when in rome :)

where do i even begin.

rome is incredible. this was the first trip that i was really really super duper thrilled about and it did not disappoint. 5 of the 6 girls in our group didn't have class on thursday so we left that morning on an earlyish train and got there around noon. once we got there we met the landlord and he took us straight to lunch at one of his favorite places. rome is known for their carbonara so half the table got it at lunch but i enjoyed another pasta dish that was very simple but one of the best ones i've had while in italy. noodles, cheese, and pepper. how can they make a basic dish so delicious?! WOWZA! we finished off the plate of pastries they had in their front case (yes the whole thing) and bounced on outta there to go to his friend's gelato place just a few shops away. so began the weekend of sweets and carbs. thursday afternoon was fun, lots of walking and taking fun pictures and enjoying being together. man i love my friends. we didn't make a whole lot of plans except for reservations to get into the vatican first thing Friday morning so we had the day free to walk around and enjoy being there and we found some fun little places and stumbled across places we were intending to go anyway!

love these precious people.

piazza navona

that night we bought some fresh proscuitto, cheese, and bread and ate at home while we got ready to go out. chi's new italian friends took us out to an italian club where their friend was playing with his band and it was such a fun time! it was away from the touristy areas and we stuck out even more than we normally do because we were the only americans in the place but the music was outstanding. we found out the hard way on the way to meet the friends that transportation in rome is way different than rome and it took twice the time we thought it would using the bus. on the way home, we found out the hard way again that after midnight the buses run every hour on the hour so we got to hang out on the curb in a random part of rome waiting for the bus. which was fun :)

we got up early the next morning and went to the vatican museum and sistine chapel. i will spare everyone a million and a half pictures and just post a couple but it was beautiful, of course. i do regret not taking an art history course while i'm here so i could know more about what i'm seeing but luckily we were with two art majors and one art history major who educated us on a lot of what we were seeing. the last stop of the tour was the sistine chapel and it was so overwhelming and beautiful. they said no pictures, i may have snuck one of the ceiling to get a picture of the creation of adam :) maybe not though…

room of the signature by raphael: hello mr. euclid.

st. peter's square

after a nap, we walked around some more and once nighttime hit, we went to the pantheon, which, if you don't know much about architecture like me, you should just google what it is because it's quite incredible. the dome is a perfect sphere and has a circle in the top that was used as a sun dial and all sorts of things. perrrrrty cool. we had dinner at a place called miscellanea which was right next to it, known for their 15 euro fixed menu that came with unlimited sexy wine. we had to check it out. then we went to the trevi fountain which is MAGICAL. i could have stayed there for hours, seriously. it was around midnight at that point, which i think was a great time because there wasn't a big crowd, and we threw coins into the fountain. we found out later that we did it wrong so we went by the next night and tried again :) once we left the fountain, we set out to find the spanish steps which was quite a challenge. after taking lots of twists and turns and getting lost a few times, we finally found it and raced up the steps as best we could.

pantheon

that sexy wine ain't no joke!

you know a restaurant is touristy when they have pictures of all the american presidents...

the trevi fountain :)

the next morning, everyone but me and katie got up to go see the sunrise at st. peter's square and man did we miss a beautiful sunrise. maybe i can snag a picture from one of my friend's and post it on here so you can see. so gorgeous. once we got up, we walked around for a long time and found the open air market and got some fabulous pizza at baffetos (as suggested by my sweet friend and co, julia!) and set out to find THE BEST GELATO ON THE PLANET!!!! the pope himself goes to get his gelato from giolitti and man did it live up to the hype. we may or may not have gotten it twice that day. we spent about an hour on the steps of piazza venezia people watching and getting pooped on by birds (not joking) and did some more walking (Katie calculated it and one day we walked for 18 hours!!). we went to an irish pub that we had our eye on had a drink before the soccer crazies got there and we went and ate outside of another cafe by the pantheon. we went back by the trevi fountain to make a wish the correct way, saw the spanish steps again on the way to dropping a friend off at the metro station, then called it a night. we were beat.

open air markets are legit

roman graffiti is also legit.

the spanish steps

bright and early, it was my turn to see the sunrise in st. peter's square but this time it was cloudy which i was slightly bummed about. i gave myself a tour of the basilica which was amazing and went to the colosseum, palatine hill, and the roman forum. it got me in the mood to watch gladiator for sure….if only i had thought to bring it! our last stop was hiking to the top of piazza del popolo and seeing the gardens that overlooked rome. my feet were practically bleeding at this point so i took the time to sit and enjoy the view rather than walk all through the park but it was a gorgeous view indeed. we made our way back down to the piazza and ran into our friend theresa. literally ran into her as she was leaving mass (what are the odds??) so we hopped on the metro and went to a bakery that is UNDERGROUND and had the best pastries i've ever had. if you are going to rome you HAVE to go there. almost everything is 30 cents so go crazy and get one of everything. seriously. you won't regret it.

st. peter's basilica

the Colosseum in all its glory.

roman forum

the view in the gardens above piazza del popolo

overall the trip was incredible and i would love to go back sometime. everyone always says the romans are mean compared to people in florence but we had a great experience with everyone except for the last lady i had the pleasure of coming in contact with on the train. old grouchy italian grandma hops on a packed out train and told me to get out of my seat and let her sit down because she deserves it. i was shocked at first but could laugh about it 5 seconds later. maybe it was because i'm american, maybe it was because i was the first seat she saw, maybe it was because she was 100 years old and felt entitled who knows, but it definitely didn't put a damper on an awesome weekend. too many memories and pictures to put in here or on Facebook and i know you don't care THAT much so enjoy the select few(ish) that i post.

up next… london :)

growing pains.

as i'm writing this, i'm realizing that this is EXACTLY 4 weeks to the hour since we arrived in this incredible city. ……..moment of silence……… this is so weird that it has already been a month. i know we always say time flies but its true- it has FLOWN by and it has been such a roller coaster, which leads me to my first emotional blog post. feel free to stop reading if you don't want to know about all of this.

so i had coffee with one of my friends from lubbock before we left and i told her what i've been told by people who have studied abroad before me that kinda made me nervous. they said "you will come back being a COMPLETELY different person, you will grow so much…." blah dee blah. my sweet friend jaree said- they're right, you will grow so much, but you will grow more into the person God wants you to be. that has stuck with me ever since and let me tell you know, it is my hope going forward into the coming months. they told us at orientation that it was normal to go through a cycle of emotions while you are here- the honeymoon stage when you just LOVE everything about florence and you're just so happy to be here and its all wonderful and then you cycle into frustration and being homesick and then back to being excited, and on and on… i can honestly say i have cycled through every stage probably three times at this point but it has been such a sweet, sweet time. it's easy when times are good to thank God for it and its also easy to forget to even acknowledge that He is the Giver of all good things. it's during the growing pains that God has brought me to my knees and I have hungered and thirsted to be near to Him. that has been what most of this first month has been- growing pains. i know it's because He's forming me into who He wants me to be. i know that i am the clay and He is the potter, although i live my life so often as if the roles are reversed. i really thought all along this study abroad experience was going to be for ME but really, it's been a time that the Lord has showed me once again how sovereign He is in all things, even the decisions i think i'm making for myself.

so if you've been keeping up with my blog or Facebook, you have seen that my mom and second mom (her best friend) were here for the first week of my stay in florence. my mom is an incredible woman and if you have been blessed to come in contact with her you will agree with me. she is so kind, and the love of Christ pours from her. she would do anything for me, she encourages me, she lets me call her everyday and never acts annoyed, she gives advice (even if i don't always ask her for it), she is supportive, is proud of her kids no matter what, etc. etc. so when she left, it was actually really hard. a lot harder than i'd like to admit. like, a homesickness that a 21 1/2 year old shouldn't be feeling when she's in freakin italy. but what the Lord did through those few weeks following her leaving was bring me to His Word and give me a desire to be near to Him because I felt so out of my element being this far away from home and i felt so overwhelmed. to summarize, He reminded me through those mornings that He is the only one who can truly comfort me, bring me peace, satisfy the overwhelming feeling i felt. i was reminded that He has given me exactly what i need for each day, a Rock to stand on, a Father to trust and hold on to, and the hope of heaven. dang.

another way He has shown His sovereignty was in bringing the friends He has into me and katie's lives. the first week here was great and we met a couple people from orientation but we were with my mom and Amy for most of our free time which didn't include going out with everyone every night so relationships didn't really grow. it was something i prayed a lot about since me and katie found out we were living together, just the two of us, in our apartment. we were excited of course but we knew it would be a little harder to meet people since we didn't come with 30 people from our school and didn't have 4 other roommates to meet people through but the Lord has just been so faithful to provide some awesome girls to get to share this experience with. we have had incredible conversations, have laughed, haven't cried yet, but have made some fabulous memories already and i'm super excited to see how the rest of the semester goes. lots more memories to be made, trips to be taken to the secret bakery, margaritas to be enjoyed at tijuana, dinners to be cooked, conversations to be had. He has been in control from the second i stepped off the plane and has showed me that there is more to this experience than learning how to live in another culture and He will continue to teach me in these coming months. He is moving and its incredible to see His power at work here.

life is beautiful in the laughter and in the growing pains and He uses every little thing to form us into who He wants us to be.

what a sweet and peaceful feeling.

venice

grand canal

two blogs in one week. gotta be a record. so i'm going to give you a little run down of our trip to venice last weekend which was a wonderful time, kinda cold, but very interesting. we got up at a very early hour (3:30 a.m. to be exact) to catch the 4:30 train because it had the lowest price and we all made it successfully. the good thing about going at that ungodly hour was that there weren't very many people on the train so we got to doze on and off for our 4 1/2 hour trip north.
my advice if you are traveling in a foreign country: if you decide you want to take up two seats during your trip because there's enough room to and you want to put your feet up, make sure your shoes are off or on your own bags, not making a mess all over their seats. you might get a gripey old man checking tickets at 5 a.m. and he might start yelling at you in a foreign language for being ill-mannered and disrespectful and threaten to kick you off the train for making the seats dirty. that may or may not have happened to a couple girls in our group.

once we finally got to venice, it was cold, but beautiful. chi found us an apartment for the weekend in the center of town for a really good price for 7 of us to stay in and the sweet man who owns it met us at the train station to walk us there. we unloaded all our stuff and set out to brave the cold. we found carnevale masks (see pictures below) and also found this restaurant that was pretty much under a bridge and away from the touristy areas. we are used to restaurants being chill and everyone taking forever to eat but this restaurant was loud, and our waiter was very pushy and wanted to get us in and out of there as quick as possible. despite that, the seafood was very very good. it's also probably important to note that since venice is built on a bunch of different islands and connected by bridges, it is much more difficult to navigate than florence because there are even more twists and turns and street names change every other second. luckily my roommate and bestie katie can decipher any map and helped us get around town so kudos to her.

for those of you like me who did not know exactly what carnevale is: it's an annual festival that starts 58 days before Easter and ends on fat tuesday, the day before ash wednesday. so, like mardi gras i guess, minus the beads and debauchery...at least we didn't see any...

more festive carnavale garb

after walking around and seeing the canals, we were exhausted so we went home to take a nap and made dinner at home. our friends chi and tiffany went museum hopping all day and told us about the delicious hot chocolate they found and it made all of us want some so we went and found one of the only restaurants open around our apartment (venice shuts down early…) and had some post-dinner hot chocolate. when we got up the next day, we were expecting it to be snowing since that's what the forecast told us but instead it was just cold and later, extremely windy. we wore our masks everywhere that day and walked through san marco to see what was going on with the carnavale happenings and it made for some great people watching. they go all out. afterwards, we thought we might go see the guggenheim museum across the grand canal but knew it was a long walk so we decided to take a gondole. it was a nice ride minus the driver (or whatever you call them) being a little too pushy about letting him take us. going on the canals was great, but once we hit the grand canal, it was like hurricane winds and i legitimately though we were going to tip because of all the waves. we had our ride cut short and ran to the guggenheim museum to check out some modern art. so cultured, i know.

our carnevale masks!

san marco

that night, we went out for dinner and tried the two drinks that are very popular in venice- spritz and hot wine. we liked the spritz…hot wine, not so much. we peaced out early the next day and hopped on an earlier train than we were planning on so we could get home because we saw all of venice we wanted to see. we all made it on, but after we switched trains in bologna, we were met with a little bump in the road, er, tracks. when we were going through a tunnel, we started hearing this really loud noise that sounded like hail and it lasted a few seconds, then stopped, then started again a few seconds later. it startled all of us and we didn't know what that noise could have been. while we were still going through the tunnel, we started slowing to a stop on the tracks, in the pitch black, and waited for close to 3 hours while the people who worked on the train ran back and forth through all the cars telling us it was going to be okay and we could leave again soon. we were sitting in the second to last train car and when the other people on our train started going to the car behind us to see what was going on, we found out that rocks or something (we still don't really know what it was) broke holes in some of the windows in the train cars in front of and behind us, shattering the glass. how that happened, we still have no idea, but we got to hang out in the train until they finally let us go to the next station that was only 10 minutes away where we all got off and piled onto the next train that came by. always have food and water and a book to read or SOMETHING with you when you are traveling on a train in case something happens and you have to chill for a few hours in the middle of a dark tunnel. still thanking Jesus that nothing too serious happened and also that we got to have some great conversations while we were waiting to figure out what they were going to tell us to do.

so glad no one was sitting in this seat when the rock shower happened. this is just one of the few windows that got broken while we were traveling home.

so that was a little longer than i anticipated so there's the venice update and maybe one of these days not too long from now, i'll update again :) ciao!

siena, the tuscan countryside, pisa, and lucca.

bahhhhh so i knew this was going to happen. one blog every few weeks. oh well, most of you see this because i post it on Facebook so you've already seen all my pictures :) but for those of you who don't…since i last blogged, i have gotten to see quite a few beautiful places AND start classes. joy. the same weekend we went to san gimignano with my mom and mrs leach, we got to see siena and get a tour by the #1 tour guide in the city (spiffy!). she showed us st. catherine's basilica and walked us through town to show us the highlights such as the world's first bank and piazza del campo (history lessons below). it was a little cold but it was a great time to go since 2 weeks later our friends were going sledding on all the snow in the piazza. [we are calling the past few weeks in italy snowpocalypse because it usually doesn't snow this much in the winter and hasn't snowed this much in 50 years??] me and katie can't wait to wear our chacos…

siena

world's first bank: the middle gothic looking building was the original bank. the buildings on either side were built in the two centuries following it by two different architects from rome and florence. lots of character, this little square here, and all 3 sections now belong to the same bank that is still being used today!

looking back at st. catherine's basilica. st. catherine is one of the two patron saints of italy (the other one being st. francis of assisi). her pointer finger and skull are on display in this church and her body is buried in rome.

piazza del campo is beautiful (you're going to get tired of me describing things this way...). but really it is. the outside of this square is used twice a year as a track when the entire town shuts down for the horse races. from the 13 districts that siena is divided up in, 6 or 7 (depending on the time of year) jockeys and horses are drawn in order to race against each other for the coveted bragging rights of winning "palio di siena." each district has its own museum that contains all the banners they have won throughout the centuries.

after we left siena, we spent the afternoon taking the scenic route back to florence. the tuscany region is absolutely gorgeous but i'm sad to say i was still jetlagged and running around for these 2 days after orientation was exhausting so i definitely didn't take enough pictures but here are a few.…mansions and vineyards galore.

the next weekend was our first day trip without the parentals and train ride to see the leaning tower of pisa and the cute little town of lucca. i don't have much of a history lesson on pisa and the only significant thing i know about lucca is that it's known for their walls. they are tall and very sturdy and no one could get through them to attack the city. in the spring it's the place to be because you can rent bikes and ride on the top of the walls or walk or whatever but we didn't do that because well, we were freezing. our few hour trip there was fun though and maybe we'll make it back later this semester when it's warmer and rent some bikes :)

pisa: the same beautiful arno river that runs through florence.

we found it :)

thanks for reading! next update SOON (i promise) over venice, carnavale, and valentine's day :) ciao!