Long Time No Blog

Dear all faithful followers of the Emily, Katy, and Joey travel-through-Italy Blog,

It's been a while since I've posted!!
Actually, I haven't posted anything since I've been here. I hope that no one thought I had met an ill fate (choked on a tomato, tripped down the steps of the Duomo, fell in the Arno and got severe frost bite). No, no, no. All is well here in the great Firenze. The smells, the food, the sights, the people are all great things to enjoy. It's been a wonderful journey thus far and that's an understatement. It would be hard to summarize everything, even only this far in. However, I'll share a few things to be sure.
One thing that's really cool is that our apartment is on a street that is also the San Lorenzo market. Basically, when you go down stairs and outside of the apartment in the morning, you are instantly greeted by this huge streetlong market, where there are vendors selling hats, bags, scarves, tapestries and all sorts of different things. Also, on the same street is the Mercato Centrale which is a two story open market, where we've all been buying all sorts of fresh food and where I've been testing my knowledge of the Italian language, which is one of the coolest parts of being here. When I don't know how to ask for something, I look it up in one of the dictionaries that came in our apartment, and then I test it out at the market. It works most of the time which is cool. The San Lorenzo church is also right down the street, and then the Duomo is only a bit further. We're really lucky to live where we do.

I never knew how much I loved food until I got here. I think I'm truly getting the Italian cuisine experience. I'm eating more vegetables, and especially more bread and pasta than I think I ever have, which is totally fine with me. Pesto is a new love in my life. I think it's a combination of basil and parmesan, but I don't know because the ingredients are of course in Italian. But seriously, my roommates and I have had some pretty killer meals since we've been here. I would say at least once or twice a week we make a big meal between all of us, normally consisting of some sort of pasta with fresh vegetables and spices. I think I'm making dinner this week so we'll see how that goes!

I feel like I've been able to do a lot already since I've been here. I'm sure that Katy and Emily have covered a lot already: climbing the Duomo and seeing all of the city, going to Ravenna to see mosaics, baptistries, and mausoleums, seeing a lot of the sites like the Ponte Vecchio. They've all been wonderful. Florence is so beautiful and I'm lucky to be here. There's just so much to enjoy.

Today my roommates Jill, Anna, and of course Katy and Emily, and I trekked to San Miniato, which is in Florence, but it's probably a good 45 minute walk from our apartment. Before we got to San Miniato, we stopped off at the chocolate festival that was going on at the piazza by Santa Croce. I'm really glad that people want to get together to celebrate chocolate. How could there be anything bad about a place that wants to celebrate chocolate?? It was pretty cool. There were all sorts of different kinds there. Katy got a hot chocolate that pretty much tasted like melted chocolate syrup, which was awesome. There was even a short parade, which was fun. After a while, we needed to get to San Miniato though. We were going because we wanted to hear the monks chant (aparently they do everyday). The walk to it was, in my opinion, half the fun because there were so many great sights. The closer we got to San Miniato, the higher the elevation was, thus the better view of the city we got. It was beautiful. It was almost as good, if not as good, as standing at the top of the Duomo. It's pretty much unlike anything I've ever been able to see before.
We got to San Miniato and thought that we had possibly come at the wrong time because the monks didn't chant until about 20 minutes after we got there. We got to hear them though! It was cool getting to hear them, but I could stop thinking about how crazy it would be to be a monk. I don't think I could live that disciplined and austere of a life.

Well, that's all you get for now. Take time to digest the full course meal of a blog that I just wrote. I hope everyone is doing well and I think of you often!!

Ciao!
Joey

Oh I about forgot...Jill, Emily, Katy and I joined a jazz club just the other night. So yeah...I'm a member of jazz club in Florence.