During our lunch break, Elisa's assistant (who we call Dobby *from Harry Potter*--- she really looks like him!), took us for a little tour of the Universita degli Studi di Firenze. Classes start Monday, so we all wanted to know where we were going. Walking into the first building was quite a shocker for us "spoiled Americans." Graffiti covered the buildings inside and out, there was trash all over the ground and even a homeless man sleeping along the wall. I tried my best to be optimistic and open-minded about the surroundings, but they were certainly different then what we are all used to. I guess the sight suprised us as much as it did because even the public, city universities in the states look better than this. Thankfully, the library was beautiful. It's in a convent, so I would have been appalled if that too was a disaster. Anyway, school is school and I'm going to be just as confused with the language regardless of the appearance of my surroundings!
After our tour, we headed back for our 4 o'clock class. We enjoyed this one because we had a chance to vent (in Italian, of course) to our teacher about our grueling morning.
Around 6:30, we met with Elia (our 22 year old cultural advisor) in the Piazza della Reppublica. He brought along 2 Italian friends, Luca and Chiara. They too, are just as awesome as Elia is. We all went for aperitivo which was amazing! I had never done something like this before, so I had to learn the process. Basically, you enter during a certain time frame and order any alcoholic beverage (usually wine or a cocktail). Then, you help yourself to the buffet of aperitivi--- for free! This place had pasta with meat sauce, risotto, rice salads, potatoes, cheese souffles, bread, grilled veggies, veal, pork, fruit, and a bunch of other amazing foods. It was all you can eat, but I could barely finish what I had chosen! Everything was very rich. Our group spent about 2 hours talking and then once we left, we met up with Elia, Luca and Chiara's other Italian friends. One girl, Margherita, was absolutely adorable! Once she found out that we were American, she got sooooo excited and started jumping up and down and telling us about how badly she wants to learn English and visit the States. It was really nice to hear what she had to say. Once everyone arrived and gathered together (there were about 20 Italians and 5 of us Americans), we all headed for gelato at the BEST PLACE EVER!!!! Grom. We had been there many times already, but it never gets old.
Oh yea, I forgot to mention that all of these foods and drinks were paid for by Holy Cross. :) So, after gelato, we went to a piazza and all sat down. The Italians handed out little packets to everyone there and just randomly started singing along to the songs that were pre-selected in this packet! A boy played the guitar, and a girl played the flute. A lot of tourists came up and took videos and pictures. It was such a crazy, awesome experience for us because it was just so spontaneous! A bunch of Italian friends just decide to sing in a piazza! What?! They were so welcoming to us and sang a hilarious song in honor of our presence. It kind of made fun of Americans, but we loved it! It was very accurate, after all.
After about an hour of that, we decided to call it a night. It was about 11:30 and we hadn't been home since 8:00 that morning. I am so happy with how the night turned out. We still felt like Americans, but blended in much better. On the way back, we joked about how each of our families has, thus far, paid $150,000 to Holy Cross so that we could have just a few Italian friends. Way to go HC for paying Elia and his friends to hang out with us! Even though this is true, I think they actually like us.. thank goodness.
Anyway, I'm on break right now in between classes and after class at 4, it will finally officially be the weekend! Yay! We're not sure what we are doing yet, but we know that we want to go out tonight. Potentially some shopping and/or musems tomorrow. We'll see. I'll keep you posted.
Ciao ciao!
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