My First Day in Florence | Grocery Shopping and Traveling Thoughts

  Waking up for my first day in Florence was exciting and surreal!   Today was all about getting some shopping done and settling in.  It's great where I'm staying because there are a few different supermarket/grocery stores all within walking distance.  I went to two different ones today because I wanted to see which each one had.  There's one which is a five minute walk away and it has great products and living essentials.
  Living in a foreign country is always sort of an alien experience because the products can be very different from what we have in the US.  And it's also interesting trying to decipher what the products say on them.  For instance, I was trying to buy grape jelly and ended up with blueberry.  I like many of the European products better; such as the yogurt, I normally don't like yogurt, but I like the European kind.  It's just a fun experience to explore and I've barely scratched the surface here.
  I was thinking about how last summer in Giverny taught me a lot of lessons and made it less intimidating to live in a foreign country.  That was my first time living abroad and it was 3 months so I learned a lot and I gained a lot of confidence.  But it's still intimidating to really be living in a different country--especially when there's a different language.  I was in Edinburgh before flying to Florence and it was great because I could talk to anyone because it's all English (although some of the Scottish were a wee bit hard to understand).  For Italy, I've been practicing my Italian in a language workbook, but actually speaking it in a store to ask someone "Where is the butter?" is a different experience.  I guess it's about theory Vs. practice.
   Anyway, I've included some photos which just show some local buildings and my trip to the grocery store.  The last photo was my dinner which I cooked tonight.  As a side note: I wanted to be a chef when I was younger and I still love the process of making a nice meal; there are actually a lot of similarities between cooking and painting because they both require good materials combined with skill.   Spontaneity and creativity is integral to both, I could go on and on, but they both give me a real sense of satisfaction and reward.
  That's all for today as I'm still settling in here.  And I'm just going to relax the rest of tonight because my work begins tomorrow as I begin my final semester at the Florence Academy of Art.  I'm really excited to meet more people and to learn more about the art that I love.
  I'll try to post as often as I can to document this journey and to share it with everyone who I miss back home.  Ciao!

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Architecture Around Where I'm Staying

Beautiful old buildings.

The photos don't do this justice but the buildings are really cool..

I wish I had my paints to capture this dappled light!

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Grocery Store Trip

Great food here!

Looking very European today with the linen shirt ;)

I got this Interesting organic soap, I think it's prickly pear?

My first homemade meal in Italy! Buon Appetito!