è tutto finito

I'm currently writing from my hotel room in Cairo. The semester has finished, I've left Florence and have begun my Christmas break in Cairo/Singapore. I can't believe it's all over. The semester ended really quickly. Finals went well but it was definitely hard to focus. I was ready to leave by the last week and all I wanted was for finals to be over so I could enjoy the last week with my friends. That was a little hard to do, but I did my best. Saturday I spent running errands around Florence, going to the market to buy presents etc. We went to the Christmas market in Santa Croce and wandered around there. It was adorable! Had all the Christmas decorations every celebrating family could dream of. Of course there wasn't a single hannukah decoration but when is there ever? I think the market was suppose to be a copy of the famous German and Viennese Christmas market because there were a ton of food stalls with German/Viennese food...struedal, sausages, giant pretzels etc. There was also a delicious vino caldo stand which served small cups of hot spiced wine. So good! Throughout the last week I would wander over to the market for a breath of fresh air, it was SO cute.
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday was spent almost solely on studying with a little packing and a lot of movie watching thrown in there. I managed to sufficiently procrastinate by watching Gone with the Wind (a 4 hour movie)and an entire season of a TV show my friend told me about called Modern Family. Don't worry parents and grandparents, I studied and got done what I needed to. Tuesday night I went to my first Italian apertivo! It's a genuis Italian inventio where you go to a bar, order a drink and get food along with the drink, all for 8 euros. If you find a good enough place you can basically make the apertivo your dinner, which is what my friends and I did.
Wednesday was my "hard" day. I woke up pretty early and went on a run (which ended up being my last run in Florence :( ), then studied a bit and went up to school for my Art History final. After the final I worked on my self portrait painting for my class, took my italian oral and then had my art critique. It all went pretty well! Wednesday night my friends and I went to La Giostra for our 2nd to last meal in Italy. As usual, it was AMAZING. Tons of proseco, wine, limoncello, pasta and appetizers. Delicious.
Thursday was the last day in Florence and we all had our Italian written exam to take. It was basically impossible to study for that test. I, and I'm pretty sure everyone else, was SO distracted with the idea that the semester was almost done. But finally we were all done! Of course we had an unbelievable amount to get done before everyone left the next day. Our aparments had to be cleaned and I had to finish packing! It was an extremely hectic last day. We had a lot of plans for what we wanted to do for the end but unfortunately we had to cut a bunch out because of time. Thursday night Shelly, Jenny and I ate our last meal in Florence at Aqua al Due, where I got the pasta taster with small plates of 5 types of pasta. I figured it'd be a perfect end to Italian food. The night was a late one as we tried to 'live it up' for the last night. I think I went to sleep at about 5am, only to get up briefly at 6 to say by to Jenny and then my alarm went off at 9 30. It was BRUTAL.
Friday morning was HECTIC. Last minute packing, cleaning and goodbyes. SO sad. Jenny left first, then Shelly, me, and last to leave was Nami. I was meeting Joci at the train station at about 11 15. When I finally got into the taxi I started to get really sad and I'd be lying if I said I didn't start to cry a tad. Leaving really is bittersweet. There's no other way to describe it. I was obviously SO excited to go to Cairo and see Zack and then to be in Singapore with him and my family, but I knew that I was going to miss Florence and, more importantly my friends. Every time I saw the Duomo through the buildings as I drove to the train station I started to cry a bit harder. That city is gorgeous. I can't imagine living in a more beautiful city. It's filled to the brim with history and art, which for someone like me, is heaven. I need to go back there when I'm older.
Joci and I, along with my 3 massive bags and my backpack got on the train to Rome where we stayed for the night. By the time we got to the hotel at the airport it was about 2 30. We wanted to go into the city but we either would've had to wait for the free shuttle leaving at 4 or figure out how to take the train from the airport. We choose the later and it was quite the experience. We got on the train that said: Roma Metroplitana (which we assumed meant the center of the city) but we had no clue where exactly we needed to get off. Eventually we noticed that the train was not getting any closer to the center of Rome, but instead was getting further and further away. Joci finally asked someone which direction we were heading in and it turned out that we were in fact going in the opposite direction we needed to go in. We got off at the next stop and figured out how to buy a ticket back to Rome, as well as made the effort to ask, in Italian, how we get to Rome. We made it to Rome at tjust about the same time the bus would've gotten us there. After about 1.5 hours of wandering around and window shopping we started making our way to the bus stop for the shuttle. We were both pretty hungry and wanted to buy some food to bring back to the hotel but we decided that it would be better to find out were the shuttle was going to pick us up and then find food nearby. That would have been a grand idea if only there had been any sort of food store within a 10 block radius of the bust stop. I'm pretty sure Joci and I managed to find THE only area in Italy without food. Score. So we just hopped on the bus and ended up getting the cheapest items on the room service menu at the hotel.
We got up pretty early to get to the airport. Joci had a 10 am flight and my flight wasn't until 1:30, but because my ubelievable amount of luggage, I went to the airport with Joci so she could help me. She was a lifesaver. After saying bye to Joci I hung around for about 2 hours until I was finally able to check into my flight. Lovely Italian style, I got to wait in a line for 45 min, check in and then wait in another line for 20 min before recieving my boarding pass (thanks to baggage fees). Waiting for my flight I embraced the last hour or so I had in Italy and then happily got on the plane on my way to Cairo...