Yom Kippur. Italian style.

I was debating with myself whether or not I should go to class today since it's yom kippur... but then I decided to go for a few reasons...

1. The class only meets once a week
2. I really like digital photography and that was my only class today
3. Let's be honest. I really was not planning to spend my entire day in the synagogue

So, I went to class. It was nice being distracted, but then it got kind of difficult during the half hour break when everyone left to get food and I stayed in the classroom to work...

I'm glad i went to class today... it was fun. Here are some pictures of what we learned...

We learned how to take an image and make certain things in the image look miniature! Pretty cool, huh? And then for the second part of the class, (it's a 5 hour class, so yes there are parts) we took a class field trip to the museum of photography here in florence... I was just blown away by some of the photos. I looked at a few photos and said to myself "oh that's simple, I can do that in photoshop in 5 minutes" and then I looked down at the date and the picture was taken in 1837! to create a photo like that before photoshop and before digital cameras is amazing!! wow, I was seriously blown away!

Oh my goodness, fasting in Italy is hard when every cafe, every restaurant, and every gelateria smells and looks SOOO GOOD.... so far it hasn't been too bad though... I've just been keeping myself busy as a bee.

After class, I went over to a student travel center and booked a trip to Prague! YES! Actually, last night I planned out most of my trips sooo for this semester the places I will travel to or have traveled to are...

• Florence (but that's only a small possibility)
• Fiesole
• Pisa
• Cinque Terre
• Viareggio
• San Gimignano
• Bologna
• Lucca
• Verona
• Venice
• Switzerland
• Greece
• Prague
• Paris
• Rome
• Barcelona
• Germany
• Austria

WOOOOO!! And that's not nearly half of all of the places that I wish I could travel to. Oh well, I guess I'm JUST going to have to come back to Europe again... and again... and again....

After I booked my Prague trip, I headed on over to the only, yes, only, synagogue in allllll of florence. It's BEAUTIFUL. Seriously, hands down one of the prettiest if not THEE prettiest synagogue I have ever seen. I was really excited about going to services, but I was a little disappointed. I was there for Musaf and the beginning of Mincha. On the women side, there were all very old ladies who couldn't stop gabbing for two seconds. It probably was pretty juicy gossip... if only I could speak Italian... but since I can't, the gabbing gossipers were just annoying. And it didn't seem like everyone was praying together... each person was just doing his or her own thing... that made me miss home.

At home, there is such a warm sense of community around yom kippur and everyone participates in the service together... here? not so much... COME ON 7:46 PM COME FASTER!

I'm going to head on back to the synagogue for Ne'ilah at 6:30 and then maybe I'll try to figure out where the chabad is for break the fast... I want to break the fast in style and not just come home to make myself a bowl of pasta. BORINGGGGG....

Okay it's now 5:45... I can do it, I can do it... Only 2 hours left... I think I can, I think I can!!