these are a few of my favorite things: Internet Down.....

Yesterday, our internet was down most of the day and still is at the apartment... SO ANNOYING!

Rainy again, I woke up at 6:30 AM to go to a market that is only open on Tuesday mornings. Lots of locals go there and supposedly the best prices on shoes, clothes, random items you think you need are found here. So I decided I needed to go check this place out, got up early, and started walking down the river... By the time I'd walked about 15 minutes, I made it to a run down amusement park, where some people were sitting and smoking.. I bet you can guess what happened... I got sketched out, turned around and walked all the way back! Ha. And apparently the market was right on the other side of the park! By the time I turned around, it had already started raining and was increasingly raining harder and harder as I made my way back to my part of town. And since I was already wet and up (it's about 7:30 by now) I decided to walk to another market I knew of by the Duomo, which is the cathedral in the middle of town. THAT WAS INCREDIBLE! I had so much fun exploring the market and vendors early in the morning. Of course, my favorite part was the indoor food market, where people sell their local produce at different stations. The best comparison to it would be Redding Market in Philadelphia. But it's still way more local than that- and more raw produce, not prepared foods.

That afternoon, in class, we took the tram- basically a really slow, bad roller coaster ride- to a suburb outside of Florence to go to a fresh pasta factory. That was so fun as well! We saw all the machines that the owners use to make fresh pasta. Fresh pasta is different than dried pasta you buy at the grocery store. It is made with eggs and flour, while dry pasta is made with Durum wheat. Durum makes the pasta brittle. Regular flour and egg pasta is still dry but can bend. It has a shorter lifespan as well. Anyways, we saw how they make this pasta and then they made us Gnocci for lunch! Gnocci is a potato dumpling, a common dish in Italy. That was yummy. The best part, though, was that each of us received a package of fresh ravioli made that morning! Mine has mozzarella, tomatoes, and spinach inside. I ate some last night for dinner, and decided that I can't eat ravioli unless it's that fresh every time. It was that good.

Nothing else too exciting happened yesterday. Went to dinner with Hannah, Meredith and the Ole Miss crowd which was really fun. Hope today I can get my project done and relax! We have a tour of the Accademia museum with the group at 5:30 this evening. That is where the "David" is housed, so I'm excited about this!