Returning to the Motherland: Dormire

Buon pomeriggio tutti!
Good Afternoon everyone!

Another day in Florence has come and gone. And this may sound crazy, but I'm happy today is over, but only for one reason. So I can sleep! I did not sleep very well last night (my mind was trying to think in Italian so I didn't get into a deep sleep) so I was VERY tired when I woke up at 6:30am.
My first class for today was at 09:00 (Consumerism) so I left for school a little after 08:00. Unfortunately it was rainy and overcast this morning, so I did not have any nice views to photograph. (Since today's a little light on photographs I'm throwing in some from a few days ago.)

My consumerism class went pretty well, besides the struggle to a) stay awake and b) stay warm. Granted, it is much warmer here than where all of you are, but today was still pretty chilly compared to the last few days that we've had. So, my class was 3 hours, thus the struggle to stay awake. Luckily we took a break half way through, at which point I ate a banana that helped wake me up a bit. I don't remember the exact number of people in that class, but there were about 13 or 14 of us. I counted, but the number has since escaped my memory.

After class, 6 of us walked around the block to a pizzeria (Gusta Pizza) for lunch. They had 7 or 8 different types of pizza that you could order and seeing that the pizzeria was right around the corner from school, I figured I'd be going there quite a few times over the next few months. Therefore, I decided to start with the first pizza for today. (The Marinara)

The Marinara pizza. Obviously it had marinara on it, as well as basil and garlic. It was 4,50 euro and I ate the WHOLE THING! It was a decent size, but I was starving, it was delicious, and I don't eat dinner until 8pm, so I have no shame!!

After lunch we walked to the north of the city to see the train station. Everyone wanted to scope it out so we knew where it was and what it looked like for when we take trips to other places during the semester.
After looking around we headed back to the other side of the river where school is. By the time we reached the school it was about 13:45 (1:45pm) and we still had 2 hours to kill before class started. (Because I live so far away, it doesn't really pay to head home just to come back.) We all plopped down in the computer lab of the school. ( I was sitting on the couch.) At this point there were 6 of us in the room. Being that the couch felt good and I was very tired, I fell asleep. Next thing I know it was 15:10 (3:10) and almost everyone from my program was in the computer lab. As far as I know, I wasn't snoring! The nap was much needed! At 15:30 I had my Italian class. Having finished 1004 (the 4th semester) and passed my language proficiency exam in Italian I am in the advanced class. Myself and one other girl are in the advanced level, and so we take class with the 1004 students (there are 5) and we just have different homework and tests. So altogether there are 7 people in my Italian class. Language classes are usually smaller anyway, but there is usually about 25-35 people in them at Minnesota. I'm sure we will all be speaking very well by the end of the semester with such one on one contact being available. During class we just reviewed some of the tenses a little bit, to get us all back into the technical things, nothing to exciting to note about the class so far. However, during class, something unrelated but exciting did happen. It started to hail!!!
It was really loud and only when class was over could we really tell how big they were.

This is one of the cars that had hail on it. The hail pieces were probably about the size of .5 cubic inches. (About as big as a pinky fingernail.)

Tonight when I got home, I had some reading to do for one of my classes, so I worked on that until dinner. The last few days my cat has been coming into my room and curling up in my lap while I work. She likes to cuddle like that, but doesn't want to be pet. She's goofy.

I had full course dinner again tonight! Pasta, fried chicken, green beans, and some bread. After dinner my host mother told me she bought asiago for me at the store today! (Asiago cheese is my favorite!!)

This is the BIG piece of asiago. It was bigger than my hand and only cost 3 euro! (Things are so much cheaper when they don't have to be imported. Cheese from Italy is cheap, but Coca-Cola is expensive! A can of coke is usually 2,50 euro.)

After dinner my host mother pulled out a world atlas book. She wanted to see where Wisconsin is. I showed her where Kenosha was and then where my school was in Minnesota. She was shocked when I told her that it was 7 hours between them by car. Then they showed me the map of Italy and pointed out how far you can go in the country in 7 hours. (Almost the entire length of the country!)