I can't believe it, but today is December 1st! I'll be heading home in just 10 days, this semester has gone by so fast. While I'm certainly looking forward to going home because I miss my family and friends, part of me wants to stay. I'm feeling increasingly comfortable here the more I learn the language and the more I get to know my friends and teachers. So I definitely have mixed feelings about coming home in 10 days. But anyway, here's a rundown of what's been going on here.
Last Thursday, we had an amazing Thanksgiving dinner here with all my friends and the faculty at the school, for many of them it was their first Thanksgiving. There were over 20 of us in all, we had 2 turkeys and an excessive amount of other food. Oh, and lots of wine. We went through something like 14 bottles of wine between all of us. It was a really great opportunity to get to know the faculty and my professors on a more personal level. The best part of the night, though, was when everyone said what they were thankful for. We really are like one big family here, even the professors and faculty too. It was great to hear everyone's thoughts on Thanksgiving, the semester, etc. We got the whole thing on video too. It's too long to be uploaded to Facebook, but it's definitely something I will cherish for years to come, and it'll be great to show people when I come home. So Thanksgiving was all in all one of the best experiences I've had here. Oh, and I also made my first turkey. It came out really great, I followed Carlo's (he's my meat guy) directions and used his spices and it came out perfect. Carrying it 20 minutes across town to the party was an adventure though.
Last weekend, I went to Volterra with Chris, Matt, Mike, and Tina. It's been a while since I did any traveling; after that 10 day trip we went on all over Europe I had had enough of traveling for a while. Volterra was really beautiful. It's a really small, ancient city on top of a hill, full of nice views of the Tuscan landscape. There were a lot of ancient Etruscan ruins and artifacts, and we visited a small Etruscan museum. We did a lot of exploring and walking all day, we even climbed some big rocks on the outskirts of the city and got some great pictures of all of us in the process. We also saw our first snow of the season, unfortunately. There was just a trace of snow on some of the grass and the roofs of buildings. Very uncool. I don't miss snow one bit. Another interesting thing about Volterra was that it was the setting for part of the Twilight series. So a lot of the shops sold Twilight memorabilia. Probably the funniest part of our day there was when Matt recreated a scene from Twilight in the main piazza, he told his sister he'd do it because she's such a big fan. In the book, Edward wants to kill himself by stepping out into the sun from one of the archways. So Matt actually took his shirt off in the freezing cold and we got pictures of him standing in the archway. People thought we were nuts. They may have been right.
Just last night, we had our big sustainability seminar at the school. We got a really good turnout from the students thanks to professors offering extra credit if they attended. All of our professors were there, the mayor of Florence came too. We even Skyped a few professors at Penn State so they could watch as well. The presentation couldn't have gone any better. All four groups did a fantastic job presenting their aspect of sustainability. My group was sustainable agriculture, while the other groups spoke about sustainable eating, sustainable energy, and making Palazzo Rucellai more sustainable. After the formal presentations, we had food and drinks and people were able to walk around and talk to us more in depth about each of our topics. The conference was a complete success. Afterwards, all of the students and professors who were involved in the project sat down for dinner at a local restaurant, paid for by the school. We had another great dinner with everyone; all of us are becoming closer and closer each day. The thought that all of this will be ending in only 10 days is actually making me pretty emotional right now. I've formed some great relationships with so many people here, I'll miss them all dearly.
Other random things... I have a recent obsession with scarves. I've bought myself a couple of scarves in the past week or so, and I got some for gifts. Every time I walk through the San Lorenzo market I can't help but buy a scarf. It's bad. They're relatively inexpensive though. I have also bought all of the little things I wanted to get before I go home, like a cap for a bottle of olive oil, a new wallet, a belt. I still have some shopping to do for Christmas gifts, but I'm almost done. Tomorrow is the last day of classes. Then we've got finals next Monday and Tuesday. Then, we have the rest of that week to do whatever we want before we go home on Saturday December 11th. Also, I just finished and handed in my Paleolithic Diet research paper which came out great, despite the fact that since I handed it in I've thought of multiple ways it could have been improved. But it's okay, I'm pretty sure I went above and beyond what Professor Fischer expected. That's it for now, I'll probably only write one more blog post at the end of next week. See you soon family!
