It's 5:45 pm Friday. I just woke up from a three hour nap. It was a late night last night so I needed to catch up on my sleep. I woke up this morning with all intentions of going to school. I got up late so I dashed to a little restaurant that has pastries set out. I also ordered an American coffee. I suppose it sounds bad that I order American coffee and not Italian coffee. Well, Italian coffee-espresso, machiato etc. is served in the smallest cup you have ever seen and on top of that it is only half full! It's literally a shot of coffee. Of course, I drink coffee partly to wake up but also to sit for a while and sip away at my large coffee. The only coffee you can do that with is American coffee. This is served in a bigger cup (still not big enough) It's only a fourth filled but it comes with hot water that you pour in yourself. I haven't figured out exactly why they can't just put the hot water in. Anyway, this morning I ordered my pastry and my coffee and went outside to their little area they have on the street to have my quick breakfast. My coffee never came so finally I went back to the counter and asked again. The bells of Santa Croce then began to ring and I realized it was 9 am. I was late for school. It was such a beautiful day I decided to take advantage of it and went to a little park about a 15 minute walk away and studied on my own all morning. It was so nice sitting in a park that actually has trees and watching the moms and dads and kids playing on the playgound equipment. The best thing about it was the fact that there are no tourists in this area. I really feel like I'm in Italy when I'm there. I missed everyone at school but I had a really good study session. Italian is NOT an easy language. I can't imagine that I'll ever be able to speak without out slowly thinking of all the grammar points. I guess, I thought that way about Japanese as well...we'll see. In the mean time I do enjoy studying it so that is what is important. I'll continue studying hard to learn to speak the language but I may never learn to drink the coffee.