Tourist Attractions: best places in Florence, best day of Italy!

Today I woke up with a sore throat. This was so upsetting because I have been so sick the last week before Spring Break. And I mean sick. Like 102 temperatures were normal for me. I was a little worried this morning that I was going to slip back to what I had before, but I pushed through the day and ended up having (possibly) the best day that I've had so far!

We got to sleep in until 9 am, which was so amazing. What was even more amazing is the fact that after our daily morning meeting was done, I went back to bed until lunch! With about a week worth of sleep deprivation before this trip started, and then between the jet lag and late late nights each night, taking a nap was so beautiful.

After lunch Gabrielle and I rode into Florence to go start our story for the day. Kim Kokernot came with us, for camaraderie. Our story today was to feature the top five parts of Florence- one place for each category: attraction, view, shopping, church and restaurant/gelato place. It was great because we wanted to see some of the stuff around Florence while we were here as well.

We went into the courtyard and saw all the statues and the (fake) David. The real David is in the Galleria dell' Accademia, but you need tickets to reserve your spot way in advance which we just don't have time for unfortunately. I mean, who comes to Italy, to FLORENCE and doesn't go see the David?!???

During a quick visit to the market, I embarrassed myself by saying "hola" to a merchant that said "hello" in English to us. I just made a face like 'oops, what do I do now?' laughed and walked away. Then we jumped on the tram and bus and came back for a delicious dinner of chicken tortellini soup and chicken, with ice cream for dessert. We're so spoiled.

Except for our buildings and artwork! And by "our" I mean America. As we were walking around the whole city we noticed that even the lamposts are decorated with such exquisite artwork and detail. In America we have to go into closed off buildings with locked up cases to see what a few, rare people created out of the creativity of their minds. In Italy, however, the arts are in the streets. It is living art. I would now like to quote the great Kim Kokernot, "Get with it, America!" Agreed.

And I decided that I think I'll move here to Italy; I don't want to go home! Kim, Gabrielle and I decided we're going to move and start our own franchise of Target, which will include a gelato place inside. Sounds like the perfect life. :)

"Everything is Beautiful"

Tonight at church Dr. Miller shared a few of his thoughts. The only word he could use to describe what we were seeing and experiencing here in Italy: beautiful. As I sat there, thinking about all the work that had to be done back at the college later that night, I realized he was right. Today was filled with just that: beauty.

This morning we went to church with the Italians. Singing songs in that beautiful church in the beautiful Italian language with beautiful-spirited people was so wonderful. Church lasted about two hours, though, and it was a little hard to sit through the parts where there were long monologues in Italian and I just heard gibberish. But it was beautiful gibberish! We would sing a few songs in Italian and then a few in English. It was really cool because we knew the tunes and the words in English to the song, so we could easily figure out what was being said.

After church there was a (beautifullllll) potluck where we were served "fat-kid" bread, pasta, meats and desserts. We stayed all the way until 3 pm! That...is... ridiculous. Church started at 10:30 am. But it was really interesting eating lunch with Nichola, aka Nick, the Albanian who lived in Italy for 3 years. I'd have to say this morning's church service was probably the best I've been to in a really long time.

After our bellies were full of yummy Italian food and real tiramisu, we went to the train station to buy our tickets for our free travel day- Friday! A bunch of us are going to Rome for the day. I'm so excited! However, I haven't really had time to process any time off because we've been so busy and stressed, trying to get everything done. We're in Italy though! Beautiful, beautiful Italy. When I start finding myself stressing, I think back to the fact that I am in my land of my ancestors and am learning so much about this culture.

Gabrielle and I went to the Duomo today after we bought our tickets, and did a feature story on the cathedral. We went inside only to find out the dome is closed on Sundays, which was disappointing, but we still enjoyed the beautiful artistic artwork and intricate details.

We walked around a little bit finding items for friends and family after we got our footage. We got lost and wandered in a giant circle twice, however, before we found our way back through the market to the train station. We took the tram and two buses to get to the Villa for dinner.

And can I just say that I love eating the authentic Italian cuisine that the cooks make the HUF students twice a day? They are so spoiled. But the joke is on them.. we get to eat Harding caf food every day... sometimes even multiple times a day!

Then it was time for devo. We went downstairs to sing and have Dr. Miller share his beautiful devotional thoughts. Dr. Hopper and Dr. Shock even joined us. The singing... just filled the whole basement with joyful sound. It made me feel so connected with everyone, especially the HUF students.

Then it was time to go back and work on stories at the college. While on our way there, we stopped to pick up Sarah Kyle and Grant Sloan. And it was beautiful.

Tomorrow is a whole 'nother day, which is weird to say because it's past 2:30 in the morning and there are most definitely six of us still awake in just this room, struggling to get all our work done. The edification, motivation, procrastination.... inspiration, creating memories(ation) in this room is... guess what? Beautiful.

I can't wait to see what the rest of this week is going to bring. I'm in ITALY! I'm so blessed to be here and I'm so excited to get to know more people. I am experiencing a once in a lifetime trip with some of the coolest people in the communication department. Who am I kidding? I'm with some of the coolest people at HARDING. :)

No phone, no map, no speakie Italian.

Today the students reporting for the Link were allowed the marvelous grace by our wonderful professor Dr. Jim Miller to wander freely and as long as we finished our required news story of the day, as long as we didn't "bother him with minor details." Since Stephen Goodale and I had already shot our interview footage of the Mayor of Economy of Scandicci, we decided to take a trip with Sarah Kyle into Florence.

After eating a nice, authentic Italian meal, (at the train station food court) we decided to go to the market to see if we could find souvenirs for friends and family back home. However, while taking pictures of the beautiful churches, I had dropped my wallet on a grate of metal and lost a few euro and various cents down the random metal death monster in....not even kidding....the middle of a grass field. Why on earth that grate was placed there- I have no clue! Unfortunately, a few of my euro met their demise. While I was awkwardly chasing the papers that were blowing in the wind, a man with a sparkly hat came over and asked us for some spare change.

Begging is not uncommon here- I've been here for just over 24 hours and I have already had about five or 6 people ask for money. However, he was different. He spoke ENGLISH, which excited me to the ends of the earth. He spoke in an Irish accent, which also thrilled me. When he laughed we were shocked he spoke English, he explained although he was from Ireland, he had lived in America for three months. We started talking about what he thought of the land of the free and also what he thought of Italy and why he left Ireland. I decided to record an interview with him, and he gave me some really good insight! It will be posted on theLink very soon. (Check out thelink.harding.edu every day for new stories about Italy!)

After we exchanged stories about our lives, (he visited New Hampshire while he was in America, where I'm from!) we went across the street to a few vendors to look at what they were selling. I asked Sarah for advice on a few items, and when I turned around one last time, her and Stephen were completely gone. Nowhere to be seen, I walked up and down the street a few times looking for a redhead in a football Saints hat and weirdly enough, another red(ish)head in glasses. No redheads were to be seen; all looked pretty Italian to me- olive skin, dark hair, gibberish coming from their mouths.. yup. All were Italian.

No working phone. No map. No knowledge of Italian besides the (severely) broken Italian I know... not kidding. You probably know as much as I do. Anyway, after freaking out for about two minutes, I had to consciously remind myself that I had a good head on my shoulders and I was going to make it back. Eventually. Somehow. I was confident. I knew to take the number 16 bus back to Scandicci to the college. Or was it 27..? Should I take the tram in instead of the bus..? Okay, so I wasn't too confident on how I was going to get back, but I can honestly say I knew I'd get back before curfew at 12 tonight.

Since I knew this, I figured I was not going to freak out and worry, but instead enjoy my time alone in a foreign country! I was actually really excited. I did a little bit of shopping and the touristy things. I kept a video blog the entire time of my excursions. People stared at me funny when I did that and I can certainly understand why. I stuck out like a sore thumb. (Americans kind of stick out in a place like this, which is evident by all the times we have been hit on and the catcalls to the blondes of the group. They don't have those there.) Aaaanyway, people could tell I was completely out of my element, which was even more so reiterated by the fact I was speaking English to a camera every time something eventful in my life was worth documenting. Oh well, I'm in a foreign country and I really don't care what people have to say about "those Americans" and "the tourists." You can definitely tell when they're talking about you; they can't really hide it- the Italian word for 'American' is 'Americano.' Like I said, not too stealthy.

It only took about six hours, a tram, two different bus lines, about eight extremely (embarrassing I'm sure) broken-Italian conversations with locals, much laughter from spectators, a map from random Americans headed to a soccer (oops! football!) game, kindly police officers, a trip out of Florence, (then back into, then out of again...) a sad attempt at conversing with a bus officer and much relief to find the "ditchees" with their paisley ties (see Stephen Goodale's blog for an explanation of the paisley ties) to get me home.

And I made it! Finally. All in all, my day was amazing. With the situation I was in, it was the perfect way it could have ended up. I had a blast exploring by myself, and I feel so much more confident in my skills of conversing, map reading and awkward pantomiming. I'd say let's do it again, but I'm not sure I can handle the stress.

Click to see my video blog of my adventures in Florence.

It begins.

I can't believe I'm in Italy! I have never been out of the States, except for the Bahamas. When I heard one leg of the flight to Florence, Italy, was going to be nine hours, I was not so sure how I felt about that! And for good reason too: flying to Italy was certainly an ordeal. At the first airport Penny Cronk got stopped by security because she had a knife in her backpack from her last trip. See Abby Kellett's blog for the complete story on that situation. In the second airport, our plane landed about 20 minutes late. However, we walked by about five men that were wearing 2010 Olympic jackets! It was so exciting. But we were late, so we couldn't stop and stare like the touristy Americans we are. We had to go through passport control which led us outside security, which is where everyone got split up. Apparently going to the left out of passport control was the wrong choice, because out of 22 of us, six went downstairs while the rest got stopped by TSA and were told to go another way. The separated six had to stand in line to go back through security downstairs, and with no phone to contact anyone and a plane that was supposed to leave in five minutes, we just headed on to the gate in hopes of not having to wait for the next plane into florence. Luckily, all of us ended up meeting up at the gate, Lufthansa had the airplane wait for us and we took off only 45 minutes after scheduled departure time. Soon enough, we touched down in Italy, where it was freezing cold, gray and lightly raining.

Right away we got to work. We had a quick tour of where we were staying and left within ten minutes to head up to the villa where we saw all the HUF students who we haven't seen all semester, and that was wonderful. It was really good to see friends there, and get to talking with some new students. It's kind of surreal for me to be at the villa with the students because I had signed up to be there this semester, but switched to go to Australia in the fall. If I hadn't switched, I would be living at that villa right now, laughing and having inside jokes with those people we're featuring in stories. It's interesting, to say the least.

Later we took about a 30-45 minute bus into Florence to explore. We saw the Duomo and all its glory. It is so beautiful- it's literally breathtaking. I had to just stop when I saw it. Others who had seen it previously kept walking, and I just had to stop and stare. The architecture and art here is something completely unamerican. Pictures certainly do not do anything justice whatsoever. It's definitely something you have to see first hand!

Anyway, last night we went to Gallos pizzeria. The pizza here has super thin crust- almost as thin as a sheet of paper. See the restaurant review to learn about Gallos and its specialty pizzas!

After that, we all came back to the Bible college where we are staying and just crashed. I had only got two hours of sleep the night previous to the day we started our crazy adventure and started (yes, STARTED) packing at 3 am that morning. The professors wouldn't let us sleep at all yesterday in hopes that if we stayed up we would beat jet lag and just sleep through the night and not be tired. And I was surprised to say that it worked! The time difference is 7 hours- so although it is only 1:30 pm central time right now, we are about to eat dinner and write a few stories before we go to bed. That still blows my mind, and it still blows my mind we're in Italy!

More to come about various adventures later!