Best Week Ever

Before I begin, this blog post will be updated, hopefully, at the beginning of next week, with the rest of my best week ever. There are some surprises I have in store for those of you who do not know where I am headed to this weekend and what I shall be doing.

Well, the best week ever in The Life and Times of Kate Hartman kicked off Sunday night with the hide and seek game. Although I was horrible at it and could never find a hiding spot or made lots of noise getting into a desired spot, I still had a very fun night. Monday night I went to dinner with Julie’s family: her mom, brother, and brother’s friend. We tried to go to two other restaurants before we decided on Café di Perugia. I ordered pasta stuffed with pumpkin in a meat sauce – it sounds like a very strange combination, and it was, but it was very tasty. And for dessert we had 3 different types: I had a strawberry tort, Julie had chocolate fondue, and everyone else got chocolate cake but it had layers of white chocolate and chocolate mousse in it. Her family came back to the apartment with us because Scott, her brother, had not been there yet. They left to go back to the hotel, and Julie and I went out to a karaoke bar to ring in her 21^st birthday (the next day – November 20^th). Her brother and his friend met up with us, and we all walked to this pub called Rock Castle. With our friend Becky, Julie and I got up the nerves to sing. We had an amazing time; unfortunately, we didn’t get back to the apartment until around 3am. It works out well when I have to wake up at 8am for my 9am Italian class. So, Tuesday was Julie’s birthday, and while she was out eating lunch with her family, Becky came over and we decorated the living room with Disney princess banners and toilet paper. We had gone shopping last Saturday for party decorations and found non-alcoholic Disney princess party fizz drink which we of course had to buy. We also ended up getting crowns, fairy wings, and other odds and ends. Tuesday night Becky, Julie, and I went out to dinner (Julie’s family left during the day to go to Rome for a couple days). Dinner was amazing – it was little restaurant down an alley. It was very cheap, food was amazing, and we had the nicest old man as our waiter. A couple hours prior to dinner, Becky and I tried to get a surprise party together for Julie. It was very last minute, so we had to be sneaky and borrow Julie’s phone to get phone numbers while she was in the kitchen or just out of the room. Somehow we pulled it off. Becky had an ‘emergency’ during dinner and left early. Julie suspected nothing. So Julie and I left about 30 minutes later, walked into the apartment, and everyone jumped out. It was so nice; we had basically called everyone 3 hours ago to tell them to be at our apartment at 10pm for a surprise party for Julie. They literally dropped what they were doing to surprise her. I’m sad that I just got to be friends with some of these people; they are very nice and incredibly fun to be around. At least we have about a month left to finish up the semester! So we had a nice little party for her, but, again, we didn’t get to bed until around 4am. It was hellish to get up this morning (Wednesday). I was so tired after 2 days of barely any sleep. Today we made plans with Tom and Sean to make dinner. Since they made us dinner last time, we made dinner tonight. I made steak, and Julie cooked the eggs. Needless to say, it was a good dinner. Julie also somehow convinced the boys to dress up, so we got dressed up, and it was just really fun. Dinner was followed by our favorite trashy television show, Laguna Beach. The boys had to leave relatively early by our standards this week, so we are left to catch up on homework and sleep tonight.

Yesterday, Julie and I celebrated Thanksgiving with her family. I went to my Italian class in the morning, then Julie and I caught a train to Orvieto. Her family was in Rome that morning and met us in Orvieto. Our plan was to sightsee for a little bit and then find a restaurant to eat dinner at. Unfortunately, we forgot about a little thing called La Pausa aka the time EVERYDAY when EVERYTHING in Italy shuts down. Of course this was just the time when we were planning on eating. Julie and I had to get back relatively early to do homework, pack, and get to bed since we had been going to bed very late. And this was our one time to get to sleep early. So we ate some pizza at an internet cafe, headed down to the train station, ate some more pizza at the train station, said goodbye to Julie's family, and got on a train back to Perugia. We got back to Perugia, starving, but had to do a little research before the morning, so Julie and I got bundled up to go sit outside to internet, then headed back to the apartment where we had another Thanksgiving meal of pasta, sandwich bread, milk, and Magnum ice cream bars. Delicious. We ended the night with a Laguna Beach episode and headed to bed. After about 20 minutes of trying to fall asleep we both head the church bell ring once. Confused we had to turn on all the lights and make sure it was not 1am. The bells rang strangely that night because 15 minutes later they chimed twice. But we got to sleep about 3-4 hours earlier than every other night that week which was so nice!