In which, A three month stay in Firenze begins

Since I'm now without regular access to internet, I'm writing this from my wireless-less computer in my new apartment. Sadly, since my computer is newly recovered from a recent crash, I don't even have Microsoft Word on here, so I'm using the 'TextEdit' application... and it just looks so ugly.

My Swedish roommate in the room right next to mine actually gets free wifi, and I can sometimes see it pop up under my wireless networks, but it really never goes through. It just kind of comes up long enough to sufficiently tease me. Anna, the Swedish roommate, told me that the free wifi works in the bathroom too, so I spent a good ten minutes wandering around the hallways with my laptop in hand trying to get a peek of it (and yes, I brought it into the bathroom to check it out to no avail).

My apartment has five single bedrooms, all females for now. Interestingly, there are a TON of German speakers here on this program. And my roommates are from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden. So at least three of them chat amongst each other in German-- other times, we communicate in a funny English-Italian mix. (And I'm happy to say that I have A Room With A View.)

And I forgot how much Jetlag sucks. Yesterday was particularly really bad. I was a really awful combination of being tired and nauseated from traveling and eating funky airplane food. My roommates and their friends took me out to cute cafe called Hemingway, which is in Oltrarno, the hipster, artsy neighborhood on the OTHER side of the river ARNO. Thus, appropriately named, "Oltrarno". I love European cafe culture. We each got ONE drink each and stayed for over two hours (I guess I'm used to being hussled out of my seat in NY).

After the cafe, we went to get apertivo at a place called Kitsch. Apertivo is kind of like the Italian equivalent to Happy Hour in the states. During certain hours, for a couple of euros (we paid 8), you can get one drink and access to buffet-style food.

The lack of sleep really caught up with me later that night. I woke up three or four times feeling really feverish with chills. I finally took some ibuprofen, which I never do. It must have worked (which always somehow surprises me), and I was feeling much much better by the morning.

I've only been here a day and I've noticed that I'm already noticibly more not wasteful. I take shorter showers (mostly cause the shower stall is so awkward), and I use smaller amounts of shampoo/toothpaste/etc (cause the bottles here are much smaller and anything I brought from home, I want to make last), and I'm eating healthier (because I have yet to venture beyond fresh fruit and pasta in the supermarkets). Haha, anyway, so I guess I'm saying is that I'm proud of my pseudo-pro-choice healthier lifestyle that I'm developing. (This is Not going to last when I'm back stateside.)

Classes also started on Monday. After a written test and oral interview, I got placed in the third level of Italian (yay). I start my day off with grammar and then after a 30 minute caffe break, we move onto conversation.

Later today, my Swiss roommate invited me out to a wine tasting with one of our classmates (yay I am liked!). Mmm... vino rosso e bianco, proscuitto, , etc.