Finally feeling settled in...

I have now been in Florence for a month and a half and life is starting to take on a real routine. I have been busy as a bee with school, between teaching and private tutoring. I've also been giving English lessons and having a language exchange of my own, so I pretty much spend the majority of my days teaching. Good thing I enjoy what I do! What has really made me feel like a resident of Florence is forming friendships in the city. This weekend I had two nights of guests at my apartment, drinks on Saturday night and a wonderful dinner party on Sunday. You would not believe the feast that my friend Charlie cooked last night! Chicken and pasta with all these fancy home-made sauces, wine a plenty, bread, cheese, roasted chestnuts, fresh Italian olives, etc. Buon appettito per noi! The dinner party at my place last night totally reminded me of all the ROML potlucks my friends at Chapel Hill and I have had over the past two years. I can't wait to have more nights filled with friends, good food, and good wine.
Also, my wonderful boyfriend Andy arrived in Florence this week! It is such a relief to have him here safe and sound with me. I am so excited to no longer have to skype with him in the middle of the night and to have someone to hang out with when I come home from work. I definitely feel more settled with my boo now, doing normal everyday things like going to the Billa to pick up bread or searching for guitars and shoes for Andy. I'm definitely content with my life at the moment and can't wait for all the upcoming adventures with friends and loved ones coming up this month!

Creepin', Spanish Style

This past weekend I made my first trip outside of Italy to Sevilla, Spain to visit my UNC friends. I was so excited to be with my people, especially for the reunion of "Kate, Allie, Barcelona". So you make think that it would be very easy to just fly from Florence to Sevilla. Wrong. Okay, so of course I flew Ryan Air (better known as the Ryan Scare). Ryan Air is the most famous of the European budget airlines, and it re-defines the word ghetto. Ryan Air only flies out of certain airports, so I had to get to Bologna, which is normally only 45 minutes away. Since my flight left at 6:30 AM though, I was forced to take a weird German train from Florence at 9:45 Thursday night to Bologna, then take an airport shuttle at 11:30, then spend the night "sleeping" in metal chairs. I maybe slept one hour and then of course was approached by a creeper who decided it was time for a chat at 3:30 in the morning. This creeper happened to be Albanian and was named Endri. He was a pharmacy student at the University of Parma and was also flying to Sevilla to visit some of his friends on erasmus there. He was a very nice creeper, buying me a coffee and trying to buy me breakfast too (I said 4 AM was too early), but still had a bit of that Eastern European skeeze about him. So Endri actually helped me out a lot in the airport and saved me a seat on the flight since of course Ryan Air doesn't assign seats and Italians don't know how to form an orderly line, so they run in mobs onto the plane. I attempted to sleep, but Ryan Air made that impossible because they made announcements every five minutes about what their attendants were going to be selling in the aisles, each announcement being said in English, Spanish, and Italian. Did you ever need an International SIM card? Lottery tickets? Discount cigarettes? A body temperature regulating watch from Israel? Ryan Air can sell you all that and more! Needless to say, the on flight marketplace kept me awake for the entire flight.
Tank goodness for my amiga Elena! She was kind enough to pick me up from the airport in her car and to let me sleep in her apartment until the rest of our friends got off of work. I truly appreciate all the hospitality she showed me. After a 2 hour power nap I was reunited with my ROML friends Allie and Megan, who are both working in Spain like I am in Italy. We had a delicious lunch of tapas and went to The Factory, a Spanish Outlet Mall (my idea of heaven). That night we had a giant Spanish dinner and ventured off to an outdoor disco. What an experience! Imagine not leaving the apartment until 2:30 in the morning, arriving at a super poppin' disco, dancing the night away to a bit of great music and a lot of really bad techno, and watching Spaniards creep on each other. I knew no one would believe that I went to a place like this (accept if you remember my secret disco stories from Perugia) so I decided to document the night. I took on the role of paparazza and photographed pretty much every creeper within my line of sight. This seemed like a good idea at first, except when some straight creepin' gay men saw me trying to document their grinding on each other and insisted that I take a real picture of them and post it on tuenti. After that my career of event photographer ended. We ended up staying out until after 6 in the morning (don't know how I was still awake).
Saturday we went to this cool international festival where of course we ate Mexican food (the only food I ever really crave in Italy, besides Chik-fil-a). We also just walked around Sevilla, ate more tapas, and saw a Flamenco show at La Carboneria. Sadly though, I had to leave early the next day.
Thanks to all my Sevilla friends, Allie, José, Megan, Elena, and Anamari! I had a fabulous time and hope you all come visit me soon in Florence!