I know I know, I have been terribly at updating this lately. Life happens, school work piles up, and the next thing I know it's the weekend again and I'm off jet-setting around Europe (or Italy). With only 9 days of classes left I can't believe the semester is winding down. I am at that awkward place where I want to go home, but I don't want to leave Europe. I have classes today and tomorrow then its off to Scotland for Thanksgiving. It is going to be a different experience not celebrating (and of course, eating) with the family. In Florence, Christmas lights have already began popping up everywhere. As it gets closer to the holidays I have started missing Washington more and more. I love it here but I am definitely doing to miss all the delicious food and company on Thursday. I am extremely grateful I will be home in time for Christmas. Had I been 5,000 miles away for that I may have died.
In brief, the last 2 weeks have been crazy ridiculous.
The week of November 8th-13th was a little bit of mayhem. I was at first supposed to go to Switzerland, then Allie and I started talking about going to Amsterdam instead. We ended up staying in Florence. While I really wish I had made it to Amsterdam, it was probably the best choice to stay in town. We did a day trip with Nina and Nathan to Lucca on Friday and had a blast. It's a walled city, so we grabbed lunch and then rented bikes and rode all around the city and the wall. It was a perfect fall day with orange and yellow leaves everywhere, and a bright blue sky. The rest of the weekend was spent working on homework. I was quite the procrastinator and left my Holocaust paper until Sunday. It got done and I actually should be getting it back later today so we will see how I did on that shortly.
The week of November 14th-20th was also quite the whirlwind. There were tests and quizzes galore. Not much else happened, but it was stressful enough that we didn't go out on Tuesday and by the time Thursday rolled around we were all exhausted. I left for Poland Thursday night with Carl and boy was that an adventure.
Our flight was at 6:30AM out of Rome Friday morning, which meant we had to take the 7PM train from Florence so that we would be in the city Friday morning. It took us a 4 hour train ride and 40 minute bus ride to get to the airport around 1AM. We then spent the night in the airport with about 30 other people who had early morning flights. It was not fun. It was freezing. At one point during the night I decided that going to Poland was not worth it and all I wanted to do was go home and curl up in my nice warm bed. But I obviously didn't, and at 6:30AM we were on the plane heading towards Poland.
Our flight landed around 8:30AM and we spent the morning and afternoon wandering around Krakow, seeing the sites. While I have never been to Russia, Krakow was almost exactly what I imagine Russia being like. I loved it. It is so different from every other place I've visited over here- probably because it is Eastern Europe and I've stayed mainly in the Western countries. We called it a day pretty early, 8PM, and passed out before our head had even hit the pillow.
On Saturday we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau. We went with a tour group and it was probably the best decision we made. I absolutely recommend everyone go visit this concentration/death camp. Even if you know almost nothing of the Holocaust, this experience is one you need to have. Looking through my pictures I realized they don't even come close to portraying what it's like there. You need to feel the air and stand on the ground that 1.5 million Jews lost their lives on. Our tour guide was amazing and it is definitely a day I will always remember.
The rest of the day we did some Christmas shopping and had an authentic Polish meal. One of the reasons I love Poland so much is because it is extremely cheap. We had a delicious dinner, complete with Polish beer, for about 7 American dollars. Fantastic. After dinner we wandered around some more and had a nice life chat before calling it a night.
We had a 9AM flight to catch so we were up early again. It took us the majority of the day to get home since we didn't want to pay for the fast train back to Florence.
Now, it's Monday. I just took a finance test and am waiting for lunch because I'm starved. Now that my test is out of the way I don't have much to do before I leave for Scotland Wednesday afternoon. Finally, a few days of peace.
Tuesday, November 8th - Monday, November 21st
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