PARIS and AMSTERDAM!

Notre Dame!
Angelina's: This little cafe is right by the Louvre and supposedly has the BEST hot chocolate in the city. It is good...but not necessarily worth the 7 Euro! But its really fun to people watch there!
Katharine, me, and Laura in front of Notre Dame.
Beautiful Paris! This is the Rue di Rivoli...a main street in the city. It parallels the Siene. This was taken right after we ate at this place called "An American Breakfast" where we had fried eggs, chocolate chip pancakes, and lovely watered-down "american" coffee :) it was fabulous!
Laura and I outside of our cute hotel window in Paris! We had out own balcony!

BEST SPRING BREAK EVER!!! I just got back from Paris and Amsterdam on Sunday and let me tell you...it was the most amazing 10 days! I could go on and on about all my adventures but i think i will tell you through pictures....there are soo many so get ready!!!

spring break in 2 days... :)

Midterms! yay! so this is why i haven't updated in a while...and our internet has been bad :( but just two more left tomorrow, then off to my internship, then dinner with nonna, then i leave for PARIS on friday! I REALLY hope i get to see Alexine there! she is staying outside the city so i hope i get to see her! then amsterdam the next wednesday where i am staying with allison long! ah so excited for this week! almost there! i can't believe its almost spring break...its going by wayy too quickly.

A little update...last Friday i went to dinner at Kelly Nelson's apartment with her and her roomies which was SO fun! we had Kelly's LOVELY baked ziti and drank wine and it was so fun! and i am planning on meeting them all in Monaco a couple weekends after spring break so that will be amazing! Then on Saturday my friend Kelsey Conklin visited and it was SOOO good to see her! she is studying in Rome and we went to a place called Kitsch on Saturday. It is in a very Italian area and it is a bar that serves "aperativi" from about 7 to 10 at night...basically what it is, is you buy a drink (usually for about 7 or 8 Euro) then you can have all you can eat at the buffet! this was the first aperativi place i have been to but apparently it is the BEST. literally the food was amazing--pasta, couscus, veggies, fried stuff, dessert, and the BEST fruit drink i have ever had! literally...the BEST deal in Florence! and it was a good study break with Kels! :)

so the weekend was great...have a couple more tests to study for and then off to spring break where i will come back with tons of fun stories and pictures! :) Ciao! (or should i say, "au revoir"!) :)

Also...I want to say happy, happy birthday to all the people who have had birthdays since i have been gone and i SO wish i could have been there to celebrate!!! Happy Birthday to...Teeny, Rach, Amy, and Tay...and soon to come Julie and Jenny!!! I love you ALL so much and we are celebrating this summer!! xoxo

Some older pictures...

Duomo
Julia, Katie and Me :)
My roommate, Kayte and me at San Miniato above Piazzale Michelangelo on our first weekend.
Kayte and me in Fiesole

art, art, art...

so...its getting a little warmer! its kinda nice because there has been so much rain and cold recently, it is nice to have a little break from that! the beautiful days are SO beautiful here...i wish you could all see! one of these days i am going to have to take my camera up to the place i run to...it is the most gorgeous view of the city. the other day i ran up to Fiesole which is technically not a part of Florence, but it is a cute little hilltop town with shops and there is a convent there and church...so beautiful! :)

so i am in the middle of studying for midterms so there are no exciting trips this weekend :( but my kelsey conklin is in town so i am excited to see her! and i am also getting SO excited for spring break...one week from today i am flying to PARIS!!! I am going with my friends Laura and Katherine. I am soo excited to experience the city with friends. we are staying with one of their friends which is so sweet, so i am soo excited! i hope i will get to see alexine, too! she starts  her program this week so i know things will be so crazy and exciting for her! :) 

and then later in the week I am visiting Allison Long in Amsterdam! I cannot wait to see her!! it has been soo long since i have seen her and it seems like she is having an amazing time...so i am so excited!! :)

i thought i would tell you a little about my art history class just because i think it is awesome the way it is organized and i realized i haven't told you yet! basically, we have one lecture a week in the classroom where we look at slides, etc.--a typical art history class. then on tuesday, we have a Site Visit, where we meet somewhere in the city--past site visits have included Piazza Signoria, Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, Piazza della Annunziata, the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (where all the original statues that were on the fiscad of the Duomo are located)....and the TA's give us a lecture there! it is SO awesome because it is so much more effective to have a lecture in the actual place we are learning about. Then every week we have a Looking Assignment--we have a certain place we need to go in the city where we observe something and write a journal on it. we have looked at tons of frescoes and learned a bit about how they were made and why which ones are more preserved than others, which gives me more of an appreciation when I see one. Also it's interesting--with many of these frescoes, in the 18th and 19th centuries, when renovations were being made in some of these churches, some of these frescoes were completely whitewashed and/ or removed from their original locations. Its pretty interesting to see how much we value them today, but at times in their history they were kind of pushed aside. But many that were whitewashed or removed, are now uncovered and put back in their original places. so some of these have gone through A LOT! SO far we have had looking assignments in the Uffizi (where we have this museum pass which lets us get in on the reservation line--no wait at the Uffizi is seriously a dream, especially as tourists keep piling in), the church at Santo Spirito, the competition panels at the Bargello (these are bronze panels that Brunelleschi and Ghiberti made in competition for who would design the Baptistry doors in Florence), a couple of the chapels in Santa Croce, the Brancacci Chapel painted by Masaccio and Masolino....basically this class is allowing me to see SO many of the most important pieces of art and architecture in the city. So when I walk around, I know exactly what I am looking at! Florence is the absolute perfect place to take an art history class because we are in the middle of a museum!

Anyway...should get back to studying....hope all is well!!! CIAO! :)

Siena

Siena and San Gimignano in a day!

San Gimignano: Relaxing with a glass of San Gimignano's famous white wine--Vernaccia. San Gimignano is known as the "Medieval Manhattan" because it originally had 72 towers, but now there are just 14. Basically, the town started with a bunch of feuding families who all thought they were better than the other so built towers--and each one tried to be tallest--to show how awesome they were. ha hence the 72 towers! Then the Black Death wiped out 75% of the population! So crazy....I can't even imagine. We went with my Masterpieces of Art class (who I also went to Rome with and will go to 5 other Italian towns...yay field trips! :) We saw some very famous frescos in the main church here, called the Collegiata. 
San Gimignano: Jen (Syracuse), Mackensey (CU Boulder), me, and Aaron (USC). So fun! the streets were so cute.
San Gimignano: wandering...this was mid-search for gelato! 
Siena: We climbed one of the towers in Siena and saw this beautiful view. That tower in the distance is on the Piazza del Campo--one of the most unique piazzas in all of Italy. It is shaped like an eggshell. It was such a beautiful day!
Siena: Piazza del Campo.

my Internship!

I cannot believe I forgot to tell you this! I have an internship! and guess where it is...in an Enoteca! and guess what that is....drum roll please...its a WINE SHOP!!!! It is seriously the internship from Heaven. And next week guess what I get to help with?? a WINE TASTING!!! I will get to help pour the wines and serve the food that goes with the wine...and the producers of the wine will be there! Ok so it is amazing...I work every Thursday for anywhere from 2 and a half to four hours. It is so great because I do not have class the next day and if I ever need to leave for a trip I am done until 8...plenty early! The people I work with speak NO ENGLISH. this is SO great for me...I am living with a family that speaks no english and again, i am speaking only Italian at my internship! It is great because this Enoteca is located in a purely Florentine area. It is about a 20 minute walk away from campus, but located in an area with no tourists. So there are regulars that come into the shop asking for wine to match with their dinner or to buy a gift for a friend. it is so great...I do not help the customers because I do not know enough about the wine but i LOVE listening--all in Italian....people take their wine SO seriously and this is the perfect place to observe this. People come in and say they are having fish or chicken or meat for dinner, they want something light but dry, or a bit heavier, or one from a specific region in Italy. listening to the customers talk with Luca and Roberto--my wine shop friends!--is so great because I realize that choosing a wine is an art. and it is very specific...customers will spend 45 minutes in there looking over every bottle of wine. this Enoteca has French wines as well.

I have learned a little but about Tuscan wines...the Chianti, Chianti Classico, Montepulciano Nobile, and the Montalcino Brunello--all reds and all AMAZING. in fact, on the job last week, I got to taste some Chianti Classico Riserva from 2006--let me just say YUM. and AMAZING. and i could not believe I was tasting wine while at my internship. WOW. is this real?? I learned about how I know about the French wines--the type of wine it is by the shape of the bottle. I look forward to learning more every week! I look forward to the wine tasting because I will get to converse with more people, pour wine, (maybe drink some!:), and truly get a feel for the customers who come in there--observe them, how they taste the wine, which foods they choose to serve with the wine...i am so excited!

So basically, i cannot believe my internship is working in a WINE SHOP. wow...i could not wait to tell you!

oh and p.s. i also have to tell you--as i think i did before--that there is an amazing gelato place, forno (bakery), and cioccolateria (chocolate shop) in my neighborhood. As I am sure this may not surprise you, I have frequented these places quite often. In fact, the woman in the chocolate shop does not speak any English and every time I pass the shop if I do not buy a piece of chocolate (that is the great part, is i can go buy one piece of dark chocolate, i do not have to buy whole bag--perfect to satisfy my sweet tooth) or whenever i walk by and she sees me, we say ciao! she totally knows me! also after my run today, i went to the pasticceria where i bought a piece of schiacciata--and the guy remembered me from a few days ago. I am the american who struggles with italian, but obviously trying and i love it. i love feeling uncomfortable because that means that I am in an area that never caters to tourists. every time i go in these places, locals are in there buying bread for their families and chocolate with their children after school...i observe conversations with regulars and i hope to soon feel like i am one of them. basically, i am finding that some of my favorite places have included food--shocking, I know!--but the reality is, these are the places where Italians hang out, this is where they go after work, and these are places where they leave happy because they buy something they wanted and they often know the people who work in there. I get this in my small neighborhood of Le Cure because I am living in a purely residential area, not in the middle of the city. i look forward to more updates for you!

dinner time...and you know what that means...my favorite time of day because I never know what AMAZING dishes my Nonna is going to prepare!!!!

CIAOOO!!!! :)