A Quiet Saturday... Take that back, IKEA is not quiet

We have been staying close to our room for the past few days in order to let Mike's leg heal. Yesterday he was in pain and needed to stay in bed, but today he woke up in good spirits and anxious to get up and move around. He removed his compression bandage and went to breakfast then went for a spin around the neighborhood. We are starting to feel like locals... we have our favorite haunts. After our morning walk, we came back for laundry (he is taking full advantage of his injury to have his laundry done by his adoring wife) and naps. Then, at about 1:00 we took an even longer walk to have lunch. Mike got around these rocky streets on those crutches, dodging motorcycles and tourists adroitly.

Caitie and two of her roommates came by to visit Mike, brightening up the afternoon. Then, the girls and I headed out in search of the free IKEA bus that takes shoppers from downtown (the illustrious train station of the banana affair) to the IKEA store. We were on an expedition to furnish the dorm room with a few essential elements. Four girls and one shower means that to take a shower you have to dodge four razors, four bottles of shampoo, four bars of soap, four bottles of conditioner, etc. all spread out on the floor of a 3x3 shower. They were using a donated towel as a rug, and their suitcases to hold their belongings. So, we went in search of supplies.

If you have never been to an IKEA, that major Swedish chain store for furnishings and lots more, save yourself the agony and skip it. If it is even possible to be more crowded that the store in Seattle, this one was. The good thing about having the store crowded with Italians is that you feel like you are walking around in a bubble where the noise might as well be TV blaring. You hear people talking but you can totally tune it out because you haven't got a clue what they are saying. The hardest part of an IKEA store is the lay-out of the store and the way they organize the merchandise. Imagine a two story football stadium in which you enter through one door, get funneled up some stairs, snake around the entire football field in a pack of frenzied shoppers through rooms and rooms of furniture, only to end up at the opposite end of the field having walked its length and width four or five times while you were winding your way to the end, then walking down another set of stairs to do it all over again on the bottom floor until your eventual escape at the exit cashier line where you get to stand for twenty minutes and contemplate your purchases. As you wind your way through the pretend kitchens you are never sure whether this is the spot where you look for the coffee mug you want, or do you wait in the hopes that their will come a coffee mug department. Likewise, do you grab the single rug you like from the fake bathroom, or do you leave it there knowing that there will be a new rug, not a sample, further in the bowels of the store in the rug department. For all the challenges of keeping a smile on your face in a store designed to frustrate anyone, I must admit it was fun to spend my time with Caitie and her roommates. The three of these girls are beautiful, fun and polite. It was a treat to be invited to share their decorating trip and I loved to be part of it. They are all very excited to be at NYU and full of the excitement of the first few days as they learn all about this new city, culture and university life. Their enthusiasm for their purchases and their concern about making sure they got good value for their expenditures was a treat. I was likely the oldest person on the IKEA shopping bus by a good twenty (okay, maybe a little more) years, and it felt like I was sneaking in for a peak at life among the college kids. They told me about the other students they have met, the parties and dancing they have been doing, their developing friendships, etc. After hearing all of that, I REALLY want to be a university student in Florence.

Deanne