Graziegiving and Operation Exploration

So, as of today, November 29th, 2009, I have less than two weeks until my semester in Firenze is over. I can't believe it. It has honestly been a major whirlwind. I feel like it was just yesterday that I lugged my two gigantic suitcases up the three very steep, pitch black stairs of this apartment. Everything has been incredible here. The classes, the people, the travel, the culture. I have loved it all. When I leave Florence on December 11th, it's going to be extremely bittersweet (as most endings are). I'm spending the night in Rome with my friend Joci and then Saturday the 12th I have a flight to Cairo to visit Zack. So with exactly 13 days left before leaving Italy, I have 13 days more of experiencing Florence. I've already done a lot but clearly there is always more to do. It's definitely hard to be motivated to do work when all I want to do is wander around Florence. My friends and I have created quite the list of things to see and go to before we leave and we've started to check things off...
Thursday, was of course Thanksgiving, and what kind of Americans would we be without celebrating? Boy did we celebrate. Shelly and I cooked up quite the feast, all in about 4.5 hours. We made.......stove top turkey, pumpkin pie, apple crisp, green bean casserole, glazed vegetables, parmesean garlic mashed potatoes, italian foccacia stuffing, corn, cranberry sauce, and threw in a store bought panetone for italian flair (a type of cake-ish christmas bread). The cooking before the feast was definitely stressful, and it definitely made me appreciate the 1/2 catered thanksgiving dinner I've been to the past couple years. But needless to say, we cooked and cooked and cooked and produced a fantastically delicious feast. I was very proud of myself and Shelly. We got lucky and used Shelly's sister's best friend's apartment (which had an oven!)and we had eleven people at the dinner. It was so much fun! We barely had any leftovers! It was a very successful thanksgiving, and even though I'm really sad I wasn't with my family, I'm glad I was forced to create my own feast.
The Friday after thanksgiving was detox day...ish. I sat in my room ALL DAY writting an Art History paper. I left my apartment once to get some water, but otherwise I was sitting on my bed, laptop on my lap and papers thrown everywhere. By dinner time my paper was done. I was SO productive! Felt lazy as hell, but it's hard to complain considering the amount of work I got done. Basically now, I have two tests and a quiz standing before me and the end of the semester. Beautiful.
Following my extremely productive Friday, Saturday was spent exploring Florence. Shelly and I met our friend Joci at 10:30 at San Marco, the church and cloister. I was suppose to go there for a class but thanks to Florence's stupid museum hours, I had to look up all the images online. It was really cool to be able to see everything in person rather than on Google images. San Marco was the home to, in my opinion, Florence's most evil tyrant: Savonarola. He was a fiery priest who, following the exile of the Medici family, began priesting death and damnation to anyone who was even the tinniest bit 'sinful'. He scared artists such as Botticelli to burn his own beautiful paintings in the middle of Piazza Signoria in what was known as the Bonfire of the Vanities. To make a long story short, he got too much power, started bashing the Pope and the church, so the Pope had him tourted and burned. Great Renaissance story...fascinating for me. So we got to see the church Savonarola preside over and spent most of his time. Pretty cool.
After San Marco we wandered the streets 'piazza hopping'. Usually every Saturday and Sunday there's a market in each of the piazzas, but of course the one Saturday we go looking for the markets, they don't exist. We still wandered around though and a very good time. For lunch we crossed a restaurant we wanted to try off our list, Cafe Za Za in the San Lorenzo market. Very good. Following lunch we did some more wandering, some shopping and then parted ways for some down time before dinner. I've been wanting to get some photos taken of the sunset in Florence so I ventured out at about 4:30 to try and do that. Of course it was a clear night so the sunset was virtually non-existant. Instead I ended up spening a long time in book store,wanting to buy half a dozen books to read, but walking out with one more on Renaissance Florence, a last hurrah.
For dinner we were able to check off another restuarant we wanted to try. We all split three small thinigs, topped off with a glass of wine. Delish. After dinner I went home, crawled into bed and spent two hours laughing and crying over Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias. I can't believe I'd never seen it before!
Sunday is work day again. I'm going to go to a market down the street that's suppose to be selling vintage jewelry. SO excited. 13 more days...