Benvenuti a Firenze!
The late start to this blog is directly related to the amount of fun I have been having so far... I simply could not find the time to write anything down!
So to recap:
I arrived in Florence in the early morning of Wednesday, August 29th, after taking the Night train from Paris to Milan and then the commuter train from Milan to Florence. The night train was an experience in and of itself. I have taken night trains before, but with this one, I was crammed into a tiny compartment measuring approximately 6ft by 8ft with 5 other cabinmates (4 of whom were very smelly males). I arrived in Milan at about 5:30am and then bolted, with my massive traveling backpack and a bigA suitcase, through the train station to get onto the 5:40am train to Firenze Santa Maria Novella.
To make a somewhat long story short, I arrived at the main train terminal in Florence in the early morning with my inordinate amount of stuff and headed straight to the student check in point of my school. I was welcomed, given my keys, and given the worst map I have ever seen and was told to go find my apartment. I managed this decently successful and only got lost once, but was helped by a very nice man from Boston who has been a professor at the University of Florence for 12 years. He could tell I needed help when he saw me staring at the map that could have easily passed as a pre-schooler's drawing and sweating profusely from dragging my suitcase along the cobblestoned streets of Florence (which, as a side note, have sidewalks that measure about 2ft in width with many, many tourists unaware that the courteous thing to do when spotting a person struggling with their suitcase would be to not stop in the middle of the tiny sidewalk, but rather to step aside nicely and let me pass). Anyhow, the nice professor pointed me in the right direction of my apartment, which I finally found. I then proceeded to struggle just a bit more when I had to carry all my stuff up 2 floors as almost no apartment building in Florence has a lift. But I survived, got into my apartment, showered, and unpacked my stuff, and waited to meet my new flatmates.
One by one, they arrived, and it was a wonderful feeling when at the end of the day the score was awesome flatmates 4, shitty flatmates 0. And the winners were Caitlin, Kenley, Kirsten, and Megan!
The next 2 days were filled with somewhat boring meetings, and orientation activities that paled miserably compared to Queen's in terms of fun, but I did meet more amazing people, and together, we all drank amazing wine (although the word amazing should be replaced with the word cheap...)
This is the start of my Florentine Adventure!
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