Friday, January 11, 2008

If The Prime Minister Of Italy Wanted To See Me Naked...He Could

And by that I mean, the Prime Minister of Italy is my neighbor. Yes my neighbor. I can see where he works, his dining room is quite nice and he has orange trees in his front yard.  By the end of the semester, I will get an orange from him.  My other neighbor is the Duomo. Yeah you know...not some hot italian boy...no...THE DUOMO...the cathedral of Florence, the symbol of Florence (is my neighbor!).  Not only is the view unbelievable my apartment wins five stars in my book.  The gorilla and I share a comfortable bed room (the bedroom that looks over the Duomo...did I mention that) The apartment is a very old Italian loft with three bedrooms where (the Freakies aka our other roommates live) Imagine a two story loft with a dining room table that seats 8, a kitchen (in a different room) fully equipped with a coffee pot, pots, pans, and a wide variety of American cups that I believe came from old McDonalds happy meals...keep imagining because it only gets better... take a walk up the spiral staircase to our very own "luogo di partito" (aka the party place) where there is an indoor lounge but within just a few steps stands a glass door that leads to a patio that is bigger than a. my dining room at home b. the chi-o tv room or c. for all others who can't make this connection...just think big and beautiful.  I hope your imagination is now going wild because that is exactly what this apartment is like...wildly amazing.  Minus the people living in my apartment...it is truly spectacular (for more information please contact me via Skype and I shall explain them). Oh and pictures are coming soon!  The past two days have been extremely busy with different orientations for my program and the art school and I have not had a lot of time to explore (but I did finally see the "fake" David today....might I add he has very nice cheeks) At one of the orientations we had a police officer come speak to us about safety, and laws...and yada yada BUT I did learn what the"official" Italian sport was....and you might be thinking futbal...BUT NO...guess again...WOMEN! He was not kidding about that one at all, they are everywhere.  Tonight the Art School took us (40 kids in all) out to dinner at the Uffizi Center for a 5 course meal...and when I mean 5 courses I also mean 5 hours as well.  But it was so nice to finally get to meet other students in the Art School.  We drank wine, ate bruschetta, a little pasta, salami, and ended the meal with the best tarmisu! Delizioso! The Gorilla and I love it here and we can't wait for our visitors and come stay.  Lets just say that the gorilla will never allow me to open the door past a certain hour of the night (because it leads to bad things like pink pasta wine, water bags, war zones and other not so good things...moral of the story, don't walk up five flights of stairs after a night out and expect for good things to happen) The Gorilla and I are trying very hard to learn Italian or speak in some other accent to avoid looking too much like Americans. Tonight the Gorilla told some guy she was from Ethiopia (now I am not sure how good of an idea that was, but the man was from Senegal, so he really liked her..but now that I think about it...it sounded like she was using a Russian mixed with Italian accent..hey we are trying!) I must go to bed now because it is very late and I have wine tasting tomorrow.  I will let you know how it goes! Dad you would love this! Thank you Ji and Ji for letting me live here, the only problem is...I may never return! 
Ciao! 
P.S. Camp Chi connections are incredible. Paul Chodosh lives down the street and Max ("I can't remember his last name") who was on my PNW trip in 8th grade, who I haven't seen since 8th grade just happens to be in all of my classes!