La Bella Vita

Birthday Torte!

I currently have 14 days left of school! The time here has flown by! The first month crew headed out and the new people started school. The midterms went well and we are excited for another few weeks! For my birthday my Italian teacher, Cecilia, made me a torte!! It was delicious! She is so sweet.. when she is not making jokes about eating her students! haha
This weekend we went to Venezia (Venice) and Verona! It was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen! In Venice there are no cars they only have canals with boats to get from place to place. It is a very interesting way of life. It makes for a lot of walking but also some of the most beautiful views!

One of my favorite pictures ever!

The first night we went out to eat a birthday dinner. We sat right by the canal and watched people riding gondolas and I ate salmon pasta! It was a great birthday dinner! The hotel we stayed in that night had air-conditioning that we could control! (awesome) So we did what any air-conditioned deprived person would do: turned it as cold as it would go and as high as it would go. At about 2 in the morning we all regretted that decision! WE WERE FREEZING!

The glass maker!

 The next morning we took a "boat bus"to an island where they make all kind of glass objects.. some cups, light fixtures, animals, plates, jewelry ect. We we able to watch a man make a few things out of glass! He put some powder "stuff" into an oven that was 500 degrees Celsius (which is really, really hot) and added some colored beads and pulled and pushed on it with these metal objects. In less that 5 minutes he had a beautiful glass cat. It was incredible.  We ate lunch at a cute little place overlooking the water and  I never wanted to be done!

The Arena di Verona!

That same evening we rode a train to Verona to watch the opera of Romeo and Juliette! The opera was in the arena that the Romans build. I was excited for the experience but prepared myself for a bit of a boring night. The opera did get a little long after 4 hours but it was actually incredible. The Romans made the theatre with the idea that one person could preform or speak and be heard throughout the stadium. They did the whole opera without a microphone. It holds 30,000 people and I could hear every note that was sung! The Romans sure knew how to build! The opera finally finished at 1 in the morning, and we bought tickets for a train the next morning at 7:30 so we had about 4 hours of sleep and headed to the train station to get on our early train. When we got there we were not to pleasantly surprised to find out there was a train strike! So our early cheep train turned into a late much more expensive train! But we finaly got back to Venice and wished we had another week there! We took a little too long before we went to the train station and ended up runing through Venice and the Trian Station so we didnt miss our train home!

Venice was a little hard to navigate through ...
I dont know why.. the signs were so clear.

This week was a great birthday week and a great birthday weekend! I don't think I will ever forget my 20th birthday! I am feeling very fortunate for the last 20 years and am excited for the next 20! Thanks to everyone who made this week so special! Love you all!