Yay for stealing the neighbor's wireless

I spent the first 2 hours of my day totally stressing out. Classes only go Monday through Thursday but my Michelangelo class has two meetings on Fridays during the semester and this morning was our first Friday class. We were to meet at Casa Buonarroti (as in Michelangelo Buonarroti for you non-artsy/totally non conscious people)… oh ok. Right. Casa Buonarroti … and this would be where?!? I asked my host fam and they said it was a quick walk from the Duomo. Oh ok, a quick walk…

So this morning I leave the house at 8:50 to go catch the 9:00 bus (yes, Tera took public transportation all by herself this morning); I was sposed to meet my class at 9:25 and I figured that 25 minutes would be plenty to get myself downtown. WELL. When the bus showed up 18 (yes, it was exactly 18) minutes LATE I started to panic. The entire way to the Duomo I had my phone out watching the minutes quickly tick by… I ended up getting to the Duomo around 9:40. THEN came the challenge of navigating myself to the Casa.

I have never felt like a bigger tourist. I had my map out and was power-limping (yes, my foot is STILL broken and walking is STILL painful) through the crowded streets like a mad woman frantically looking for the Casa. Short walk. My ass. Even if I had two good feet, it was still a good 15 minute walk from the Duomo. After asking 4 different people for directions and finding an old man to WALK me directly to the door I finally met up with my class… 40 minutes late. Ok, I am NEVER late. Being late, in my opinion, is the worst thing you can ever do. To make matters worse, I’ve been coming down with a cold for the past few days now and as soon as I met up with my class I broke out in crazy coughing fits… AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Anyways, Casa Buonarroti was really cool. It is a museum in a huge house that Michelangelo actually lived in during the 1500’s. We got to look at and discuss pieces such as Madonna on the Stairs, The Battle of the Centaurs, a model he made for the façade of San Lorenzo… how cool is that. Rather than learning from slides and pictures, I am in a class where we get to stand in front of the REAL pieces MADE by Michelangelo!!!

After a few hours at Casa Buonarroti a some friends from my class and I went and grabbed some lunch at a little café… can I just say right now that I LOVE LOVE LOVE “l’acqua frizzante,” (aka water with bubbles)?!? Cuz I really do.

After our little break our class met up again at Borgello to look at more Mike pieces (this time the Bacchus, and the Tondo). Loved it.

Around 2ish Marilena and I met up and spent the evening shopping around Firenze. We went to the Ponte Vecchio and talked about how when we’re older we’re going to make our rich husbands take us here to buy jewelry (EVERY store on the Ponte Vecchio was a jewelry store), then stopped and got some gelato, then bargained with some African purse people who tried to tell us that the purse we liked was REALLY Gucci and that it was worth 80 euro (right dude…), then we came across THE best market in Firenze: Piazza San Lorenzo.

Ok, ANYONE that comes to Firenze NEEDS to go to Piazza San Lorenzo. Marilena and I were so overwhelmed about the billions of stores and stands that we had to call it a day in order to go home and sort out in our minds the millions of things that we wanted to buy. I bought some presents for some of my favorite people soooooo, if you’re one of my favorite people be excited!!!

On our 2 mile walk home from San Lorenzo Marilena and I decided to stop in a grocery store to check it out… I mean, why not? It was pretty cool. Firstly, the cheese isle was liek the BIGGEST isle in the entire store; wait no, I lied… the pasta isle was the biggest isle. Really though, if you ever got trapped in a grocery store in Italy I hope that you like cheese and pasta cuz seriously that’s ALL you’re going to be eating. Hahahaha.

On a side note: Amelia is funny cuz today she called me from Oktoberfest to tell me that she was standing in a Starbucks with a coffee in one hand and a beer in another hand – haha, I love that girl. We discussed plans for our trip to Amsterdam this December… wooooo, so excited for that already!

Finally Marilena and I made it home and ACTUALLY got to doing homework; I know, what? Homework on a Friday afternoon? We’re such good students :)

Tonight we enjoyed dinner with Manual (who was wearing a sweater that he prolly owned when he was 8 years old… it was yellow and red and blue and the sleeves were about 5 inches too short). He speaks as much English and we do Italian sooooo it was pretty entertaining. We spent the evening talking about good clubs/bars to go to, toga parties, school, how me and Marilena look nothing but American, politics… yea.

It was disturbing to hear what he had to say about the whole September 11 fiasco. HIS take on it was that the whole thing wasn’t a terrorist attack at all and that it was Bush that set up the whole thing. He’s convinced that our president likes killing his own people and used Bush’s sending troops to war in the Middle East as evidence.

Whoa whoa whoa. Ok, Manuel. I know our president is retarded. And I’m sure there were ways he prolly could have prevented things with 911. And I know that he is pushing for war. BUT I’m pretty sure that he isn’t an American-citizen-killing-machine. It worries me to think that the whole world might think like this… what if the whole world thinks that we live in this place under a president that kills his own people??? Wow, that’s bad. Interesting to think about though.

Anyways, I’m back to homework. Tomorrow is going to be a looooonng day cuz we’re off to Ravenna! No clue what there is to see in Ravenna, but hey, who cares?!