End of my first week

On Friday night I moved to my new apartment. My new roomie, Lorena, came and picked me up in her car (thank goodness I didn't have to trek all my stuff) and we lugged it up the stairs. Once we were upstairs and I had started unpacking she offered me a glass of wine! Nice! And she let me move in two days early (before the start of the month) without charging me extra and the school was charging me 21 euros a night! After all the madness of moving, I walked back to my old apt (only about 5 min away) and my old roomies and I walked downtown to meet some people from school to go to a bar. Only one of our classmates, Vitor (who Renata and I had hung out with the night before), showed up with his friend Teresa who is also a student going to the branch of our school that is in Rome. She, like Vitor, is also from Brazil. She is very high fashion and all that, wearing her stiletto boots with skinny jeans while I was wearing my black ballet flats and jeans with a slight flare (tres gauche here). Think Ugly Betty going out with Gisele Bundchen. Yeah, real fun. Plus, I was already so tired from the long week of new things, new places, starting school, moving twice and all that. Plus it had been raining so my pants were getting wet and I had no decent rain shoes. Can you guess which one is Teresa?

So we all meet at this designated spot and we decided to go in search of this bar called Dolce Zucchero (Sweet Sugar). Unfortunately, none of us knew where it was so we started asking (in broken Italian) for directions. One person told us this way, then another told us a complete opposite direction. I will spare you the details but after walking around the city for 50 minutes (the city is easily walkable in about 20 minutes so we were seriously going in circles) we came around a corner and could see the post office which is right near the apartment we had originally come from. My roomies and I just started laughing from sheer exhaustion and the ridiculousness of it all. Finally we found the spot but then high-fashion Teresa didn't like the hip/hop music they were playing. I will admit that the music wasn't great but I was just happy to be sitting for a minute. So she and Renata went off to check out another club we had passed while Vanesa, Vitor and I stayed put. Ten minutes later she came back and told us how the other one was so much better and we had to go there. So we left at entered "Doris". I don't know why they would name a chic bar a very traditional middle-aged (plus) woman's name...but it was very cool and definitely the it-spot in Firenze. At this point, though, I was too tired and after checking out the scene, I walked home.

The next morning I slept in until noon! I was so tired. I got up and went shopping for boots. Oops, I forgot to take a picture of those. I will do that. They are cool, black leather boots that go up to just under my knee but they can also be scrunched down to mid-calf. Very cool--but the most important part is that they are rain-proof. I couldn't go one more day in my tennies, they get so drenched whenever it rains and I can't stand soggy socks. Then I met up with Marc and Amy and we had lunch at a nice spot near the church of San Lorenzo. I had cannelloni stuffed with ricotta and spinach with more cheese melted on top. Then Amy and I went shopping at a store she found that has trendy clothes that aren't wildly expensive. Apparently all of the hip youngsters in Firenze have found this store as well because it was packed with "tweenage" girls. I found a black dress that will be great when it finally warms up. I did some other random shopping (including a hairdryer "aschiugecappelli" and a stovetop coffeemaker) and some grocery shopping now that I am finally settled in my new apartment. Amy came over to see the apartment and she approves. I will post pictures of it sometime this week.

Saturday night, the same group of us (Vanesa, Renata, Vitor, Teresa, and I) met up in front of the Duomo which is where I took the picture at the beginning of this post. Teresa had made "friends" with one of the bartenders the night before so he had told her about some other bars we could try. I thought, "Great, this time we have a map and we know where these places are...no problem." WRONG! She didn't like any of the bars on the list (even though any one of them would have been fine with the rest of us) and we walked around for 50 minutes AGAIN only to end up at the SAME club as the night before (again, only about 3 min. from my new apt.) Fortunately, I was in better humor on Saturday because I had slept. Vanesa and I just kept rolling our eyes and laughing hysterically at the situation. Teresa did redeem herself though because she got us up to the second floor of the club with a table and then she ordered a bottle of vodka for the table "as a gift". This is my artistic photographic rendering of my drink (vodka with peach juice): The night was fun after that! I could only tolerate one drink (with mostly peach juice)--Renata wanted to taste it purely without doctoring it to really judge the vodka taste (okay crazy Eastern Europeaner) so I took her juice. Apparently this particular vodka (from Poland) tastes like blades of grass. I wouldn't know, mine tasted like peaches. The girls went and danced in the smoking room where the bartender Teresa befriended was (apparently he has a girlfriend but he had been texting Teresa all day about how much he want her blah blah blah) and Renata snagged some Italian/Engligh guy. I wasn't into the smoking scene so Vitor and I stayed and talked and then he walked me home. He was trying to teach me a Brazilian dance while we were in the club so he showed me on the street and we danced outside my apartment. I will have to teach him how to swing dance!