Io sono malata.

I have good news...sunset is getting later each night. By the time we leave, we may actually get to eat dinner while it's still light out! I'm particularly excited for this because, while I love Florence at night, especially when we go elsewhere I would rather have more hours in the day to explore.

Speaking of daytime, the Italians have so many convenient words that we don't have in English. For instance, un giorno is the entirety of a day, the 24 hours that it remains the 28th of January, for instance. However, una giornata is also the word for 'a day,' but it means daytime, as in daylight hours. It makes sense to have two different words for this. Italian is so logical, it makes my English worse. Once I get to thinking about all the things that don't make sense in English, I have trouble saying them the way they should be. I'm also having a ton of trouble spelling since I've got here, but learning a different language will do that to you. It's funny to observe.

So, I've been back from Innsbruck for a few days now but I've been trying to fight off a cold/flu/some sort of virus, so I've been sleeping early and slacking on my updates. Innsbruck was great though! We left last Thursday afternoon and made it there late Thursday night after an uneventful seven hour bus ride through Italy and the Alps to Austria. We stayed at a hostel a little bit out of the city center that was originally built as housing for athletes competing in the winter olympics, held there in the sixties and again in the seventies. It was my first hostel experience...the place itself was fairly nice, but the rooms were definitely just for sleeping. There were three sets of bunk beds, a bank of lockers, and a hallway just wide enough between them to fit one person comfortably. If all six of us girls staying in that room were in there at once, at least four of us had to be in bed. Pretty ridiculous. Also, there were two showers and two toilets for three rooms - that's 18 girls. It was definitely an interesting struggle, but it worked out just fine. I really liked my roommates and got to know them all quite a bit better, which was nice.

The next day, we went skiing! It was fairly inexpensive, especially compared to the states, though the ski mountain itself didn't have that many runs, so it made sense. It ended up being about seventy euro, which included lift ticket, boots, skis, helmet, goggles, snowpants, jacket, and gloves. The snow itself wasn't fabulous...they'd had a lot, but not recently, so it was pretty icy. I skiied for about half the day, then spent the other half in the lodge on top playing apples to apples with those who didn't or couldn't ski. Altogether a great day. When we got down we returned all our stuff and had the evening to ourselves, so Rob and I walked to the closest restaurant, a Tyrolean (traditional Austrian) place. The food was unexpectedly phenomenal (though so is all food after a day of intense workout). The waiter was really nice and chose food for us (a habit we're getting in to in Europe, as it's a lot easier than picking for yourself when you don't speak the language and usually a lot more delicious).

Saturday we spent wandering Innsbruck with some friends, mostly from our pensione (Lindsey, Allison, Thad, and David). We went to several sports stores looking for a hat for Lindsey, walked in to the Svarovski crystal factory and looked at their incredible statues, jewelry, and exhibitions, saw the golden roof (kind of a letdown, even if it is all gold, it's pretty tiny). We ate at a restaurant called the Piano Bar and once again had delicious Tyrolean food and really friendly help. Every place in town had the downhill skiing World Cup on, so we watched that intermittently as well. The actual races were in a town a few miles away, but we opted not to go so we could go exploring (plus it was 22 euro just to get in.) We attempted to take the tram up to a castle on the hill but accidentally missed our stop, so we spent about an hour riding in and back out again of rural Austria, which was actually a great epxerience -- it was so beautiful! We caught our stop on the way back to town but it dropped us in the middle of nowhere with no castle in sight. With me in my heeled leather boots with no traction, we hiked (well, I slid) down the hill to a road, hoping to find some directions, but we ended up bumping in to the castle itself within about ten minutes, so it all worked out. The castle itself was really fun -- we got to just wander the rooms and see the strange collections of stuff its owner had collected over the years, like old embroidered hymnals on cloth pages, stuffed sharks and blowfish, and treasures from all over the world. There were also peacocks there and a collection of exotic water birds like a gorgeous black swan, so we caught a few pictures of them.

That evening, the whole group of us Gonzaga students went out to a traditional meal a few towns away with traditional music and dancers (complete with lederhosen! you have to see the pictures). It was really delicious food - pancake soup (it's way better than it sounds), wienerschnitzel, and appel strudel. The beer in Innsbruck was also pretty phenomenal, so I look forward to going back to Austria to try more. The dancers were great, and totally hilarious. They didn't take themselves too seriously and had a great time, so it was a blast to watch them. They also did a bunch of stuff with different pitched cowbells, one of which was Eidelweiss complete with harmony on bells and singing in German. Really, really wonderful.

Sunday morning we got up bright and early and left, which I was disappointed about at first until I realized that the first three hours of the trip would be spent driving through the Alps, which was a sight I won't soon forget. So beautiful! My only regret was that it was difficult to get any good pictures out the window of the bus, so I can't share how gorgeous it really was. Because of it, Megan, Rob, and I decided to take over one of the mountains and build castles all over it that we can use skis and lifts to visit one another with. I've heard it's kind of difficult to buy a mountain though, so we'll have to see how well it works out. I'd seriously be happy to spend the rest of my life in a castle in the Alps though...what a way to live!

This week has, like all weeks have so far, completely flown by. When we got back from Innsbruck I wasn't feeling too hot but figured I was just tired, so I finished up my homework and went to bed early. Monday wasn't much better, and by yesterday I was royally sick. It was a shame too, because yesterday night they had a toga party in our pensione that would have been really fun had I felt better. I still put on a toga and went for about fifteen minutes just to say hi to everyone, but I went back to bed after that. Today I saw the doctor (who speaks only Italian, which was interesting) and he told me I have the flu, but he gave me some medicine that's supposed to kick it. Let's hope so...I was looking forward to doing some day tripping in Italy this weekend and don't want to spend it here in Florence, especially if I'm just going to sit in bed and be a lump.

I do, however, need to spend time taking care of myself and getting better or all sorts of plans will have to get put on hold. Yesterday afternoon I went exploring and ended up spending about an hour listening to monks chant mass at sunset an hour walk from my pensione, so by the time I got home I was very cold and much sicker. It's hard to keep yourself from going out and doing fun things when you're living somewhere like Florence, but after yesterday afternoon I realized I have got to have a little downtime or I'll never get better. The doctor told me today I need to quit my gallavanting for at least three days, so I'll try to stick to it.

This weekend's trips will probably be Assisi, maybe Parma (I'm dying to go for the cheese...parmesan!), or perhaps somewhere south, to try and get warmer. Next weekend we're going to try to head out of the country or somewhere we can at least spend more than one day, like maybe Milan. The weekend after we were trying for Prague since it's such a beautiful city and it'll be Valentine's Day, but it's really difficult to get there from Florence, so we're still trying to get it figured out. Planning travel is not my favorite thing, but if I don't get moving on it, we'll never go anywhere, which would be a shame because if I want to visit Prague from the states it's a lot more difficult than from Italy.

Anyway, it's getting to be time for me to be productive and do some homework, so I better go. Oh, but before I do! I've been working on getting caught up on pictures on facebook. They're all online now and mostly captioned, so you should check them out if you get a chance:

Florence/Fiesole
Siena
Rome
Innsbruck

Quick weekend update: finding tickets places is extremely difficult. This weekend we're just going to rest up, try to get better, and see more of Italy. We were going to try to head out of the country next weekend, but finding tickets is proving to be more difficult than we'd hoped. We'll see how it goes.

Until I next find time to write (and who knows how long that will be)... ciao!