Ciao da Firenze--finalmente!

I finally made it to Florence! (May I apologize in advance for typos--Italian keyboards are different, and my different I mean annoying.) I am all oriented, and today is the first day of classes (or would have been, had my one class today not been cancelled).

My host family consists of a host mother, Francesca, and her mother, Maria, who lives next door. They are both incredibly nice, and incredibly Italian. The apartment complex is in what the guidebooks call the North City Centre and the cab drivers call 'vicino a San Marco'--near Saint Mark's. The apartment is ENORMOUS, considering it's in a European city (or any city for that matter) and furnished almost exclusively with things I'm afraid I'll break. The streets right around us are residential, but a few blocks away the piazzas and bustle of central Florence start. Our walk to the Stanford Center is 25 minutes long and--not to brag--one of the prettiest walks of all time. We walk down the oldest street in Florence, past cute shops, past San Marco, past Piazza della Reppublica, past the Duomo, across the Arno on the Ponte Vecchio (there will be pictures soon! I promise!).

To give you an idea of the sort of things I've been learning pre-classes, here are the things I learned at dinner last night:
1. A very handy phrase is "non lo sapevo," or "I didn't know (that)." Useful variants include "non lo sapevamo" (we didn't know that) and "mi dispiace, non lo sapevo" (I'm sorry, I didn't know).
2. Miss Italy has short hair. This is a VERY big deal and worthy of extended television coverage.
3. America is not the only country with ridiculous reality television. Italians have a program in which celebrities compete at circus stunts they have one week to learn. It is called "Reality Circus"--how fitting, in how many ways.
4. Italians talk very quickly. Asking them to repeat something slowly does not help.

Pictures soon! Bacioni :)