Hello from Florence!

I am head over heals (scratch that, heels don't mix well with cobblestone) in love with Florence… and its people… and its art… and its food… and even the strangely green Arno river. However, before I get going, here’s a little background about me. It has been almost one week since I arrived here with my roommate from Merrimack, Rebecca. Both of our majors are Art History, and I have a second major in Finance. I play on the women’s soccer team at Merrimack, where I have AMAZING teammates that I already miss very much. Other than school and soccer, I ride horses professionally and get to work for my mom, who trains horses and teaches riding lessens. She keeps telling me how very jealous she is of my adventure abroad, and I almost feel bad, until I remember she’s spending this winter in Florida. Anyways, there’s a little about me, but now: FIRENZE.

Becca and I are living together with three other girls. Our apartment is about ten big steps away from the Uffizi Gallery and the Bargello Museum! We live on the fourth floor (which really means the fifth in Italy). No need for a Stairmaster these days. In Florence we walk everywhere and the novelty has yet to wear off. The city is old and the streets winding. When you don’t know where you are (which seems to be a lot of the time), just look for Brunelleschi’s dome that covers the great Duomo, the best-known landmark in Florence. If I’m trying to get home, I just look for the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio (outside which the original David once stood) and walk to it. The building that is the Palazzo Vecchio, literally meaning “old palace” in Italian, shares the Piazza della Signoria with the Uffizi Gallery. Our street is directly on the backside of where these two buildings meet.

Today (Monday) is our first day of classes. I just had Italian and it was amazing. The professor is so fun and high energy and there are only eight of us in the class. I think I’ll be able to pick up the language really fast in this type of learning environment. Other than Italian, I’m taking a class on Michelangelo, a class on 19th century art, and a class on the chemistry behind art restoration and conservation. Finally, I’m interviewing for an internship in a Florentine museum, for which I’ll get class credit if I’m accepted.

This weekend Becca and I are going to Interlaken, Switzerland. Last Friday, we did a sort of pub-crawl thing and I won this trip and a canyon-jumping excursion, which apparently is only legal in Interlaken and somewhere in New Zealand. It’s sort of like bungee jumping, but instead of bouncing back up, you jump down and sort of swing across a very deep canyon. Can’t wait!

Well, that’s about all for now!

A doppo!
Lindsey