Un giorno nella citta' bellissima

Ciao amici!

Classes started yesterday and it's crazy because, after less than a week, Florence is really beginning to feel like my home.  The city is surprisingly very manageable and although I don't know my way around the city in its entirety yet, I feel pretty confident walking around in the corner where we live and study.  It helps that there are so many huge, memorable landmarks (i.e. il Duomo and the other large churches and buildings).

Last night, I spent the nicest evening I've had so far in Florence just walking around the city with Michelle and Andrea, le mie compagne di stanze.

Our journey started out just a few minutes from our home in a church that we were just going to look at.  The church we went to for Sunday mass, Santa Felicita, was much newer than this was and was very clearly in a late Rennaisance/Baroque style.  This church, on the other hand, had art spanning from the early 1000s when it was built to one sculpture that had the year 1982 inscribed on it.  Really, it looked something like an antique  sale at first, as if everything in the building were just randomly placed there for storage.  However, the more time I spent there, the more I grew to love the little church and appreciate the eclectic pieces.  Really, this church, by itself, could probably tell the whole history of Florence, which is an unfathomably amazing thought.

Even more beautiful than the art, however, were the people in the church.  There was a group of about eight old women praying the rosary at the very front of the church when we walked in and it was just a really beautiful sight.  When mass started as we were about to leave, we couldn't resist joining them.

Wanting to truly join in the mass with our new nonne italiane (Italian grandmothers, they don't know that they have already adopted us, but I do), we went on the hunt for an Italian missellette, that took us literally all around town to different book stores, many of which were closed because it was about 5 or 6 in the evening.  Although we didn't find our missellette (we did buy them this morning when the other stores were open), we spent the afternoon walking around the city, going back and forth between English and Italian and seeing a part of the city I hadn't seen before.  I really am starting to feel much more like a local than a tourist and, although I still have a long way to go, I really think that I am going to grow and learn a lot while I am here and I'm beyond excited for these next few months!

On another note, we had our first Art History class today and I felt like a few of the different sectors of my life started coming together.  Because we talked more about History than actual art, I learned that Florentines from the late 1200s/early 1300s onward were tremendously innovative not only in art and literature but also in the political sphere (Florence was one of the only, if not the only Republic since Rome fell) and (get excited) the realm of Economics (my favorite thing).  Did you know that many of the thirteenth and fourteenth century Florentines were among the first international bankers?  And that, long before the Euro, the Florin was a single currency that united many places?  These bankers even invented a system similar to credit cards where people could deposit money in a bank in, for example, Florence and withdraw it so that they could trade, even in large quantities, from a connected bank in, for example Switzerland or France.  Can you even imagine what an invaluable, indispensable tool an international bank would be to long-distance trade?  It's totally unbelievable!!  Now that I know that Florentine history has such vasts amounts of Economics as well as art, I don't know if I will ever be able to leave!!!

But, fortunately, that day is very far away.


Ciao for now!

Ciao, Firenze!

Ciao amici!

These last few days in Florence have been truly, truly incredible.  I CANNOT believe that there I am in this incredible place, walking the same streets as Michelangelo and Lorenzo de Medici EVERYDAY.  There is art and churched with well-known art and architecture EVERYWHERE.  Some of the most famous buildings, paintings and sculptures ARE RIGHT HERE and that is no exaggeration!!

Yesterday, I went to mass in the morning with Michelle and Andrea (two of my lovely roommates) at a church that is literally a five minute walk from our house.  Directly on the right, one of the first things you see when you walk in, was a painting called The Deposition by Pontormo, un artista working in Italy in the mid-1500s.  This is a work that I had studied in my Art History class Senior year of high school.  I never remembered the name of the church the painting was in (it is relatively small compared to, say, Il Duomo) and, of course, never even thought of trying to find it.

 I was so shocked and I tried to stay quiet but it was so hard!!  I kept saying to Michelle, "Questa e' cosi' famosa!! This is so famous!!"  To prove it, when we got back I opened one of our Art History books and it was re-printed on a whole page!

I guess that if I had to pick only a few words to describe my trip so far, it would be a stroke of buona fortuna, good luck, just like that.  This semester, all the FSU students live in the same building and guess who got the best apartment in the building??  We are on the fourth floor and we have THE BEST VIEW EVER.  From my window I see the top of some darling Florentine houses, some lovely gardens and, the best part, in the really distant horizon, the very tip-top of big tower which I lovingly refer to as "my castle."


And wait, it gets better.  I have AWESOME roommates.  I definitely feel like throughout my whole college career, I have really lucked out with respect to my roommates. (Dear Anne, Cait and Paige: I love and miss you all a ton and wish that you were here!)

We have already have several excursions and i don't have time to write about all of them, but the highlight was probably yesterday when we went to a church called San Miniato al Monte (St. Minias on the Mountain).  It's dedicated to Saint Minias, who is considered to first Florentine martyr.  He was actually an Armenian prince who was converted to Christianity when he had a vision while staying in Florence in the early first centuries AD, when Florence was still a Roman colony.  He began preaching in the streets and, as the story goes, when the Roman leader tried to boil him alive in hot oil, which was miraculously cooled the second his body touched the oil.  When lions were sent in to maul him, the lions stopped before Minias and bowed down.  Finally, the Roman leader ordered that Minias be be-headed and after the guards had done their job, Minias picked up his head and walked back to the mountains of Florence where he later died.  San Miniato was built in that spot to honor him and has grown into a reasonably large church

How Minias made that trek without his head, I can't fathom, because it was quite long and arduous for me with my body intact.  However, it was definitely worth the climb to see such a beautiful church and for such a great view of the city of Florence.

For any of you who are planning to come visit me, please bring your hiking boots because this is a trek that WE WILL be making!!

I wish I had time to write about everything that I have experienced, but it's time for me to go out and make some new memories so that I will have more to write about later...I must say ciao for now!

A Psalm of Life
What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.


Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.


Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.


In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !


Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !


Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;


Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.




Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)