelter from the rain. But we get bored so we meet some friends at a sports bar to watch the football (soccer) game. From there Jessica and I met up with another girl from Abroadco and some of her guy friends who are studying with CEA and we all head out to the club. So while we are walking to this club, me and a friend are talking and we are a few feet behind the rest of the group (which is being pretty loud). We stop to ask a couple of girls if we are headed in the right direction and all the sudden we’re soaked! Some old lady on the fourth floor dumped water on us because we were being too loud I guess. Apparently it’s just something they do here, to get people to shut up. (I might try it on the garbage truck…) So we look at each other and are like UH….and then just start laughing and walk into the club around the corner. I’m pretty sure it’s a club meant for Americans, but not entirely sure. They played a lot of different music but by the very end of the night before they were about to close they started playing stuff like Greece Lightning and I Will Survive. It was hilarious, I can’t even explain. All the Italians in there were really getting into and then of course you had all your crazy obnoxious drunk Americans. It was funny. So me and Jessica ended the night on that note and finally got some sleep.

Sunday morning we all woke up to have brunch with Nikki, her husband and some of her Italian friends. So that we could get to know some more Italians and just learn the culture and customs through them. It was great. Breakfast was so good! The two guys that had met up with us in the café Saturday were there too, and didn’t understand the concept of “brunch”. It was so hard to explain, but really funny. Once they got it they were like Breakfast food for lunch?? And we were like well kind of. But you can have breakfast food all day long we told them and they were pretty astounded that we would eat breakfast in the evening. We sat there for a good three hours and then got up and decided to take a walk around Florence to window shop. I got to talk to one of Nikki’s friends. It was somewhat hard to have a conversation; he has a very thick accent. But we managed anyways and I really did enjoy talking with him, he even helped me a little with Italian and we talked about the differences between our cultures and how we grew up. It was neat. Of course to ruin our fun, it starts raining again. So we all head our back to our homes to not get poured on. Me and Missy decide to watch a movie and then go up to school to work on stuff. But we called it an early night because of school this morning. And even though we tried to go to sleep early, 8:00am rolled around much too soon!