Everytime I go outside I get Rhianna stuck in my head

This is the view out my living room window. Pretty spectac huh? This is the Battistero di San Giovanni (straight out the window), the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, and the Duomo peeking over. The only down side is the parade of pots and pans and dishes and men singing "Macho Man" at the wee hours of the morning getting all the pastries ready for the day. They are SO LOUD. Although the Macho Man thing was pretty hilarious because they only knew the words Macho Man and would half hum half sing the rest of it. So that was fun to wake up and eat breakfast to.


Speaking of waking up and eating, this is where I sleep and eat! My bed is against the wall. There is a really oooold classic venetian dresser and wardrobe that dominate the rest of the room, but both were hard to fit into this picture. The kitchen is so awesome. I spend most of my time in the apartment at this table reading or writing in my journal (which I've never done before but rocks. I dont know how i've been missing out on the whole journal thing before).
ADVENTURE TIME. Sunday my roomies and I went out to explore the city. We had intended to get cell phones but could not for the life of us find the address for the store. So I bought a new pair of shoes instead and we were off to wander! Here are some pics of our meanderings...
(ok the first 4 are from a couple days before)




The statue of the guy is on the bridge Ponte Vecchio. What you do is find either a bf or a gf, then you buy a lock and write your names on it. Next, you lock it to the base of the statue! Voila! You will be together forever. Like Justin always says, Florence is the city of Love (although, I thought that was Paris...).




























































































So these are my housemates, from left to right is Melinda, Winnie, and Katie. We found this little park thing in the middle of the city, it is surrounded by a traffic roundabout which made it seriously hard to get to, but was worth it to walk on grass and see big trees. The rest are pictures from the "most romantic spot in Florence", random graffiti on the walls, etc. The one with the group of colorfully dressed people was actually really cool. Ok, so we followed our ears to this large piazza and there was a huge group of what we thought were mimes because all of their faces were painted white. But I think they were a performance group of some other sort because they would make noise and one woman spoke directly to the crowd, as a narrator kind of thing. They were making fun of tourists and it was really funny (in a hey.... kind of way) until they brought out a mom and two kids pretending to be beggars and all the tourists were clutching their bags and looking away all snooty. So that was a message well received.
I cant wait for what else we find. There are soccer games every two weeks on Sundays and I am DEFINITELY going to the next one.

(in explanation of the title: It rains ALL THE TIME. and everyone has umbrellas! it's not like in Portland where if you have an umbrella you are a total dork. It's like, dude, it's raining. where is your umbrella?!)