day 3

Almost 6,000 miles away, we are officially settled in the city that we REALLY try to fit in to. Our humble abodes reside across the city. Jaclyn is located in Santa Maria Novella, the city's first dominican church, while Jennifer's apartment is on Via de Venezia "the street of Venice". We hope we can share our adventure of Florence and the surrounding areas this month.

The past few days we have been getting familiar with the area we will be living in. Collier Parker, the head hancho, had his sister come and give us two orientations of the town. Orientation 1 consisted of us learning about the location of the ATM's, the fresh market, the gypsies, and most importantly the grocery store. Now. The grocery store. Imagine yourself walking into a hole in the wall where you recognize nothing but the bananas and the apples. Really though, none of the words are familiar and you sometimes find yourself buying things that resemble American food. Our most "favorite" item in our first grocery store visit was the mozzarella cheese balls, which are floating in a plastic package full of mysterious liquid. We have also found the cities treasure which is... the one euro bottle of wine. Orientation 2 consisted of museum talk, train information, and tips for bargaining with the infamous street vendors "fake louis vuitton". With each post we will include personal stories, tid bits about the culture, and excerpts from both of our journals. We hope you enjoy.

The Italians do quite a few things differently here... we'd like to share them with you.
- Air Conditioning does NOT exist. Windows become your new best friend.
- You MUST open your window after taking a shower to prevent mold from growing on the walls.
- Our European dryer consists of a fishing line outside of our window with about ten clothes pin... This should be fun.
- There are 'red spiders' here.. which are the equivalent to our love bugs. They. Are. Everywhere. (as well as mosquitos)


Excerpts from our journals:
"Mamma mia!!!! the wine!!"

"In a store yesterday the man behind the counter asked us where we were from. When we said we were from Mississippi he moved his hand in a winding motion, nodded and smiled, recognizing immediately our beautiful state. He proceeded to tell us the word "Mississippi" is funny to Italians because to youngsters it reminds them of the word "wee wee". For once in our lives, we are not looked down upon because of the size of Mississippians, but we were recognized for the beautiful attributes that our great brings to the world."

"If we are 25 without a spouse or a serious boyfriend, we will most definitely be coming back here to find one. Sometimes we find it hard to focus on the architecture and sculpture of the city because of the stunning beauty of the Florentines."

Sorry for the delay of getting this up and running. There are many more hilarious encounters that will need to be posted and we look forward to sharing them with our family and friends. Please feel free to leave us a friendly post!

Molto Amare,

Jack and Jenn

CIAO!!!!