To all those who wonder how us chickens have been.
The first week in Florence/Scandicci has been great, but we have been extremely busy trying to take in five weeks of Music History in four days.  Each day the schedule has been different, and we never really know what we will be doing during the day until we are well into our morning routines. I will just write down a few things that have permeated our lives until I have more time tomorrow night to write down longer stories.
1. Meeting in the middle of the street. Our professor Dr. G likes to stop in the middle of the busiest streets he can find in Florence and start telling us about some wonderful palace, that now looks like an apartment building, where someone wrote some famous piece of music, that no one has heard of, while you hear at least two people say, "Why are we standing in the middle of the street again? We are going to get run over!"This happens at least three times during every trip to Florence.
2. Getting lost. For the first five or six trips into Florence we seemed to always get on the wrong bus. There was one trip in particular when we had gotten onto about three buses before we actually found the one that would take us to our destination. Traveling in groups is never a good idea on buses either, because separation is a very real issue that you will have to deal with at some point during your stay. One of the most memorable moments was when ten of us were trying to cram onto a very full bus. As the doors closed our friend Nathan popped right off the bus while saying, "Bye Guys" with a very concerned look on his face. We all started yelling, and thankfully the bus driver stopped and opened the doors for Nathan to run and get back on the bus.
3. Naked Statues...EVERYWHERE! Today we visited the Uffizi Galleria in Florence which is famous for its paintings and sculptures from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The art was beautiful, but after about two hours of walking around the incredibly crowded rooms of artwork, we were all sick of the naked Statues and paintings that leave nothing up to the imagination. The thing about sculpture here is that they are either draped in yards of Grecian robes or they are wearing nothing at all.
Needless to say our stay here has been an adventure for sure. We leave for Rome at 6:50 tomorrow morning, and I'm sure I will have more stories tomorrow night!

                                              When all the roads look like this, it is quite

                                                                  easy to get lost!