Benvenuto a Firenze!

So I’m finally here! It’s been a lot of planning and paperwork and frustration with the financial aid office, but now it has all finally paid off. I seems like it took forever to here. My day of flying started at 12 noon central time and it finally ended at 12 noon Italian time. That’s 17 hours of flying and sitting in airports. I was very thankful though that all my baggage made it relatively intact. For some reason, Italian airports tear up bags. My roommate got his bags, but there is a hole about the size of a softball and several bad scrapes. There were several students who arrived sans any baggage and then had to sit in line for a turn to argue with the airport officers.

The airport in Paris, very chic.

This was my first view of Italy on the bus from the airport to the hotel

The first thing that most people will realize when they get to Italy is how bad the drivers really are. Italian driving is one of the largest stereotypes about the country, but it’s definitely true. Little tiny cars and motor bikes easily drive four wide on streets that are only marked for two lanes. Also, Italians don’t stop for people in crosswalks. If you get hit, it’s because you weren’t walking fast enough. I think I’ll definitely stick to walking during my stay here in Florence. Also, many of the streets in the older parts of Florence were planned during the 13^th century; therefore automobiles were not taken into consideration. These streets are especially prone to accidents because most of the sidewalks are only about two feet wide and the street is only about 6 feet wide and even when you try your hardest to stay on the sidewalk you always end up walking in the street and you always end up getting honked at by motorbikes and cars because you’re blocking the street. It’s a little bit chaotic, to say the least.

On my first day in Italy, my roommate and I decided to wander around a bit before our mandatory welcome dinner and orientation with the API group. We walked to the Duomo and the Arno and got ourselves lost within a few minutes. Then it was time to break out the Italian dictionary and figure out how to ask for directions. In Florence, it’s relatively easy to ask the locals for information. They are mostly nice and speak English, so if you try and speak broken Italian to them they usually just smile and respond in English so you can understand. As one local told us “it’s not very easy for foreigners to get lost in Florence, it’s just easy to go the wrong way.”

Hotel digs for the first two nights. Not bad eh?

View from the rooftop terrace of the hotel.

The Arno at dusk

Once we finally made it back to the hotel, we headed out again with the entire API group to the convention center for our welcome orientation and dinner. After being awake for so long it was pretty difficult to pay attention during the orientation meeting and by the time we got to eat we were all like a pack of ravenous wolves. They served us some traditional Italian dishes with plenty of pasta. Most of it was delicious, except for the flan and olive oil loaf, which kind of tasted like a soggy shoe. After dinner, most of the students in our group went out for some drinks and to check out the local scene, it was relatively dead in most places because it was a Monday night so everywhere we went we were definitely the entire bar atmosphere.

First night out. Notice la polizia watching us. I'm pretty sure the whole city heard us that night, typical Americans.

Today, we went on a tow hour walking tour of the city and we learned a lot about the history of some of the buildings and some of the places to enjoy and avoid in the city. It’s still pretty surreal to walk around Florence and try and comprehend that I’ll be here for the next four months. Everything is so old and beautiful, the architecture is outstanding, and the atmosphere is great. Now I just need to work on learning the language so that I can fit in with the locals when I order my daily coffee.

 The Duomo, 4th largest church in the world.

The dome.

This whole experience has been extremely exhilarating so far and I can’t wait to see what else Florence has in store. I have held off on a lot of the picture taking so far to look less touristy, but definitely expect lots of updates in the future.