Florence, Italy

I have just realized I only have a month left here, and I can't believe it! Everything seems to have gone by so fast. On Wednesday, Meg and I had our first day of volunteering. We got put into two different classrooms, I got the 4 year olds and she got the 5 year olds. Mostly, we just spent an hour putting kids on timeouts. I had a young boy with Downs Syndrome who was so sweet. At one point, I looked over at Meg and she had at least 4 girls wrapped around her legs. She couldn't even move. Needless to say, we were pretty exhausted by the end of it. My intercambio, Sandra, had to cancel at the last minute, although we are hoping to get together this weekend while Meg and her mom are in Paris.
On Thursday, we went to class and saw the Capilla Real (again). This is where the Reyes Catolicos (Isabel and Ferdinand) are buried. They are the ones who finally conquered Granada and made it Christian. We returned to the house for lunch, even though there was a little confusion because of a mistake I made in Spanish tenses (oops!). Luckily, she had enough food for us and then we were on our way to Madrid.
Courtney met us at the bus station and took us back to her apartment. We all had flights to catch the next day, so we only stayed up for a little bit. The next morning we got up early and went with Court to the airport where she caught an early flight to Paris with her group. Meg and I caught our later flight to Florence and got there without a problem.
It was a WONDERFUL weekend. We have missed Becca so much and we had the apartment all to ourselves for most of it, since her roommates were traveling to Rome. We walked around the city and saw a lot of the sights, like the Duomo (big cathedral), Ponte Vecchio (the beautiful old bridge), and Michelangelo's David. On day 2, I realized that I had actually been to Florence before! About three years ago, on my senior trip. It is amazing that I forgot, but we had traveled to so many cities in Spain, Italy and France, it was hard to keep it straight. Overall, we spent the most amazing weekend eating the best italian food (ravioli, penne, pizza, gelato, etc) and telling Italian guys to back off. Although, the worst group of guys we met were American Navy men (go figure!). Becca gave us our Christmas presents a little early and they were these beautiful cashmere burberry scarves. I hardly took mine off all weekend. The last night we were there, we had a birthday dinner for Meg, since we weren't all together when she turned 21. We went to this restaurant called Dante's and they gave us a ton of wine for free. It was absolutely delicious and difficult to leave to come back to the mediocre food here in Spain.
Overall, it made us miss Denison a lot and look forward to next semester. Now I am back in my room in Granada and am realizing how short of time I have left here. There is so much to do!

I love you all,
Em