Apartment Hunting

I found an apartment to live in when I move back to Charleston in August.  It is 2 bedrooms, has a washer/dryer hookup, and is surprisingly affordable.  I am very excited to move back! 




Living Room

 

Kitchen/Dining Room




Bedroom (both bedrooms are almost exactly the same... I forgot to get the window in the pic)



Closet



Bathroom





Utility Room



Linen Closet



Babbie

My grandmother Charlotte Ariel Barringer passed away on July 13th.  She went  by Ariel and all the grandchildren called her Babbie, I am very thankful to be named after her.
http://wvgazette.com/Obituaries/201107170001

Recap of June/July

Not much has been happening since the Italy trip.  I’ve been golfing about once a week with Mark… he says I get better every time but I’m not too sure about that.   Annalisa, my best friend since high school, came to Morgantown to visit me in June.  We had so much fun!!!  On the 4th of July Mark and I went to an anniversary party for a couple whose wedding we attended last.  I say it is also our anniversary  because the wedding we went to last year was the first date I remember when we were getting serious and we don’t have an actual day that we both knew we were a couple.  Mark got me a beautiful gold key necklace. 

 We are babysitting my friends cat while she's at army training.  I've never had a cat before so this is a fun experience, he like playing/drinking from the kitchen sink faucet.  Now we’re just counting down the days until our graduation on August 5th.  Three days later I’ll be starting a new job in Charleston on August 8th.  The first 8 weeks I am going to be studying for my Series 7 and 66 exams full time so I don’t think it will be a drastic change from my student life.  I am so excited to finish school… only 14 days to go!!!

Venice

      On Monday May 16th, we took a train from Florence to Venice in the morning.  Our class got a little confused at the train station but we eventually figured it out and found everyone.  Venice was beautiful!  I was surprised because most of the waterways were huge and I was expecting a ton of little water canals between the building like in the cartoons I used to watch.  First, we took a private boat to our hotel was on Lido Island, and then ate lunch at the Roxy (it was really delicious so Mark and I ate dinner there later).  Then we took the aqua bus to the main island for a walking tour of Venice.  We did a lot of sight seeing and visited Doge’s Palace.

            Tuesday morning we went to the cruise ship terminal for a meeting about marketing for the cruises.  The ships were huge, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to go on a cruise considering how easily I get motion sickness.  In the afternoon we went to Murano Island, which is now my favorite shopping place.  It is an island with a bunch of handmade glass factories and stores.  I love getting handmade items because I think they’re unique.  We watched a glass blower make a cobalt blue spotted tumbler and a glass horse.  After buying a few souvenirs in the gift shop we went to lunch and had a delicious past with pesto sauce.

            After lunch Mark and I took a boat back to our hotel and then took a walk to the beach.  The beach was really spacious and it had some neat little snack shops and restaurants on it.  We took a walk on the beach and we had to be careful walking by the water because there were tons on seashells.  Later on, we had our last dinner in Italy.  

            On Wednesday May 18th we took a boat from our hotel to the airport in the morning.  We had a layover in Philadelphia then got on a small plane to Pittsburgh… we had no idea, but apparently there were tornados in Philadelphia that day and there was tons of turbulence.  We finally landed in Pittsburgh around 6:30.  I was glad to be back, but now I miss it a lot!  Hopefully I’ll have plenty more chance to travel there again.

Florence

            On Wednesday May 11 we took a bus from Rome to the Agriturismo Poderi Arcangelo right outside of Florence in Tuscany.  Our bus Eddie was really skilled, he took us up a tiny road and across a tiny bridge, we thought we were going to fall off the side of the road and Eddie was calling his boss and yelling at him in Italian.  Then when we got to the agriturismo we found out we took the wrong road and there was a wider road up for busses.  We ate lunch there and had the best spaghetti I have ever tasted.  It was amazing!  We also had a small wine tasting with lunch.. 2 red wines, 1 white wine, and 1 dessert wine.  Here’s a link to the farm’s website http://www.poderiarcangelo.it/. We also went on a little tour and saw one of the rooms they rent out for vacations; it was really nice I’d love to stay there for a vacation some day.  I also bought a couple bottles of wine and a bottle of olive oil as souvenirs in the gift shop.
           

      After lunch we got back on the bus and took the wider road to go see San Gimignano.  It’s a really old town with a bunch of stone towers.  We did not get to stay there very long, but I wish we had because it had a lot of shops with handmade items I would have like to browse.  Then we got back on the bus and headed to another agriturismo outside of Florence Castello del Trebbio.

            Castello del Trebbio was built by the Pazzi family… there was a big conspiracy with this family and the Pope to kill the de’Medici brothers back in the fourteen hundreds… but the whole thing led to “pazzi or pazzo” being a common phrase for “crazy” in Italy today.  

            The next day we went on a tour of the castle and had a wine tasting with lunch.  Then we had some free time to relax by the pool at the guys spacious villa (the girls had a three bedroom apartment, but it was pretty nice because there was only 5 of us).  Later we went to a cooking class in the castle where the owners mother-in-law taught us how to make homemade pasta, a creamy vegetable sauce, and a tomato meat sauce.  Then they brought up the food we made to eat on the back porch of the guy’s villa.  After dinner Mark and I went to the restaurant with a couple friends and sample four desserts… they were AMAZING.
          

 

     We left very early in the morning on Friday the 13th for Florence.  We went on a tour of the high school for marketing there... which ended up being a kind of pointless way to spend 3 hours in Florence.  Then we went to lunch and to a meeting at the tourism board, which was boring (sitting in a hot room, in the dark during a PowerPoint presentation) but at least was more useful than the high school visit.  On Saturday we went on a walking tour of Florence and visited the Uffizi Gallery, Ponte Vecchio, Accademia Gallery, and the Duomo.  Later that night mark and I went on a walk where we found a building with the name Biliotti on it which is almost the same as Mark’s last name Billotti.  After taking a picture of Mark and his family’s building we went to get gelato!
           

    

Sunday was our last day in Florence, Mark and I did some sight seeing.  It was kind of chilly and rainy so we did not do too much besides go out for lunch and dinner and walk around a little.



Rome!

We got back from Italy last Wednesday and it's taken me a while to get adjusted again, but I'm finally updating my blog and putting all of my pictures on facebook.  The first city we went to in Italy was Rome. We got there on Saturday May 7, very early in the morning. As soon as we got there we dropped our bags off at the Hotel and then went to have our first authentic Italian meal.  We had different types of pizza and pasta with an eggplant sauce.  Then we went to the Coliseum and the Roman Forum. I was surprised at how huge the Colesium was!

The girls right after arriving at the hotel.



The guys.



The Colesium

The first restaurant we ate at.



Mushroom pizza



Pasta in an eggplant sauce

Our hotel in Rome was nice, I had a great view from the room… Also, I’ll be including a lot of pictures from meals we ate, unfortunately I didn’t take pictures at a lot of the best meals because they were so good I forgot!



View from the room



On Sunday we had a free day in Rome, I spent it site seeing with classmates.

Then on Monday the 9^th, we had a tour of the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel.  There was a huge line the lasted for blocks to get into the Vatican, but luckily we were able to skip the line with our tour guide.  Everything at the Vatican was beautiful, but Mark and I had a little confusion with our group when we were there.  I wanted to go with to the post office to get Vatican Euro Coins for one of my coworkers who collects coins so we left the tour and were supposed to meet back up at 12:45.  We went to where we supposed to meet, but our class was running late with the tour so by the time a couple guys from class went to find us at the meeting spot, Mark and I had already thought we went to the wrong spot and we left.  So then we left the Vatican trying to figure out where our class was supposed to have lunch, right after we had no luck asking one of the policemen if he knew how to get to the restaurant we turned around and saw our class walking by!  I was so happy we weren’t lost for the day, because we still had to visit a university that evening.  The last thing we did on Monday was go to Sapienza Universita, for a lecture with one of the marketing professors.  It was interesting to learn about how Italy markets to tourists, and the was farmers market their products (specifically wine).  We had to find our way back to our hotel on our own without the professors, which took a while, but eventually made it.  I liked walking for a long time from one site to the next in Italy because we always seemed to come across even more unexpected beautiful sites and buildings.

On the last day in Rome our class visited the clothing manufacturer Brioni.  We worked on a case study about the company for class, and I enjoyed learning more about the high end retailer.  I hope I’ll be able to afford one of their suits one day!

This was sooooo good!

We surprisingly had a lot of french fries (or some sort of french fry like potatos)... I would have rather had pasta.

The women's bathroom someplace where we went out in Rome... notice no toilette seat, the short height, and it was out of toilette paper :/ 

Best gellato ever!! I got chocolate with hazelnuts with a scoop of a different flavor in a conolo cono every night!

Some meats and cheeses at lunch with the folder from Brioni.

The delicious pinapple slices with tinee tiny strawberries... it kind of tasted like a fruit roll up.

Catching Up

My schedule has been getting more hectic as we approach finals week, so I'm a little late posting on a couple recent events.... A couple weeks ago Mark and I decided to get a group of the students going on the Italy trip together for a sort of Italian dinner.  We wanted to go to Vintage Room because they mainly serve pizza and wine, but we waited 'til last minute to call about getting a room for 20 and it was already booked.  So then we called this place Mountain Brewing Company and they told us they had a very large table and they don't get very busy on Thursday nights to just come in. So we called and texted everyone and told them the dinner location was moved. We got there about half an hour early to get the table, and one of the students we know from class' mom took the big table right before us!  Once again, we had to find a new place to eat and contact everyone again! We finally ended up at The Wharf, the food was good and I think everyone had a great time.


Young Italian Amateurs @ The Wharf

Last Thursday my foreign exchange friend Chris had a cook out at his house.  Tons of kids from class showed, but my camera batteries were dying so I didn't take many pictures :(.

Christoph

In the midst of all these festivities I've been stressed with an array of tests and quizzes crammed into a short time frame (more specifically 1 finance quiz and 2 finance exams in a 3 week period).  I've also been job searching, going to career fairs and applying for financial advising jobs.  I had a phone interview for a FA position and I think it went really well!  They just have to do my background check and then I'll schedule a face to face interview when I get back from Italy.  I really hope I get this job because its seem like a great place to work, it's exactly what I can see myself doing for a lifetime, and I'll be able to move back to Charleston!

Last week I started moving into my cousin's townhouse because my lease ends while I'm in Italy, it's been a very slow process and most of my stuff has not been moved yet.  I hope I don't get too overwhelmed with school because I will have A LOT of cleaning to do before I turn my keys in.  My landlords are ridiculous about the amount of cleaning to be done, moving fridge, under oven, wash all walls, professional carpet cleaner... last year they charged me for having "old kitchen tile".