A long overdue update!

Hello friends and family!

I am sorry it has taken me so long to update my blog. A lot has happened in the past month. For starters, I broke my hand/pinky playing in a soccer tournament with my school. It was a very silly injury. I was dribbling to the right corner and lost my balance while crossing the ball. I fell on my right side and rolled onto my arm and then my hand. It didn't hurt too much at the time and was sore for only about 24 hours. Then I got an xray and found out the bone had broken and shifted and needed to be realigned surgically. My mom came to Florence a week early to be here for the surgery and help out with the medical stuff. I have been in a cast and then a splint for about a month. I just found out I have two more weeks before they can remove the pins. It hasnt been the most fun experience but I've learned a lot and definitely sharpened up on my Italian. Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive and helpful throughout the whole thing...it was really nice knowing you were concerned.

My family came to visit for Spring Break...every one but my dad who, unfortunately, had to work. We had a great time...many have probably heard about it from my mom. We stayed in Florence for the most part...aside for a day trip to the Chianti region to visit a vineyard and do some wine tasting. I showed them all my favorite parts of Florence and every one met my host mom, Luigina. We had some amazing Italian meals. It was a great vacation. The weekend after they left Chelsea and Brianna came to Florence. We went out to a great dinner with Brie's parents and had a great two days of browsing and chilling in the city.

I've been travelling a bit since then... Three weekends ago I went to Vicenzia and Padua with my Drama class. We saw the Teatro Olympico which was the most unbelievable theatre set I've ever seen. It was a 3-D set with a perspectival vanishing point and lit up with beautiful blue and pink lights. It looked so real! The following weekend I went to Venice and I absolutely loved it. It's hard to believe that there are canals instead of roads until you actually see it. In my drama class we learned about how Venice has always been the place where anything was possible...it's always been a diverse city where anyone/everyone is accepted. It's also extremely maze-like and confusing and we were lost a good amount of the time we were there. Even though it was rainy and flooding Saturday night and Sunday, we had a great time. My five friends and I rented an apartment for Saturday night and we cooked a great dinner. This was good because the city was very expensive...there were even more tourists than in Florence! We didn't take a gondola because they were very pricey but we took the water taxi a couple of times and it was so cool!

Last weekend I went to Ischia Island off of Naples. It is next to Capri but it is less touristy and less developed. I stayed in a hotel with 5 friends in a town called Forio. The first day we took a 15 minute bus ride and then walked for 20 minutes to a beautiful, hidden rock beach cove. We walked down 249 stairs to get to this beach. It had natural hotsprings...the water coming out of the rocks/cove was boiling (the sign said it reached 90 C !) and it mixed with the cold ocean tide in these little pools. We layed out, climed along the rocks and relaxed for the whole day. We got back to the hotel, ate dinner and passed out. Sunday we went to a Baths place called Negombo. During the week it is like a resort with natural hot springs/pools/and a beach but when we went it was closed. We sat out on the beach until 3pm when we had to take a ferry back to naples and a 6 hour train ride back to florence. We got in around midnight.

I didnt feel any vibrations from the earth quake that hit Aquila on Monday. It's been all over the news here.

Tomorrow I leave for Greece to visit Christine in Athens for 5 days.. Friends from Williams Chelsea and Lauren are also going and we are all going to take an overnight ferry from Athens to Crete for Friday and Saturday. I can't wait! I'll update my blog sooner next time, I promise!

A dopo!