23

I know I’m beyond behind with updating this, and I apologize. What can I say besides the fact that I’m lazy?

Anyway, that Thursday after my last post was our last day of classes. We had a group dinner for everyone in the program that night. A bus took us up into the hills and dropped us at a big house with a large yard. There were tables set up. Naturally, five of us made our way stealthily to the best table, under an archway and somewhat isolated. We played the “Oh sorry, we have no more room at our table” game until it was just the five of us. Perfect. We had wine, pasta, salad, brucshetta, and panzanella (beyond amazing). I think a bowl of gazpacho and some panzanella would make the perfect summer meal on a hot day. Here's a picture of some of us.

And a picture of my Italian class.

Anyway, it was a fun meal. People were nostalgic. We had a final toast with prosecco before going back into the city. Pretty much everyone went out after that to a bar around the corner – including the two main guys from the hotel and two of the program professors, including my Italian one. Needless to say, the first thing we did at the bar was make her take a shot with several of us. She could not stop laughing when we told her the name of it.
Most people ended up getting beyond drunk, which was really rather stupid. Some people missed flights the next day because of it. Good call.

Friday was fairly calm. We did a little shopping at the Leather School. It’s inside the monastery of Santa Croce, which was really cool. They will engrave anything you want too. After that we went into the hills – to Fiesole – for dinner. It was originally an Etruscan settlement, which makes it older than Florence. Much smarter building a city in the hills than in a mosquito-ridden valley. Kudos to you, Etruscans. We had the most fantastic dinner in a little restaurant there, which became packed. I had pici (like a fat spaghetti) with zucchini flowers and sundried tomatoes and capers and such. Delicious. The picture below is Fiesole at sunset. Looking down and gorgeous.

We didn’t do much Friday night, besides hanging around the hotel with some limoncello. Saturday too was fairly chill. We did some more shopping and had one final grocery store dinner. A round of tequila shots went around at some point that night for the people still there, which wasn’t really that many. Sunday I left bright and early, an made it back to Atlanta that evening. Because of weather, we had to circle a few times over West Virginia before they would let us come into Atlanta. Sadly when we did land, we had to sit on the tarmac for ages because it was the worst weather imaginable and it wasn’t safe to either open up the ramp or let the groundcrews out. Eventually I did make it home though, which was wonderful, as much as I miss Italy.