Okay, I am sorry for the lateness of this post. I rarely ever have a chance just to sit down and enjoy my view of my apartment let alone write a post for my blog. I really do want to keep up to date with everything on here but I don't think I will be able to actually say everything that has happened since my last post, which is about 4 or more weeks ago! So much has happened but I will highlight the main events.
I feel like there is never nothing to do while here in Florence. Something is always going on such as festivals, events, etc. Within the first week in Florence I ended up going to a Florentina soccer game. They were playing Genoa and won BIG TIME! It was so much fun, so much energy and freezing cold! People would walk around with kegs on their backs, selling beer. I feel like this would be a VERY popular thing in America. It was very convenient and fast and the beer was actually very tasty. I had a few cups of them, they weren't that expensive and definitely helped with the cold weather. I plan on going to a game later in the semester, especially when they play AC Milan. That should be a very epic game. I also bought a Florentina scarf, because I wanted to have something while at the game but didn't want to pay lots of money for a jersey and plus the weather was cold so a scarf fit in perfectly. Now it hangs in my living room, a symbol of my allegiance to FLORENCE!
Pisa and Lucca Day Trip:
Later that weekend, we went on a day trip to Pisa and Lucca. Generally its either sunny or overcast here in Florence but never above the temperature of 45 degrees. We arrived n Pisa and I thought that being closer to the coast it would be colder but nope, it was AMAZING weather! I was actually able to take off some layers of clothing and be very comfortable. When we arrived, we had a private guided tour around the main parts of Pisa which was the Church, the tower and the baptistry. The rest of Pisa isn't that exciting and a little more ghetto compared to a lot of other small towns in the Tuscany area. I loved our tour guide, he was amazing. I feel that it is either hit or miss with these tour guides but he seemed to enjoy what he was doing and I actually learned a few things. We then took those stereotypical photos next to the leaning tower and just walked around the town. 
We then hopped back on the bus and headed towards Lucca. I was mighty hungry by this point so I was hoping to go grab some food while having plenty of time to rent a bike, which is a common thing to do there. 
But the bike place we were going to rent from had run out of bikes so we had to walk all around town to find another one but it took too long and we didn't have enough time so we ended up getting food at this yummy dinner and then people watched in the park. I enjoyed Lucca a lot, it was definitely a small town and tons more locals then tourists which was a nice change. I hope to get back there soon, especially so I can get to ride that bike!
So our apartment is not equipped the best stuff. But we seem to manage. Once and a while my roommate and I cook food together and we have been really limited to what we can cook because one, the food selection here is not the same as back home and two, we only have a stove so pretty much we cook pasta and I make my signature "Cock Block Salad." Yes I know this is an interesting name but it is only called this because after eating it, your breath will probably smell because it has garlic and onions in it. It also took us about two weeks to get internet and then 3 weeks to get a washer so that was not fun. Thankfully there is a laundry matt down the street from us but it is major expensive to do a load of laundry, about 4 Euros a cycle. So 4 euros for a wash and 4 euros for a dry. Thats 8 euros for one load of laundry. That is ridiculous! Lets just say I had enough close to last me only a small amount of loads then we got our washing machine and it is actually really good, given its small size. We don't have a dryer, that is very uncommon here in Europe, so we have to hang things to dry. Generally they say it takes a few days for your clothes to dry but because our washer is new, it does an extra spin cycle the helps make the clothes less damp which then helps the clothes dry faster. So it only takes about a day to try, which is very nice but I have to plan around that amount of time to make sure I don't need that specific clothes anytime soon.
A few other things I have been involved with here in Florence is that I joined our schools soccer team. Our first game we lost then we had 2 other games back to back! It was ridiculous, so we had three games that night then another game the following night then another game the next night then we had a week off then our last game on the following monday. Lets just say we didn't do that well but we didn't really have practice and each game we got better and better. One game I made two goals, and four goals all season (yeah the season was 2 weeks) which pretty much means I made the most goals out of everyone on my team and the most injuries as well. I messed up my knee pretty bad, I couldn't walk on it for a while and it kept locking up so I might have some serious damage to it but its gradually getting better so I am going to wait till i come home then see a doctor about it. My other knee got scrapped up BIG time and it's still healing. My elbow feels like it is permanently bruised which is very irritating and I have no idea what I did to it. But overall I enjoyed being on the soccer team, it was nice getting on the field again. I kind of wish the season was longer but then again I don't really have time to be on a soccer team. We had an awards ceremony at the local pub and we got actual metals. We didn't come in last place, we came in 2nd to last and we still got metals. They even have our team name engraved on them, which is pretty sweet. Hanging that up in my room when I get home. One of the accidents that happened on the field was some guy completely tackled me and made my glasses fly across the ground. A couple days after that I was just opening and closing my glasses and BOOM they broke right off!! That was extremely annoying, only a few weeks into school and I have no glasses. 
I didn't bring an extra pair and I don't wear contacts, so I managed to not have glasses for a few weeks. I finally got my prescription from my doctor back home and went on a search to find glasses.But the only glasses they sell out here are designer and are pretty expensive. Also their styles are not something I would normally wear but I finally found a pair. Of course they are Chanel and are a good 250 Euros. But I literally could not find any other pair and the cheapest ones are around 150 Euros and I didn't want to spend that much on glasses and not like them so why not spend the extra money on glasses you do like. So I got them and it only took them 1 hour to make so it worked out perfectly!! It was weird to put them on after not wearing glasses for a while.
Also I signed up for multiple different events and classes with my program. I did a cooking class, we made gnocchi, some eggplant and mozzarella dish and this amazing chocolate sausage for dessert and not its not like a meat sausage its just called that because of the way it looks. A lot of people didn't like the class because it was very basic but I enjoyed it for the experience and the food was mediocre and it was only 10Euro for it so it wasn't that big of waste. I also did a pizza making class which was pretty straight forward. We didn't learn how to make the dough but we rolled it out and put the sauce and cheese and whatever toppings we wanted on it. We put it in the oven and then took it out and boom, that was it. But they did provide us with unlimited amounts of wine!
And the wine was very delicious so that was a major plus and the pizza was really good. I wouldn't mind taking another pizza making class just for the unlimited wine and yummy pizza. I also attended an opera at the St. Marks church. Let me just say how amazing it was! It was very intimate, small audience and there were only 4 performers and one pianist playing. It was a love story and their voices were so passionate, and of course I couldn't understand what they were saying but I could feel it by the way they sung. I really hope to attend more Operas here if not, I am going to the SF Opera house as much as I can. I think this will be my new addiction. There are also many different festivals going on around town and my favorite one thus far was the 2 week long chocolate festival. They had fruit on a stick covered in chocolate, crepe chocolate sandwiches and chocolate rum drinks to name a few amazing stuff they had. I went there a couple different times and man, oh man, I could have spent weeks there. Excited to see what other awesome festivals they will have. 
School in general has been annoying. I don't even want to blog about it because it annoys me so much. Lets see, oh yeah the other night at our house my roommate and I held a Wine and Cheese Fest which was pretty awesome. A good 15 people showed up, which is a big turnout for our small apartment. We went through 7 bottles of wine! And ate some delicious cheeses and assorted breads. We plan on having many more to come, but it was a bummer because the weather has not been that great here so hopefully when we come back from Spring Break the weather will pick up and we can start enjoying our enormous terrace.
Okay well that is pretty much the gist of it now. I know this is another long one but I am sure you don't mind hearing about this stuff! I am heading on my spring break in 2 days. I will be traveling to Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris for 10 days. Yeah its a short time to be traveling to all those places but I most likely wouldn't have any other time to visit them so it was an awesome opportunity so I jumped at it. I have my next blog post already written out but I didn't want to overwhelm you guys with too much awesome stuff. The next blog I will be posting will be about the places I have travel too so far which include: Interlaken, Siena, San Gimignano, Viareggio and Rome! And after that post I will be posting about my Spring Break adventures. Don't blame me for not keeping up to date with this blog. Blame the awesome time I am having out here :)
(P.S. I haven't proofread any of this, so sorry if there are a lot of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, once I get a chance I will scan through it and fix everything!)
So I amposting a quick blog post. I know I have to catch up on all my other trips and spring break was amazing, no shock there. But on my trip I lost my iPhone and this is a very monumental loss for me. I use my iPhone for everything...photos, texting, emailing, games, alarm clock, etc. And at home my iPhone died on my once and that was horrible as well but being a foreign country, having no contact with my friends and family back home is really unsettling as well. But beyond the heartache this has caused me, I have realized how attached Iam to materialistic things. I never considermyselfmaterialistic, but now looking back on it...I really am. Instead ofpersonally remembering each experience I have, I have to document it on my iPhone or camera and I depend on that to store all my information. I was writing in a journal the other day on the train from Versailles and it was shocking at how much I could not remember only a few days before. Photography is one of the most beautiful things in the world but man...how much stuff I forget when I am behind that lens.I am scared about forgetting about these experience so I take the photos but then I forget that I never fully get to experience them and then I forget what happened.So maybe losing my iPhone was just a wake up call to life and 
that I shouldn't depend so much on technology to remember everything for me. I just felt like sharing this revelation with you all because I think it is very important. I'll leave you with a fewsneak peeks at the photos from my spring break trip. I will be posting my blog about Interlaken, Siena, San Gimignano, Vierragio and Rome in the next few days. Then hopefully a few days after that post my blog about my spring break. Hope all is well in your world.
