I better learn Italian...fast

Hello, Hello.
I am sitting in the computer lab after rushing to the Villa Rossa (S.U. campus) on my new ride thinking I had class at 9:55am. My new ride is a bicycle, its pretty sweet...even has a bell & a basket. After arriving here (after getting lost down one ways and side streets) I see my Italian teacher. She reminds me our class doesn't begin until 10:55am. MAMA MIA!

Anyways, my weekend was amazing. The school calls it "Full Imersion Weekend". Your host family is supposed to spend time with you and acclimate you to Florence. My roommate's grandma was in town and insisted on taking her to Rome that weekend. So it was just Laura (host mom) and I. Baldo (host dad) went to visit family somewhere else. Laura and I had a great time though.
She took me to their beach house which is on the Medditeranean sea. They have a private beach, which I posted pictures of on Facebook. We went down Saturday morning, only took an hour to get there. After arriving we jumped into our bikinis and headed for the beach! It's a flat rock area which was great to get a tan. Right away, we went for a swim in the open sea. It was amazing, the water is so blue. We found sea urchins, fish and little crabs. She headed back to the house a little earlier than I. Around 7pm I went back to the house, where Laura was cleaning and getting ready for dinner. In Italy the people generally eat around 8pm for dinner and that's the way it's been at my home stay. Dinner. 8pm. Sharp. (usually)

Dinner was amazing, per usual. I really was able to get to know Laura and it was easy to talk to her. When I found out my roommate was leaving for the weekend, I was a little nervous to be alone with my host mom but it turned out to be really great.
After dinner, Laura had things to do to close up the house for the Winter. I went for a walk around the small little town. Most of the shops were closed (they usually close all around 7:30pm here...which sucks) but it was nice to get out. A lot of people were around still getting dinner and just relaxing. After about an hour of  walking around I found an outdoor cafe/restaurant in a small garden. I grabbed a glass of wine and relaxed there (& people watched, which was fun in itself.) You may find this corny, but it was very peaceful. What's better than being in Italy and relaxing with a glass of wine.

The next day while Laura finished up closing the house, I headed to the beach again. The Italian sun was good to me and I got a nice tan. I decided to go swimming by myself while I waited for Laura to come down. I went out, (not touching the bottom because she told me you never know if you might step on a sea urchin) and when I finally reached the deeper part, I find a pink jelly fish. Well, I freaked out and swam back to the flat rock, haha!

A little while later, I got the courage up to use the snorkeling goggles she let me use. (this is my favorite part)
I swam around the shallow area for a little bit and saw many fishies hiding around the rocks/coral. As I swam farther out I noticed another jelly fish. I wasn't scared, I just swam around it. THEN, I found 4 more spread apart. I was able to swim around them and somehow (THANK GOD) not get stung. It was the most amazing thing to see pink jellyfish swimming around me while also regular fishies swam underneath me. All of this combined with the beautiful blue water was amazing.

A little while later Laura came down and was surprised to hear I saw jelly fish. She said they don't usually come around that beach. We were in the water ready to go for a swim when someone screamed. A girl had been stung right in front of us. The girl ended up being fine, just really red on the arm but that was enough for Laura and I. We swam in the area around the flat rock.
As the day went on, the jelly fish swam into shore near us. We ended up catching 6 of them and put them in the sun to melt. I kind of felt bad about this but I didn't want to get stung, haha!
I also caught a sea urchin so I could touch it. The spikes aren't sharp unless there is force applied, so it was pretty sweet to experience that. I put him back afterwards though.

Around 4pm Sunday we headed back. It was good to be home but I would've lived at the beach too...(a little far from school though)

Monday, classes started. Since then it's been pretty stressful. My classes seem very interesting. It is just stressful trying to acclimate to the new culture. A LOT of things are done differently here. Classes are classes, but learning Italian is one big stress in itself. I really want to learn as much Italian as I can. It's been really frustrating when I can't pronounce words or I try to use what I've learned in a store and forget what exactly to say. I am very happy I am immersed in this culture because I think learning Italian will be a smidge easier. I will be practicing basically all day and night.

Figuring out a bus route to get to school, being surrounded by a new language, trying to find a 'good' gym, keeping organized with classes, learning that new language, finding a place to get a cheap used bike---> these are some of the things that are stressful. Luckily, within the last couple days I've figured some of this out though. I found a bus route, I found a good gym, I found a bike. Buying a bike may have been one of the most stressful lanuage barrier situations I've experienced yet. They spoke basically no english and another customer ended up helping translate. Craziness I tell you, Craziness.

I have to get my bum to Italian now. I will write more later today. We went out last night and there were some bizarre experiences all in one night. Funny but bizarre!