train – Small things.

We’re living dog days here in Florence…each day feels like 7. This past week has been another full but good one, and I’m starting to feel like Florence is home. Last week I started classes. Which feels only half real, considering I only have class 3 days a week, and many of them are jam packed with field trips to museums, palaces, and factories.

I’m taking 5 classes:

1. Italian. My professor, Irene, is the bomb. She’s a Florence-native and full of tips for places to check out and things to see. Italian is really confusing though. My mind always translates things to Spanish…not Italian. I’ve almost said Hola many a time.

2. History of Italian Fashion. Very lecture-based, buuuutttt it’s interesting to learn about the brands that I see everyday walking to class. Whenever I’m navigating my way to that side of the city I have to remember “turn right at Max Mara,” “left at Louis Vuitton,” “across the street from Armani here.” It’s basically just like Ames.

3. Visual Merchandising. We had to build this paper box thing the first day of class, and it was so hard??!!! I don’t want to talk about it.

4. Fashion Consumer Behavior. The material is things I’ve heard a million times, but my professor rules and we always get a break in the middle of lecture to go buy a cappuccino or candy bar. So…

5. Lifestyles in Renaissance Florence. This is the best. My professor, Marcello Bellini, is the happiest most adorable old man I’ver ever met. He loves Florence and loves teaching us things. Today we had an hour of lecture about 3 influential Florentine families and then an hour of walking around to each of those families palaces. It’s amazing being in a class where all the things I’m learning are out the window and down the street.

Ok so there was class last week. And lots of running around buying books and getting lost and getting found and buying groceries and getting lost and getting found.

On Thursday my roommates and I hopped on a train to Rome to visit friends studying there. We wandered the city, seeing the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Colosseum, and gelato shops. Plus the “cat sanctuary.” Unsettling. We went to the beach on Saturday. I felt like the beach would be just a skip and a hop away, but it was a little more of a trek. It took two tram rides, two subway rides, two train rides, and 80 minutes of walking in this semi-sketchy scorching hot town. And we almost missed our train back from Anzzio to Roma because we were washing the sand and sweat off our faces in this ghetto bathroom/outhouse thing behind the “train station.” But the water was amazing, laying out felt too good, and it was a million percent with it. On the train ride home as I was dirty and sandy, drinking a Peroni beer, and blasting Yeezy’s “The College Dropout” I simultaneously felt like I had hit a new low point and also that I was fulfilling a long lost high school dream I never knew I had and felt hella good.

We went to Rome Baptist Church on Sunday, which ended up being AMAZING and teaching me about generosity. Which just haaaappened to be what I had been praying over last week. Imagine that.

Visiting Rome was so much fun and made the weekend a blast and a half. But I have to admit I’m happy to be back in Florence and settled in my apartment. It’s currently thunder storming outside, I have a french press full of coffee, and I have a free day tomorrow. So very content. This weekend I’ll be staying in Florence, but have fun things to look forward to. Updates next week. Thanks for your prayers and messages and being so fly. Miss all you friends so much.