Turchia Giorna Felici!

Happy Thanksgiving! It's been a very long and eventful day. One that I am very thankful for.

We started out this wonderful Thanksgiving day by heading to the Academia. The Academia is full of masterpieces, like many of the other museums we have been to this semester. The one that draws the most attention of course is the David. Our professor took us all around this enormous statue and referred to things she has told us in past lectures and gave us lots of new things to consider as we were just feet away from this valued work. After our lecture about the David and a few other objects were finished we were able to explore the museum on our own. I chose to attend the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition. It was one of my favorite exhibits I have seen to date. It had a great atmosphere and his photographs are so lovely. When we left the Academia I grabbed a quick bite to eat, finished a paper, and headed to the next museum! We visited the Art and Illusion Museum near our Italian language school. This museum was unlike any of the others so far. The thing that really stood out above the rest was at the end of the tour we got to play with things and experiment with 3D illusions and physicaly touch and experience them. It was a pleasant change because normally in the museums around here everything is either behind bulletproof glass, guarded, or has a very loud and annoying alarm if you get too close. It was really fun and a change I appreciated.

This evening we were lucky enough to celebrate Thanksgiving with our entire program at our school building in Santo Spirito. Barb, our Faculty Member in Residence, and her husband Mark invited us all over for an amazing dinner. Each of the girls chose a side to bring and they brought the turkey! It was an evening filled with fun, laughter, food, and being stuffed beyond belief at the end of the night. It was so nice to celebrate with everyone and have a little piece of home and the holidays here in Florence.

Tomorrow a little over half of the group is heading to Amsterdam and Brussels for the weekend. We have lots of fun plans and I can't wait to get some more pictures for everyone to enjoy. Thanks for keeping up with my trip thus far, I really appreciate all of the comments and encouragement from everyone back home!