Finally Home :)

Well, I finally made it home last night (Wednesday)! I was supposed to be home Tuesday night, but something was wrong with the plane in Amsterdam, so I was stuck there for the night. They did put us in a really nice hotel though, with a huge buffet dinner and breakfast the next day, so it wasn't too bad, and now I can officially say I have been to Amsterdam :)

I left Ferrara last Saturday and spent my last few days in Europe visiting Lamees in Paris. Paris was great and it was so fun to see Lamees again!! In Paris I went to the Louvre, the Eifel Tower, Notre Dame, and St. Suplice Church (where they filmed some of the Da Vinci code). Lamees lives right next to Notre Dame and the Siene River, so it was really pretty. It was really cold all weekend though and it even snowed one morning for a little while!

It feels really weird to be home. It doesn't feel much different and it doesn't seem like I have been gone for 3 1/2 months at all! I am so glad to be home though and I hope I get to see everyone very soon! But, if not, then Merry Chirstmas!! :)

Only a few more days ...

I can't believe that I leave Ferrara in 2 days! This week (and semester) has flown by! I finished finals on Monday; it was really nice to be done early. Yesterday I took my first solo trip to a little town called Bassano del Grappa. It was a two hour train ride north of Ferrara and it was beautiful! It was a gorgeous day out, so it was the perfect day to go. I was only there for a few hours, but I just walked along the river and around the town. It was a lot of fun :) Today, I am planning on doing some of the last things on my list of things to do in Ferrara. I've still got some shopping to do at the Christmas market too. Tonight is our final group dinner, which should be a lot of fun, but sad too :( Friday will be my last day here and then I leave early Saturday morning for Paris to meet up with Lamees again! I am excited to have a tour guide to show me around :) I will be in Paris until Tuesday morning, then I fly out and will get home late Tuesday night! I can't wait to see everyone!!! Have a great weekend! I will post pictures from the end of my trip when I get home :)

Thanksgiving Weekend in Rome!

The Spanish Steps

The view of Rome from Gianicolo Hill

Sant'Angelo Castle

The stairs we climbed up the hill :)

The Vatican

Me and Megan at the Vatican :)

St. Peter's Basilica

The Colosseum at night

Pizza!

Trevi Fountain

The Pantheon

The Vatican at sunrise (haha waiting in line nice and early!)

The Colosseum

Trevi Fountain

Mailing postcards from the Vatican :)

Our Thanksgiving dinner! Pumpkin Pie :)

The turkey!

Turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing!

Some kind of soup, we weren't really sure what it was it was though ...

Antipasta: stuffing, spinach and ceci (chickpeas, my favorite!)

Cranberry sauce. They don't have cranberries in Italy though, so we each only got a little scoop :)

Happy late Thanksgiving everyone! Or, in Italian, Buon Ringraziamento! Yes they actually have a word for it in Italian even though they don't celebrate it :) Our program served us a Thanksgiving dinner which was delicious, but not as good as at home :) We went to a restaurant in Ferrara that we usually go to and they made us turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and apple pie, plus a few other things to give it an Italian twist :) I will put up some pictures of all the food we ate! :)

Well, I just got back yesterday from Rome! I met Megan and her friend Katie there which was sooo fun! The weather was great even though it was supposed to rain all weekend :) On Friday we walked all over and saw the Colosseum, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, and the Pantheon. After a dinner of pizza and free wine, we walked around some more; it was fun to see everything in the dark. We didn't really know where we were going, but we ended up at the president's house which was huge!!!

On Saturday we got up early and headed to the Vatican. After going the wrong way on the metro we finally ended up at the Vatican. I couldn't believe how big it was! Then we walked down to the river and to the Sant'Angelo Castle. My favorite part was Trastevere, which was a little ways down the river. It was a smaller medieval neighborhood in Rome, which was really fun to walk around in! We also walked up the Gianicolo Hill and got a great view of Rome.

On Sunday, we got up at 5:30 to go to the Vatican again. On the last Sunday of every month, there is free entrance to the museum, so we figured we would get in line early. The museum didn't open until 9, but we were close to the front of the line and made it in :) We didn't have a lot of time in the museum because Megan had to catch her plane back to Greece, but we did see Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. We also went into St. Peter's Basilica which was massive! And I also got to see the Pope speak, which was pretty cool. He was really far away, but I did still get a couple of pictures :)

I can't believe tomorrow is December! This semester has flown by! I will be home 2 weeks from tomorrow, which is crazy to think about! I have one of my finals this week and then 2 next Monday and then I am done with classes! It will be nice to have a few days here when classes are over :) Hope everyone's doing well and I can't wait to see you all! Ciao!

Barcelona with Lamees!!!

So many palm trees!

Port Olympic

The Beach!

Our dessert place!

Sangrias!! :)

Biking through Barcelona.

The water fountain show.

At Park Guell

The Cathedral in Barcelona was massive!

So last weekend, I met Lamees in Barcelona! It was so great to see her and it felt like more of a vacation since we were there for 4 days. We both arrived Thursday night and amazingly made it to the hostel all on our own. We each flew into different airports, so we were on our own getting to the hostel, but nobody got lost :) Our hostel was in a really good location because it was only about a 5 minute walk from Las Ramblas, which is the main street in Barcelona. We were also right next to the coast, which was great, and only about a 20 minute walk to the nearest beach! It was so weird seeing everyone out on the beach in swimsuits! The weather was sooooo nice all weekend! It was in the 70's during the day and it was so nice to have a break from the cold!

On Friday morning, we went to the Picasso Museum, which I loved! The museum was huge and it was fun to see all the paintings! After that we found this HUGE market with all kinds of food. We tried these smoothie fruit things that were really good, just pure fruit juice.

On Saturday morning, we took the metro to Park Guell, which was a really neat architectural park done by the artist Guadi. It was really cool! Saturday night there was a really cool water show that we went to; it reminded us of Disneyland :) The show was in this big plaza, with huge fountains that were illuminated with lights and they had all kinds of different music. After the show we went to Las Ramblas to have dinner. We had Tapas, which are really good and kind of like omelettes with potatoes or veggies in them, and we also had our first Sangrias which were delicious!

On Sunday we decided to rent bikes to bike around the city since we had done so much walking the past few days. It was definitely worth it! We rode all along the beach for a few hours. We rode through Port Olympic, which is where the Olympics were in 1992. After that we decided we had to do a little shopping! There was another market on Las Ramblas with scarves, jewelry and bags. That night after dinner we found a really cute little dessert shop with real hot chocolate (not like the chocolate syrup kind in Italy and Paris!)

It was pretty hard for me to get used to speaking Spanish instead of Italian, especially since they are so similar. The whole weekend I was saying 'grazie' instead of 'gracias', but then when I got back to Italy I started saying 'gracias' instead :) Luckily the Spanish didn't mess my Italian up too much, which is good, because I had my Italian final exam on Tuesday after I got back :) Yes, my final exam! It's kind of hard to believe that one of my classes ended in the middle of November!

Well, I can't believe I am coming home in 3 weeks! Time sure flies! On Tuesday we have our last cooking class and we are making Chocolate Salami, which is sooooo good! I guess it is really easy to make and all you need is chocolate, biscotti and butter. They call it chocolate salami because it is shaped like salami and the pieces of biscotti make it look like salami. Then on Thursday we have a big Thanksgiving dinner! It is at one of the restaurants we usually go to, but they are cooking traditional Thanksgiving food for us with a turkey and everything! We'll have to see how the Italians do at making mashed potatoes, stuffing and apple pie! :) Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!! Talk to you soon!

Dublin Pics .... Finally!

Here are my pics from Dublin!



St. Patrick's Cathedral

The small fishing town of Howth just outside of Dublin. There were seals in the water too!

The coast of Ireland at sunset.

The Man O War Pub where we ate lunch on our tour. It has been around since the 1500's, one of the oldest pubs in Ireland!

Trim Castle where Braveheart was filmed :) This is the view from the top.

These are from the Hill of Tara just outside of Dublin.

There were sheep wandering all over the hill.

Here's the gang at the coast!

Here's everyone at the Guiness Factory!

Here's Trim Castle again.

We got to take a picture behind the bar at one of the pubs!

Christ Church

This is St. Stephen's Green. The park was gorgeous!

Trinity College