Firenze, in all it's Angry Moped-Riding Glory

No, that is not my picture. Not yet. It's still the rainy season in Florence, and will be until the end of January, at least. So it's wet and gray. But it really is that beautiful.

So my flight was um, interesting. The flight was packed full of NYU kids going to Paris, and either stopping there to study or going on to Florence. There ended up being a lot less people on the second Florence flight, but it was crowded nonetheless. I wasn't sure I was really meant to hang out with the people I was on the plane with. I think I inadvertently ended up taking the Frat Boy Flight ("BRO LET'S GET WASTED TONIGHT MY SISTER WASN'T SOBER MORE THAN TWO NIGHTS SHE WAS THERE YEAH DUDE THAT'S SWEET LET'S DO IT"), which as you might suspect, made me a little nervous about the kind of people that attend this program. And everyone seemed to be living in this one dorm, Via Maffia, while I was the only one out of everyone I met in Via Micheli.

So I slept through the flight to Paris, which wasn't terrible. The flight attendants were ridiculously nice and joked with us and force fed us (even though I politely declined to eat dinner, since they served it to us at what was the equivalent of 12:00 AM and I was like ew food take it away I just want to sleep. However, Charles Degaulle in Paris is the most confusing airport ever. We had a three hour layover where I got my first migraine (I think) and realized that I definitely had nothing in common with the people with whom I was travelling. But anyways, the flight to Florence went smoothly (we flew over the Alps! Stunning! Incredible! Glacial! And now I feel no need to go to Switzerland, unless a lot more chocolate is involved.) It went smoothly, that is, until we actually reached Florence.

The pilot said about five times that we were getting ready to land. And then he came on, and in his nice french accent, said that we couldn't land in Florence due to wind, and were being diverted to Pisa, an hour away from Florence. Of course, we al freaked out since every single one of us packed two suitcases plus extra carry-ons, which ended up being significantly more than we weigh. We had to collect our baggage in Pisa, then wait for a bus to the Florence airport, where the NYU people kindly waited to pick us up. By that time I was so exhausted and had such a headache, that if you poked me with a pen I would probably have started crying hysterically. But then again, that's just me.

But we finally got to the campus, and after checking in they drove us to our apartments. And here's where everything starts to go uphill. My apartment is lovely (pictures soon to come, when I have daylight hours to take them, as the dark gives them no justice), with marble stairs leading up the three floors, a lift WITH A LIFT KEY AND DOUBLE DOORS, a gas range, a washing machine, and a double refrigerator. We have a balcony overlooking the neighbor's backyard, and my window faces the Florence Botanical Gardens. I love it.

Today after orientation stuff my roommates (NYU seems to have outdone themselves placing us with people similar to ourselves) and I went out for a celebratory first night dinner, where I managed to speak Italian without making a fool of myself and ate ridiculously good food. Then we wandered around Florence for a good two hours, found the Duomo, and I fell in love. I think I'm really going to enjoy living here. I just need the damn rain to stop.