Last Regular Old Weekend

Incredible. This is my last regular old weekend in Florence. I still have nearly two weeks, but next weekend is finals, and I do in fact have a final presentation next Saturday, not to give, but to listen to other people give. Making this my last normal weekend. As "normal" as any weekend here can be at least! Not many plans as the mountain of finals work under which I'm buried will not avalanche off of me until Wednesday, but after that I will be DONE except an Italian written and oral....and let's talk about how much I'm studying for that. My LIFE here is on big study session for Italian oral exams.
So to catch you up....
I pretty much owned my Botticelli presentation. Thank goodness because now it means I don't really have to do much for my final paper besides make my presentation dictation read like an essay. Big win. Cinque Terre. AMAZING. I will try to upload photos following this post. I took nearly 300- many are just slightly different angles of the same exact thing but I have seriously never seen anything so beautiful, which is saying a lot here. We departed Florence at 7:30 am and it was freezing and raining. We were all vaguely miserable and contemplating not getting on the train because it was an all day hike, and what fun is that in the pouring rain when it's 45 degrees? No fun at all. But, fortune smiled upon us. By the time we reached the first Cinque Terre (which means Five Lands) it wasn't raining. We started hiking to warm up and by the time we reached the second town, about 30 minutes away (the shortest hike) the sun was coming out. In something you only see in the movies, the sun bursted through the clouds, it warmed up about 20 degrees, and we were all able to see the Cinque Terre as they were meant to be seen. My favorite town by far was Vernazza, the 4th town. We had time there to sit on these rocks that looked out upon the sea and ate the best fruit gelato I've ever had (Kiwi-banana and pineapple!) while soaking up the sun. The towns were amazing- colorful houses literally built into the faces of steep mountains. In between the towns there were often single houses or small clusters of houses situated on the very top of a mountain. They must have the most incredible view ever seeing as their houses looked as if they could topple into the sea at any moment. It was also really nice to hike and be out and about in the woods, walking through olive groves and forests. My host dad and sister were just asking me what I liked most about Florence, and I had a really hard time picking what I liked the most, as there are so many things, but when it came to what I missed in the states (due to it's lack in Florence- of course I miss everyone at home like crazy) it was definitely nature.
Last night was the end of the year art show at school. Interestingly enough, someone from the advanced painting class did a gigantic panel painting of a close-up of dog fur because she too missed nature while being here and thought that the highly pervasive dog culture was as close to nature as Florence gets. In other news about the show, I had two watercolors displayed! It was really cool to have my work hung, and now I have two framed pieces to bring back to the states!
I've also been doing some storytelling through our volunteer program (ie my host mom) this week, which has been really fun. There's a whole bag of flashcards and storyboards and costumes that you take to a school and you and a partner do the flashcards with the kids to prep them, read the story while dressing up, and then do it again while making the kids dress up and interact. Soooo cute. The first day I did it, the teacher liked it so much she asked me and my partner for our phone numbers so she could call us to have coffee with her sons to help them with their English! And yesterday the kids liked it so much that they asked me and my partner for our firma (autographs)! Talk about feeling like a celebrity, when 25 Italian school children run at you with pens and notebooks!