I'll Be Home for Christmas

I am utterly mind-blown.  Yet another week has gone by!!  Seriously, where does the time go?  SERIOUSLY!!  But this week has been much more than awesome!  It has been bittersweet to say the least, but also full of wonderful new discoveries and adventures (that are not all Italian might I add!).  So, people, hang tight!  Here is Kelsey's official second to last blog entry (and the last one that I will write abroad too!). 

So.  When we left off, I was jumping in my pants, remember?  Well, I met Mom and Grandma with many happy tears in the airport before I led them (jetlagged - evil me!) for a two hour walk around Florence before we went to our little gallery opening of a sort for our drawings in our art class.  They got to meet many of my friends and my instructors before we lugged my suitcases (yes, plural) across the city.  By the time we got to the hotel, they were so tuckered out that they went to sleep really fast.  The next morning I had two exams that I felt went really well.  Mom and Gma went on a bus tour of the city which they really enjoyed.  I had last minute errands to run and I had to go see my host mom one more time before I left so I went ahead and did that.  That night we went to see the opera, Tosca which was fantastic.  Afterward, I went out one last time with everyone.  It was so sad!!  We met up for lunch the next day and there were many tears.  Hopefully, if we all put our minds to it, we will be able to meet up for a reunion in the near future.  I think we like each other too much to not!  I made so many wonderful new friends on this trip, I was heartbroken to see them go.  Most of them are back in the States already!

Anyways, that night after I walked Mom and Grandma around some more and took them shopping, we hopped on this horrible horrible horrible HORRIBLE night train to Paris.  The room was literally 5 feet by 6 feet with three beds stacked on top of one another.  It was a bit of a nightmare.  But it ended happily in the fact that we arrived the next morning in Paris, France!  We spent three days there seeing things like, the LOUVRE (my fav), Notre Dame, Arc du Triomph, Eiffel Tower, the D'Orsay, Napoleon's tomb, Champs Elysees, and much more!!  Food and shopping were wonderful there!!  I absolutely loved looking at art that was NOT Renaissance!  I have to admit that I am a little Renaissanced out right now.  Last night we took that horrid night train again to Venice, which is where I am now writing to you from.  I can't tell you how excited I was to see this place again.  I so loved Venice when I came before.  We had a lovely day on this little island and had a terrific dinner at Trattoria alla Rivetta.  If you ever go to Venice, you MUST look this place up.  Fresh seafood caught that day and homemade tiramisu :]  Life can't get much better than that ;) 

Tomorrow we head off for Naples and Pompeii which I am very excited about since I have never been there before.  Then we go back to ROME, which was my favorite trip that we went on in the program.  Then I come home!!  I am so excited to go home.  Only 5 more days and I will be on a flight home - it's so hard to believe!!  Anyways, next time I write to you, I will be summing up my entire trip from good old Traverse City in the 90 billion feet of snow we just got :]  Cannot WAIT to see you all very soon!

Oh, yeah, and the song explains itself :]