Photo Dump

I feel so bad for not posting in so long! I now understand why so many students neglect their blogs while studying abroad, you get so busy! I realized there were so many pictures I have not posted from other trips and events I have done!

So this post is exactly what it is called, a big ol’ photo dump!

I also created a website for my photography, yay!

http://goldenjacq.wix.com/goldenphotography

 

The following are from Siena, San Gminiano, Venice, and a few random things around Florence

 

My last three weeks here have started, and I seem to be doing a lot more traveling than I expected. I hope I can keep up!

San Valentin

Today is dia de San Valentin, or as we call it in the states, valentines day.

We know it as a day filled with red flowers, chocolates and eventually some belly aches and if you are lucky some belly rubs. I was lucky this year, but in a different way.

Florence doesn’t celebrate the way that Americans do. I was not constantly reminded of the somewhat tacky holiday today, but reminded with all the love I saw. I swear people said Florence was romantic and today really showed me. The weather has gotten a lot nicer this week– we all needed some cheering up- and I found myself a little local valentine- Sydney Vize. She lives with me and is a truly great friend I am lucky to have spent so much time with here! I could say it’s because she’s one of the only girls from Texas.. But I admit it’s more than that!

We spent our day walking through the citu, it was CROWDED today. Tourist season seems to have begun early this year… But the city was also celebrating the day in it’s unique ways. We spent quite a bit of time in piazza republicca where there was a woman singing opera, and later a man playing the cello. Artists were creating portraits and men were selling flowers, it was very old fashioned.

We finally went to a restaurant/caffe we have been wanting to try called Gilli. While it is over priced, it’s got a great outdoor atmosphere, so we splurged.

I had a caffe al ginseng— still not sure what it was… But small and delicious.

Sydney had a cappuccino and we split a gotta donna caaaa? Something.
Custard, almonds, flour? What else do you need. It was my Friday pastry.

We spent the entirety of the sunshine walking around town. When I got home I had a text from sweet sweet boyfriend asking if my gift had arrived… Well, if you have been abroad you may know surprised are HARD to keep surprises. I knew something was coming but had no idea what… So I ran back to school and there they were! A bouquet of the prettiest red tulips.. My face turned into a red tulip when I grabbed em.

Ain’t they pretty?
Sweet boyfriend thinking about me 5,636 miles away from him.

Sydney and I continued our evening with a dinner reservation al due ( for two).

One thing I have failed to mention in my valentines day post is the all mighty chocolate festival. It has been here a week. Across the street from my house. I’m a chocoholic. Can you see where this is heading?

 

Have a looksie

Even though I was missing my man I had an incredible day in the city.

I will go eat my chocolate covered fruits now…

Ciao,

28 days

I have been in Florence now for a month. 4 weeks as of last Wednesday and it has flown by. I have shared most of my important adventures with you and I hope that I can continue to share you with you in my remaining 3 months.

It has rained so much here and if you know me you know how much I love the sunshine and warm weather, so this has not been easy. I get out of class and want to just go cuddle in my bed, and I do. I originally felt bad about it, but it’s what I want to do in the lousy weather so why not just do what I want to do!
However, I have made some small goals to feel accomplished.

One: try a new pastry every Friday.
I have done this for three weeks now. Sadly I could not even tell you the names of them because they aren’t even listed anywhere, I use broken Italian to point and say ‘uno’, it works.

This one is like a chocolate cookie roll with cream on the inside. It was good, not too sweet which I liked!

I regret not taking a photo of the one from this Friday because it was delicious, but it was like a flattened sweetened flakey break, like a croissant but with a glaze, then folded with some chocolate in the center. This one was a bit too sweet for me but Sydney and I really enjoyed sitting in the loft of the cute cafe!

I think my next endeavor will be a cannoli! Although that might be too much crema for my little tummy, good thing they have miniatures….

Along with dessert, I have had a lot of incredible food recently. When I first got here I was not that impressed. Obviously the food was good but it didn’t blow me away, especially for how much I was paying for it. I learned that the better food for the better price was out of the center of the city, so usually across the river.
The other night my housemates and I went to Osteria Santo Spirito. Go. You must.
They let you order small portions for a cheaper price, so you can order many things!
We got a bottle of wine to share and each ordered a small portion salad, which honestly was a big enough meal for me BUT I was on a mission. I came to this restaurant specifically for their formaggio (cheese) gnocchi with truffle oil. So I got a small portion of that, and boy was that a BIG small portion.

OH BABY. Look at that baked cheese. I wish I could bring it all home with me.

Since my mind is clearly on food, I am excited to say that the chocolate festival has begun. For 9 days, artisan chocolates have booths providing you with ANYTHING chocolate you could crave. Did I mention it’s across the street from my house?!
A post will certainly come soon from that….

I am currently writing this post at “the American coffee shop” by my apartment. I know it’s totally lame to be doing this but when a girl needs a comforting soy chai and bagel…
It’s nice to be able to sit, sip, and relax.

Now here is a big photo dump:

Aperitivo: €3 wine and all you can eat snacks.

Boboli gardens from inside pitti palace. It was raining of course.

FRANDS

My spring break is coming up! That means midterms are due and planning my trip. Easy-peasy.

It also means I have a visitor coming, and I CANNOT wait to share this beautiful city.

Welcome to Firenze!

Well I am officially no longer in the US. Can I get a whoop?

I will say that leaving the US and landing in a foreign country was not as climactic as I thought it would be. I thought I would have a rush of emotions and strange new feelings. I thought I would feel like a new person, but I didn’t.

I was mostly just worn out and ready to be in Italy. I still can’t even believe I am here, even while I write this post from my bed in my gorgeous apartment.

Traveling started at 7:30 am.. And my mom insisted on this picture. Glad she took it though!

The gate was decorated for Christmas, it appeared to be jolly but at 6:30 in the morning no one is around to make you feel the holiday spirit.

My flights continued from Houston To Washington D.C., To New York To Zurich, Switzerland And finally to Florence, Italy . A whopping 24 hours later.

I can officially say I’ve never gone this long without sleep.
Check for typos..

BUT I was so pleased to be dropped off at my new home and it is absolutely beautiful:

Plane shots:

Dare ya to guess which one is which!

For now, exploration and much needed sleep. My cat naps on the planes led me to weirdly vivid dreams about food so I think I need some real sleep in a bed.

Arrivaderci

Ciao Italia!

I am long overdue here… But I have some great news!
I am going to just be blunt here..

I am going to Florence, Italy in two weeks!
For those who don’t know me well should know that
-I never travel
– I just got my first passport ( so I’ve never left the country)
– I’m not quite sure what to do in airport
-and I’m leaving my family…

I am very close with my family and love spending time with them.. So to leave for 4 months and go across the globe is going to be very difficult but I’m so lucky to have this opportunity!

That’s my sister, I am hoping she will come visit and get to explore Florence with me, but who knows!

I am going to a local art school and studying art and art history, including photography!

Now let’s catch up on some things that have made life crAzy

I spent some time making a grill.
Yes a grill for your mouth. Yes Miley may have inspired me.
Yes it’s metal. No I will not sell it. It’s custom fit for my mouth!

Is it cute?
My mom thinks not… But I think she’s just jealous.

My cousin had her baby! #littleladyblake is 6 weeks old!

A garden began…
What is used most is the basil but a few heads of cabbage have showed up aaaand

Butternut squash babies!
Go mom!!!

I wanted a more travel friendly garden

And then came Christmas parties.. I’d say I’m about 110% done with cheistmS music. Sorry

So far I’m enjoying my time home, I’ve only been here a full week!
I’m not sure I’m ready to leave yet… But Italy is definitely calling my name..

Some things I will miss:

This guy for sure

MAaaaaybe this guy too

This special lady!

I’ll probably miss coconuts a lot too… I love coconuts..

And my family ❤

We’ve been besties all along.

I will be creating a new tab soon for the blog contJnjng my posts from Italy, so you may not here from me until then.

If that’s so,

Ciao Italia
Buenanotte Texas

There’ll be Love wherever you go

My first time to Austin city limits —Jacqueline
My second time to Austin city limits— nadeen

Friday started off great with sunshine and a full bagel breakfast sandwich.
When finally ready, yes it takes SWEET time to get ready for a festival, nadeen, her boyfriend Brian and Trent and I biked down through the beautiful city to zilker park.
Friday afternoon was a beautiful picture, sunshine, in the grass listening to the beautiful sounds of local natives, and then dancing our butts off at vampire weekend. They blew our socks off! Literally I rubbed holes in mine!!

Then muse started, Brian’s dream and things got steamy…

Welp those are all the photos from Friday because we had one phone… Mine, and I left it at the park Friday night, just hanging out in the grass it slept.
Saturday morning started to a great start with a phone call from my phone saying it was found! (Secretly enjoyed not having it… Shhhh)

Saturday we saw: grimes, passion out, Kendrick Lamar, and I’m sure I’m missing someone in here… Then the cure! The cure brought it for the new weather! It got so chilly we needed sweaters, luckily we looked in advance.
Kids with their technology these days…
OHH and Brian got a Venezuelan flag! (EAsily recognize able, thanks b! )

Sunday: the best and final day. As some of you may heard… The second weekend Sunday got cancelled, so I am incredibly sorry to those who missed it.
The weather could not have been sweeter
The day we saw: MS MR (MS is so awesome!), Noah and the whale, not did they surprise me, but the last song had the 4 of us dancing around together in a circle, and I wondered why I couldn’t be that happy every day, then we saw some grouplooooove which we were definitely feeling. Followed by franz Ferdinand and finally PHEONIX.
I have to say… I am incredibly tired of PHEONIX, BUT I FELL IN LOVE. We were sooooo impressed, we laughed, we danced, we cried, and had a really really really good time.
Jk about the crying…. But I may have shed one. the weekend couldn’t have ended any better!

A disposables post will be soon to follow!
In the meantime we all crunch to come up with our Halloween costumes over the next couple weeks!
Any ideas for us?!?

—Jacqueline, approved and added by nadeen

Part austinite

So I have seen nadeen A LOT recently. And I can attest to the fact that life right now is great. For many a reasons:

-school is so awesome this semester, yes, I went there. But I love my classes… And pay for them so why complain?
-I have been able to cross a few things off my life check list that I slowly make up in my head
-I got a job! Yay for baked goods I sell! Come visit, BIRD bakery, noooomz.
-I have gotten to venture to Austin a lot, which contains many adventures in and of itself.

So that was a QUICK life update, but the real reason I’m posting this one is for nadeen. I know I’ve said that I always dedicate things to her but I truly get to appreciate her and her love more all the time. I have been visiting frequently and it’s different because she doesn’t live in the apartment anymore, but a house full of people. And by people, I should say great people (If any of you read this, you could be my favorite).

Every time I go to her house all of her housemates are incredibly welcoming and outgoing towards me. I have also gotten to know her boyfriend and their best friend very well.
All I can say is she deserves this.
Just gonna say how great THEY ARE. They always make sure we have fun when I am in town.

I want to now share some pictures, I get these over time from her, and they need to be shared.

And we get along so well!! ^^^ in case you didn’t know. . . . That’s her boyfriend btw. (HI BRIAN)

This weekend was a quick visit but worth the effort. I got to go canoeing on the lake, never before done, and never so much fun.
That night we all went dancing, they have taken me to this place before and it was the greatest, told by the guy dressed as spider man.

AND they have MULTIPLE photo booths! Which we took advantage of… Duh.

Don’t they make you wanna just throw up?!

Now to the most important parts of the house: The DOGGiES.

And how Trent sees them…

—-Jacqueline, now officially part austinite part San antonioan
— half nadeen for being a photo collector.

Cracro

It’s been a while but hey! Guess what? I moved back to San Antonio! Decorating and organizing a giant place to myself takes quite the time and effort… Finally people are moving back and I am slowly adjusting, but I really couldn’t be happier.

This post is dedicated to a something new, acro. My friend Matt from Houston always talked about how “waaaycoool” it was and I was like well yeah it does look awesome but there’s no way I can do it. So I kinda decided when I came back to San Antonio I would try to start doing it. There’s a lot of people here who do it so I had an area to dive right in. Being like 46% introvert that I am I was a bit too nervous to do it alone. My friend autumn is from Austin and sees acro all over the place as well, so she had displayed some interest.

I woke up from a nap and my room was entirely orange from the sunset and autumn texted me saying yo $5 acro jam lets go!! I felt kinda sick but was like screw it I need to get out of bed its 9 pm. So we went…. It was incredible.

We practiced flying and basing for eachother… We toppled over a lot and I instantly realized this would be like those hard yoga poses I’m not strong enough to do for more than a second, meanwhile I was watching people being balanced on their shoulders and hips.

I felt slightly discouraged until a new friend wanted to base me and try some stuff. I never knew the support of a strong base makes it so much better. Because then we could do stuff like this!!

Then things got real crazy..

It was SO much fun I can’t wait to go back!

IN OTHER NEWS, I get to see nadeen this Friday because its her boyfriend and her boyfriends boyfriends birthday weekend! Eeeep

-Jacqqqquelineupsidedown

Birthday magic

Some readers who know me personally may know that yesterday was my birthday… But if you didn’t know you know… Now. And what did I do for my birthday you ask? I went to see nadeen of course! I was really excited to have more than just a night with her and to get to do some fun stuff for the weekend with her great house mates.

Friday-Monday was spectacular in Austin as there was lots to do. Everyone in nadeens co op was so nice about celebrating my birthday and lettin me take up space.
Friday night they had an pajama party! No pictures were taken because well.. I don’t really know why but sadly they weren’t. There were some onesies there though… With butt flaps.

Another great part of Friday was cuddling with the puppies 🙂

Saturday we spent the day with Lana! You have probably read aaaalll about her from nadeens posts. But she is AWESOME.

We layed in bed for quite some time…
Then we went to dinner with some friends! And look who came to visit

MOST TOUGHTFUL PERSON EVER

She came all the way from San Antonio!! How sweet!

The rest of the weekend was pretty much just a huge smile on my face.
On my birthday nadeen took me to get a new piercing! I love to change or add some thing to my body when my life changes… So alas

Ya like, ya like?

Sunday night we did emo karaoke.. It was emo..

I also developed some photos from OLD DISPOSABLES. I wanted to put a few in the post cause I was so excited!

All natural.

Cody is in that bag ^

I CAN’T WAIT UNTIL I SEE NADEEN Again!

——-muchlovejacqueline heh.

Modern Housewife

Most people say Sunday is for laundry, but I say Sunday is for blogging. I haven’t done a recap type post in a while, so I guess it needs to be done. Its summer time and a lot has been going on!

This week was incredibly fun because there were two holidays! Gay Pride, and the 4th of July, I am so excited because that means only a few weeks until my birthday AND no work AND fireworks. So we went to my friend Mels house to watch the fireworks on his rooftop deck.

Soooo it was a beautiful view and the only picture I got was of the sunset… BUT fireworks are so pretty that I get mesmerized and I couldn’t be bothered to pull my phone out to snap pictures.

Gay Pride Parade was also last Saturday and boy was it a party

Some of the greatest costumes and characters come out during gay pride. It was also led by Annise Parker, who just may be the coolest mayor.

The week flew by and the next thing I knew it was the weekend again, and I was house sitting this weekend, so naturally there was a raging party and we destroyed the house. just kidding!

I was just thrilled to spend some time alone and to cook in a big ole kitchen!

Friday night I made pasta:

veggie pasta with

soy beef crumbles (delicious, and taste just like beef), spinach, diced onions, toasted pine nuts, cooked in olive oil, lemon juice and various random spices.

I have also really been trying to be super healthy this summer, so I created a new page on the blog called Healthy lifestyle, which will include healthy recipes I make, and maybe some fun workout stuff…just maybe…

So i included a salad at dinner:

Dark field greens, with craisins, feta cheese crumbles, and avocado slices with a cilantro lime dressing.

MMMMM, i’m starting to feel like a modern housewife.

Saturday night my friend Beth and I went to an arts market in the heights then to Coco’s Crepes on Grey. If you have not been there, i think it is a Houston must.

so now it is sunday, im on the couch working on some art work which has not happened in a while, so I am feeling good. I may be feeling new because I have been alone and relaxing, or because I got a new haircut… who knows.

ya like??!?!?!

—-Jacqueline