The Brown's Adventures in Italy!!

we have 4 days until we're home now! (we leave in 3)
i'm soooooo excited. now it's hitting me that we're actually
leaving though, and that's really sad. this is our second home and now we've got to leave it!

i remember not knowing what to expect AT ALL coming here. now i feel the same way with going home. it's probably going to seem so different, but i'm really excited.
we just finished everything up with school, which is a relief because we have all our papers turned in and tests finished.

i bought my fifth pair of italian shoes today. ahh!
i couln't help it. they were all decent prices and really nice.
since i bought 3 pairs of high heeled ankle boots, today i got some practical everyday boots.

4 days!WOOOO

-c

Only five days left!
It is SOO COLD HERE!

( Here are some pictures from Rome )

Last weekend was my favorite trip so far.
Probably my favorite places in Italy
Sorrento was the cutest little beach town I've ever seen. I want to live there
Capri was an island off of Sorrento. The Blue grotto was closed :(. It's this amazing cave with blue light underneath the water.
Anyway, the first day we went to Pompei. It was amazingly beautiful. very green. very good view of Mt. Vesuvius. It rained, then cleared up soon after. There was a HUGe rainbow. biggest I've ever seen. 2 actually.
We stayed in the NICEST hostel we have ever seen or heard of. Hostels are usually crap. But this one was like a really nice hotel. It was really clean and really CHEAP! 20 euros a night? WOW.
Second day we went to Sorrento town to look for the boats that go to capri. We had a really late start. We ate at this cute restaurant, then decided to stay an extra day so we could have more time for capri.
We eventually found out that we couldn't because our train tickets were set
SO. we got up REALLY early the next day to go to capri.
I have TONS of pictures to post

( here they are )

Ok, these pictures got all jumbled when I uploaded them somehow. I'll try to get them in order

( Halloween, Cinque Terre, Sergio )

so sunday was a much better day.
i went to the boboli gardens, which i haven't seen yet.

i packed a lunch, brought a blanket and my book and it was really relaxing to just sit in the sun and read.
it felt nice to absorb the warmth of the sun again and be in open, green surroundings, rather than the shadows of all the tall buildings in the city.

justine and sergio saw a lot of cats there, but when i went i only saw one and it wouldn't come up to me.

now that i've realized we only have about 19 days left here, i'm actually pretty sad!
this whole stay has flown by so fast, and i know these last few weeks will too.
i know im going to miss italy SOO much.
its just such a weird feeling not wanting to leave, yet wanting to go home.
i really love my new life here, but i guess it's time to move on. there's a lot of things i want to do
when i get home.

anyway, i think justine is going to post some pictures of the boboli gardens from when she and sergio went. they were gorgeous! i wish you all could see them in person.

so its friday night and im at home alone on my friend's laptop.
you have no idea how happy i am to be able to be on the internet right now!
ill explain.

well before i get to that, i had a nice week. i met some really cool people from san diego who are travelling through europe and are here visiting their friend for a few days. sergio is also here visiting justine so we all went to the gardens and showed them around florence. fun stuff.

we also went to an obama party, which was also fun.
it was at this club and there were mainly older people there from ages like 30-50, but it made
dancing so much more fun because they dance so cute and they actually played dance-able stuff like prince and even a little beach boys. there was an italian guy that i danced with who couldn't even vote, but still had an obama t-shirt and pin! i taught him the YMCA. haha. we ran into our san diego friends again later that night and hung out for a while.

today we made really good nutella-banana-whipped cream pancakes then i did some homework.
every time i need to use the internet, i have to walk to the CAPA building, which isn't too far, but it's like not walking into the computer room in your house.
my mom sent me some pictures of my family and it made me miss everyone sooo much. my little cousin teo is growing soooo fast and isn't actually so little anymore.
i also had dreams last night about all my friends who moved to san francisco and i miss them a lot too.
today was just sort of gloomy. most of my roommates are gone travelling this weekend and justine has been hanging out with sergio, so its been a little lonely. my mom called me and i try so hard to be strong and have been pretty good about it this whole time but once i got off the phone i couldn't help but cry. i miss EVERYONE so much. my parents, my grandparents, all my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my friends, my cat, my house. i just miss everything.
i didnt know what to do with myself at 4 in the afternoon so i journaled and played guitar and felt better.
i try not to let myself get down but sometimes i guess i just have to let it out.
back to the reason why im so thankful to be on the internet on my roommates' laptop- i received lots of comments and messages from my friends and that made me feel a whole lot better. like my teacher was saying, now that this is coming to an end, we just have to hang on to the little things we have left from home to comfort us. tonight its internet at home, and the top ramen & chips and salsa my parents sent me. i don't know what i'm going to do all weekend...maybe will get some homework done and try to see some museums and gardens i haven't seen yet.
anyway to all my friends and family-i miss you and love you and hope to see you ALL when i get back.
i know the last few weeks are going to be so fun here and im so thankful to be here, but im also ready to come home! just a little longer...

-Chelsea

okay so we made a nice big dinner on halloween and got all dressed up.
that was good fun.

THEN...the night started to go wrong

first, we had this little ghost peeps (marshmallow peeps)
and someone said they were really good if you roast them so we all
run over to the stove to roast them.
natalies begins to fall off her fork so her reflexes tell her to catch it
then her brain tells her to move her hand away from the burning hot peep
well the hot melty hot stuff landed partly on her hand leaving her awful burns.
she now had a huge blister shaped like a llama on her hand. looks very painful.

after a while we decided to go out.
its raining. of course.
and rain is NOT fun when youre wearing heels on wet cobblestones
trying to hold your umbrella and feathery mask.
we went to one club that was all halloween decorated but it was SO packed
we went to find another one. we ran into some friends and decided to follow
them, unaware that this place they wanted to go was REALLY far.
there are times where i really miss having a car.

so we get to this club and it looks pretty okay. they also decorated from halloween
and i stole some posters they hung on the wall for the occasion- a mark ryden painting,
an alien from mars attacks, and jack nicholson doing "heres johnny!" (which are now hanging in the den). then that place got SUPER packed so we decided to leave. there was Drraaaaammmaa trying to get out of the stupid club because they give you a ticket when you walk in and they stamp it when you buy a drink, then you pay on the way out. well it turns out that its 15 euros if you dont buy a drink! and no one had money. larissa and i finally got out and walked the far walk home. my feet hurt in my heels and her flats were soaked so we traded shoes. hers were too big on me so i kinda dragged my feet home.
it felt like halloween was basically spent walking in the rain. hah.
there were a lot of people celebrating through, which was kind of cool.

then next day we all slept in and made french toast for breakfast..mm..
(syrup courtesy of my parents package they sent)
it was a lazy day and we just watched movies then went out and had
a really delicious and well priced italian dinner.

its raining again today and justine is on her way to go meet sergio!
shes super excited and all of my roommates are really excited to meet him.
were having another big dinner tonight (by the way, i cant find the apostrophe on this keyboard)

oh yeah! and i wanted to comment on italian men. you know that theyre known for
hitting on women and all that. well its SO TRUE. they seriously say "ciao bella" to EVERY pretty girl that walks by them. sometimes its because they think theyre really hot in their leather jackets, and sometimes they want you to buy something from their stand, or sometimes they probably know were american and just want to see how we will react...whatever the reason it happens all the time. one of the leather jacket guys said it right in my face as he was passing justine and i coming back from the grocery store, and i guess you had to be there, but it was hilarious. they just HAVE TO say it. whenever they get the opportunity and sometimes they even say it under their breathe really nonchalantly and boringly almost so you dont hear but they say just to have said it anyway.

we have about 3 more weeks till we come home! i cant say it enough but I CANT WAIT!
i reeeeaaaally want to cuddle with tubby in my bed and see everyone again.
i am enjoying this time here though. nothing compares to florence.
i cant wait to jam in the basement though. thats one thing i reaaally miss. i finally started writing a song...its been a while. also having been reading a lot -am finishing up fear and loathing in las vegas, which has reeeaally cool illustrations by ralph steadman.
well i better get home !

-Chelsea

happy halloween everyone!

we've got our apartment all decorated.
one of the other girls also got a package from her aunt with a bunch of
halloween stuff.

we're planning on having a big dinner of pasta and wine with our friends.
then we're going to eat lots of candy, cookies, and strawberries with nutella.

by the way nutella is SOOO popular here-they LOVE it.
for those who don't know-its a chocolate spread...kind of like peanut
butter..only it's chocolate.
all my roommates are now addicted and put it on everything.

it's a gorgeous day today- a little overcast but not rainy and not too cold.
hope you all have a fun on halloween!

so it's wed. night and it's been feeling a lot later than it is, getting dark earlier, plus it's been rainy, cloudy weather.

i wish i could go into detail about the trip but it's not so fresh in memory and that's really the best time to do it. i did journal a lot for myself though throughout the trip.
it was really just so amazing. i feel like i learned sooooo much more just in that one week of seeing different countries.
it's quite a strange feeling going from one country to another!
once you get to another it's like..ok how do you say hello, thank you, etc. in their language, how does there metro system work, etc.
but i'm really proud of us because we've become really good at figuring all this stuff out. when we first left we didn't know how we were going to get to the airports, hotels, and trainstations we needed to make it to. by the end of each short stay, we at least knew how to get around the neighborhood where we were stayind and figured out all the buses and metros/metro passes.

had a little bit of trouble in london because we didn't know that we were travelling outside the zones that our passes covered. but the metro guy was really nice and understanding and we were charged a small fee.
it was so nice to be around english-speaking people! every time we were trying to figure something out we were just like...oh yeah! we can ASK someone!
they were so nice there.


in london and paris justine and i stayed in low-budget hotels, which weren't too bad.
in amsterdam, we met up with friends and stayed in a hostel. the hostels were quite an experience, let me tell you. haha. the one in amsterdam was pretty nice.
one big dorm room with bunk beds everywhere and one communal bathroom with seperate stalls for showers and toilets. it was kind of hard to manage all my things because they were all packed into this one backpack-10 days worth of stuff. we only wore one pair of jeans the whole trip, but we had to bring enough to stay warm. amsterdam was pretty cold! i never thought i could function in that cold of weather, yet i did, and so does everyone who lives there and rides their bike to work n everything!

the only problem was they had a million H&M's and the best flea markets and vintage stores! so by the end of amsterdam, i had an extra bag full of clothes. and my new boots :)

we went to the anne frank huis..or however they spell house. most everyone there spoke english so it was easy.
it was a little more difficult in paris because we don't know an inch of french!
and the people who knew no enligsh just kept talking to us in french, even if we didn't understand. justine kept making fun of me because i couldn't say "merci" (thank you) correctly. i kept pronouncing it "mer-cay-i" because in italian, grazei is pronounced sort of like grats-say-i. haha.

but by the time we left amsterdam and got to milan, i felt like i had forgotten a lot of the italian i had learned and it took me a while to get back into it.
soo the hostel in milan. wow.
haha. they had ONE bathroom for the entire hostel. justine, larissa, and i were in there and the floor was all soaked and it smelled like a park bathroom. the door of the shower fell off as well as the toilet seat just from touching them! that was a pretty funny moment though and larissa was hopping around on beth's one flipflop she had. it was a good laugh after everyone was tired and cranky.
we then went to sleep in our 4 beds that barely fit in the room and beth had to sleep on the floor.

the next day everyone went home earler and larissa and i spent the day in milan. milan is supposed to be the fashion-capital of the world, but it wasn't too exciting. the city part kind of just looked like l.a. but the area around the duomo was gorgeous.


it was really such a great trip though. we're so lucky we got to visit 3 of the most amazing cities and i would love to go back.
it was weird coming home. (and weird that we actually consider florence our home too!)
it's been rainy and cloudy and i really miss my parents and real home more than ever.
i talked to my teacher, who had a lot of experience and had studied a lot about culture shock and she said this is a strange period of studying abroad-almost like a limbo.
because we have been here so long now we feel like it's time to go home. and if we were staying longer than we would eventually get over this phase, but we would also start making ourselves comfortable by buying things like warm comforters or things that you would buy for your own home. but because we're leaving we still have to deal with inconveniences that we wouldn't have at home or would otherwise try to change here. it's really hard to explain. but we sort of just have to get through these 4 weeks and make the most of them. we'll probably do some more day trips around florence and such. but im at the point where i really just can't wait to get home.

then my teacher explained the second part-
when you get home and experience culture shock from your own culture! i know i will see things back home in a new way that i have never seen them before. and i will start to miss florence and long for my home in florence. she explained that it gets really hard then because no one understands, unless they have been through the same exact thing. i know i keep saying this, but it's really something i can't explain. all i can say is that from my experience so far, i highly encourage EVERYONE to do whatever they can to travel around and get out of the country. why would you not want to see what's out there? you really can't even conceive what life is like in other places unless you have lived it. i remember i had no idea what florence would be like AT ALL before i came. now i can't even describe what it's like.

one night in amsterdam we had coffee at this cute outdoor cafe under a tent with lights. we sat there and realized something big. larissa said, "this is the epitome of our whole studying abroad experience." and we all understood what she meant. though it was a great moment, she didn't mean that i was the best one. we had lots of other amazing moments and figured there were more to come. but there we were in amsterdam, after having experienced everything we have experienced so far, it was like the peak of this whole thing. we did it. after having lived through this whole thing, moving our lives and going about with them, you just move forward and don't really think about it. but we just stopped and realized that we were there. at the beginning of the trip we expected we would get there, although we didn't really know where "there" would be.
and i think because we have passed that point, that's why we're in this weird sort of "limbo" now. i also knew i would change as a person on this trip, but in that moment it actually hit me that i have changed. i never knew it until that second, when it just clicked. after that night i actually felt like a different person and was concious of the changes in myself. i'm still myself, but different. and its a great feeling to be able to be yourself and add and gain to that, in whatever country you are in.
especially after going through so many different cultures-your own identity is put under questioning. you are what you are because of the whole culture you grew up in and when that is stripped away, you really see what's there. it's quite refreshing, and i feel a new sort of confidence or something in myself.

at first i thought studying abroad like this was absolutely CRAZY and so did all my friends. but why is it crazy?
it doesn't feel that way anymore. now that i've done this, i feel like a can do a lot more than i thought i could.
all i can say is just DO IT. whatever it is, and don't make up excuses, because there really are none. if you want to learn the violin, then learn the violin. if you want to travel to europe then you'll find a way to do it. i've heard so many people who say that they wanted to study abroad and always thought it would be cool, but just didn't sign up in time or something. if the opportunity comes, then take it! before i was also hesitant, but now i just think, why would you not! i feel like now im also more willing to do things i never thought i would do. like play a sport of something. why not? ask yourself that question and if you don't have a reason not to, then you should. why not open yourself up to new things. you might find that its not your thing, but at least you now know that its just not your thing- and you learn that about yourself.

anyway, its a great feeling and i wanted to share it with everyone. i absolutely CANNOT WAIT to come home! i really really really can't wait. im terribly excited.

my parents sent us a box of halloween decorations! haha it was so cute, because we were sad we had to miss halloween at home. it's still not the same-it doesn't even feel like halloween is coming up because they don't celebrate it here..so really it's not. but OUR halloween is coming up. we've put up the decorations around the apartment and friday we're dressing up with our masks we got in venice and we're celebrating. it's things like these that will get us through these next 4 weeks. i have learned to appreciate sooooooo much more! like a bed. or a nice bathroom. especially after travelling for long periods of time when you only have one backpack and REALLY don't have luxuries!

"clean, crisp socks..i don't need luxuries like that!" (says high maintenance larissa) hahah.

i've been writing down funny quotes. today my crazy italian teacher said in her accent
"Listen, I am small and skinny , but I ah-do thee tae-bo!"

okay well we're going to our 5 euro church dinner tonight, so i've got to go! thanks for reading.

Pictures from our week trip

click
( HERE )

ok..so..
we left last thursday for our break that we planned.

it's been so much fun! AMAZING.
i'm sooo glad we got to visit some different countries.
it really gives you a new insight on lots of things-we're learning a lot.

i'll go more into detail later when we get back to florence
and we'll post up tonnnssss of pictures.

i'm writing from our hostel in amsterdam!
its sooo BEAUTIFUL here, it's unbelievable. and we haven't even
seen much yet. lots of people speak english so it's not too
hard to figure things out.
and all my friends who ride bikes-SOOO many people here ride bikes.
even more than in florence.
ok and they have a separate lane and street lights just for bikes!
AND parking garages for bikes with several levels. its crazy...and smart.
its reeeaaally reaaally cold here but the streets are so pretty with lots
of trees and gorgeous buildings. i LOVE it.

today we found the BEST flea market EVER. they had several stands full of
vintage clothehs. i found soo much stuff.
and they have a 4 level H&M (this one and the one in paris are really good).
i invested in some amazing boots-italian leather-but they're cheaper here
than in italy. ahh!

well i can't write much because we're going to go to anne frank's house
(or hideout) right now.

!!!!
-chelsea

i miss you mom and dad..and tubby!
and the judges! thanks for your comment!
we miss you guys!

so we've been here quite a while now.
we're starting to figure more things out, like a grocery store that's A LOT closer to our apartment- down the street actually.
By the way, the usually charge you for grocery bags and you bag your own groceries.

This weekend we did two day trips.
Friday we went to this town called San Gimignano:



It was pretty cool and medieval looking.
We visited the 'Museo de Tortura' (Museum of Torture) where they have all the medieval torture devices on display. I have to say, it was really disturbing!
We brought lunches and had a picnic in the sun overlooking the gorgeous Tuscan hills.

something like this:



it looked a lot different in person.
we went and had café lattes..mmm..
it was about a 1 hour train ride there and back.


Saturday we went to Siena. The streets to me looked like the streets of Florence. But we climbed the main tower of the town and you could also see a gorgeous view of tuscany up there.
Oh and can I just say - what is it with Europeans and stairs! They are CRAZY. Now i know a lot of this stuff was built centuries ago, but wow. The stairs that went up to that tower as well as the stairs that go up to the duomo in Florence are these insane spiral staircases, in tiny enclosed areas made of stone. every once in a while there is a tiny window, literally like a few inches by a few inches, and dim lights. NOT a good thing to do if you are claustrophobic. I am pretty tiny and even I had to duck down in certain parts. Wherever you go in Florence though, you will always find stairs in buildings. Tons of stairs to get up to school, tons of stairs to get here to the computer lab, and tons of really steep stairs to get up to our apartment! It's great excersize though and has gotten easier. They occaisionally have really tiny elevators, but I don't plan on using one while I'm here. It's true that Italians live without a lot of the material things and luxuries that Americans enjoy.


here is the tower of siena:



(justine is going to post up pictures that we took soon)


Sunday we did lots of homework then that night we to L'Opera! We saw La Boheme, which I really liked. Even though it was in Italian, I've been studying and learning a little and could get the jist of some of the main parts. The sets were GORGEOUS. They had one that was a piazza at night with falling snow and everything. wow. After that we went to get kabobs (here kabobs are basically meat, french fries, lettuce, spicy sauce, etc. wrapped in a really good tortilla!). The place was pretty sketchy and we had a very unpleasant encounter with a drunk man who did not like americans, so we booked it.
That's one thing that is starting to get old- a lot of people here don't like americans very much. And by seeing the way that some of them act here, I don't blame the Italians, but we're not all like that. People can be very rude to us. I have not once had a person behind a counter in a grocery store or shop smile or be nice to us. At the train station, they blatantly ignore us. I know part of it is just the way Italians are when they're working. We Americans work A LOT more than Italians. Here, work is work and you don't have to be nice to anyone on the job if you don't want to. They don't care if you are their customers and are spending money. While in America people can be overly-nice. In restaurants, waitresses can be nice to the point where it just gets fake and annoying. But I actually do miss people being nice and smiling. They say that Americans smile a lot more, which I've found is SO true. When we were up in the tower in Siena, we asked an American lady to take a picture for us and she was SO NICE. It just reminded me of how nice some Americans can be too! I had never really thought about it before.

It's not that I don't like Italians for this. It's just the way their culture is and so we've been taught to try not to jump to conclusions and get angry about it. If someone is rude to you, you have to look at the situation and think about what you did, that is maybe something Italians just don't do. Or when they do things-like cut in line. They ALWAYS cut in line and are pushy- you have to just accept it and not get offended by it because that's the way they do things. If a person is buying one thing at a grocery store, they can cut to the front of the line. Not in America. (Although we do have express lanes!). Just little things like that, we are noticing. It's not something that a tourists could notice. That's why I feel like by being here for so long, we can really learn about their culture just by being around it and sometimes, part of it (or by trying to be part of it anyway).

Hmmm...what else..
oh yeah! The smell of rain here is different, because their streets are made of different materials and there is no grass around these areas. I miss the smell of wet asphalt, cement, and grass at home! It hasn't rained here in a while though, it's actually been pretty warm.

We leave Thursday for our one week break!
First we'll take the train from here to Milan, stay the night there. Flying to London at 6:40 (AM!) for two days. Then we fly from London to Paris for two days. After that, we're taking the train and meeting up with some of our friends in Amsterdam. After a few days we're flying back to Milan, spending the day there, then taking the train back to Florence! We get back the last day of our break, on Sunday night around 11 PM. We're going to be soooooooo tired walking home from the train station and going to school the next day! I'm also not looking forward to the airports, long trains, and trying to figure out where our hotels are and everything, but I'm really excited to go to all these places I never thought I'd be able to go to! I know it's going to be great.

We've met a few Italians here that are helping us learn some more of their language. I wish I spoke better, ma non parlo italiano molto bene. ho bisigno di pratica. I'll hopefully get better by speaking it.

Ok well I hope you enjoy the pictures justine is posting!
I miss you all.

-chelsea

they say that tourist season is coming to an end.
i really hope so!
it gets really annoying trying to walk to school through crowds of tourists.

we were talking with our roommates about what we miss and used to take for
granted. things like microwaves, toasters, dryers, big sidewalks, our own cars,
lots of space, escalators, Target (haha), and big refridgerators with lots of food.
oh and big cups. everything is tiny here!

justine and i just walked to the train station to buy tickets for venice.
quite a walk. then up a bunch of stairs to school.
i feel really good walking so much though.

i also had a conversation with my english teacher about the smells here.
she said that smells in america seems a lot more muted, which is true.
we use lots of deoderants and stuff. but here the smells are very strong.
the good and the bad. when you walk down the street, one second you will smell
a very strong sewer smell, and often the B.O. of a man walking by, then the next
you will smell delicious garlic smells from a restaurant, or freshly made waffles
at a gelateria. the bad smells make the good smells even better and vice versa.

did i mention how crazy the streets are? maybe i did.
but they are all tiny and one way. the sidewalks are so small that basically every walks in the street until a car comes. sometimes you have to walk in front of cars if you want to cross the street. and when a bus passes you it's like RIGHT THERE, next to you.
i would be sooo scared to drive here or ride a vespa or bike.
though i really do want to ride a scooter again.
the streets are usually made of REALLY old cobblestones, which are really hard to walk on in heels. even in regular shoes, its easy to trip just because your eyes wander. there's so much to look at. the buildings are so beautiful with small details if you look closely. and shops here basically advertise with their front window displays. so there's always clothes and AMAZING shoes to look at in windows. so many great shoes here.

i feel like there's lots more to discover here that we haven't yet.
there's just so much to get done on weekdays.

oh yeah and i think we've pretty much adapted to the noise at night.
we can sleep through it, though we've been waking up because of mosquitos.
we have this little mosquito thing we plug in though, which helps.
i have to go to class now!

-chelsea

thanks alison, molly, nate, and stephen for you comments!
stephen-we're also learning a lot about florentine art and i really never found it that interesting until now.
hope you guys are all doing well.

i just wanted to write about how we went to this american bar/restaurant last night for our roommates birthday. all the americans go there to watch football.
we got hamburgers and fries and you have to practically beg for more ketchup to get more than a little packet.
BUT..we found out that they have open mics there every monday night!
our friend, marcio, plays guitar so we'll probably get some songs together.
justine and i found a tambourine and a xylophone at the music store that we want to get.

this weekend was pretty fun. we didn't do too much.
we cleaned up the apartment and did laundry.
sunday we went to this grape festival they have every year whenever the grapes ripen, in this little town outside of florence. gorgeous place. we got panini and wine and watched the weird parade of little kids running around in bee and grape costumes.
i found out that "cheese" in italian is "formaggio."
i had no idea, and when we went to get paninis, no wonder the guy didn't
understand me when i just guessed and said "queso." hahaha.
having a language barrier can make small things seem more intimidating.

justine and i are going to the grocery store today. they make you pay for plasitc bags there so we bring our bags, which isn't a bad idea.
and they have amazing 99 cent stores here! seriously. we LOVE going to them. you can find paper towels and cleaning products. then they always have fun phone charms, which justine and i always get. i found this little case for my ipod that i can strap onto my wrist. we also found cute bags to take to the grocery store. oh and i found a funny little kids shirt that fits me. It has a neon colored cat that says "wow baby! firenze!" haha its pretty great.

we've got to go get some more stamps so we can send out some postcards.
LOTS of homework to do this week, but the hard work will pay off when we go to venice this weekend!
we also have to figure out train tickets and all that. so much to get done.

the switch on our camera that goes between picture/video/and play modes is broken. so now we can ONLY take pictures.
no more filming videos.
: (

okay well we'll try to update soon!

-chelsea