B.E.D.A.+.T.F.W.M.T.M.U.F.L

So it has recently come to my attention how stupid it is for me to not be writing in this thing everyday. Honestly, why did I start a blog? Why did I start a blog with this title/username if I wasn't going to actually write about the wanderings of an anglophile. I want to change this. Which is why I am hereby starting B.E.D.A.+.T.F.W.M.T.M.U.F.L. or Blog every day in April + The First Week of May To Make Up For Lateness. It would just be regular BEDA if I hadn't forgotten about this project thing. Honestly April really took me by surprise this year. I was so surprised in fact that I went to Grom (best Gelato place EVER!!) and asked for the flavour of the month which was a delicious green tea with bits of white chocolate in it and was surprised/horrified to realise that it was the first of April and that the flavour of the month had changed to some kind of fragola (strawberry) milkshake! Not a very funny April Fools joke at all. Also I spent the first weekend of April in Paris with Danielle for Easter and was away from a computer. Enough with the excuses...

So I last left you off about a month ago before leaving for London. Wow. That is just unacceptable. Well, I already have a blog post about London in the works and it should come up after this one. In the interest of keeping this blog in sequential order I will not talk about Spring Break or Paris in this particular post. Instead I will talk about... get ready... Florence (!) since that is where I am living and I have yet to really do that. Pretty ridiculous. I am really sorry about what I put you, my lovely readers, through sometimes. You have probably been contemplating un-following me for the past month and a half because the only reason you started following me in the first place was to hear me talk about cool places. And I haven't even done that!! I'm so sorry!! I love you all and I will try and make it up to you!

OK, here I go...

So far I've told you about my classes, my crazy roommates and friends, nannertots... and... sadly that's it. It is tourist season in Florence right now. I guess that means that everyone is on spring break at home and abroad so they are all coming here. It is also really beautiful outside. It is sunny and getting warmer while still maintaining a colder temperature in the shadow of the Duomo. I am sitting inside at the kitchen table of our apartment. If I look to my left I can see the buildings and apartments surrounding me. Down below is some sort of courtyard. I can see the roofs of the buildings. They are the red ceramic tile sort. The tiles sort of layed haphazardly on top and next to each other. Weeds are starting to sprout between some of them. The building across has chips in the cream painted concrete and you can see the red brick show through. The green shutters swing open and shut with the wind. The Terrace across the courtyard is full of flowers which are just now starting to bloom a brilliant fuchsia and canary yellow. The top of the Mercato Centrale is visible and at around 19:00 I can hear the venders outside the market pack up there leather jackets and scarves and other souvenirs and pull their carts down the streets toward home for the day. For now it's quite silent. A sparrow is sitting on my window sill and twittering but other than that I can hear an occasional distant Italian voice apart from the sound of my own typing. Oranges are going out of season. Now it's strawberries and pears. Tonight for dinner I will have a fruit salad consisting of apples, oranges, strawberries, and bananas drizzled with a small bit of sugar to make the fruit sweat and the juices mix together. Fruit salads are lovely. They never really get old for me. I can always enjoy them.

Every day on my way to class I pass this clothes shoppe on the corner of my street. In the window are two manikins. One is without hair and is always, and has been since I've been here, dressed in some sort of Oriental purple dress. The other's outfit changes quite frequently. Always the same pair of plaid black and gray straight legged, high-water trousers and black wig. Sometimes she is sporting a black plaid coat with some read in it and other times its this very conspicuous red plaid coat of exactly the same style. It's basically the same coat but with different colour focus. The one is mainly black and the other is mainly red. As I said, I walk past this every day and every day the coat is different. Now I'm not silly enough to imagine that it is the manikin that can't make up her mind. Instead I like to believe that there's some sort of power struggle between two different shop assistants. Both of them fancying themselves world class status when it comes to clothing shop displays. I imagine them silently feuding by changing the coats. It's been the red one for a while however. Either the black coat enthusiast has been recognised for her full potential and offered to join a special school or even league for fancy clothing shop window displays or her red coat loving fiend of a colleague has hidden her beloved black coat in the depths of the shop basement so that the red coat will never again be usurped from it's rightful place in the display. I return to the drama of the clothing shoppe display window tomorrow to find out what has happened during the night or early morning of the shop's opening. Until then I can only wonder. I can also finish the blog post about London. Yes! I think I will do that!

Until next time, Arrivederci!!

Gelato count: 13

Nannertot escapades: 8

PS. Sorry this was so weird. I have a cold and am kind of drowsy so my musings are a bit weirder than usual. You can tell me how crazy I am. I won't be offended. : )