My Backyard is a Postcard

Hiiii so this is my first attempt at an E-Harmony video and I love cats...

wait.

Let me start again.

I LIVE IN ITALY NOW! I'm a little excited about it. I figured I'd start the obligatory I'm-in-Europe-For-a-While blog to keep everyone updated. Especially since I'll be here for 2.5 (years) and will be traveling a lot.

So I am now a resident of Arezzo, Italy. Well, I'm just outside the city walls (yes, there are walls), up on a hill above the town. As the title implies, it's pretty much gorgeous here. I feel like i live in a postcard. Here's an example:

This Photo was taken from "The Barn" which is a cool building behind my house that has some storage stalls (probably used to be horse or animal stalls) and an upstairs open area for whatever. You can see the barn in the foreground of this photo:

The storage stalls are under the roof on the left, and the upstairs area is on the right. Beyond it you can see the city of Arezzo. We are high on the hills outside the city, which is built among some crazy hills of it's own. Tomorrow I'm going to wander the city and take some photos of the weird alleys and tiny streets.

So I've been here since Wednesday evening. I was warned in coming here that everything takes longer in Italy: getting anything processed through offices, anything requiring other people, generally accomplishing things. Now I understand why. It must be in the air. Francesca (my roommate and friend from college who is also in the program) and I have spent the past few days with the windows and doors open, lounging around our house, enjoying the ease that is Italy:

Look to the left in the photo. the yellow building on the hill is my school. The Accademia dell-Arte, which is housed in the Villa Godiola, where apparently the children of the Medici Family used to vacation. no big deal. Its placement on the hill lets it be seen from all around the area. Plus it's yellow. Though the walls aren't painted, they're covered in some type of powder pigment, so you can't lean up against them or you'll turn yellow. I'll have to watch out for that.

Also there are lots of mosquitoes here and to them I am just as delicious as I am to the ones in the US. damn.

Anyways, here's a photo of my house.

Francesa is standing in the doorway. To the left you can kind of see the barn behind the fig tree. Yup. we have a fig tree.

Just eating a fresh fig from the tree in our back yard. nbd. Behind me is one of our 3 olive trees.

Alright. So i've been rambling. too bad. It's my first blog post. Deal with it. I've also consumed a few glasses of wine while writing it. By the way there is a winery connected with the Accademia which is a 5 minute walk away. Today we bought a couple bottles. Tomorrow we will go into town to buy a big empty 5L jug which we will then fill up at the winery for about 6.50 Euro (10 bucks, about). And it's delicious.

Alright, If you've read this far, congratulations! And thanks! As a reward, you get to see a few more photos I took today!

In the barn there are open brick walls like this one. Through it you can see the Accademia and the "Duomo", which refers to the big church in Arezzo. Pretty much every city in Italy has a Duomo. This is ours.

Here is Francesca enjoying the sunset while I take photos from the barn. this is our giant backyard. in the top right corner you can see the Accademia. Also there is a path through that grove of olive trees that we take to get to the school. It's pretty sweet.

And here was this evening's sunset:

Thanks for reading my first blog post! There will be more :) Miss you all!