After a half hour of Italian on a groggy mind, I got ready for the day. Today in Italian class we learned love lines for a love letter we have to write for class tomorrow. During this class she also taught us pick up lines, which the two guys in our class loved, of course.
Italian: Ti sei fatta male quando sei caduta dal ceib?
English: Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?
After my Intercultural Communications class I walked home, ate lunch, showered and started looking to book more trips.
Over the course of the afternoon I sat on my comfortable couch staring at the computer screen. Let me tell you it can be stressful trying to find affordable, decent places to stay.
At 5:30 I left the apartment with Kate to go listen to speech our Italian Art professor, Rocky, was giving. Last Thursday he told our class he was speaking in Florence and if we wanted to come we had to email him and let him know. He offered for his students to come because the artist he was talking about was not in our curriculum for the semester.
Kate asked me Friday night if I would go, and I decided it would be cool to sit in on, so I said yes.
We both forgot to email him until today, but he got back to Kate and said we were more than welcome to come.
We showed up at 6:00 thinking that's when it started. We walked up to the fancy man standing outside of this building and he opened the doors with a remote to get inside these big glass doors. Sign number one.
When we got upstairs there was no one there. A nice woman came up to us and asked if we were here for the speech and she then said it didn't start until 6:30. Sign number two.
So we decided to go grab something quick to eat. We went to the Piazza of the Duomo about five minutes away and I got a yummy bruschetta type of pizza. On our way back to the building where the speech was we stopped by the chocolate fair and OH MY GOSH it's amazing. Any kind of chocolate you can think of...on top of anything and everything.
There were white tents everywhere in the Piazza di Republica and under every white tent was chocolate and chocolate fountains. Kate and I got chocolate covered waffle sticks. I had dark chocolate with sprinkles. SO GOOD. I'm going back sometime this week and taking pictures. There were chocolate shoes, owls, penguins (edible candy), and they were all so pretty!
After that lovely detour it was almost 6:30. When we walked back up to the place where the fancy man let us in, there was no on at the stand. We stood around for a minute or two and kept looking around. I saw a button that said open/close. So I thought it would be a good idea to push it to open to glass doors. False. It started closing these huge wooden doors behind me. I immediately hit the button hoping it would stop it like a garage stops and goes back up.
At first it went back to open but then it kept making a clicking sound. I thought maybe it just always did that. About 2 minutes later the wooden door started closing again and it couldn't get very far because of this big red carpet, which it started bundling up...because that's what happens when a door pushes against carpet.
At this point I'm sticking my foot out hoping it won't shut on me. Thankfully it was motion censored. This was the universe's third sign to tell us not to go.
After this happened twice someone finally came out. While he was asking what we were there for I was praying the door didn't try to shut again. Luckily he led us to the elevator and if the door did shut again I didn't see it. Unfortunately I did notice a camera where we were at so now I know someone was having a good laugh watching me try to break this big wooden door that kept trying to close.
Once we got up to the floor we walked in and realized there were maybe only 10 other people here...and none of them were students. Kate said "maybe we should leave." I said "no let's just go in."
We walked in and no one really noticed. We saw our teacher talking with other people. We also noticed there was a bar with appetizers and wine, but we had no idea if we were allowed to have it so we sat down on a couch. We kept laughing because we were so underdressed and we felt so out of place. We kept trying to sit up straight and just talk but then we kept laughing because we had no idea what we had just agreed to come to. We thought it was going to be a big lecture and other students would be here too, but it was Kate and I and about 10 other people between the ages of 40 and 60.
A waitress came over and offered us hor'derves and we felt rude saying no. I took one bite and I regretted being nice. I think I ate something from under the sea and it was squishy and tasted so funny. My face must have been priceless. Kate said she thought she ate something that was raw.
About five minutes later the woman came back so I took another but Kate said no thank you this time. My second one was better than the first, but a little salty. After we finished the hor'derves I asked Kate where she put her napkin and she said "in my purse" because we didn't see a trash can. We were so classy.
At this point we both really wanted a glass of wine or something, but we didn't know if we had to pay for it so we stayed put.
Rocky came over and talked to us for a bit and thanked us for coming. I ended up feeling bad because he invited 30 of his students from my class and Kate and I were the only ones to come, so it was worth it in that sense.
His speech was on an artist named Caravaggio. We learned a little about him while we visited the Borghese Gallery in Rome so I had a little background on him. However, I didn't realize it was the same man until the end of the speech. He spoke about the paintings and what they meant. It was actually a really interesting speech and I'm not going to lie...I felt kind of fancy being there.
On our way out of the place I prayed to God that the door was still working. Thankfully it was still in place and I didn't get any glares.
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