Well, I'm here in Florence. I made it! I'm still a bit drained from the flight, but I've had one good sleep, and will probably do so again tonight. I found an internet cafe that has qwerty keyboards. I've seen a few of the other kinds, and they scare me. Oi. This place plays fairly awful music in the background. I think its Bruce Springsteen right now, which is by far the best I've heard in here so far. My time is being counted down, so I don't really wanna stop to think about what I'm typing. I've changed all my dollars to lire, which amounted to what sure seems like a lot of money. My money clip is having a hard time staying shut with all the bulk. And all the bills are different sizes, which I don't think I like, hehe.
Florence is incredibly gorgeous. I went to the Duomo yesterday and was pretty awe-struck. Today is orientation, and I have a meeting in about a half hour. I'm thinking of you all very much, but I'm not quite homesick yet. All the DePaul people seemed to have bonded pretty nicely on the flights. We had to wait at the Florence airport for about an hour for our ride. It never showed, so we just had to get cabs. It took 5 hatchback cabs to move all of us and our stuff. I'm learning how truly terrible my Italian is, but I've still managed to communicate things when I have to. Pretty much every shop here has a few people that speak English, so you don't have to speak Italian much really, but I do anyway, because its more fun that way. I'm still finding out about our field trip schedule, but it seems like we're gonna be going somewhere every weekend, and most classes have trips too. I'm singling out the ones that visit Rome. I sign up in the second to last group for classes, though, so I might not have much of a selection by then. Wish me luck! I'm gonna go now. As soon as I've got the phone thing figured out, I'll call home. Bye for now.
-Brian