Man it is crazy to think I miss people so much when I spent less than a month with each of them.

As good as it feels to be home, nothing beats walking down the streets of Florence and looking left and right at the beautiful art. I had to readjust being back in the States at first. I kept wanting to order food in Italian and say Gratzie after. It got to the point where I felt I was rude because by reflex I was going to say “Gratzie” but then realized I was in America, and then the moment of “Thank you” passed, so I said nothing.

I got so tired of Italian food, but now I miss it. The phrase “You don’t appreciate something until it’s gone” flashes through my mind when I look through my pictures or talk to my old roommates who are still at my Italian apartment.

I don’t get sad, though, because I know I will be back in Italy someday with the knowledge I gained. The next trip will be even better because I know what I’ve learned.

Hopefully, I will leave here Saturday feeling I have left nothing undone this time around.

Over the weekend, there was a gelato festival where someone could paid €7 for 5 big scoops of hundreds of flavors of gelato. I bought a card and used it a couple of times Friday and Saturday.

Saturday, I went with my friend Willenmijn to the Bobili Gardens to sit awhile and tan. We had some gelato before hand and were ready to relax after the night before. We laid there for a couple of hours and I almost forgot we were in Italia.

After a month of being here, dodging Italian drivers and ordering in Italian has become second nature to me. I wish I knew this before I came here so I wouldn’t have been so nervous.

While some friends and I were walking down the street, we ran into another friend from school. We told her we had no idea what to do that night because it was a Thursday and we were all pretty tired from the day before.

It just so happens that she had been walking away from a nearby piazza that was hosting a small selection of songs from the opera Traviata. She thought it was amazing and suggested we go to see it.

We decided to check it out, and as we grew closer to the piazza, we could hear the soprano’s beautifully LOUD voice grow and grow. We stopped there for a couple of minutes (just enough to hear the climax of the song) and then we left for bed.

Moral of the story is: there is never nothing to do in Firenze. Walk around and you will find an opera or something even better. Bellissimo.

I will let this post be more about pictures because they pretty much explain themselves. I went to one of the most beautiful places that I may ever go in my lifetime.

I left Firenze by bus at 8. I arrived at Riomaggiore at 10. I traveled by ferry between the cities of Cinque Terre, except when I took a walk down lovers lane between the first and second city (I did not have a lover on the path, so it was a little boring).

I ate lunch at a very fresh seafood restaurant. My fish was not de-boned, it was so fresh. At the final city, I swam in the Mediterranean Sea and laid on rocks in the sun, surrounded by crabs and sea urchins.

Our group did not get back to Firenze until 10. Tired does not begin to describe how much I whined on the walk back home.

Later that night, we went out to one of the discotecas here called Twice. They were there again. This time it was Vinny, Pauly D, and Ronnie. We quickly left because every time the Jersey Shore would move, so would the TV crew and the body guards surrounding them. Every time we moved away from them, they would move in our area and more people would flock to that side of the disco. We left to go to the local hotspot Salamanca, but after staying until closing, we returned back to Twice.

They were still there, but it appeared the guards had given up their posts and the three of them were unprotected. As the night went on, we found ourselves dancing shoulder to shoulder with all three of them. I had to get a picture.

Not only did I get pictures of the guys, but I also snapped a picture of girls signing contracts to be on the show. Apparently, it is imperative that the girls must be 21+ and have their ID on them to be on the show/go back to the Jersey Shore house. This is not a deduction or spectulation. From hearsay, other American girls from the universities FSU and UF have had their close encounters with the Jersey kind. Of course, theirs are more personal than mine.

Friends from both universities have indulged information to myself and the other Queens student living here, Brandy. Luckily, we are both from Florida and have connections with Florida State University and University of Florida. Our friends have specified the above information as well as the fact that UF is in an uproar about the situation. UF administrators are apparently well informed about what their students are doing with MTV and more privately with the Jersey Shore cast. They were so concerned that they sent out a letter to every student involved in the program explicitly saying that if they associate themselves with anything ten shades tanner than its natural color, they will be kicked off the trip.

The national celebrity gossip TV program, TMZ, got wind of this (probably submitted by one of the rebel students) and did a report on how UF is telling their students to just say no to guidos. Of course, UF sent out a retraction email after TMZ’s report and now the students are once again free to contract any disease from the Jersey Shore cast that they want.

This next season of Jersey Shore will definitely be very interesting.