Where to Start?

It's been a crazy week full of adventures worth writing about every day (especially because it's NaBloPoMo a.k.a. National Blog Post Month as I'm reminded every so often) but I've had a hard time convincing myself to blog the past little while. You see, things have become a bit frantic here between oral exams, multiple garlic drawings, a rather large art final, and going a bit crazy trying to soak in all of Italy. I know these are all just excuses, but here's a taste of what I've been up to...

Just pretend that the apple is red...

~ Any guesses as to where we are? We're in Volterra! If you haven't read the Twilight books you are out of luck. There are quite a few dramatic vampire scenes that take place in this wonderful little city. We were there with our Humanities teacher who is Italian and he couldn't figure out why we all knew about the vampire myths from Volterra. We were a bit disappointed though because Stephenie Meyer obviously hasn't actually been to Volterra...no fountain, the piazza is actually quite small, and it just wouldn't have worked out quite like she described. The day was very fitting though. I've never seen such a large, angry cloud come at me so quickly. It was convenient though because if the sun had been out...




~ After Volterra we went to a great city called Sangimignamo. (Don't ask me to say it because ti never comes out right...there are a few too many m, n, g sounds with a few Italian tricks to throw into the bag.) It was raining but when in Italy you just learn to get over that. We ate the World Champion Gelato while here and it was truly amazing. Who knew that they had worldwide gelato competitions? Well, Sangimignamo won. They also had these great signs all over with Italian phrases on them. I'm not sure what the purpose of them was, but they were great. I'm a bit hesitant to translate this because of those reading this that know more Italian than I do, but i'll give it a shot. "Ma tu mi ami?" = "But you love me?"




~ We spent Saturday and Sunday in Florence. We had stake conference in Florence so we decided to sleep there so that we could go. It was all so great I don't even know what to say. In fact I've been sitting here for a while trying to figure out what to say and I'm at a loss for words. Good moments: buying a jacket from a great Italian man-calling America (4:00 AM their time) to get the address for our hostel-having an entire hostel called Emerald House to ourselves-creating gangster names that we now go by-walking into the kitchen to find Erin cleaning up beer that fell out of the fridge-watching Sharlie put parmasan on her pasta like she was having a seizer-hearing incredibly great music in the middle of a piazza-climbing tons of stairs to see a view well worth the climb-wandering around amazing gardens on Sunday afternoon-racing to eat your waffel with gelato faster than the gelato can melt-........