Time is going by way too fast.

HOW is tomorrow March 1st? I cannot believe how fast my time in Italy is going by. But it's been so great, I am so so so blessed and thankful. The past two weekends were really fun.

So last weekend, on Friday I went with SAI to Chianti! Chianti is in the beautiful green Tuscan hills, and we went to a winery and old castle there. The weather was perfect. We had a short tour of the winery and then wine tasting! I'm not a huge fan of red wine, I've been learning to appreciate it a lot more since I've been here (I really like how here in Italy they savor and make wine into an art instead of using it to get drunk) but it was the best wine I've ever had. We tried 4 different kinds, and I actually ended up buying a bottle of my favorite one, the Chianti Classico. We also tried a Rose wine, Chianti reserve, and a dessert wine with biscotti. Along with the wine they also gave us prosciutto, salami, little breads with various spreads, and the best thing everr was the crostini (toasts) with the most amazing extra virgin olive oil I've ever had. My roommates and I bought a bottle for special occasions. That was such a good day, so many of my friends were there, and the trip was FREE!

Friday night me, Haley, and Haley went to a "gospel choir concert" at our church. The choir was about 10 old ladies & one guy singing, with a guy playing piano. They were singing SO loud because there were so few of them, they were pretty good, it was just really funny. But a nice, different thing to do!

Saturday I just did homework and finally cleaned our apartment (we finally found a mop, it was desperately needed) because Sunday was the trip with our program to the Carnival kick-off parade in Viareggio! Viareggio is a town on west coast of Italy, about an hour and a half away by train. We left Sunday morning, got there around lunchtime, and after a bite to eat went to see the parade! The parade was absolutely amazing, but really really strange. The parade floats were HUGE and quite detailed, they had tons of people dancing to loud happy music on them (especially the song Barbara Streisand by Duck Sauce, look it up if you haven't heard it, it's so funny!) and everyone was dressed up. It was a nasty, cloudy/rainy day, but still really colorful. Anyways, the weird thing was that the floats were all politically charged or had nudity or something like that, not exactly for kids! But there were tons of them there which was fun. We also happened to stand under an apartment that had a kid with TONS of confetti that he kept dumping on us, it was fun though! The weather was bad but it was a good day!

This weekend was awesome. On Friday I went with some art students to the studio of multi-media contemporary artist Robert Pettena. He has photography, sculpture, video installation, and a really cool studio/home. The coolest piece was this big nest made out of plants, vines, and mesh, that had 8 birds living inside it! It was hanging by cables from the ceiling in his studio, and we, one-by-one, got to put on this jacket thing and look inside it! It was really cool. He was really nice as well, and gave us biscotti with sweet wine at the end. There are many artists in Florence whose studios you can go visit, I would really like to go to some more but we'll see! Here's some pics of his studio/nest:

On Saturday I went to Venice!! I love Venice. We left at 7:30 on Saturday by private bus. There were about 50 people (it was with SAI) and it took about 3 hours to get there. I mostly dozed on the way. When we arrived we checked into our hotel in Mestre (I roomed with two sweet girls from India who are actually roommates with my friend Cara), and then took a bus and then a ferry into Venezia! We arrived at San Marco square which was where everyone and everything was. Huge crowds of people you could barely walk through, every type of mask and costume, it was so cool. We were supposed to have a tour but we got separated within 10 minutes of it with all the people and distractions! But I am not sad about that. We (me and 5 others that managed to stick together) bought masks for people that didn't have them, (I bought mine in Florence the night before) and wandered around a bit. Then Haley, Andrea, and I decided to go to the top of the bell tower! It was 8 euros to go up, but so worth it, and it was just an elevator ride. The pictures at the top were perfetto.

We came back down from the bell tower and wandered around some more, had dinner, threw confetti at people, etc. We met back up with our friends and it was a fun night!

I forgot to mention that I have been sick for a few days now. It's nothing bad, just congestion pretty much, but it's annoying. So Sunday morning I was soo tired when I woke up, and I always feel more sick in the morning and late at night. But the hotel breakfast was pretty good actually. We then went back to Venice and went to a glassblowing factory! They did a demonstration and it was amazing. The guy made a freaking horse out of glass in one minute! It was so cool, I wish we had glassblowing classes! We then looked in their shop and I bought a little bowl thing that I really liked.

After that we went to lunch which, although it was close, took us forever to get to because we somehow got caught in a crowd of people close as sardines. Lunch was good though, and was paid for in the trip which was nice. After that me, Andrea, and Haley went to see the Jewish ghetto. It is a part of Venice in which Jews were forced to live in, could not leave, and had huge gates that kept them in the small area. It was the polar opposite from San Marco square, it was so quiet. We went to the really small museum and looked around the square, it was a good thing to remember what those people went through. Funny story: Because it was raining a bit I had my scarf wrapped around my head in a Jewishy way, and a lady asked us where the synagogue was, and I knew where it was bc it was near the museum we went to haha!) At about 6:00ish we headed back to Florence, it was a nice bus ride, we even saw some snow!

It was a great weekend, I really want to go back to Venice when there are less people there. I think I am feeling a bit better, I want to be totally better before I go to Rome this weekend! Well that's all for now, ciao!

~ Elisa