This Week in Florence

Well this week has been pretty busy. I have classes all day Monday through Wednesday and I was in dire need of catching up on all the work I had put off in my travels the past two weekends. My classes aren't hard, they are simply long and boring. The Italian style of teaching is based around lecture, rather than discussion like in America. Its a bit difficult to get used to.
On Thursday I don't have any classes. Regardless, I still went to school to meet up with everyone for lunch. We found this restaurant that serves American style hamburgers and french fries. We've become weekly customers. It's always nice to have a taste of home every so often. We also did a little bit of shopping on Thursday. While we were in Italy's main department store, Coin, our shopping was interrupted by a male underwear fashion show. Only in Italy would you see male models walking around a department store to loud music in skin tight boxer-briefs. Needless to say, it was a surprise, but it wasn't the worst surprise we could have seen. Thursday night they had a mini-Oktoberfest/ beer tasting festival in the Piazza Santa Croce. We all decided to meet up and head over to the event. Unfortunately we didn't pay attention to the times of the event, and we got there right as it was closing. I had time to taste one beer (which was very good) but then the event shut down. So for the rest of the night we just walked around Florence, hung out, and stopped in a few bars. We're still exhausted from the past few weekends that we didn't try to do too much.
No one in our school has classes on Fridays so this is when CAPA takes us on mini field trips. Today we climbed up Mt. Cerceri which is the mountain where da Vinci's assistant attempted, and failed, the fly with their first flying machine. It was a very challenging hike, but we eventually made it up and got to see the beautiful view of Florence down below in the valley. On our way down the mountain (where Lorenzo our CAPA director chose a much easier route) we walked through Fiesole, a village of Florence. It was a beautiful site to see, but a whole lot of walking up and down very steep hills. Our hike ended at a very delicious pizza place, where we all ate far more pizza than any one person should ever consume. But it was so delicious and we were starving.
I forgot to charge my camera battery last night so I didn't have a camera to take pictures today, but Lindsay took a lot. So as soon as she puts her pictures up online I will have some to post here.