De' Medici.

Ciao Tutti!

Well, it certainly has been an adventurous few days.

Thursday I had my art history class, which is always exciting.

I would tell the story in order in which it occurred, but I'm just too excited to hold it in!

At the end of my art history class my professor finally handed back our midterms from before Spring Break. As he handed me mine test back he said "So close. It honestly pained me to do it, but i had to." I got a 99.5/100!! I got one 1/2 point question wrong. I'm still very excited about my score. Maybe I will become a tour guide after all? You never know!

So back to class- this week we went to the Basilica of San Lorenzo as well as the Medici Chapels.

The Medici family was one of the wealthiest families in Florence, and at one point they were the third wealthiest family in all of Europe. They made their money in banking and were even the bank for the Papacy in their time. I won't go into all of the history of their family, (I will probably go more into that Monday, since we're reading a book about them for my Lit. class) but they were really extremely powerful. Here are just a few examples:

-When the Council to try and reconcile the differences between the East and West religions was held in 1439 in Florence, it was hosted by the Medici.

-Many of the Medici were buried in sarcophagi that were made of porphyry, which is a purple granite, that is now extinct, and previously only available to emperors.

-The city of Florence went to the Medici to fund their war against Milan, which would have been close to 60 million dollars in today's currency.

Yeah, they were rich and powerful.

In many famous paintings from that time you may see orange trees that are in the background. This often shows that the patron of the painting was the Medici family. The coat of arms of the family has a shield with 5 to 8 red spheres. Medici is the plural of medico, meaning doctor, and oranges used to be called "mela medica" meaning medical apple. Even in the 1400s they knew the medicinal properties of the orange. And seeing as blood oranges are indigenous to Italy, it has been concluded that that is where they took their coat of arms from.

These are some of the oranges that are still on the land that the Medici owned.

For lunch on Thursday I decided to try something a little new on my panino. I had my usual turkey and salame with lettuce, and then I had dried tomatoes, philadelphia, and pesto. The philadelphia and pesto went together really well! It was definitely a success.

Then I treated myself to a little chocolate for doing well on my exam! I got fondant chocolate with whole hazelnuts. It was some of the best chocolate! I may sacrifice my daily coke to buy some chocolate instead.

At dinner that night I branched out and tried a new cheese. When I asked what it was they had a fun time explaining that it was what it was! (I was trying to figure out what the equivalent would be in the U.S.) Finally after a little searching online I figured it was a type of brie, but much much better than a normal brie.

For dessert I got TIRAMISU! Yep, that whole pan, just for me! Okay, not really. But I do think I ate most of it. I had two pieces that night, one for breakfast today and another for lunch. :) My mom makes amazing tiramisu! It was delicious.

Then after dinner I came back into my room to find this....Stella with Pooh. It was strange, to say the least, but quite funny.

This is the Basilica of San Lorenzo. It has kind of an ugly exterior, but the inside is very beautiful, but quite simple, since it is the first Renaissance style church, it has little decoration.

It was also the first Christian church to be built in Florence. (This is the third version of it.)

Normally I don't have Italian class on Thursdays, but we had a make up class for a holiday that we have at a later point in the semester. To make class a little more enjoyable we went to the Boboli Gardens and talked about some of the sculptures in Italian. It was an absolute beautiful day out. The sun was shining, the grass is green, and it was 60 degrees.

As you can see in this picture, I had my coat off! :)

Inside the Boboli Gardens, next to the Pitti Palace is the old grotto. Which as you can see from the stalagmites, is quite old.

Apparently this is some famous statue, but we all just took pictures of it because it was funny.

Yesterday, we had our weekly family dinner at one of the apartments. There were only 10 of us in town this weekend, but we had a lot of fun. There was only one down side to yesterday, the bus system was on a 24 hour strike. They don't actually strike the entire 24 hours though. The buses ran from 6 am to 9:15 am and then 11:30 am to3 pm. In Italy there are quite a lot of strikes, but they aren't a bad thing like in the U.S. The different unions or groups strike not because there is a problem (with pay or working conditions) but as a reminder to the city and those in charge. It's a reminder of "hey, we're important, you need us, this is what things would be like without us if you screw us over and we go on a strike an actual, long term strike." It really is quite genius. And, while it may seem a bit inconvenient, it serves its purpose, and they always announce the strikes well in advance so that you can plan ahead. For instance, I knew about the bus strike at least a week before.

However, because the buses would not be running I planned my day that I would leave in the afternoon around 2 to head over to my friends apartment and then I would just sleep at her place for the night and take the bus back home the next morning.

We had a delicious meal for dinner. We all slaved away all day.

We started cooking around 2:30 and everything was finally ready around 7.

In case any of you were wondering, this is how you make egg rolls!

So I feel like I need to preface the next few photos. There 8 girls that live in 2 apartments that are on the same street in our program. Despite being in different apartments, the way their staircases are and the rooms are laid out, their apartments are actually right on top of each other. Its very confusing. So, because we all had so much to cook a few went to cook in the other apartment that was empty. After the two people went to the other apartment to cook they called us saying they forgot their bottle of wine to cook with and they didn't want to come back to get it. Despite the apartments being on top of each other you have to go down over 100 stairs, go outside, and then back up about another 100 to get from one apartment to the other. So, seeing as the apartments are right over each other, we decided to lower the wine bottle to them, through the window.

They grabbed a bed sheet to catch it- just in case.

Then we wrapped the bottle up in a dish cloth, tied it to another dishcloth...

and then tied that to a bath towel to make it long enough to reach. It was a success!

For the family dinner I made our famous homemade pizza (I made 2 this size). It was absolutely delicious, and possibly even better than normal because I used fresh ingredients from Italy! :)

We also had a mac and cheese bake,

Our homemade egg rolls,

and caramelized pears.

Everything was delicious. Except for the gin that they made me try. If any of you drink that, I don't know how you do it. I felt like I was drinking a Christmas tree. Other than that though, it was wonderful.

Today I worked on some homework and relaxed a little bit.

Megan was barking at some other dogs in the neighborhood. I felt like it was a 101 Dalmatians moment.

And then later Megan decided she was sick of being left out of snuggling with me and Stella, so she hopped right on up and joined in. I really had very little space left for me on my own bed. Silly animals!

Well that is all for now. A dopo!

E. Giulia