Un Viaggio Italiano: Una Settimana!

I am trying to do this thing where every one of my blog titles are in Italian and somehow coordinate with what I am about to talk about, and I am doing this through my Italian translator online. So if they don't make much sense, my bad! This blog title says "One week!"...meaning it has been one week since I have been here. I wanted to say something like "One week down!" but the translator took it too literally.

Anyways, ONE WEEK DOWN! It honestly feels like I have been here for forever though. My first week of classes went extremely well. My Italian class is fun, my Lost Symbols/Secret Codes class is fascinating, and my Italian Renaissance Art/Michelangelo class is going to be really in depth and enlightening. I am going to be writing a good amount of research papers and oral presentations for these classes, but it'll be worth it for sure! I was in International Art Business, but I just didn't like it and felt like it was going to be a waste of time, as I already took art business at KU. Luckily, I was fortunate to be able to switch into this course called "Italian Culture: Pairing Food and Wine." The class involves cooking, learning Italian recipes, and which foods go with which wines. It counts for credit at KU (Geography 547 - Wines around the World! hahaha...) and I am super excited to start it!

This past week my roommates and I had a terrible scare: bed bugs. I woke up Tuesday morning just to find out that I had bites all over my body, and they itched. Some of them looked massive, and it seriously scared me. We were told to me on the lookout for bed bugs, which are nasty little bugs that bite you in your sleep. I had no idea these were so serious until I contacted my advisor here and she wanted to see me immediately. Our school paid for a professional to come inspect our place, and luckily we didn't have them! I just have a ton of mosquito bites from leaving my window open at night. And now, they are mostly gone! :)

Thoughts on Italians:
1. Old Italians (old men/women) are the cutest people in the world.
2. Italian children are extremely cute.
3. Most of them smell terrible.
4. I don't understand how women here wear heels.
5. Most of them are nice. It's sad how rude they can be to Americans (me mostly) though.
6. If you say something wrong in Italian, THEY WILL CORRECT YOU AND MAKE YOU FEEL STUPID.

Today my roommate Laura and I went to the Uffizi and climbed to the top of the Campanile at the Duomo. It was 414 steps, holy cow! It wasn't so bad until the last part, where it was a circular path and the space was getting real tight--a person with claustrophobia would not do well there. But boy was the view entirely worth it :) Here are some pictures from the past couple of days: