SLEEP WHEN YOU'RE DEAD

So my new motto is sleep when you're dead. Pretty much sums up how I want to act for the remainder of my time abroad, I don't care I'm going to do as much as physically possible and sleep when I'm back in America, sleep when I'm dead.

So after talking to my friend Hal about thinking about the time we have left abroad and how much we want to accomplish, she came up with the challenge to do at least one thing where you step outside your comfort zone (big or small) a day. So can't exactly promise every single day I can do it, but I accepted the challenge  will be actively putting myself out here in Florence more. Granted a few hours before Hal and I talked about this I had spent 2 hours cutting my hair; whenever I am in the need for change my hair is the first thing to go. It just feels like a fresh start, sucks girls can feel liberated and buzz their hair off (I have this theory that if you cut off all her hair she'd look like a British man). However, I decided to just buzz off the sides and back and then spent forever and a day to fix the top to not make it look like a had a muffintop, and the result is surprisingly acceptable for me and strangely very European looking (I can pull off an Italian faux hawk without looking like a tool..)

ANYWAYS, so my new haircut yesterday was a symbolic transition of my abroad experience (I'm soooo deep like that) [That was sarcasm if you couldn't tell.... really wish there was a sarcastic font, it'd be the most helpful]. So then today after my art history class I had my first group meeting for my Business Psych class group project/paper (I think I lucked out hardcore cause the 3 girls I'm working with are super nice and seem like they won't want to procrastinate on this) at Astor. So Astor is this cafe/hangout very cool place during the day that transitions into a club at night, but I have avoided it like the plague the whole time I have been here because I know that's the one place that serves iced coffee similar to America. I told myself I would give up coffee completely while abroad because it's expensive and I need to save money anyway I can, but today I said fuck it and spent the damn 3 euro for an equivalent of a small Dunkin iced... but oh was it worth every useless dollar euro coin. So they picked Astor to meet to do work and needless to say I will most definitely be going back (but trying my hardest to avoid the ice coffee).

So for my project/paper we have to choose 2 workplaces in Florence, observe, take note of, etc etc and write about the organizational culture of the two places. After talking we decided on one of the leather markets and a gelato store. The leather market is super condensed and sort of claustrophobic, really perfect to talk about for our paper, but we also have to present on it with pics/videos so we walk around pretending to buy things and go to 4 carts and literally no one interacts with us, then we stop at a scarf cart and this Italian makes small talk with us and then we befriend Eduardo. He was hilarious talking to us in what English he did know, tried to get us to talk more in Italian, asking us about our stay here and studying in Firenze, but was also helpful for our paper answering all our questions. Eduardo made our day. Then we went to Festival del Gelato as our second place... dammit now I have a third favorite Gelato place. This place has to have at least 50 different gelato flavors, I'm screwed. Already ate there twice today... Mela Verde/Green Apple (so good), Limone/Lemon (can't ever go wrong with that), 5 Cereale/Five Cereal? (I have no clue which 5 cereals they were aside from cocoa pebbles but it was GOOD), Tiramisu.... need I say more? Italia is doing some SERIOUS damage to my palette for when I get back and nothing will ever compare to it.

But just the act of walking around, talking to random Italian strangers, awkwardly taking half staged photos, it was jude nice. Good afternoon, my iced coffee might have been a factor, but i'll take it.

Then for dinner a group of us went to Gusta Pizza (om nom nom) and then went out for gelato (hence why I went back in the same day).

Tomorrow Courtney and I are off to Perugia to visit some Stonehill friends, party it up in Perugia, and then get chocolate shwasted at the EuroChoco festival there. Trying to enjoy the time I have left before I slave over studying for midterms next week... which will suck. BUT then I'll be in London/Ireland for a week and a half. Boom. Roasted.