Florence, Pisa, good friends, and the tin man

Well calcio got canceled tonight. I know I can't complain about the weather here, especially compared to Chicago. (I'm thinking of all of you over there.) But it loves to rain here, all the time, I feel like it's monsoon season. The SLA's decided there was too much rain to play calcio. We didn't need more injuries than usual. This is probably good because I need to keep working on my Italian homework, the amount seems to grow larger every day. But of course I needed to distract myself and write a blog before I begin.

I'm not sure if my Italian is getting better, but my English is definitely getting worse. Sometimes it takes me a good minute to say sentences, because I get all the words out of order. Even typing my blogs and emails I forget letters and forget basic sentence structuring. But I figure it's good. My brain is learning in new ways.

Time is continuing to move fast here. I can't believe it is almost March. I have exactly 15 days until I go to Africa. Just saying the words Africa boggles my mind. Marriam and I like to insert the word whenever we can. "When we go to Africa..." "When we get back from Africa..." "When we are in Africa . . ." It gets me even more excited, if that's possible.

As far as planning my other trips, it is a slow process, but one that will hopefully get figured out soon. I'm trying to stick to my budget I've made myself, because I have a long way to go still...I don't want to be broke in a month. So far so good.

This past weekend I went to Florence. The best way to describe Florence, for me, was calm. It's a great little city. We learned our way around really fast and I was really happy to just be there with three others. Traveling in smaller groups is definitely much less hectic. Me, Marriam, Adri, and Josh saw all the great sights. My favorite - Michelangelo's David. Spectacular. Everyone has said "You just can't believe it." But I figured it's just a statue, I'm sure it's cool, but not out of this world. It's out of this world. I stared at it and stared at it and stared at it. Everything about it just put me in awe. I can't wait to go back when my parents come to Florence. I know my dad will love it. Julie has already seen it and I know she is really excited to see it again. 

The hostel we stayed at in Florence was also super cute, it was called Leonardo's House. And Leonardo was our guide to Florence. He was rather goofy, but very helpful. And even told us to change our train tickets from Florence to Rome to Pisa to Rome. We did this because on Sunday we went to Pisa for the day and then just came home from there.

There is really nothing to do in Pisa though. I mean we went to the Leaning Tower, that was cool. We ate lunch by it and I laughed really hard at Adri because she was terrified of the pigeons. But other than that Pisa was dead. We were going to go see a movie, but the theater wasn't open. The only thing they were showing was Avatar. Not going to lie, I would have really liked to have seen that in Italian. But instead we sat at a cafe and ended up paying way too much for overpriced sandwiches.

So the top things that happened in Florence:
 - Josh cut his hair . . . a random decision he made so he could look good in a hat he wanted.
 - I bought a very cute leather purse that I bargained down from 45 to 28 euro!
 - We ate amazing waffles, pizza, and fantastic Mexican food.
 - Josh and I kept everyone up snoring. And Adri smacked me in the face in my sleep.
 - We took lots of pictures of the tin man, but I forgot to bring Dorthy to Florence. It was really sad.

All in all a fantastic trip. I am really looking forward to making it a Rome weekend though. There is still so much to do and see here. Also it is exhausting to travel. Everyone needs a break and to save some money.

Ciao for now!