Moving Right Along. Paris to Florence to Sardegna.

I have officially decided that my perception of time here in Italy is the most baffling experience of them all. I almost feel as if too much has happened between this blog and my last to be able to write it all. I’ll try to sum it up quickly.

Paris was a lot of fun, my best friend from home was with me, and my best friend from the program and we got to spend time with my other wonderful friend from high school who is studying there. It was five full days in Paris and they were all jam packed with museums, pastries, and walking long distances. It made me appreciate once again my knowledge of the Italian language because even after two years of high school French I felt so bad not being able to even order a baguette sandwich correctly. The experience did, however, make me remember why the French language was so beautiful, and that I may still want to pick it back up one day. My favorite museum in Paris was the Museé D’Orsay, a museum that was created out of an old railroad station and now holds one of the most incredible collections of art I have ever seen including many works by three of my favorites: Degas, Monet, and Van Gogh.

Paris was exhilarating and exciting, there is absolutely so much to do there that I can see it being a very livable city, it was shockingly modernized and globalised in comparison with Florence, reminding me of things like multi-culturalism and efficiency that just don’t exist in Italy. The weather, however was freezing cold and it rained/snowed almost every day we were there, my feet were very tired by the end of the day, and getting back home to Italy was once again a wonderful feeling.

Since then the weather in Florence has been beautiful, I’ve finished up my University of Florence course and caught up on everything I missed from my illness. Friday morning three of my closest friends and I hopped a cheap RyanAir flight to Sardegna, the island off Italy’s western coast for a much needed relaxing three days. We flew into Alghero, the city in the northwestern corner of the island, found the bungalow we had reserved at a campground, and spent three full days lying on the beach, making our own dinners, and studying for our upcoming University exams. We got back late Sunday night, sunburned but happy, and now I have two more days to finish the reading for my University Exam Thursday morning. The exam is oral, we are responsible for knowing all of the information given in class plus three books we should have read, I am still swinging back and forth between feeling completely confident and completely unprepared, but hopefully the first one will win over come Thursday morning.

Now that I am back from Sardegna I have three and a half weeks of classes left, three weekends to spend in Florence, before finals for my other courses happen the first week of May, followed by our group trip to Sicily May 10-15, and then I will be flying home May 19th. There are six weeks sitting in front of me and I’m trying to tell myself they will be enough, but in all honesty I just can’t believe any of it.