ten hours closer to christmas

I just got back from a long weekend in London yesterday. It was fall break at my school so for the first half Hillary and I went to visit her friend Natalie who is doing the Pepperdine study abroad program there. We also got to visit my friend Clara who is attending a music school in the London area! The first weekend was full of tourist sights: the london eye, parliament, big ben, tate modern museum, piccadilly circus, abby road, tower bridge, etc... We hung out at the pepperdine house saturday and sunday evening which was nice since this hostel was not quite the same experience as our last one (in a negative way). Hillary has a video of our hostel if anyone really wants to see it! lol. But yeah, overall great weekend! Monday was nice too since we just had a relaxing day that ended in hanging out with Clara at her pub and then seeing a movie in english at the O2. We saw couples retreat! very entertaining! So yeah, thats about the basics of it all. Oh Getting TO london friday was quite the fiasco. Our flight was canceled due to airline strikes in italy and paris... so we hung out in the pisa airport for... oh about 12 hours. one of the worst travel days of my life! Luckily the weekend made up for it!

For the rest of this week i'm enjoying an empty apartment and doing my own thing for a couple days! It's been just what I need so far at least!

Also, in about 5 days my parents will be here which I'm really looking forward too! Europe semester through westmont will be stationed out of Florence starting next week as well! Looking forward to that too!!

For halloween I'm volunteering at a kids carnival at St.James church. I'm on the decorating committee and will be helping out in some way for the actual carnival! Should be really fun!!

Happy halloween I guess! And happy end of October! Crazy how fast time goes by!

ciao!

here are some of my london photos!

this is clara working at her pub "The Yacht"

Tower Bridge (aka the famous bridge in london)

sign for the real london bridge

platform 9 and 3/4 (for those who don't know anything about harry potter... this is how he gets to hogwarts.... the train through this wall...)

abby road (picture fail -- good one is on hillary's camera!)

hillsong church in london! message sucked but the music was amazing!

hillary and I in front of Harrods! (the famous department store in london -- very expensive!!)

it's fall here! the parks were possibly my favorite part of london!!

the queen wasn't home :-(

natalie and hillary walking through one of london's many parks! gorgeous!

hillary and I with the london eye in the background!

another famous church!.......

typical telephone booth picture! got to have it! (inside is hillary and i)

This is hillary and I after about 10 hours at pisa airport! we were a little bored and going a bit crazy by this point!

summary of rome

So basically Rome was awesome! went for one night and stayed at my first european hostel! It was called the yellow and wasn't too bad for our first hostel experience! I went with Hillary and Rachel and had a pretty great time! Saw all the sights, artwork, etc... but without too much information being forced at us! We probably walked about 8 miles the first day and I was wearing low heeled boots... BAD call! my feet have never been so mad at me in my entire life! Rome was a nice break from Florence! While it is still touristy it is much more open and the weekend we went the weather was pretty much ideal! Below are some pictures of what all we visited and saw! Along with all this we saw the sistine chapel ceiling too. While I know that most of it is not original, it was still amazing. The more frescos I look at the more impressed I am with the process that went into it originally. Painting a ceiling on sketchy wooden scaffolding and only with the light of candles while using one of the most challenging painting techniques available! craziness! But ya, had a great time and would totally recommend visiting Rome! it was definitely worth it!

here are some pictures to check out of where all we went!

me in front of some ancient Roman ruins near the colosseum.

look! it's the colosseum!

a cool church we stumbled across.

the colosseum!

our hostel - "the yellow"

famous painting i learned about in art history (#1)

famous painting i learned about in art history (#1)

famous sculpture thing i learned about in art history

the pieta by Michelangelo! amazing!

St. Peters Basillica

the river! (rachel, hillary, and me)

the ferrari shop

up there is a great lookout point of the city... where i'm standing is the nice shopping street!

throwing a coin in for luck!

LONDON!

hey from london! it's fall breat at my school so Hillary and I went to London -- so nice to speak english for a change!! having a great time though! update soon, i promise!!!

ROME

Went to Rome this weekend! Pictures and update to come soon!!!

siena and san giminiato

Hey all -- so this weekend I actually did quite a bit for a change.

Friday after class I went shopping and walking around town with Hillary. We dressed up so we would actually look somewhat decent enough to not look suspicious when we went into some of the nicer stores here. haha. We found some cute stuff for Hillary though and I managed to not buy anything! Amazing!

Friday night I stayed in and watched a movie which was a nice change of pace from our usual weekend activities of exploring florence till early hours of the morning.

Saturday there was an optional school fieldtrip (like there is everyweekend) but I actually wanted to go to this one so I got up at about 6:30am to get on a bus to siena with a bunch of other students from SACI. First we went to Siena (look it up online if you want to know about it) but it was really nice. It was about an hour drive away from Florence and totally worth the trip. It was similar to Florence in some aspects, but was much hillier, much cleaner, and much less touristy! I had the best cup of hot chocolate i've ever had there in a cafe off the central piazza of the town. (the piazza where the twice annual horse race is held) It was seriously hot chocolate as in it was the consistency of a melted chocolate bar! I can never drink powdered hot chocolate from the states ever again after this. amazing.

In sienna we learned a lot of historical stuff, went into a bunch of churches, saw the face and thumb of st. cathrine (i think that was her name) and yeah.

After Siena we went to San Giminiato (again, look it up if ur curious) but it was probably one of my favorite towns i've been to so far. It was not much of a touristy town compared to other towns i've been to like it. Again in San Giminiato we did the touristy art history tour of the churches and museums etc... Hillary and I ditched out on one of them early and went up to the top of a bell tower with an AMAZING view of the tuscan landscape!!! It was a cold cloudy day that day so at the top we could see the rain falling on various hills in the distance and the colors were so rich and green and beautiful! I love getting out of the city and actually being able to see some life and breath fresh air! I am quickly learning that I don't think I can ever live in a city as much as that has seemed appealing in the past. I need my ocean or mountains or BOTH!

San Giminiato also has the best Gelato place ever! Actually they were voted best in the area or something for the past few years! I got pink grapefruit-champagne flavored with lemon and it was really strange but really good! (one of their signature flavors or whatever so i had to try it!) As the sun was setting in San Giminiato our group all met up and had some pecorino cheese, some sort of meat i didn't eat and some white wine from the area. Kinda fun, but the concept of wine tasting with my school weirded me out. Definitely not normal, hah!

On sunday I slept in most of the morning then Hillary and I ventured to IKEA. That store is crazy here! Even crazier than in the States. Soooo many people were in there it was chaotic and crazy and hillary and I both ended up with that "mall daze" feeling by the end. BUTTT we got stuffed animal elephants and named them Marco and Polo (mine is polo) they are amazing and super soft and sooo cute!

Other than that I haven't been up to much. Terrible weather the last couple days. It is definitely fall around here. Not sure if that is good or bad yet. Guess we'll see! Have some crazy weekends ahead of me! This weekend i'm either going to Rome or to the Chocolate Festival. Either way i can't really go wrong! They both sound pretty amazing!

Hope you are all doing well! Miss everyone lots and as much as I love it here I can't wait to be back home!

A few photos are posted below - Ciao!

view from a bell tower in Siena

best hot chocolate i've ever had - this was the end of it. amazing!

Me in the main piazza in Siena where the horse race runs around! (Piazza Publica i think?)

This is St. Cathrine's tomb or shrine or something weird and creepylike. See that glowing square in the middle? That is her face. Yeah, her face, skin and all with her nun hat on. I do not understand some of the Catholic traditions. Her thumb was also saved in this same building. It was in another case. I decided that i am going to have my thumb saved and handed down from generation to generation once I die. So family -- take note of this please. haha....!

A typical street in any of the Tuscan towns. This one is in Siena -- lots of hills there!

View from the Bell tower in San Giminiato -- check out the rain in the background!

This picture I snuck. We got to see the fresco of Good and Bad government in Siena (very famous in art history if you don't already know about it)

This was in the main church "the duomo" of Siena - The whole room was painted like this! Amazing but a bit intense!

This is my souvenir from Ikea. Actually this elephant AND this blanket! Necessities to this room now that it is getting cold!

it's officially fall!

Hey all -- so not a ton is new still. This weekend though I'm going to Siena, pretending to be rich and dressing up and exploring the designer shops with hillary on friday, and getting a blanket, pillow, and decent sized drinking glass at IKEA this weekend with sofia! Tonight we're all hanging out at a friends house for some good 'ol american games!

Here are a few photos of my past week!

Ciao!

creeper italian who wanted our photo on the duomo steps. but ya, we just hang out on the duomo steps at night. no big deal.

a free form drawing in class last week. basically it started out as scribbles and nothing and we were supposed to create anything out of nothing with no references. Not a huge fan of it, but first thing i've done that is not of the models (aka appropriate for this page).

this is my animal vessel from ceramics. it's a turtle and the shell comes off and can be flipped over for like eating ice cream and surrounding the bowl with cookies. the little turtle hides under the shell for show. hah. I spent like three class periods AFTER this picture was taken smoothing both of them out. they are officially the smoothest, most geometric turtles EVER! hopefully i can take them home :-(

this is another night of hanging out at the duomo steps and people watching, this time with Hillary!

not much is new

yup, thats basically it... not a whole lot is new. Italian is starting to get very difficult and the homework load is increasing a little. Still loving it overall but looking forward to escaping florence for a couple weekend. I have planned to go to london, holland, switzerland, and then the main cities of florence (rome, milan, venice, and siena) Don't think i'll make it to greece or capri on this european adventure but i suppose four countries and all over italy is enough for now ;-) i'm going to work on saving up to backpack ireland, greece, and egypt for the summer after i graduate!

Anyways, to tide you over till something interesting happens here are a couple photos from this weekend at the beach (montorosso)

here is me with a pretty normal sized "truck"

here are hillary and i on a very touristy beach in montorosso but it was gorgeous and such a good beach day so it was totally worth it!

Miss you all!

Ciao! Hope all is well back in the states! :-)