Athena Florence Spring 2012: Mary Wihnyk

Hello all!!! It has been a long time since my last post. Sorry about that! Things got busy here with midterms and what not. 

Hey everyone! This past week has been a pretty great one. I traveled, classes become more fun, and there was a LOT of chocolate eating.

CHOCOLATE FESTIVAL

Last Friday Florence began its annual week long Chocolate Festival. My roommates and I went and it was SO great. There were booths and booths with tables covered in piles of all kinds of chocolate. They had hot chocolate (which is basically just melted chocolate here), chocolate covered fruits and waffles, and even IPhones and shoes carved out of chocolate! It was so overwhelming that I only bought a little bit of chocolate and made plans to develop a strategy for purchasing more later in the week. It was snowing lightly as we were walking around and it was so pretty.

This past week was mostly about getting situated in my apartment, acquainted with the area, and finding all my classes. Things went pretty well! I had some decent shopping experiences at a place called The Coop. They have really fresh local veggies and meat and everything is really well priced! Finding a good grocery store was right at the top of my list so I was happy to be able to cross that off pretty fast.

The next most important part of the week was my classes. I was a little nervous about finding all of them and getting there on time but it went very well! I got a little lost and was a little late to two of the classes but since it was the first day the professors were really nice about it. I think my red face, heavy breathing, and the non-stop "I'm so sorry!!!" helped my case a bit too.

My classes are Beginning Italian, Art History: High Renaissance to the present, Pairing food and wine, Intro to digital photography, and Archaeology lab. So far they all seem like they will be pretty interesting! Art history has never been my favorite, and I’m pretty bad at learning languages, but I figure taking these classes actually IN Italy will help make them more do-able!

 I made it! After months and months of filling out forms and having to get in contact with about a million different people to obtain important documents (right up to the last minute!), I have made it to Florence!

       Getting ready to leave my hometown in Florida was a bit hectic. Lots of running around to different stores trying to find everything I might need while away, trying to put together a warm but fashionable wardrobe (for someone who is not very fashionable!) and saying goodbye to all of my friends and family was pretty crazy! It still shocks me that I managed to get it all done without forgetting too much of what I was going to pack!

     I left Florida on Tuesday afternoon, had a connection in Atlanta to Paris, and ended up in Florence around 9:00am on Wednesday morning. Surprisingly all of my flights went pretty smoothly. Nothing was delayed or canceled, the movies were great, and even the food wasn’t too horrific. The Paris airport was a little bit crazy but luckily I ran into some other students who were also making their way to Florence and we were all able to find our gate together.