I’ve now had an intercultural experience I never planned on and didn’t really want in the beginning: I went to the hospital. I don’t want to talk about the specifics, but for a period after just waking up this morning I lost consciousness and woke up with my head bleeding. My roommate’s gone for the […]
ContinueFlorence, Italy: The Treadmill of Life
The treadmill has to be one of the greatest and worst inventions in the history of the world. It’s a contraption designed to make you work hard for amounts of time without getting anywhere. Yet, training on it (and its horizontally-impaired step-sibling the Stairmaster) lets me get into shape for hiking the Appalachian Trail. The […]
ContinueFlorence, Italy: Riding the Sugar High
I just returned from the world’s largest chocolate festival. Eurochocolate, http://www.eurochocolate.com, is an annual fair devoted entirely to chocolate. It was packed! This year in the ten days it’s hosted in Perugia (in Umbria to the south of Florence), they’re expecting over a million people. In fact, the bus I went on couldn’t get into […]
ContinueFlorence, Italy: Living It Up
It’s great how the small reminders of familiarity can change an entire day. I spent the first part of the day getting a lot done. A little reading here and there adds up. Then came the familiar: Mike’s cooking lessons. These are turning into the highlights of my weeks. I know this is going to […]
ContinueFlorence, Italy: Empathetic Elation
I’m pretty excited. I just got the e-mail. The e-mail that told me two of my best friends are now engaged! Richard Newton, one of my roommates back at TCU, has been dating Sarah Harville since our sophomore year. Now they’re engaged. They both support each other and love each other so much. Whether helping […]
ContinueFlorence, Italy: Needing the Kneading
Kneading is an art. It creates; it forms; it sustains. Kneading envelopes, turns, pushes, and envelopes again. The bakery at the end of my street is one of Florence’s best. It’s the little details that help in distinguishing this ‘forno’-expert from all of the others. The baker speaks at least three languages and smiles and […]
ContinueFlorence, Italy: Third Technological Casualty
What could be worse than my third technological casualty during my stay here in Italy? The fourth, which almost happened! When I was cooking a great sauce for my angel hair pasta tonight, I tripped over my power cord plugged into my Apple Powerbook. It wasn’t good. When I plugged it back in, it started […]
ContinueFlorence, Italy: Digging In
I’ve finally decided something – I’m digging in. I’m going to stay in Florence for most weekends and enjoy the culture. Several people have told me I need to go to several places, but I realized today that I haven’t enjoyed Florence enough. I’ve yet to go into the Uffizi, the Museum of San Marco, […]
ContinueFlorence, Italy: Poetic Justice
I knew I shouldn’t have written that last entry; I just knew it. I had the fresh wind and now I have to deal with the fresh rain. What a night! After finishing our week of classes, Brett and I decided to go out for dinner. We went to my new favorite restaurant in Florence, […]
ContinueFlorence, Italy: Fresh Wind
I started this week in a funk. Literally. One of the nice things about going so cheap and efficiently to Venice was that I took 1.5 outfits that fit in the bottom of my backpack. They were dirty by the end of the trip and I threw them in the wash right once I got […]
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