Inside Harrods they were playing the song from the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that goes “If you want to view paradise/Simply look around and view it/Anything you want to, do it/Wanta change the world?/There’s nothing to it” I think it fit very well!

On my birthday I saw a passion play….but left about 30 seconds in because it was impossible to see through the crowd.

Saw a Football Match on Saturday between ManU and Chelsea (where we live) at a pub. We really tried to blend.

I found the place my family will want to go when they visit!

Chelsea: Worlds End

At Hide Park

London is amazing! On our second night here we went to a play called “The Gods Weep.” It is a modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s King Leer and got horrible reviews, but I thought it was ok. It had Jeremy Irons in it (voice of Scar from the Lion King) and his scenes with this girl, Barbara, were really good!

It went from a board room….

to epic apocalyptic battle grounds!!!

The next day we went on a bit of a tour with Sara’s class (the London Janet). This is what our (my, Beth, Chelsea, and Katia) window!

I got so excited when I saw the eye!!! I started to jump up and down and everyone thought I was crazy, but I can’t wait to go on it!

Greece was awesome! I don’t have a bunch of pictures, but I realize we haven’t posted for a while so I will put up a few!

Santorini first!

Our mode of transportation!

And then we did Athens…in three hours!!!

We went to the site of the first modern day Olympics!!

And now….We’re in London!!!!

Here is our house!!! Its the one with the guy sitting on the steps!

View Larger Map

So we leave Florence tomorrow, which is sad but we get to go to Greek during our break and then we will be off to London are the second half of the semester.

Last weekend we went to Cinque Terre and it was beautiful. Cinque Terre is a group of five small towns of the coast of Italy north of Pisa. We had a great time walking from town to town and we saw some cool and odd things.

Bye Florence we’ve had a great time!

This weekend we went to Venice and it was amazing!!!!!!

San Marco

Chelsea, Amanda, and Elissa on a gondola!

Amanda and I on the gondola!

And finally…..

Romeo! The most pimping cat in all of Venice who lived in our hotel!!!

Four day weekends….ACM’s gift to students. Well, our time in Italy is quickly coming to a close. We have our Italian final tomorrow and then one more week of classes, and then our other two finals the week after that. Then Greece!!! WOO!!! But anyways, For this long weekend we did two day trips. One was to Volterra and the other to San Gimignano.

As some of you may know, New Moon, the second book in the Twilight, had a big chunk of the book taking place in Volterra. They also did some of the filming there as well.

It was a beautiful city, as are all of the smaller towns in Tuscany.

So we did the official Twilight tour of the city! This is us right outside of the gate that Alice drives through in the movie (we know, we’re really cool).

This is said gate with Elissa standing next to it.

Ok, so this picture takes a bit of explanation…there is a part in the movie where Bella starts sprinting up this street, but Amanda didn’t think it was possible. So, deciding to prove her wrong, I sprinted up the hill!

Amanda’s favorite part obviously was the theater ruins from Roman times. Sadly it was closed, but we got a pretty sweet areal view for free!

Two days later we went to San Gimignano. It is supposed to be what Florence looked like before all the towers had to be chopped in half.

The towers were all over the city! It was very difficult to imagine Florence looking like this at one point. There is only one left in Florence, but it looks nothing like the ones in San Gimignano.

There is a fountain in the middle of the square that is in the middle of the town that makes it kind of a big deal. I think it would have been a bit better if you could actually see the water.

Of course, like every other place we go, we went to the top of the tower. I have to say, that is probably my favorite part of all of these trips. And with a view like this, its pretty hard to disagree with me don’t you think?

Here is a view of a tower from the top of another.

We were exploring the town after our six stop Rick Steves walking tour, we just started exploring. Here are some of the random places we found.

Amanda made us walk down this really steep hill to find these ruins. It ended up being really cool until we had to walk UP the same really steep hill!

Two weekends ago, we had a three day weekend. On Friday, we went to Lucca. We were supposed to be on a 9:08 train, but of course we were about 30 second late and watched our train pull away. Because of a preplanned train strike from 10-2 we didn’t know if we could make it that day, but we found out that one train would be 11 despite the strike! We went back to Linguaviva to get online for a bit, then went to Lucca with Elissa in tow.

Lucca is a really cool city! First of all, one of the most important things to know is that it is surrounded by this probably 15 foot wide wall. We walked around half the city in about half an hour (also, not the umbrella that I found on the ground and used for the day, therefore solving the three people two umbrella dilemma that we had found ourselves in).

We then climbed up this really cool tower that had olive trees growing on top. As usual, the tower provided a great view of surrounding Tuscany.

On Sunday Elissa, Amanda, Ashley, Michelle, and I all went to a soccer game. While I have no idea who we played, I do know that Firenze won!!!! I also learned that we are good at trash talk…

“WE CAN KICK THE BALL HARDER THAN YOU!”

“GRASS STAINS WILL BE MORE APPARENT ON YOUR CLOTHES THAN OURS!!!”

“OUR COLOR IS YOU COLOR PLUS BLUE!!!!”

(Side note, the title to this post is my new nickname as given to me by my Italian teacher because Italian tends to make me sleepy…)

Happy Valentines day everyone!

We just have a few short shout outs!

Mines is to Ben, love you baby Happy Valentines Day! Also shout out to the Riponites, we got snow here too, my peeps from the 703, and to my family who obsessively stalks this site

Amanda would like to give a shout out to her homies in Tonka, Becky Smith, Alex Jung, Sydney “I’m Jealous of You Because You’re in Vancouver” Wolf, and her family!