Settled.

    OH MY GOODNESS, FLORENCE!

FACT: EVERYTHING YOU WOULD DO IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE IS 100X BETTER WHEN YOU DO IT IN ITALY.

    Braxton and I get to call this amazingly historical, beautiful place our home for the next three months. I really can't get over how lucky we are! It's amazing to think that we are living one of our dreams right now. Today was our first official day of school, and it really helped me feel settled and like this is home. It felt like a really long vacation for the last little while, and I was getting extremely homesick! It sucked, and it worried me a lot, but I knew if I waited it out things would get better and I would feel exactly the way I'm feeling now. SO HAPPY.

I look like butt, but these are some of our friends. We had a welcome dinner on our first night here in Florence at this beautiful restaurant. Here is Susan, Maggie, Katie, April, and me. We were the first ones there, like always when there's food involved..

The dessert at the restaurant. Everything was so good! Like always. #italia

    Neither of us had school today until 4:20, so we had the whole day to just explore, and I think we got a pretty good feel of our surroundings (at least we think), I may or may not have done a little shopping, we saw some of our friends, and we realized how close we are to everything! It was really surprising and kind of funny, cause everywhere we turned we were like "WHAT? We're here already?!" Haha, definitely a good thing. School went really well though, I have class early tomorrow morning, and I'm excited to see what they'll be like. I have a Leonardo Di Vinci class which will be fantastic, then after that I have a History of Florence class. It will be interesting I know for a fact, but a lot of work..Thank goodness I am taking these history courses with Braxton since he's an expert. I'm picking up on the Italian speaking pretty quick, so we figured we could tutor each other. Everything is really working out so well! 

My favorite part of being here is the simple things. Like sitting with Braxton
at an outdoor cafe to have breakfast or grab a snack or drink, or just to sit and talk
and people watch. I love all my friends here and being in groups of people, but I've learned that you can't
get the full experience unless you leave that aside and live like the natives do. Just keep it simple.

Haha... :)

    I love being able to walk everywhere and see something in a new perspective everyday. We are walking a ton! I actually have an extremely hurt foot right now, I can hardly walk and that is not good considering all the walking we do. Definitely have some torn ligaments so I'm gonna try out some shoes with better support for a while. Stupid arches... But pain or no pain, I love the walking and I don't know if we will every grow accustomed to the beauty here. Natives walk around like it's nothing, and I don't understand it. Some of the buildings literally look fake, like It's A Small World at Disneyland or something! I'm not kidding when I say it's all unreal. Even right now, I'm sitting in my apartment alone (people are usually parting until about 2 or 3 AM), blogging, and listening to Sara Bareilles and it couldn't get any better than this. 

Goodnight. XOXO <3

Buono Notte. :)