First full week of classes.

Chocolate festival outside of Santa Croce church.

More chocolate!! Yum Yum!!

They make things out of chocolate, animals, tools, spoons, teeth!

 

The festival, with Santa Croce church in the background.

Me, Han, and Emma with our cups of fresh strawberries covered in melted chocolate. Nummy!

Ok I know, I've been slacking in this blog-writing thing, I'm sorry! But if it makes you feel any better I didn't do anything super duper exciting this week til last night! Haha. Well our first week of classes is over, none of us have class on Fridays-wootwoot! And I think I have my schedule figured out:

Mondays:

9:30-12:30 Design of the Coordinated Image

12:30-14:30 Italian

15:00-18:00 Photographing Florence

Tuesdays:

12:30-14:30 Italian

Wednesdays:

9:00-12:30 Graphic Design II

12:30-14:30 Italian

Thursdays:

9:00-12:00 Life and Works of Michelangelo

12:30-14:30 Italian

Graphic Design II and Michelangelo are both very small classes which is nice. At least in my GDII class there are two others that speak English which forces the professor to teach in English. yay! As for the Michelangelo class... originally, my roommate Emma and I wanted to take the Renaissance art class taught by the same teacher (Rocky--originally from Rhode Island) which was on Tuesday mornings, but when we showed up for the class, there were literally 50 students there for a class that was originally 23. The appeal to that class was that since we are in Florence, Rocky actually takes us to these museums and galleries and churches and lectures in front of the actual pieces (how cool?!?!). He did say 50 students would be insane and urged some of us to switch to his Michelangelo class since we still go to almost all the same places. I guess Emma and I were the only ones that switched. But its nice because now there's only like 10 of us. The first class yesterday was really very interesting and its insane that these incredible works of art that he's teaching about are literally within hours of Florence if not in Florence. And Michelangelo lived in Florence by the way. :) 

Its really nice with my schedule that I have afternoons off everyday except Monday. I've been using them to do a little shopping, going for walks, running errands, etc. And then my roommates get done around six usually, depending on the day. I didn't do anything too exciting with my afternoons this week, but I think it was Tuesday night that me and my roommates Han and Emma booked a trip to Barcelona Feb. 6-8! 

Last night, Emma and Han and I went out for Mexican! In italy... is that an oxy-moron? Its this place called Tijuana just behind our apartment. It was soooooo nummy! And then we went and checked out the chocolate festival in front of the church of Santa Croce. That was a mistake---soooo many good looking, ooey-gooey, scrumptious-smelling chocolates!! We had cups of fresh strawberries with melted chocolate over them, it was ridiculous. We were there a half an hour before it closed down for the night, but it goes on all weekend so we'll hit that up again today.

After the chocolate festival, we came home, got all gussied up and went to this local jazz bar that my roommate Han discovered last semester. Such a cool place and so great (Dad-you would LOVE it). I also tried a Bollini for the first time (champagne and peach schnapps, to die for). We had some other people from our program come meet us there and then we went back to their apartment and chatted til the wee hours of the morning. (We got home just before 4:00am.) It was fun because there are actually four people from the U of Mn here, I only thought there were two, but all four of us were in our group last night so it was fun swapping Minnesota-isms. 

So like I said, today we'll hit up the chocolate festival again, and probably the grocery store (ugh!), and then the open leather market and possibly a pink floyd cover band tonight. Hahaha.  Tomorrow we get on a bus bright and early to go on a day trip to Siena and San Gimignano with the school. (Guess what my next blog will be about! :) hehe) Ciao!