Beginning Halfway Through

Well everyone, I have been in Italy for about 5 months now, and it is only now, when I am sitting in studio waiting for my new computer to charge so I can upload some photos to facebook, that I have ultimately decided to start my own blog- an action only done because my sister, Kelly, has beat me to it a week into her study abroad in Australia. So therefore, I thought it was about time I start mine since I am so terrible at sitting down and writing large mass e-mails out to everyone back home. You can just follow this blog now and not have to be bombarded by all the e-mails that I would have written just to let you know that I have found a decent burrito place on a little street in Valencia, Spain.
So yeah, here goes.
I got to Florence, Italy on August 27th 2009. I have lived here for about 5.5 months, and it has been the most amazing experience that I have ever had, although that's exactly what you expect someone like me to say. In my opinion, it should be mandatory for people to study somewhere else, especially when they are younger... there are more things to do, and cheaper prices to pay. So far in Italy I have visited: Rome, Florence, Padova, Mantova, Vicenza, Verona, Venice, Milan, Genoa, San Gimignano, Volterra, Lucca, Vada, Bologna, and others, but I just can't think of them at the moment. Outside of Itlay, I have visited Bern, Paris, London, Galway, Sligo, Dublin, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Barcelona, Granada, and Valencia.
It seems like a lot of traveling, but I don't feel like I have traveled enough over the past months here. I got crazy freaked out at the end of my Christmas Break vacation from bern, paris, london, galway, sligo, and rome because at that point, it was the halfway mark of my entire stay here in Italy. I had barely gone to anywhere in the whole of Europe! There are just so many places to see, I went on a booking frenzy making illustrator calendars color coding all weekends booked, tentative, and free filling it with travel plans.
Today is my first day back from the semester break. I had an 8 week pre-semester load of italian and art classes to get used to the language here. After that, our first semester was all architecture, Florentine Architecture History, and Italian grammer and reading and conversation class. Our studio projects were smaller than I am used to, but we did 2 in one semester, and this semester will be one whole long project that I will find out about tonight. The last 2 projects were a new entrance to the University of Florence's Library, and a new exit for the Uffizi Gallery.
I guess that's it for now about what I have been up to so far. Plenty more to come about recent trips I have made to catch up!
<3 Erin