Well I'm here in Florence, and as expected, its incredibly awesome! I got here last Wednesday, and have been situating myself since. I've emailed a few times, and have managed to get one telephone call home, but overall communication has been slim. At first I was using an internet cafe for my daily fix, but I've since gotten a username here on campus, and have been able to successfully compromise their security and run a real email program, instead of Eudora light. Bah, windows, and those who rely on it....
My plane to Brussels and connecting flight to Florence were both good, but tiring. The trans-Atlantic one had personal video screens and super Nintendo-like controllers to choose your music or movie or game. No good games though. :( Ah well. I don't want to sound snotty, but the airport in Brussels just looked so old... weird. It was my first brush with Europe and I was very tired, so not a good impression. And they ran my film under the x-ray machine, after I had specially pulled it aside to as to not mess it up. And right after I had explained to the others who were flying with me to do likewise with their film. As so often happens to me, I looked stupid for a shining moment. Tehe.
Upon our arrival in Florence, we were expecting to be picked up at the airport, but apparently the DePaul foreign study dept had forgotten to make such arrangements, so we waited for about and hour, then all hopped into cabs and went to out hotel. Each cab cost about 40,000 lire, or about $20, so for 6 cab rides, that got expensive.
In the cabs, we entered the city. As I crossed the River Arno, I could see the Duomo (the cathedral with a massive dome on it) from the bridge. It finally hit me, in my semi-dazed and very tired state: I was in Florence! Oh my God this city is soooooo beautiful. No street is straight. Everything radiates out from the Duomo. Every church (and there are tons) is on a piazza (plaza), each with a unique night-life scene. There are vendors in tents selling anything you can imagine lining the streets and piazzas. Everything is old, but old in a beautiful "History" kind of old. There are palaces and towers and wonderful stores and the works everywhere. On the south side of the river, there is Piazzale Michelangelo, overlooking the whole valley that the city lays in. I took some awesome cityscape pictures from there. There's far too much to tell in this already "going to be way too long" email.
Meals here are insane. At my house, my momma (as we are all calling our host mothers) brings out the first dish, usually pasta (often spaghetti, usually something else, its been rotini lately). This dish alone tastes good enough and is filling enough to serve as a standard American meal. Then the second course comes, and its maybe some lighter meat, cheese or salad or something like that. This is about equally as filling as the last dish. Then numero three, which is the main meat dish, sometimes chicken, or fish, or fried steak or something like that. After all of that, if you're stomach isn't about to explode, you're probably 100% Italian, or named Ben Walters.
School is good. Classes are in a building called the Villa Rossa (or Rosa, I forget...). I've dropped one of my classes, a history class that was to count as poli-sci for me. It had a ton of required readings (and heavy books) and a regular poli-sci class back at DePaul would be much easier. Besides, I'm not here in Florence to read a bunch of xeroxed pages! oi...
One of the weirdest things about the school building is that all the bathrooms are uni-sex. I don't mean bathrooms with just one toilet and a sink, but bigger bathrooms with stalls and all. It's a little unnerving to walk out of a stall right as a girl (or a guy for those gals reading...) comes out of the stall next to you. I don't know if this is pretty standard Italian fare, but it feels inherently very wrong to me...
Well, on that odd note, I think I'm going to finish up this note. I'm having an awesome time here in Florence, and I miss all of you very much. I think of you all often, and though I'm loving it here, I can hardly wait to get back home too. I love all of you! Ciao!
-Brian