The Beginning

The fox all ready to go (Dad's feet in the background)

I just got to my new apartment and I'm so happy to be able to sit and digest the last 24 hours. It's been a hectic whirlwind, but the second I got off the plane it seemed to be worth it. On my flight from JFK to Rome I sat next to the nicest man. He was from Montenegro, the former Yugoslavia, and was going to visit his parents. The entire flight he couldn't have been more pleasant about helping me with my bags and moving when I needed to get up. We both had connecting flights, so when our plane landed 50 minutes before I was supposed to be on my flight to Florence, we banded together to shove our way through security (he managed to get a closed security line to open up for us) and then again through customs. I managed to make it on my flight, but only because of him.

To my pleasant surprise when I got to my apartment I found out that I am not only am I in a triple, but in a suite that sleeps nine! There is one bed that is empty, so right now it is just eight girls. I honestly couldn't be happier. I think this is a great environment to be in. All of the girls are so nice. Three of the girls are from NYU, one is from Duke and the other three are from a school in North Carolina.

Today we spent the day in orientation. We covered everything there is to know about Florence - how not to get pick-pocketed, expected behavior, emergency numbers, ways to stay healthy, etc. It was then followed by a tour of the neighborhood around the apartment. My building has three floors of NYU girls, 9 girls to a floor. It is directly sandwiched between the Duomo on one side (via Ricasoli dead-ends into it) and the statue of David is on the other side.

After orientation my roommates and myself got our first experience food shopping. Luckily everything has pictures of what it is on it, though with my small vocabulary of food probably I probably could have squeaked by without buying something like cat food thinking it was tuna. I have decided that I'm going to try something new every time I go on a big food shop. Today I bought tiny glass bottles of yogurt with honey. ALSO - I managed to find notebooks with animals on them at the grocery store. "Un mondo di cuccioli" means a world of puppies...yes.