12 Days.

So sorry for not posting sooner, but the unreliable nature of my internet in my apartment combined with the fact that I actually have a busy social life here makes more not much time on my computer. But I have so much to tell!

Currently, it's 8:30 am and I'm sitting at our tiny kitchen table eating a banana with nutella and drinking tea for breakfast (and no, Dad, I didn't stay up all night last night!). I had to get up early this morning to get some paperwork stuff done for my internship...I have to leave to do that soon. But I'll get to that in a minute.

First, an update on my life here!

• My living situation is great! I live with 5 girls and we're all really different, but have been getting along amazingly. We hang out a lot, but don't HAVE to be hanging out all the time either. I feel like we've been living together longer than just a week because we're all close and mesh together so well. We share a lot of mutual friends so various combinations of us go out together a lot, but we can also just chill in our kitchen together eating special k when we get home (a frequent occurrence). The other super awesome and ridiculously convenient thing is that we've become good friends with the apartment below us, a group of equally as individually different, but totally great guys. I usually start and end my nights there...they have a much bigger and more hanging-out-condusive apartment, meaning there's always people there. Last night they all cooked this huge delicious dinner for everyone! The only issue that stems from getting along great and having their apartment in the same building is that we have a tendency to get to talking and accidentally stay up all night! Oh well. Here's a family picture of us girls!
• Besides my lovely housemates and the guys, it's been wonderful to have a bunch of different groups of friends to hang out with too! I've been spending a lot of time with my friend, Emily. She goes to Skidmore too and is best friends with one of my best friends, but we didn't know each other well before this semester. Most nights we end up either going out together to meet other people, or just naturally meeting up because of our mutual friends. We've been hanging out with a few awesome people from Skidmore and their housemates too. I also have been seeing my friend, Amanda, a lot, who I met in the airport waiting for our luggage. She's wonderful.
• I finished my first week of classes yesterday (no class on Fridays, hooray!). My Italian class seems fast-paced, but I think it will be good. My professor basically just speaks to us in Italian and it's pretty conversational-based, which I like. It's a 4-credit class for people who already know a romance language - unless it's a intensive class, the other beginner ones are only 3-credits. I want to learn Italian so badly, and I think I'm going to have to learn really quickly, but I'll get back to that in a minute. My Intermediate Painting class scared the crap out of me at first; I got to class and was thrown into a placement test to make sure we were good enough to be in that level. We had to paint the full figure in only 45 minutes! I haven't really been drawing or painting since first semester sophomore year, so I was terrified. It definitely was not my best work, but I passed! My professor is an American who's been living and teaching art in Italy for 30 years. She has a pretty strong personality, but I'm pretty sure she's going to be a good professor. She even had bags made up at the art store with all the supplies in them for each of us so we wouldn't have to hunt around and figure it out in Italian. It was great, except that I had to drop 200 euro for it all. Ugh. The art classes are all 5 hours once a week, which a weird change from my 3 hours twice a week at Skidmore. I have both art classes in the same day, though, which makes for a loooooong and exhausting Tuesday for me. I have class almost straight through from 9am to 8:30pm (they're each 2.5 hours with a 30 min break and then another 2.5 hours). Anyway, so I was all stressed about getting to my Fashion Photography class on time and then I spilled gesso IN MY HAIR (don't even ask me how that's possible) right at the end of class! I was so frazzled by the time I made it to photo and then we had another placement test in that class too. I think it's going to be SOOOOOO COOOOOOOL! Not only is my professor totally fly (I think he might be half Asian, half Italian?), it's going to be a really advanced course and is both darkroom and digital! So glad I brought the Nikon. I don't even want to think about the money I'm going to have to spend for that class, though....I think I might need a 100mm lens for my Canon - a good, useful investment, but expensive. We'll see....Finally I had my last class yesterday: International Art Business. I was nervous for it to be really boring, but it was awesome! My professor is this really cool lady who definitely knows her stuff and was really engaging the class. We were talking about art pricing and behavioral economics yesterday (fascinating) and the whole class was using about Damien Hirst and Duchamp as examples without having to explain who everyone was and it was awesome. Plus we're going to visit all these auction houses and private museums...so interesting.
• The last thing is my internship! I got placed at the Palazzo Vecchio, which is totally insane. I'm going to be guiding tours there for English-speaking visitors, meaning I'm going to have to learn everything and everything about 16th century Italian art, Vasari (who painting tons of it), and the Medici family. It's 12 hours a week and 1 weekend per month, which is kind of a lot with my class schedule, but I think it's going to be the craziest and coolest learning experience ever. The scary thing is that apparently the person I'm working for there does not like to speak English.......the reason I'm going to have to pick up Italian ASAP! This morning I have to go get all this registration and paperwork done so that I'm all set to work here. My first meeting at the Palazzo is on Monday! I'm excited and terrified.

Okay, I feel like that's a pretty sufficient update on my life right now! Other than these things, I've just been cooking a lot and walking a lot. The weather's been pretty cold and rainy for too much exploring, but just walking to my classes around the city and doing errands have been doing that for me some. I can't wait for it to get just a tad warmer and much more pleasant to walk around all day.

Also, sorry about the lack of pictures, but it's been taking too long to upload. I'll dedicate a post to just photos soon, but you can also check out my facebook in the meantime.

Ciao!