I'm sorry, what language do they speak here?

So I'm fully starting to understand how hard it is to keep these suckers updated. Coming back from Barcelona was harder than it should have been. It was like culture shock within a culture shock. Once I was on the plane getting ready to leave again I just couldn't believe how fast everything had gone by. After Taylor and I seperated for our terminals, I sat down as I waited to board the plane. I started shaking as I started to realize how much had happened in those three, quick days. It's crazy that you can do that here, just hop on a plane to go to another country for the weekend, come in, go out, with no evidence through stamps or security. If it hadn't have been for all of the pictures, it would have been like I was off the charts. How cool.

The journey back consisted of two bus rides, a plane, and a train ride that took way too long. Once I got back to my apartment in Florence, I showered immediately. I was beyond disgusting. It took me a couple of days to readjust to what I consider to be my second life. That's how I've started to view these things. My life in the states is my first life (like real life), my life in Italy is my second life (it's temporarily real) and then these random weekend excursions are the third life that flash right before me. It's really hard to explain if you have never done it yourself. Leaving Thursday night, traveling through every type of mass transit you can imagine, arriving late, leaving Sunday afternoon makes every minute in between seem like a dream. None if it is real, especially when you don't even have to flash your passport.

I never really know where my Mondays and Tuesdays go every week. I say that I'm going to get all of these little projects completed and little weekly goals accomplished but I never really do and there is no particular reason for it. I think it's Ganzo. I might spend more time there than in my own apartment. Our internet decides to NEVER work on Sundays so I just hang out in Ganzo for the afternoon, which eventually turns into the evening and before I know it, midnight is around the corner. I feel very at home there. Since I volunteer so often, I get free cappuccinos (which is my new all time favorite thing) so if I stay there long enough (even if I'm not volunteering) I tend to just get free stuff.

Oh before I keep going, I have to make a side note that I ran into this guy that I worked with at Lokanda (upstate New York camp) TWO summers ago in some random bar in Florence. I thought it was him from a distance but then I thought there is no way! Once we made eye contact, he started screaming.. Oh yea, that's Ian. We hugged and freaked out for a good five minutes and briefly caught up on our lives in the past couple of years. We actually went skydiving together that summer too. I love small world stuff like that, I mean really?! How does stuff like that happen?! Needless to say, we grabbed lunch last Monday and I hope to see more of him soon.

Ok so, back on track.. the Thursday after Spain (which is about two weeks ago now, oh geez!) I went on a night tour of the city. It was of the other side of the river, which I don't get to explore too often so it was interesting. Our tour guide is always so fantastic. Her name is Martina and she knows everything about everything. Standing on the Ponte Vecchio, I learned about an old Florentine tradition. There is a statue in the middle of the bridge on the right side of some guys head (I wish I had more details on who it actually was to make this story a little more interesting). There is a small little gate about belly button high around this famous statue with a sign in front of it. I'm going to let what I have found on Wikipedia explain it and then critque what I witnessed..

"It was perhaps introduced by the padlock shop owner at the end of the bridge. It is popularly connected to idea of love and lovers: by locking the padlock and throwing the key into the river, the lovers became eternally bonded. This is an example of the negative impact of mass tourism: thousands of padlocks needed to be removed frequently, spoiling or damaging the structure of the centuries-old bridge; however, it seems to have decreased after the city administration put a sign on the bridge mentioning a 50€ penalty for those caught locking something to the fence."

FALSE.

People still do it, all the time. I guess you just have to be sneaky about it. Apparently it had just been "cleaned" off the day before by the police but I saw about 30 locks just from that one day. I wonder if it's true, the whole eternally bonded thing. I want to try it. Dibs on Alex Heald.

To go into detail about everything else we saw and learned would just be ridiculous so I'll just go into the good part of the night. Tons of FREE gelato, castles, museums, history, blah, blah, blah -- just like everything else in Europe.. You know the drill. Carlos and I were starving but the time it was over so Martina recommended this place a couple of bridges down called "Dante's" which apparently served free bread and WINE. We ironically ran into Ian again (which still blows my mind) and made our way to the restuarant. It was a pretty cool scene, there were tons of locals and the food was fantastic. Note to self -- Italians make hot dog pizza, do they make it for the Americans because they think we would like it? Or is it for themselves? Whatever the reason is, it's kind of weird but not terrible. I wonder why we haven't thought of that in the states yet?

We were in close quarters to these guys about our age who were speaking Italian so we just assumed that they couldn't understand us. Bad choice. They were totally eavesdropping on our conversation and decided to chime in. Vittorio Fumagalli and Fed Albrighi were their names (does it get any more Italian than that?!). I can't even remember what it was about now but it lead us into a two a two hour discussion about politics, 9/11, the color green, accents, teeth, and a bunch of other random stuff. After a few bottles of wine they asked us to come over to see their place. Although it seemed like kind of a journey, it was totally worth it. I'm not sure if it was me or the wine but whatever it was, it made me totally freak out when I saw their incredible apartment. Apparently Fed's grandfather owns the building and he let him and Vittorio stay there basically for free.