Thursday, June 10
Yikes, I better quit getting behind on my entries or I'll start forgetting important things.
Tuesday we just hung out at the villa all day. Classes in the morning, a nap in the afternoon, studying in the evening. Oh, our P.E. class met for the first time--I can't belive I forgot that. It really was awful. Maybe by the end of the summer I could be in shape enough to do all the class required, but certainly not right now. The requirements include a lot of running, which has always been a weakness for me. I just got overwhealmed while listening to Dr. Casey explain all this, and I had to get up and leave the room. It must have been hormones or something, but I started crying and just couldn't stop. Pretty embarassing, but at least Greg was the only one who knew. The rest of the class went on a 45 minute run/jog/walk, which would have truly killed me. So I had Dr. Casey drop me from the class. It's kind of frustrating to me that here's this great opportunity to get a P.E. class out of the way in just a few weeks, but there's no way I'd stay in such a class that I couldn't possibly get an A in. Greg's thinking about dropping it too--he shouldn't take a B or C in a P.E. class either.
Wednesday we had classes in the morning. After lunch, Greg and I went into Florence to spend time at the internet place and see the Boboli Gardens. Well, we learned a valuable lesson: don't trust the bus routes map! We left the villa around 2:30 and didn't get to the internet place until 4:00. By the time I got done in there--which took a while because they had to transfer my account to that location, and what's the point of having three locations if they're not interchangeable?--we weren't going to be able to see the gardens and get back in time for dinner. So we came back to the villa. Kinda sad that it was all we did, but I suppose we'll get this figured out eventually. Stupid buses.
Today we had classes and then went in as a group to the Pitti Palace. No wait, we went to some church first--I don't even know the name of it. Our guide had a thick accent and was ~very~ long-winded. The church was awesome, but the majority of it was closed off. :-( The ceilings were painted to look like they were 3D arches and stuff, but it looked extremely realistic. It was really neat. But the Pitti Palace was ten times better. There was a lot of the 3D paintings, which just really blew me away. So many times it was really hard to tell what was painted and what was really scuplted. There were ~so~ many paintings in the palace, it was unreal. Every wall was just covered with them, and these walls were huge. And the frames on the paintings were ornate and huge, and ~everything~ was guilded with gold. There was more than paintings, too. There were sculptures and tapestries and original furniture--the palace is from the time of the Medicis. It was really overwhealming. Definitely a must for any Florence tourist. The tour guide kept us in there for hours, which got really tiresome. So we came back and had dinner, and then I took a nap. ;-)
Well, it's sleep time again so I can say no more. Hopefully the pictures will say what I can't (when I get them up). Oh! We got our pictures from Greece developed! Most of them turned out well, though some did not. I learned what to do and not do for future rolls, at least.
--Angelique