Buon Giorno!

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Hello! It's been about 4 days living in gorgeous Firenze and it has been an absolute dream. Arrived here last Friday after a very long day of flying and met everyone in our group-first impressions-could not have asked for a better group of people. Anyways Friday night we went out to this beautiful restaurant sitting right on the main river in Florence, we all got dressed up sat down to the 20 person table and were immediately greeted with bruschetta, red wine, and the conversations just burst from there. First course was delicious homemade ravioli and pasta , then onto the 2nd course of chicken, followed by espesso and dolce-dessert! After about 3 hours we decided it was time to experience the night life in the city and sat outside at a local bar for a while, hopped onto a pub-crawl, danced the night away at the 'disco',got to bed by 5 am, met soooo many people and needless to say it was a GREAT opener to the semester... Gotta run, but more updates to come soon, and more importantly PICTURES. All I can say is this place is wonderful. I'm pretty sure I've had better food in the past 3 days than i have in my life, the ingredients are just soooo fresh and simple. In class today we learned that the average american 'food miles' meaning how far from where it is purchased to where it is consumed is about 1,400 miles, but Italians love food grown nearby that the furthest their food comes from is about 27 miles. The food is just such high quality, fresh, and flavorful. Not to sound like a glutton but it's great. AND we even have a cooking class to go to next week, aside from food haha, the whole culture is amazing, such high fashion, the gypsies, the statues, museums, architecture, it's just molto bello! ...pictures soon to come!

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