A Typical Week in Firenze

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Florence pretty much seems like a home to me now. The people are friendly, I have tons of supportive friends, and it is just amazing to look around at all the beautiful architecture and statues. International Marketing is a great class. A lady named Rosanna teaches it and she is a young stylish lady who loves to talk loud and tell jokes like a typical Italian. She calls me the "sexy boy" because on presentation day, I had tons of pictures on my flashdrive that she wanted to look at. Our class also has a guy nicknamed "big boy" because she was frightened by him on the first day and how intimidating he looks. On my bday, she led class in singing "happy birthday sexy boy" it sounds strange and definitely would be weird in america, but just imagine it in a cool italian accent. Culture and History of the Italian Renaissance is not fun at all. Most people tend to fall asleep in there, but it is fun to mimic his accent. Yesterday's birthday was a lot of fun. I have a favorite bakery down the road from my apartment, and everyday when I walk by it I always wave at this one lady who works there. She is amazing and always loves to give me free samples and attempt to teach me italian. Yesterday, I got 8 free cookies! Holy crap that was a good deal. The best deal I've ever gotten at that place was I ordered 2 slices of pizza and then she gave me 2 more for free, and 6 tasty doughnut type things, and a couple cookies. She talks so loudly with her italian accent and when she said happy birthday to me it sounded like "HAPPY BUR DAY" She is one of my favorite people in Italy though. Afterwards our adviser, Luca, threw an awesome lemon and spagetti tasting event. The lemons were bigger than my head!! It was quite fun to see everyone from NC State come together on my terrace and celebrate our awesome times in Italy. Today was a lot of fun. Everyone was super surprised that I woke up okay and was still in hyper mode. We went to the academia and looked at Michelangelo's David. He was HUGE!! I defintiely didn't expect the statue to be that big. Everything was so detailed too, like I could seriously see the veins popping out of his arms. After that, we walked over to the Uffizi museum, one of the most famous in the world, and saw some cool pictures like the Birth of Venus. Now this is when my day really got interesting!! I got tired so I left my group to walk back to my apartment. Right when I walked outside, BAM the jersey shore crowd was touring the city. I've never seen this show and don't think it would be interesting at all, but everyone in Florence talks about them. Our teacher tells us that all the locals hate them. I decided to follow the jersey shore group and get pictures of them. It was hard to get close because they had tons of security around them and they were shooting video footage. I followed them to the famous bridge area when all of a sudden I found an opening. They were in walking mode going down the street, and I decided to weave my way in and walked RIGHT next to them. I turned and looked at one of the guys and just said "HEy, its my birthday!" and he looked back at me, shook my hand and said happy birthday and then I walked up to try to say hi to snookie, but she ignored me, and immediately after that the security guards shoved me away. So overall it was a fun experience, I've never met anyone famous before but I just like to brag to all the girls in our group who seem to be obsessed with them. I'll post pictures when I get back to USA. WEll thats all my story for now. This weekend, I will be going to Venice!! Ciao!

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