My Journey Through Architecture: SCHOOLED IN LAUNDRY

Today was the start of our classes, but not for this lucky lady. My only class for the day (which wouldn't have started until 3pm; goodbye 7:45am classes!) was cancelled for some unknown reason. So I'll just have to wait until next week to being studying video, media, and architecture.

My roommates and friends all started classes today, though. So I decided to get up at the same time as them and work on some necessary things while they were away.

First on my list was laundry.

Not only is the washer a completely different set up than the ones back in the states, but it's also in Italian, and has funky little symbols that are supposed to mean things.

I'm just thankful our apartment agency equips us with two different handbooks that help us work the appliances. That's probably more so they don't have to keep paying for washing machines broken by us silly Americas, but that's besides the point.

Once I had finally figured out which two slots to put the detergent in (yes, there are TWO slots, and even a third one for fabric softener) I kept on getting nervous because it was taking so long. Apparently it takes about 3 hours to do a load. And then you have to wait 5 minutes after that for the washer itself to decompress so you can open the door.

And then, as I'm sure almost all of you know, there is no dryer. Since we were blessed with an apartment that has a beautiful balcony, we were given a clothes line, but no indoor drying rack. This was a bit of a problem today since it was super chilly and not at all sunny. Since it's supposed to rain tonight an tomorrow, we were forced to improvise. We took down the line, strung it through our hallway, and hung what we could on it. And since we did a larger load we still had more. So currently we have clothes hung in various places all around our room, hoping that they'll dry eventually. But who knows, because our room is pretty chilly still.

The excitement for the day was getting our museum cards that will get us into almost any museum in Florence for free. The art history nerd in me is beyond excited! Especially since we live right by the museum that houses the David statue. We will be taking great advantage of our cards from here on in. Pictures will follow said adventures.

As for yesterday, we went to church twice: first was a morning Italian Catholic service in the Cattedrale di S. Maria dei Fiore (that's the Duomo). And then we went to an evening English Christian service. In between there we had quite a few hours to spare. My roommates and I decided to go explore some of the parks around our apartment, which ended up taking us towards the outskirts of the historic center. There isn't much else to say about it, so I'll just show you.