Getting Settled

After getting in to Florence this past Thursday, time has already been going by quickly! It still feels so surreal that I will be in this beautiful city for the next four months. I am currently in my bed in the home-stay which is really cozy after stuffing myself with a home-made Italian meal from my home-stay grandmother. We get home-cooked dinners Monday through Friday which is definitely an amazing thing to look forward to after getting out of school. The food in general has been delicious as expected–especially the gelato of course :D I ate gelato every day for the first 3 days, and am a little embarrassed to say that I have been slacking the past few days. Although pastries are always a great substitute. So far, everything is going really well! I finally met Lapo (the 3 year old grandson of the house) yesterday and he is ridiculously cute but pretty shy. Him and his mother live attached to our home but usually don't really come out of their section of the house so I haven't talked to them much/ haven't even met the mother yet. But the grandmother is the one who cooks for us and eats dinner with us every night and she is really nice, and we have broken conversations in Italian, occasionally resorting to the handy dandy Oxford Italian-English dictionary. Orientation started this week which consists of random lectures/typical orientation stuff and intensive Italian every day for about 3.5 hours... which sounds pretty terrible in terms of the Italian part but it isn't so bad yet at least. And we are currently making our own sketchbooks to use over the semester which I am really excited about! Bookbinding has always seemed awesome but I have never done it so it is really neat to learn the process. Plus, it is just cool in general to be able to create your own sketchbook with your own hands. Well, it is really hard to summarize everything I have done in the past four days because the first weekend in particular we walked ALL over the place, but here is a list of some highlights with pictures !

first gelato- coffee flavored, of course

overlooking the heart of the city

shot of the river on the way back from school

Ponte Vecchio (super old and awesome bridge)

the Duomo!

There are way more pictures on facebook but here are some of my favorites so far! And hopefully I will be able to write more consistently now so I don't have to attempt to recap multiple days in a row! 

And I know that some of you in particular have been asking me about my address here for mailing, so here it is...

Raina Koller

c/o Washington University/SRISA

Via San Gallo, 53R

50129 Firenze, Italy