Piazza Signoria

I woke up to my eye still swollen but after taking my first pill after breakfast I feel like the swelling has gone down slightly! So hopefully by Saturday I will be back to normal. I do feel better today, though. I had my first site visit today with my art history class. I met some girls at school and we rushed down to the Duomo area on bus 17 to then try to find Piazza Signoria. After a little running, and trying to figure out where we were, we found our class by the fountain. We have two TA's for that class who are really nice and are in their twenties so every Wed. we will meet them somewhere in the city for a site visit. Today we learned about 300 years of history and an overview of the Medicci family power. We talked alot about the Republic and we studied about 6 different sculptures that are outside in Piazza Signoria, though they are not the originals. I can't wait to see the originals! Especially, to see the David in the Academica. We have a student museum pass that supposively zips us through lines and gets us in for free. Awesome, huh? On our way back we picked up a slice of pizza to go and get back to school for my next class. I was a little late for my next class, but my Italian teacher didn't seem to mind. Italian is my favorite class here so far, though I haven't had many classes. It is fun to try to use my Italian at bars (which is basically a caffe) or just around anywhere, if I can. If you haven't been to Italy you must know that there are many places where you can grab something quick to eat without sitting down, or some bars don't even have room for you to sit down. Many Italians crowd into these little bars for a quick espresso or panino.

I found my teacher who teaches Family & Gender in Contemporary Italy this afternoon since I missed her class yesterday. She was really nice and gave me the syllabus. Yesterday afternoon there was an acitivities meeting and there are a lot of cool extracurriculars to get involved in, including soccer and sports, dance classes, cooking classes, and even conversaciones with italians where it would be like an exchange...you try to speak italian with them for 30 minutes or an hour and then you help them speak engnlish. I definitely want to look into these things.

There are also many compies that help students plan traveling or have preorganized travel weekends to Greece, Switzerland, Prague, Cinque terre, you name it! My host mom suggests waiting to go to Cinque terre until the touristst leave in a couple more weekends. Alot of people are going this weekend but I think I will go on the day trip to Assissi on Friday, and then enjoy another weekend in Florence. I haven't even climbed the steps of the Duomo yet or gone into the Uffizi! One thing at a time :-)

I am feeling better though, if you can't tell and I hope you all are have a good day too! (Buona goirnata! --have a good day)