Italy 2007

2007-12-14T05:14:00.000-08:00

12/9: This weekend Julie and I hung out for the first time since Budapest, the weekend after my birthday – early October. The original plan was to go to the Alps to ski, but it turned out to be incredibly difficult to plan an affordable weekend trip to anywhere in the Alps for skiing. Most hotels and hostels aren’t open until December 22^nd or there was a 4 day minimum to stay at the hotel. We ended up deciding instead to have a more “relaxing” weekend. Friday we went to Florence to shop. We were there for about 4 hours and had amazing speed luck. I bought another pair of gorgeous boots (black and suede this time) and lots of presents for people. It started out to be a nice day, but towards the end it was dreary, cold and rainy. Julie and I stopped at a café for a cappuccino; we didn’t realize that drinks were at min seven euro, but the place was Christmas-y and warm, so we bit the bullet and decided to stay. With all our bags we got back onto the train to head home to Perugia. About thirty minutes into our two hour, fifteen minute train ride a huge gypsy family joined us in our carriage. There must have been twenty of them. The part of the family that sat across the aisle from us were just plain dirty. They were eating off the shelf thing on the train near the window, dropping Clementine peels and bread crumbs all over the place. A little boy was sitting over there too. He was very rowdy, and his mon kept slapping him, but he wasn’t listening to her. She finally just went to sleep. Julie turns to me and says, “The kid’s going to hock a loogie.” I thought she was kidding, but I turned to look and his head was back, his throat was rattling and, right there, in the aisle, the kid hacked up everything in his mouth. Truly disgusting. The lady sitting directly across from Julie had the most disgusted look on her face the entire time she was on the train; luckily she had gotten off the train at that point and had missed it. Julie and I could not wait to get off the train. When the train arrived in Perugia we leaped off and ran away from the gypsy family. We saw them talking to some police when we got off, and I hope they were talking about eating and spitting on public transportation. Julie and I had to get stuff from the Big Coop which is across the street from the train station, so we went in, but we saw them there too. After grocery shopping, we found a bus that took us much closer to our apartment than before. I can’t believe we just found this considering we’ve lived here for 3 months and we’re leaving next week (this week). Friday night, Sean and Tom came over to watch some movies. We only got through Mean Girls before everyone was so tired and we had all just fallen asleep on our couches. Saturday morning, Julie and I got up and made bacon, eggs, and pancakes for breakfast. It was our first real/full breakfast since we’ve been here. Every morning prior I’ve eaten cereal. But Saturday morning was a real treat. And we have some left over for Sunday morning. Saturday was a slow day with movies (Super Troopers, Transformers, and Sweet Home Alabama), a little internet, and some homework.

For a couple weeks now, the roommates and I have been thinking about what we will miss in Italia, what we will not miss, and things we are looking forward to at home in America:

Things we will missed: Oggi Porchetta man, good food, living with Julie, Italian MTV, weekly Wednesday dinners, cheap(ish)) public transportation, bells at every hour, Amelie accordion player, shopping adventures, pastries and gelati, Euro pizza and Delle Stella carry-out, Tabbachi lady, Laguna Beach with Julie, the random things you find in stores, knowing you can live without a lot of things I used to take for granted

Not miss: nipple mann (he follows girls and touches his chest), language barrier with every purchase of anything, expensive phone calls, Bambino family, the euro, flower guys

Looking forward to: dryers so clothes fit, food other than Italian, heat more than 6 hours a day, a real bath and shower, Julie for New Years, working internet, convenience, being able to see again (my contacts and glasses have been the wrong prescription for months now), seeing friends and family again and being able to talk to them all

2nd to Last Weekend

2007-12-04T05:32:00.000-08:00

10/3: Last week nothing happened worth mentioning. Wednesday, the boys came over and made us Mexican food. I think they made burritos, but I’m not too sure. It doesn’t matter since it was delicious. Thursday, Julie left me. Jeanette, Erica, and I went to Becky’s apartment for dinner. It was like a potluck with lasagna, salad, risotta, and something for dessert. We must have eaten dessert, but I can’t remember what it was. After dinner we hung over for awhile and then went to a pub to hang out with some more friends. Friday was a very uneventful day. I think I spent the entire day watching trashy American television shows on my computer, but I had a blast. I think I needed my fill of bad television since we’ve only watched television once since we’ve been here. That’s been nice because I’m been able to read so many books. When I was in Cairo I realized how many depressing books I’ve read in the last month: 3 Stephan Kings, boy soldiers, biographies on alcoholics, A Clockwork Orange, and now I’m reading a book about Afghanistan. I’ve been on a role! Perhaps something on the horrible human rights problems in China next followed by a book on abandoned babies (Julie made me put that one in). Saturday I had a field trip to Spoleto with my Early Christianity class. Spoleto is a very pretty little rural town. Becky is in my class, and we had a ball there. Especially since she was taking pictures of our teacher who is like an Italian Indiana Jones. We got back to Perugia during the middle of the day, so we gathered up Erica, Jeanette, and a girl I had just met, Jessie, and went to Assisi for the rest of the day. Assisi and the basilica were gorgeous. I’ve never been there during the day time, but at night the church is lit-up and looks so pretty. Becky, Jessie, and I stayed in Assisi a little bit longer, and we went to a little bar. It was so cute and all decorated like Christmas with lights and greenery. After a caffe latte each we got back on the train to Perugia. Erica and Jeanette went to Becky’s for dinner, but I needed to stay at home to write a paper. I got through about half of it, got tired, curled up in my bed with my nice warm, soft blanket and watch a bad chick flick, Must Love Dogs. It is not a good movie, but it made me all warm and fuzzy inside which is always a nice ending to the day. Unfortunately I just couldn’t fall asleep that night. It might have been the caffe latte that night, but I was also preoccupied with other things and couldn’t get to sleep until around 4am. To make it worse at 7:56am I woke up and could not go back to sleep. The silver lining is that I got a lot of homework done very early on Sunday. Sunday was spent all day in the computer lab writing 2 papers, researching for my Italian oral, and working on 2 presentations – all due this week. It was not a fun day, but right now the papers are mostly done, 2 presentations are mostly done, and we have a script for our oral. Sunday night Julie came home and we curled up in my bed and watched one of the best movies for all ages: Milo and Otis. Well, we only got to the part with the bear, but tonight (Monday) we are going to watch more of it! I almost forgot to mention that Bambino’s family was playing very loud music. We think “Daddy Bambino” was playing the guitar and singing; he wasn’t half-bad either. Just very, very loud.

End of Best Week Ever: Cairo

2007-11-26T10:44:00.001-08:00

So yesterday morning I had to wake up at 6:30am to finish packing for my very exciting trip that weekend. I needed to catch the 8:23am train to train so that I would make my 2:40pm flight. I hate that we have to start leaving for our flights at least 5 hours before the actual flight leaves because it takes at least 3 solid hours to get to the airport. I had been slightly nervous up to this point about this trip for a number of reasons: I don’t speak the language at all, I heard you needed shots which I didn’t have, and some people had told me that a visa a required. But more importantly, I just want to be at the gate in plenty of time before take off – which I am luckily. So I got on the plane and had to laugh to myself because I was on the aisle reading a book in English for my American Foreign Policy class, the guy in the middle was reading a book in Arabic, and the lady in the window seat was reading a novel in Italian. We had a very diverse row. The plane ride was about three and half hours (which very good food I might add), and then I arrived. IN CAIRO, EGYPT! I packed all my stuff in my backpack and a giant tote bag so I wouldn’t have to deal with lost luggage or trying to find the right baggage claim. I figured that I could get away with lying about getting typhoid and malaria shots, but the visa was going to hard to talk myself through. So I went up to passport control, and the guy flipped through my passport, stopped, and stared at me for a minute. “You don’t have a visa? You need a visa.” Oh no. What do I do? Look at him sadly and confused. “Go to the bank and get one.” So I figured out how easy it is to get a visa in Egypt. I went to the ‘bank’, paid them 15 euro (the sign said $15 US so I felt a little ripped off when I paid 15 euro), I was handed a sticker, and some change back. I had no idea what kind of money Egypt has, but I found out it was Egyptian pounds. So I went back to passport control, they put the sticker on my passport, stamped it and let me in. My first stop: the bathroom. I know this is not something that I really should tell everyone, but it was my first experience in the culture. When I got into the bathroom there was a lady working in there; she opened the bathroom stall door for me and ushered me in. When I was finished I washed my hands, she handed me my towel to dry my hands and then asked for money. Thankfully, I did have some money, but I had money idea what it meant. So far, the Egyptian pound was about as meaningful to me as monopoly money. So I pulled out a pound; she looked at me and said, “Only one pound?” so I gave her another, and she thanked me. I had no idea how much money I had just given the women’s bathroom attendant. The only thing left was to go through customs. I had nothing to declare so I went into the “Nothing to Declare” line. One of the security guards stopped me;

Him: You have nothing to declare?

Me: No

Him: Are you sure?

Me: Yes

Him: Where are you coming from?

Me: Rome

Him: And you want to declare nothing?

Me: Correct

Him (in a huff): Fine

And then he let me go. Honestly, I had nothing to declare. I was bringing in a package of M&Ms and a Special K granola bar – both of which I think you can legally bring into a country without declaring. I was to meet EB and Whitney, two very good family friends, in about an hour. EB was my babysitter when I was younger, and they are both the older sister’s of my best friend Jane so I have known them both for almost two decades, and have been initiated into their family formally. They were coming back from a cruise on the Nile which I was invited on but couldn’t justify skipping so many days of school so close to the end of the semester. But I was randomly searching flights one day and I found a cheap flight to Cairo for this weekend. Okay, back to story. So I plopped myself down in the large waiting area and read for about an hour – fun stuff like A Clockwork Orange. I also did a little people watching, but I wasn’t so sure how obvious I could be about it being an obvious Western woman all by myself. So I mainly kept to myself until I heard “Kate Hartman” and Whitney running towards me. It was great to see her and EB; they had 2 friends with them from the cruise so we (EB) hailed (went up to a driver) a taxi and I got my first experience driving in Cairo. 2 lanes means nothing. If you can squeeze in front of someone else or in-between 2 cars, you go. There were 3 lanes of traffic most times where only 2 cars should really fit. I saw some pretty mosques and sights on the way back to EB’s apartment. I also saw the Nile as we crossed over it in the dark. Her apartment is amazing. It’s so nice and new and spacious. I am not used to it after living with 3 other girls in something half the size. So it was a mildly joint effort by all to make dinner (nachos) and chocolate chip cookies. I don’t think I helped as much as I could have. I opened the red bean cans, ate lots of chocolate chips, taste tested the cookie batter, and watched about 2 dishes, put 5 in the dishwasher, and that’s about all. But EB and Whitney’s friend, Nate, came over and we had a mini fest of nachos and cookies. After that we ended up talking for a long time. Nate and I decided to wake up really early (7am) and go with EB and Lisa to a cemetery and some mosques before Lisa’s noon flight to Dubai. So EB got us a cab and we rode to the City of the Dead. It was quite a unique experience; I was not expecting to be walking through the slums of Cairo since people lived in the City. The City was like a subdivision. There were obvious ins and outs to the area and it was clearly divided from the rest of the city. So the poor Egyptians live in this community with these tombs that are like mausoleums. While in the City we visited 2 mosques. In both of them we went up the minarets which gave us great views of the city. One of the minarets was a little scary since it involved climbing up a metal contraption that did not seen very safe whatsoever. Like I said the views were great; one such view included a herd of goats on a roof next to a satellite. At both mosques we had a mini tour of the building had a small introduction to Islam. I really liked one of the prayers. One of the rooms in the second mosque we saw had a room with a coffin, I think, in it. The man showed us a prayer in which he took off our hijab, rubbed his hand on the wooden gate surrounding the coffin, put the dust on our heads, and put the hijab back on our heads. It had to do with the guy in the coffin being a good man, and now we are good people too. I really liked that prayer. As we were walking from mosque to mosque, like I said, we were not in the best of neighborhood. Also, for whatever reason Egyptian kids tend to throw things at foreigners. EB said that she’s been stoned before by some kids; it’s sort of a problem for Westerners. So we’re walking and come across a group of boys playing soccer; I most definitely flinched, afraid of having the ball kicked in my face. Instead of walking closer to them, we turned around and took a different route; on the other route we came across a little boy and girl with their mother. The little girl went right up to Lisa, one of EB’s friends, and punched her in the crotch. Luckily, Lisa, with her quick reactions, moved her purse into more strategic location. We finished up the mosques, put Lisa in a cab, and walked to another mosque – the Blue Mosque. The Blue Mosque is called that because when the Turks invaded 700 years ago, they decorated the walls with blue tiles from Turkey. From the Blue Mosque EB and I walked to the Citadel. We basically walked all the way around the Citadel before we found the entrance. The moment we walked in 4 boys starting following us, closely. I was afraid my wallet was going to be stolen so EB and I started walking faster. They finally left us alone, but 2 younger boys approached us and wanted pictures with us. 4 pictures total: one with Boy 1, EB, and me; one with Boy 2, EB, and me; one with EB and Boy 2; and one with Boy 1 and me. So here starts the picture taking. EB and I walked into the mosque at the Citadel and just wanted to sit down. We sat against a pillar and just took in the view. All of a sudden a group of boys (ages 11-15) came close to us. They pushed 2 of the boys towards us; “Do you have any water?...I am thirsty.” What? We are in a mosque; obviously we didn’t have any water on us. After the boys left we got swarmed, I’m talking swarmed, with girls. Hundreds of 15 year old girls wanted pictures with us. Hundreds. We had trouble moving from place to place because girls kept wanting their pictures taken. The mosque security finally came over and told the girls to leave us alone. But by that point, EB and I each had our own circle of girls wanting to know our names, nationality and ages. But each time I answered the questions, another girl would run up and ask the exact same questions. It got so crazy. After about 20 minutes, we made an escape to the prison section of the Citadel. There we saw a very detailed map of the area. One section included a cafeteria, gift shop, and a punishment by whipping section. After the prison section of the complex, we went to a military museum on the premise; again, we got attacked by a school group of girls who followed us as much as possible since they still had to stay with their teacher who finally stopped the girls from ‘harassing’ us. That did not work so we finally had to run through the rest of the museum to get away from them. But we did get to see the oldest cannon in the world as well as the world’s greatest warrior. If anyone knows who that is, it would be a great help since the inscription did not tell us who the man was other than the world’s greatest warrior. Once we got back out of the museum we were, once more, attacked by another group of boys. They now have pictures of us to show their friends. We hailed a cab to Zamelek, the island where EB and Whitney live to meet them at a spa. EB had said that the manicures and pedicures were pretty cheap and since my fingernails were pretty dirty, I decided to get them done. Unfortunately, I had the worst lady ever. She had a chip on her shoulder from the beginning. I’m no expert on getting my nails done since I can probably count them on my fingers, but I do know that this one was the shortest by about 30 minutes. When she finished I probably could have snagged every fingernail on a piece of cloth and there was tons of dirt and dust under every nail. It was by far the worst manicure I have ever had. So EB took me up to the front counter to show them, they called the lady back over and told her to finish the job. She basically pushed me back into the seat and made it as painful as possible, pushing all sorts of instruments under my fingernails to get the dirt out. My nails were mostly smooth by the time she was done and about ¾ of the dirt was gone. Needless to say, I can finish it up myself with about a quarter of the pain and none of the attitude. We left the spa without giving her a tip and went to get some French pastries at Fauchon. I think my family went to Fauchon when we were in NYC (did we Mom?) and it was insanely expensive. However, in Egypt, where full meals are less than $2, these pastries were 8 Egyptian pounds (remember that 5 EP = $1 US). So we took the pastries back to the apartment and had lunch and did homework: EB on her translating Arabic articles and me writing my Roman Empire paper. Since no one was done with their homework by dinnertime and since lunch was pastries, we ordered some Chinese takeout for dinner. After dinner EB turned on Jane’s breakup video, a masterpiece if I do say so myself. Wow. Oh, I forgot to mention that EB’s classmate, Christ, met us at the pastry place and was present until a little after the breakup video. He looks like a mix between David Bowie and Christopher Walken; I’m not so sure it’s such a great combo, and unfortunately, his social skills didn’t really help him either. After Mr. Walken left, EB and I got ready for bed and started to watch High School Musical 2 to which we both feel asleep to.

Sunday morning I got to sleep in. For the first time in weeks, I slept under I woke up on my own: no alarm, no nothing. It was wonderful. EB was at her first class for the day (Fridays and Saturdays are the weekends in Egypt), and Whitney was at work. So I had a nice relaxing morning and when EB got back home, we left for the pyramids. The pyramids are just outside the city; from the highway downtown you can see them; they are that close. Now, Egyptian drivers are probably the worst (or best, considering how you look at the situation) in the world. They don’t have lanes, they squeeze into whatever space they can, and they are constantly using their horns to alert other drivers where they are. They are the most aggressive drivers out there; they don’t even stop for pedestrians. However, when they near the pyramids, cab drivers have to go on the defensive. The vendors or whoever they are who try to sell tourist fake tickets or souvenirs, if the cab driver slows down enough, will latch onto the car until they are able to sell you something. The vendors were jumping in front of the car, and our driver was forced to start swerving to miss hitting all these people. On one such swerve we slowed down enough to allow a guy to somehow get into the front passenger seat. Everyone was yelling at him to get out, I think, but he stayed in until we got to the place where taxis drop their passengers. EB paid, but the cabbie wanted more money. I was told to just get out of the car and keep walking which I did, perfectly, I might add. The guy who jumped in the cab followed us for a little bit, telling us something. Italian men and gypsies have almost perfected my ability to totally tune out people which works out perfectly in Egypt as well. We first walked over to the sphinx. On the way there a group of girls wanted to take pictures with us; we obliged since we were already stopped looking at the sphinx, but we did not want that day to be all about the paparazzi again. We had our day of being famous and we just wanted to be tourists and to be left alone. From the sphinx we looked at the pyramids a little bit before getting in line to get tickets to actually go into the biggest one. It was very cool. But I do not recommend it to anyone with back problems or who is out of shape. You are bent over walking up a slippery ramp which you also have to walk down. The lady in front of me on the way up was having some serious problems with it, but regardless, it was very cool. I think we were the actual tomb room, but I’m not sure since one of EB’s friends had all the guidebooks and nothing is labeled. We didn’t have much time at the pyramids because EB had to get to her Arabic translation class. I was going to go to the Egyptian Museum while she did that. However, we were running at 10 minutes late; the traffic stopped a little bit away from the museum but in sight. EB pushed me out of the cab and said she would text me after her class. So, on the opposite side of the street during rush hour in one of the most crowded cities in the world which also does not believe in sidewalks much less crosswalks in the middle of ‘rush hour’, I had to basically frogger myself over to the other side of the road. Once at the museum I walked around for about an hour and half looking at numerous mummies, large statues, model boats, and pieces of papyrus. I don’t think I’ll have a needing to go to another museum or see another mummy for a very long time. After EB’s class she met me outside the museum, and we walked back over to where she goes to school, American University in Cairo where I got to sit in on her calligraphy class. All the grad students were working on their final projects while I was just copying random words or sentences in Arabic the best I could with the calligraphy pen. Needless to say, I was fantastic; the teacher even complimented me! After class we stopped in at a fast food Egyptian restaurant (EB, you’re going to have to help me with the name). There’s only one thing to order there, so you find a table, order a small, medium, or large portion, and a drink, and within seconds you have your food. It was delicious whatever we had; it had rice, rice-a-roni noodles, chick peas, lentils, and some strange tomato and vinegar sauce. Total of 2 small orders (they were pretty decent size) and a Fanta was less than $2 US. I don’t think I can get a Fanta in the US for less than $2. Plus, new fact of the day, the reason the Fanta in Europe and overseas tastes so much better is because they use cane sugar instead of corn fructose syrup stuff the US uses in all its sugary substances. So we finished our snack quickly since we were both very hungry and cabbed back to EB’s. One of the way to the island, the cabbie picked up this guy who turned out to speak English; we’re not sure if he was American or not, but he was born in French Canada. So EB and I were just talking about life, and the guy just butts in. He told us he was sorry about our problems and that he could commiserate with us since he was having a horrible week (it was Sunday). Apparently, Drew (that’s his name) was fired last Wednesday, but rehired on Thursday, and his boss who he hates because she is backstabbing made this huge deal about how Drew was “moving on” and is now throwing him this “moving on” party. Luckily, the cab ride did not last that much longer and he was sort of interesting but very inappropriate and lacking in normal social skills. Back at the apartment EB and I finished watching High School Musical 2; it is definitely not a masterpiece of the cinema, but it was highly entertaining. Whitney came home from work, made some amazing chicken noodle soup, and then her boyfriend Clay came over. Clay seemed very nice. After dinner, since it was Sunday, we all watched Oprah. She had Jerry Seinfeld on talking about his new movie, Bee Movie. And after Oprah, EB and Whitney’s friend Liz came over and we all watched Tori & Dean inn love? I think that’s what it’s called, at least. It’s a reality show about Tori Spelling, daughter of something Spelling who produced tons of television shows like 90210. During reality show Whitney cooked some cookies EB had made 2 nights previously; those were gone in about 5 minutes. They were delicious! I need to learn how to bake cookies and cakes!

Monday came fast. We had to wake up relatively early since I needed to catch a cab at 8am in order to ensure I’d get to the airport in time with all the traffic. On the way to get the cab, we stopped at a food vendor, and EB bought me 4 bags of Doritos. The Doritos in Egypt are different from those in the US and taste very good. We think that they’re baked instead of being fried, and it tastes like a mixture of the Cool Ranch flavor and the Cheese flavor. So I need to make these 4 bags last me a long time! So it was time to say goodbye, EB put me in a cab, and I was off to the airport. The cab driver was a little odd. The entire way there he sang. I mean, he sang with all this might. He also kept pretending to shoot cars that made him angry: both hands off the wheel, holding an invisible rifle or shotgun, and making shooting noises. After shooting the cars, shooting policemen, and making fun of the military (I caught on only because he was humming something that sounded like a national anthem and saluting), he would turn around and smile, looking for me to smile back or laugh. It was just very bizarre. We then ‘talked’ about Bush and Reagan. By that I mean he talked in Arabic, I looked at him blankly, he asked where I came from and listed countries, I said America, and then he said something about Bush and Reagan. Who knows. On the side of the road he picked up this guy near the airport who spoke some English and helped the cabbie find my terminal. I don’t think the cab driver had even been to the airport before from the way he did not understand the signs and made some wrong turns. We got to the terminal and thanked him and made my way inside the airport. It’s a very confusing airport if you are ever there. At least the first time there, I thought it was. I got on the plane fine, but I was not expecting to watch a movie on it. They turned on the newest Die Hard movie. I didn’t know other cultures would enjoy it since it’s mainly about the US and being patriotic and stuff. They did edit some of the scenes though. No kissing, but then again, that’s Egypt. Question: women aren’t supposed to allow anyone but husbands and family members to see them without a hijab or burka, if they wear them. But what happens, come wedding night, when the husband takes off the hijab and notices his new wife is bald or has ears that stick out?

Best Week Ever

2007-11-21T23:59:00.001-08:00

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!

Since Casserole Night

2007-11-20T03:00:00.001-08:00

Since the casserole night I have had some fun. Last Wednesday (November 14) Julie, somehow, convinced our friend Tom to come over to our apartment and cook dinner for us. Tom and Julie went shopping for food Wednesday afternoon, and later Julie and I ‘baked’ a cake aka we bought it from the pastry shop that about 30 seconds from our front door. Around 8pm Tom and his roommate Sean came over and started cooking chicken and pasta with pesto sauce. They made Julie and me appetizers of cheese, prosciutto, and some other meat first, and then refused to let us into the kitchen. So we lazed around on the couches as the boys cooked for us. And then we ate. I ate so much. It was delicious. We had chicken with some seasoning on it, grilled vegetables, the pasta with pesto sauce, and for dessert, the chocolate mousse cake. The conversation was also very interesting and included such topics as: can jellyfish sting other jellyfish, do bees sting other bees, and what exactly are daddy-long-legs if they aren’t spiders. Needless to say, they ended up staying for a long time, and we decided that this should be a weekly thing. Julie and I offered to cook steak for them this week as long as we could all get dressed up and have a mini formal party.

Friday I had to be at a bus station at 7am for my Roman Empire class. We went on a 2 day excursion to Rome. It was pouring down rain when we got there Friday late morning. And it rained for the entire day. The rain messed up our plans a little bit since our teacher, Giempiermo, did not take us to Palatine Hill since only half the class had umbrellas. But we did see the Ara Pacis, the Coliseum, and the Roman Forum. Around 4pm ‘class’ was done for the day, so 3 of my friends and I walked around to the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain. We also snacked on some gelato before meeting a friend of mine from high school, Maggie. I had made plans with Maggie a couple weeks ago to hang out for the night, so we met up at the ‘Wedding Cake.’ I’m not really sure what the building is actually called since everyone in Rome refers to it as the Wedding Cake, but it’s a huge white building with a statue of Victorio Emmanuele II in front of it and its located near the Forum of Nerva. No matter. We walked to her apartment in La Travese(?) which was amazing. We all loved the apartment and I was especially jealous of her giant kitchen. Getting late and hungry we went in search of a restaurant and happened onto a very little cute restaurant. Our waiter was this little old Italian man who we ended up taking pictures with later in the evening. And, of course, the food was delicious. I had the closest thing to fettuccini alfredo I think I’ll have in Italy. After dessert at the restaurant we walked to a gelateria for a nightcap. IT was so cold, but it didn’t matter since the ice cream was amazing. I need to come up with new adjectives for the food here; I just don’t know to explain how good it really is. Night came and we had to be up early so we said bye to Maggie and headed back to our hotel. The next day our class got back into our little bus and we drove to Ostia, an old port town now in ruins. It was also bitterly cold, but the area was very pretty and the ruins were interesting. I feel like I’ve seen so many ruins in my short life that they start not to get so exciting, but the area was pretty. After a couple of hours looking at the town, the bus took us to the beach for lunch. And from there we went back to Perugia. I had a nice quiet Saturday night which was very nice. Erica, Jeanette, Andy, and I watched an episode of Flight of the Conchords, a comedy group from New Zealand. It’s hilarious in all sense of the word hilarious. Parents, we need HBO just to watch Flight of the Conchords. It’s worth it. Sadly, I was unable to sleep in because my body refuses to let me sleep past 8:30am now. Sunday went by pretty quickly with homework and such. Sunday night, however, got more interesting. Jeanette’s ‘boyfriend’ came and surprised her with a visit to Perugia for a week, so we have Andy sort of living with us this week. He’s a real nice guy, but for some reason he brought a spelunking light with him; it’s like a sweatband/headband with a light that you can turn on. So late Sunday night while Julie, Erica, and I are in procrastination mode, we found the light band thing on top of the fridge and had a game of hide and seek in the apartment. I am awful at the game. It took me so long to find spaces to hide in that Erica was done counting and I would be standing in the middle of the living room. But I have a spot that I know is good and does not take a lot of moving things to get into. I’ll tell you how it goes when I use it for our game.

Company Casserole

2007-11-13T06:19:00.001-08:00

I successfully made dinner for my roommates last night. It was delicious. The recipe calls for sour cream. However, this country does not believe in anything mexican and therefore no sour cream. We used yogurt instead which does not taste as good but it was alright. But overall the casserole is amazing but was definately much better the second time around (this afternoon for lunch). Jeanette and I decided that we eat pretty well for college kids. For lunch we had the casserole and then homemade chocolate pie for dessert. Tonight Jeanette's half-boyfriend, at least that what she calls him, is coming to surprise visit her. She has no idea he's been planning to come for weeks which also means we all get to meet Andy! This is going to be a very interesting week. Tomorrow night Julie managed to convince one of our friends, Tom, and his roommate to cook dinner for us. So we'll be eating well this entire week! I'm so excited!

Perugia Weekend

2007-11-09T06:18:00.001-08:00

I decided to stay in Perugia this weekend. Well, it was more like I didn't plan anything and there's a train strike all day today (Friday) so we are basically stuck here. Last night Jeanette and I had dinner and watched Hot Fuzz. I was so tired I fell asleep during the middle of it. I can't believe it! But I guess with the lack of sleep this week (I don't even know why. I barely did any of my homework. I decided instead to read and watch Laguna Beach with Julie.) I just needed to catch up. However, I woke up early and watched Full Metal Jacket. Then Jeanette and I went shopping for groceries, postcards, eyedrops, and boots. I am now the very proud owner of the most gorgeous boots in the entire world. I will definitely take pictures of them soon so you can see them, but until they are up, I will just have to describe them. They are almost knee length brown leather boots. Very plain with a buckle close to the top. They are close to being tight around the calf, but there's enough room in them that allows me to be Italian and tuck my pants into them. Basically, they are the most pulchritudinous and breathtaking boots I have ever seen. So I think the rest of the weekend is either going to involve a trip (either by myself or with my roommates if I can convince them) to one of the surrounding towns for the day or a weekend entirely devoted to Perugia...and homework, movies, and novels. That sounds like a wonderful weekend for me! But I know for sure that it will involve a stop at the Diesel store since everything in their store window is pretty! Now I know I really need to find a job.

Rome Weekend

2007-11-05T05:01:00.000-08:00

This past week I’ve been doing pretty poorly. My cold has turned into a sinus infection, and I’ve been sleeping during most of the day and night. Friday I had a class fieldtrip to Rome. My Early Christianity class was going to look at some churches from the 4^th C – which is the time right after Christianity became legalized (313ad). Our class has about twenty-five kids in it, and our teacher, Alessandro. My friend Becky nicknamed him Indiana Jones; if you saw him you would understand why. So we had to be at the bus station at 7:30am Friday morning to get on this chartered bus taking us to Rome. So, being in Italy, the bus didn’t arrive until around 7:45am, and we hopped on. I slept for most of the trip. Oh, I also realized it was time to switch out my contacts. Bad idea since my stash of contacts for the next 2 months are wrong, and everything is blurry. Great. But we got to Rome around 10am and spent the day walking around looking at 4 different churches – including Saint John’s the cathedral of Rome. For whatever reason, I had no idea that St. Peter’s is not the pope’s main church. The pope is the bishop of Rome, and since St. John’s is the cathedral of Rome, the pope’s main church is St. John’s. My parents were in Rome for the previous week and for that weekend, so I decided to stay in Rome for rest of the weekend with them. But when my fieldtrip was over, they still at the Vatican and wouldn’t be done for a couple of hours. Luckily, there were about 3 other girls staying in Rome so I hung out with them on the Spanish Steps for about 30 minutes before I made my way to my parent’s hotel to drop my stuff and then to an internet café to register for my classes! Most of them look very interesting, and I’m taking at least 2 of them with some friends so that will be really nice, especially since both girls are rooming with me next semester. Makes studying for the tests much easier! When I was done checking email and class registration, I made my way back to the hotel where my parents had just arrived. They were tired of big crowds since this weekend was an Italian holiday, and it seems like the entire country decided to come to Rome. We powwowed in the hotel room for a little bit and then went out to dinner to a Sicilian restaurant. It was delicious! I had penne al salmone. As much as I’m looking forward to Mexican food, sushi, and a Philadelphia cheesesteak, I am also going to miss such good pasta on an everyday basis. The next day I felt miserable, but we had a tour of underground Rome which we were going to go to. At breakfast that morning sitting at the table next to us was a couple from Chevy Chase, Maryland, so of course I had to say that I went to school in DC. The man who we met actually works at GW and is teaching a class there next semester. He works for the Elliott School in the global health program and was being very helpful with trying to get me an internship with Doctors without Borders and other health related organizations which would have been all well and good if I was even remotely interested in entering that field of international development. But they were very nice, but we had to rush out of breakfast to get to our tour which was very interesting. We went under some churches and museums and saw remnants of buildings from the BC times. The tour ended just in time for lunch where I had a ham pizza. Also delicious. Across from the ristorante was a very beautiful Jesuit church, so of course we had to go in and look around. No matter where I go, somehow I also manage to run into something Jesuit. We spent the majority of the late afternoon on some of the big shopping streets looking for some boots while going to look at the Ara Pacis (Alter of Peace) and Augustus’s mausoleum. If anyone needs a guided tour of Rome, I am pretty confident in my ability to give one about anything up until the Flavian period in 81AD. Just pay for my plane ticket and I’ll tell you everything I know and even some stuff I don’t know. To no avail did we find boots that night however, but again we ate some very good food and one of the best chocolate cakes ever. I also witnessed my first thief in Italy. This youngish man was being chased by this older man. If the older guy had made a sound, my mom said, she would have tripped the guy stealing from him. The older man did manage to get his backpack back, but the thief got away with a folder/briefcase thing. This morning my mom and I went on an adventure to some markets. She thought there was a market that was only once a month, but sadly, she’s the only one that has heard of it so we instead went to a weekly market that was amazing. I found some boots, but they were too big. However, I found a great purse for cheap-ish. After the market it was time to reconvene with my dad and to head to the train station. On the way to the train station, my dad told me some good news (for me). My cousin and his wife are pregnant which we have known about for some time, but we didn’t know if it was going to be a boy or a girl. On that side of the family I hold a very high position with my grandfather since I am the only girl granddaughter. I was especially excited to hear that they now know the sex of the baby – it’s a boy!! My parents decided to come back with me to Perugia and stay for a couple days before they fly back to the States. After putting all our stuff ‘at home’ (Perugia is almost starting to feel like home to me…almost), I got a little bit of homework done before we went out to dinner at a very good little restaurant near the Church. They had amazing pumpkin soup and zucchini pie with cheese sauce. If anyone knows how to make zucchini pie with cheese sauce please please send me the recipe. They also had some great chocolate cake and apple pie. Yum! Tonight the Colts play the Patriots which I am very sad I’ll be missing. Too much homework. Plus the bar showing the game is more than a 30 second walk outside, and it’s cold tonight! I only hope the Colts win. By the time I’m able to post this blog (I’ve found it’s easier to write in a Word document and transfer it over since the computer lab always seems to be closed when we need internet) I’ll already know the score and who lost the game. But…GO BLUE!

11/5: I don’t know if it’s hit the news in the US or not yet, but last week a British girl studying in Perugia was murdered. We were told that this is a once and a lifetime thing in Perugia; the police seem to be going crazy, especially since it was a foreigner that was murdered. They have some leads, but no one has been pulled into custody yet. Apparently, the story is all over BBC so in case it makes it to US news, just wanted to tell you I’m fine and what’s going on with the case.

Sick

2007-10-30T01:00:00.000-07:00

I hate colds. And I hate that our apartment has no heat. We get heat in 2 days, but unfortunately, I have already gotten a cold due to the fact our apartment is about 45 degrees. It's horrible especially for whatever reason (most likely because our room is the further from the kitchen and bathroom - the only 2 rooms that produce heat) Julie's and my room is the coldest in the apartment. We wear sweatpants and sweatshirts to bed while under our sheets, comforter, down comforter and my extra blanket. We have entertained the idea of pushing our beds together in order to use each other as space heaters for the other. It's that bad. Its also gotten to the point where no one wants to shower since the bathroom is also very cold. We do, but its like pulling teeth. Last night I really couldn't do much of anything since every 5 seconds I would have to blow my nose and if I didn't I would sneeze and my eyes would start to water so I watched the movie Tears of the Sun. Julie joined me towards the beginning of it. The movie was decent, but since my eyes were watering and my voice is lower and throat is scratchy, I was able to fake being so sad from the movie. It worked a couple of times with Jeanette and Erica; Julie didn't feel so bad for me after I got her a couple of times. So, in the next couple of days if you can't get in contact with me, I'm most likely busy doing one of these things: sneezing, blowing my nose, looking like I've been crying, sleeping, or drinking lots of water.

Fall Break: The British Isles

2007-10-28T07:52:00.000-07:00

Fall Break was a very interesting process to plan for. Lots of kids are going with their parents either all over Europe or having a nice quiet vacation in the surrounding Tuscan and Umbrian countrysides. Being rather on the late side of planning for most things, I was very late in planning what I was going to do for my fall break. One roommate Julie was going to Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands and invited me to go with her. Unfortunately ticket prices were through the roof to travel with them so I had to opt out. Another roommate of mine, Jeanette, is backpacking across Sicily which sounded like fun, but my third roommate, Erica, had no plans either. So about four days before fall break started, we decided on a tentative itinerary of Ireland, Scotland and another country. At first it was going to be Spain, then the Netherlands, and finally Greece. They were all hard to get to from where we were going to stay in Edinburgh, Scotland, so we decided on going to London. Erica has never been there and we’re already going to be on the same island. So we bought plane tickets to Dublin and then to Edinburgh, but we hadn’t booked a flight back to Rome. We now do have a flight back home – out of London. Our plan was to rent a car and drive from Edinburgh to Salisbury to see Stonehenge before we have to go back to school. Unfortunately all the affordable car rentals are for ages 23 and up while the most expensive ones allow 21 yr olds to drive. Train tickets and plane tickets in the UK are god-awful expensive. In Italy to go from one end to the other is about 40 euro. From Edinburgh, Scotland, to London, England is about 150 POUNDS! So we’re now looking for bus tickets down to London. But that’s all background. Now to the real adventure!

Our plane from Rome to Dublin left this morning at 9:55am, but the only way to make it was to leave yesterday so we’d be able to get to the airport with enough time to check-in and go through security and passport control. We had two options: get a hostel in Rome for the night or take a late train out of Perugia, sleep for about 5 hours in a train station, get to the airport and save hostel money. Being two thrifty college kids, we decided to take the later train out of Perugia. So around 10pm last night we finished packing our stuff and started walking down to the train station (apparently walking takes about the same amount of time as taking the bus and we saved a euro). The walk down was a bit shady since it was 10:45pm on a Friday and we were given very crude directions to the station (just keep walking down and you’ll see it). We finally made it without any problem to find out that the ticket machines weren’t working, but somehow we got a ticket to the layover station, Terni. So onto the train we got. It was so cold outside. I’m wearing a tank top, long john shirt, sweatshirt and a coat with 2 layers of pants on as well as gloves and a hat. We get to Terni and look for a nice place to spend the night. A man gets up from one the long benches in the main waiting room (it’s about 1am by now and our next train leaves at 5:39am). Right as we sit down Erica notices a girl she knows from class who is also doing the same thing we’re doing (sleeping at train station to catch her plane). It’s freezing cold. We are all shivering. Someone between consciousness and sleep I notice she’s gotten up and when she returns she mentions that the sottopassiggio is a lot warmer, and that there is also a chapel down there. So we grab all our things and head down to the little chapel. We each grabbed a pew (about 2 feet too short for me) and tried to sleep. But it was still frigid down there. I tried to use my towel as a blanket, but it was too thin and basically did nothing. At 5:20am we all woke up and grabbed some HOT cappuccino cioccolato from one of the vending machines. It was so nice to hold something warm in my hands. Still shivering we wait for the train to arrive, get to Roma Termini (the big train station), transfer to Ciampino and then get a bus to the airport. The airport takes hardly any time to get through at all. We’re checked in and waiting at the gate within fifteen minutes. Throughout these transfers we’re still trying to get warm as well as catch some sleep. So the plane ride is highly uninteresting besides RyanAir gives you no leg room and the stewardesses come around at least six times trying to get you to buy a soda or chip bag on the plane since they are not complementary. But we arrived in Dublin!!! It was so green outside and not as cold as Perugia. The Dublin airport was under construction so it took some time to walk through it all especially since they put all the cheap airlines out in the boonies of the airport. None of that mattered though when we got to baggage claim and our bags were there!!! We grabbed out bags, I got a smoothie to eat/drink, and then we headed to information to find out which bus to take to the hostel downtown for the night. The plan was to get to the hostel, drop our stuff, take a nap, eat something, look around a little bit, get on the internet to finalize our plans for the trip, and then go to bed very early. So we get to the hostel with little trouble (we had help from a nice lady sitting next to us on the bus) only to find out that we’re staying in that hostel tomorrow night. Erica had forgotten that we were staying at a different place near the airport tonight. We need to find the bus to get back to the airport which takes forever because it’s not on the main street with the rest of the bus stops; it’s on a side street and down quite a ways. We are wicked tired due to not sleeping for 36 hours by now as well as schlepping our bags across Dublin and back again. Back to the airport we go to get directions to the hotel Erica knows she made reservations for. On the way to the airport four boys dropped a stink bomb in the bus and ran off. Luckily for me, I couldn’t smell it but everyone around me had their sweaters and coats over their mouths and noses. The hotel has Wi-Fi which is all we care about now to figure out our days in Ireland and the bus from Edinburgh to London. But when we get to the hotel they don’t have our reservations, we paid an exorbitant fee (we were too tired to try and even find another hotel especially since we’re near nothing), and the Wi-Fi is not free whatsoever. At this point we’re hating life and just want to sleep. Unfortunately our heat is not working so well in the room, the people above us are having a trampoline party, and there’s this little Asian boy running up and down the hallway. Oh, earlier we also got ripped off on power adapters. We just got back from having decent cheeseburgers (the first in months…we also had fish and chips today! We’re not eating pasta while we’re away and we’ve vowed to eat lots of meat) and watching the semi-final world cup rugby match between South Africa and England. South Africa won. We are tired and delirious and still have no idea what time we can get to the hostel tomorrow because it’s not written anywhere and the hostel people were mean to us today. This trip will get better when we drink some real Guinness and buy some Ireland shirts. Maybe those giant Leprechaun hats too.

10/21: First ‘real day’ in Ireland. Since we were super angry with our hotel we took very long baths AND showers to run out their hot water and kept all our lights on this morning. I don’t think it did much since we slept in late this morning. It was glorious - Sleeping in a bed, with sheets and 2 comforters in a room that was not exposed to outside air unless we chose for it to be. While getting ready for the day we watched this made-for-tv-movie called The Secret of Moon Castle. If you ever happen to see it on television it is definitely not worth anyone’s time, but everyone was speaking with Irish accents and it was early in the morning and I was easily amused. We also ate a very expensive breakfast at the hotel. 7 euro for cereal, a banana and juice? I thought that was a bit ridiculous myself. So we bit the bullet and paid and ate and packed our stuff to move to the hostel which we had tried to get into the day before. No problems with that since we already knew where we were headed. We checked in and got to our room. It was filled with bugs. Lots and lots of fly-like things. Erica and I tried to shoo them out; we’re praying that they were in the room because the window was open. But after dumping our stuff in steel lockers with large brass locks we started to really explore the city. First stop was Trinity College and the Book of Kells. Honestly, I don’t ever remember hearing about it except when my mom told me I had to see it while we were in Dublin. So we went and it was quite amazing. James, if you are reading this, I think I won the oldest book competition. And Parents, do we have a picture of St. John somewhere in our house? After the Book of Kells we started walking to the Guinness Storehouse. We took a loopy way around the city to get to Guinness in order to see Christ Church Cathedral, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and I’m sure something else that I have a picture of but can’t remember right now. After loads of walking we finally made it to the Guinness StoreHouse. The tour was quite interesting – learning about Arthur Guinness and his hops and pure water from the Wicklow Mountains. The tour ends on top of the StoreHouse in a circular glass panoramic bar that gives out complimentary Guinness pints. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast around 11ish, so after our pints, we quickly tried to find some food for the tipsy and hungry Erica. Rick’s Burgers in the Temple Bar area did the trick, plus we are on a red meat frenzy since its expensive and not the same in Italy. So we’ve eaten many hamburgers since in the Isles. Rick’s was the end of the night for us, so we headed back to the hostel. A little after we got into bed (we stayed in a 5 person co-ed hostel room) we acquired a roommate – a late 40s year old man. I did not witness any of these events since I was cranky and pretended to be asleep. Erica on the other hand woke up when he was getting ready for bed and noticed he was no longer wearing pants. Early in the morning she woke up again and now the man was also not wearing a shirt. But he left very soon after that, and we saw no more of this man.

10/22: Erica and I decided that today we did not want to be in a city or be in a tour group out to the country so we planned our own tour to Wicklow, a small picaresque Irish village. Wicklow had a medieval castle and lots of pretty countryside. We got a train ticket that morning and trained out there. Across and facing us on the train was a couple that was very intrigued with their picture phone – for about 2 hours they look pictures of everything and giggled (the people were in their late 40s maybe). We hopped off the train at Wicklow Station. The station was deserted and we were in the middle of some suburbs. We walked and walked, hoping in the right direction, to the village center. We found the tourist information center, but it was closed for lunch so we decided to grab some lunch as well at Ernie’s Bar. It had decent food. Erica refused to look at the Guinness on tap. After lunch we walked back to the information shop and got directions to the castle and Wicklow Point, a nice place. So we followed her direct ions to the tee and found some ruins and took some pretty pictures there. We continued our hike to the castle when we realized that in the directions the tourist lady wrote for us we had already passed the castle and were on our way to Wicklow Point. At that moment it dawned on us that the ruins were actually the castle. That confused us and still confuses us because we have a brochure for Wicklow Castle, and the picture is of a medieval castle. But we continued on to the Point where we had to walk through this red gate and up and up past lots of goat and cow pastures. But it was gorgeous – being out of cities with no one else around except the goats and cows. We found this tower but were not allowed to go near it since it was private property. So we obeyed the law and stayed outside the gate surrounding the tower. We then took a long hike back to the train station only to find out that the next train left in 2 hours. Our feet were killing us but we were starving so we hiked back into town, got dinner, hiked back, waited and waited for the train, and got back to the hostel in Dublin. Luckily we did not have another roommate that night since we had to wake up at 3:30am the next morning to catch our flight.

10/23: Erica and I woke up way too early this morning. We planned on getting out of our bunk beds at 3:30am, but we didn’t until around 4:00am. Well, Erica got up earlier, but I am a much worse morning person than she is and refused to get up until I absolutely had to. We walked to the bus station that was going to take us to the airport which we are happy we got there 20 minutes early. The bus was supposed to leave at 4:30am so we got there around 4:10am. The bus arrived within 3 minutes, packed up, and drove off. At 4:22 we were miles down the road. The airport was not that exciting. We grabbed breakfast there, and I had 2 caffe lattes which were delicious (I also was not tired for the rest of the day). RyanAir was a bit sketchy with its landing since we hit the ground roughly and then stopped abruptly. But that’s why it’s so cheap. We got a bus to Edinburgh after grabbing some money from the ATM. The exchange rate is horrible in Great Britain; its quite sad. We took a bus into Edinburgh center and immediately noticed how much prettier Edinburgh was than Dublin. After much fretting and phones not working we met up with Caitlin outside this train station. She walked us to her dorm where we were crashing for the night and then had to go to class. Not having internet in our rooms, I was very excited and played around on it all morning. Erica fell asleep and took a very nice long nap. When she woke up we started to explore the city. We listened to 2 different street performers. One group was three guys: 2 playing African bongo drums and the other with the bagpipes. I really liked that one. The second group was 3 Braveheart guys playing drums and bagpipes. Around this time Caitlin was out of class so we picked her up and went to the grocery store to buy stuff to make some Mexican food since we were all craving it. It ended up being delicious – while we watched half of Hot Fuzz. Caitlin’s friend Emma came over and then we all went this pub and ended up playing their Pub Quiz. We didn’t do so well since we were battling UKers and since the quiz was many UK history and pop culture. But Caitlin did come in 2^nd place in the dance-off and win us party poppers. After the game we had to get back to Caitlin’s room to go to bed. It was a very long but very fun day.

10/24: We all woke up late when Erica’s friend Colby called her to meet up in a coffee shop. So we got dressed and went to Black Medicine Coffee Shop were we spent 2 hours just talking. Colby went back to his dorm while Caitlin showed us around Edinburg University. A couple hours later Erica and I dropped Caitlin off at her dorm and then went to meet up with Colby and hike this hill called Arthur’s Seat. I’m not complaining but I’ve noticed that every trip I go on involved some sort of hike. It wasn’t as cold as we thought it was going to be though and we were overdressed for the weather. The way down was much easier. For my knees since they’re a tad off right now, I found it was easier to sort of gallop down the mountain. Erica joined me, but right as we were stopping she turned and fell right on her rear. We finished the hike, Erica said bye to Colby, and headed back to Caitlin to pick her up and go out to dinner. I was planning on trying the haggis, but by the time I was ready to order I just wanted a burger or something; I was not in the mood to try something new and intestine-like. But before we could order or even sit down, we had to produce IDs for some reason. Of course I had forgotten mine so we all had to go to Caitlin’s so I could get my ID. The food was worth it though. And they never even looked at our IDs which I thought was a little strange since it was such a big deal that we have them. After dinner Erica and I packed our stuff, Caitlin walked us to the bus station and we caught a night bus to London.

10/25: We got into London 30 minutes ahead of schedule (at 6:30am). Luckily, the bus wasn’t that full so we weren’t packed in. People didn’t talk on it and there were no babies. When we got to London we were both really disgusting so we took showers in the train station. Surprisingly it looked much cleaner and nicer than the shower in the hostel in Dublin. We found a place to store our bags for the day, put the essentials in our backpacks, and started walking around. We were close to Buckingham Palace so we took a look at it. There were lots of people dressed up in fancy velvet dresses all around us and when we got to the Palace there was a line of cars waiting to get in. I asked a police officer about it, and he told me the Queen was presenting awards to people who had done community service. I thought that was sort of cool. From there we walked around the park directly across the street as well as Hyde Park. There were lots of swans and dogs and squirrels running around; we had fun playing with the geese. After playing with the animals we started on our way to the British Museum which holds the Rosetta Stone and lots of other stolen things from all over the world. The British pillaged from everywhere! One of my friends Robbie met us at the British Museum so we had a nice catch-up on our lives while looking at huge chunks taken off the Parthenon in Athens. I think he asked four different people if what we were looking at was fake since it just seemed unrealistic that people would be able to chisel out these massive blocks of stone and transport them back to Britain unharmed. And that they’re still in Britain and haven’t been returned to their native land. Robbie showed us around a little bit more of London – like Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square which was hosting a protest to the 2008 Olympics being held in Beijing with all the atrocities that are happening/have happened there. It was time for Robbie to get back to his college for dinner, and Erica and I had to get to Oxford where we found free housing with 2 of my very good friends, Vanessa and James. We got a train and arrived in Oxford around 10pm. I was starving so we went to this kabob place and I downed a half pounder burger. It was delicious. Probably not even close to the best hamburger I have had, but at that point I was famished. After ‘dinner’ James and Vanessa took us to this very famous/hard to find tavern in downtown Oxford, Turf Tavern. We’re sitting down inside and I see this guy I worked with a couple summers ago. He’s from Israeli and I knew he was going to be traveling around Europe, but I had no idea we were going to be at the same place at the same time. So I got up and went outside and sort of yelled at him as he was walking by. He didn’t hear me so I was resigned to just send him an email about it the next day. I went back inside and explained the story to my friends. Vanessa is sitting right next to the window. All of a sudden the guy comes back. Vanessa sees him and starts banging on the window. She gets his attention, and then both she and James are pointing frantically to me. That’s when I noticed that his face was just a little bit different, and it wasn’t my friend Alon at all but some random person. He’s stopped so I go back outside and apologize and explain myself. He also apologized because he thought he was supposed to know who I was and had forgotten. We parted ways, and I went back inside where the rest of the conversation circulated around Alon’s name and how strange it must have seemed to other people for this girl to come running out of a tavern and yell, “ALONE!” Or if I had asked the guy if he was alone or said that his appearance implied he was alone.

10/26: We stayed with Vanessa last night at her college, Pembroke; she put us up on her floor which was not as uncomfortable as I was expecting it to be. But she had class and crew and choir practice starting at noon so we would mainly be hanging out with James all day. The four of us (Me, Erica, James, and Vanessa) met up for a full English breakfast in a covered market downtown. It was delicious. Lots of baked beans, ham, eggs, toast, and a chocolate milkshake for my drink. Father, you should be proud! Vanessa had to get to class after breakfast so James took us on a tour of Oxford. Our first stop was this bookshop. I forget its name, but it was amazing. Its massive and all in a basement. I got caught up in this corner for about an hour. Basically, I was in love. We all tore ourselves away from the store and started hiking around the town. It was beautiful, sort of a damp and dreary day, but it was still beautiful. I love the way Oxford University is set up with all the individual colleges with one or two entrances only to get into them. After looking around the town James took us through Christ Church Meadows – just a very pretty meadow with cows and where the crew boathouses are located on this little canal. Again, we found some swans and played with them for awhile. James got hissed at by a white goose for trying to feed it. Tired and hungry we took a pit stop at a local sandwich shop for refreshments and then went to have a look at James’ college, Lady Margaret H. The gardens there are also gorgeous. We ate dinner in their dining hall which is not the dining hall pictured in the Harry Potters, but it looks very similar to it. The Harry Potter dining hall is at Christ Church College. After dinner Vanessa was finally down with her stuff so we met up with her. Erica was tired so we all walked to Vanessa’s college, and then James, Vanessa, and I headed out back to Turf’s Tavern where some of James’ friends were meeting us. I had a great time. I met such nice people: Liz, Ji, and Scott. Well, I didn’t really met Scott until later in the evening. We’ll get to that. But at Turf’s I just talking to Ji and Liz and Vanessa. Vanessa and James decide that I need to go to Chequers because that’s another very nice pub in town. So we rush over there because it closes at 11pm and it’s around 10:30pm. So we rush over there. The boys all get a drink and want their picture taken. At that same time I decide I want something to drink so I’m rummaging through my purse to get some money. James is in a better position at the bar to order for me. So right after Ji and Scott ask for a picture, I hand James some money and ask him to buy me a drink. For the 2 seconds that Scott didn’t see I had handed James some money, he thought I was a horrible person. In exchange for a picture, I wanted James to buy me a drink. So for the rest of that night he kept apologizing and replaying the story for us. But the long and short of it was that it was a very fun night, and it was sad to say goodbye to both James and Vanessa since they are at Oxford for the year.

10/27: We had to get up ridiculously early this morning. It was no fun. But somehow we woke up 10 minutes late so we missed the original train we needed to get to the airport so we started the day with having to improvise. We arrived in London Paddington Station about 40 minutes behind schedule and rushed to the Tube. But the stops we needed were under repair and we had to ask at least 3 different people for directions, and the last guy totally changed our end destination from London Victoria Station to the Liverpool Street Station where we could pick up a direct train to London Stansted. That ended up working perfectly and we arrived to the airport very early. We had time to get some food and take our time. I hadn’t had time to eat breakfast so I got a salmon sandwich and an apple cake. But I was out of pounds. So I paid with a credit card. Right as the lady was putting my card through the machine I realized I still had a 20 pound note. Knowing that I would not be back to London in quite some time I had to spend it. I’ve barely bought anything for myself this semester minus food so I went on a little splurge and got 2 books. I spend the remaining money checking my email on the airport computers. We made it to the plane fine and had a good flight. We bused from Ciampino to Roma Termini where I met my parents for dinner at the train station. Erica went ahead to Perugia to get back home. The food at the train station was not good, but we had more time to talk. I got on my train back to Perugia where I’m going to be very late getting back now since the first train was delayed by 20 minutes and I think I’ve missed my connection and somehow I have to get a bus to Perugia. I’ve never done this before, and I’m on my own so it’s time for a little Kate adventure!

Well, I had my little 'Kate adventure'. I got to the my connection train station, Foligno, 23 minutes after my connection had left. The train that I missed also happened to be the last train to the station for the night. I had decided I was just going to suck it up and call a taxi to drive me the 30 minutes home to Perugia. Fortunately, there were lots of people who needed the same train I did to get to Assisi, Spello, and Perugia. So, the train station had this guy seperating people into what cities they had to go to and put them into taxis. I was in a taxi with 4 other people: 3 going to Assisi and one to Spello. I was the last stop and got to hang out with the taxi driver for like 20 minutes by myself as he drove me home. He dropped me off at the train station from which I normally take a bus to Piazza Italia and walk the rest of the way home. However, the last bus to Piazza Italia had left about 20 minutes before I got there. Some other Umbra students had just gotten off a train and were waiting for the same bus so we started talking and this very short and drunk man came over and told us that the next (and last) bus for the night would drop us off at the Stanieri which is sort of close to where we live in the center of the city. So we thanked him and got on the bus. He followed and tried to listen to our conversation, but being drunk and not fully understanding I have no idea what he understood or not. But I got home after 12:30. It was so nice to get into my bed. No more floors or buses or bus station!!

And they said the British Isles were going to be cold...

2007-10-21T05:50:00.000-07:00

Our plane from Rome to Dublin left this morning at 9:55am, but the only way to make it was to leave yesterday so we’d be able to get to the airport with enough time to check-in and go through security and passport control. We had two options: get a hostel in Rome for the night or take a late train out of Perugia, sleep for about 5 hours in a train station, get to the airport and save hostel money. Being two thrifty college kids, we decided to take the later train out of Perugia. So around 10pm last night we finished packing our stuff and started walking down to the train station (apparently walking takes about the same amount of time as taking the bus and we saved a euro). The walk down was a bit shady since it was 10:45pm on a Friday and we were given very crude directions to the station (just keep walking down and you’ll see it). We finally made it without any problem to find out that the ticket machines weren’t working, but somehow we got a ticket to the layover station, Terni. So onto the train we got. It was so cold outside. I’m wearing a tank top, long john shirt, sweatshirt and a coat with 2 layers of pants on as well as gloves and a hat. We get to Terni and look for a nice place to spend the night. A man gets up from one the long benches in the main waiting room (it’s about 1am by now and our next train leaves at 5:39am). Right as we sit down Erica notices a girl she knows from class who is also doing the same thing we’re doing (sleeping at train station to catch her plane). It’s freezing cold. We are all shivering. Parents, do you remember that one time a long time ago we spent the night at Connor Praire? Well, I think this might have been worse. Someone between consciousness and sleep I notice she’s gotten up and when she returns she mentions that the sottopassiggio is a lot warmer, and that there is also a chapel down there. So we grab all our things and head down to the little chapel. We each grabbed a pew (about 2 feet too short for me) and tried to sleep. But it was still frigid down there. I tried to use my towel as a blanket, but it was too thin and basically did nothing. At 5:20am we all woke up and grabbed some HOT cappuccino cioccolato from one of the vending machines. It was so nice to hold something warm in my hands. Still shivering we wait for the train to arrive, get to Roma Termini (the big train station), transfer to Ciampino and then get a bus to the airport. The airport takes hardly any time to get through at all. We’re checked in and waiting at the gate within fifteen minutes. Throughout these transfers we’re still trying to get warm as well as catch some sleep. So the plane ride is highly uninteresting besides RyanAir gives you no leg room and the stewardesses come around at least six times trying to get you to buy a soda or chip bag on the plane since they are not complementary. But we arrived in Dublin!!! It was so green outside and not as cold as Perugia. The Dublin airport was under construction so it took some time to walk through it all especially since they put all the cheap airlines out in the boonies of the airport. None of that mattered though when we got to baggage claim and our bags were there!!! We grabbed out bags, I got a smoothie to eat/drink, and then we headed to information to find out which bus to take to the hostel downtown for the night. The plan was to get to the hostel, drop our stuff, take a nap, eat something, look around a little bit, get on the internet to finalize our plans for the trip, and then go to bed very early. So we get to the hostel with little trouble (we had help from a nice lady sitting next to us on the bus) only to find out that we’re staying in that hostel tomorrow night. Erica had forgotten that we were staying at a different place near the airport tonight. We need to find the bus to get back to the airport which takes forever because it’s not on the main street with the rest of the bus stops; it’s on a side street and down quite a ways. We are wicked tired due to not sleeping for 36 hours by now as well as schlepping our bags across Dublin and back again. Back to the airport we go to get directions to the hotel Erica knows she made reservations for. On the way to the airport four boys dropped a stink bomb in the bus and ran off. Luckily for me, I couldn’t smell it but everyone around me had their sweaters and coats over their mouths and noses. The hotel has Wi-Fi which is all we care about now to figure out our days in Ireland and the bus from Edinburgh to London. But when we get to the hotel they don’t have our reservations, we paid an exorbitant fee (we were too tired to try and even find another hotel especially since we’re near nothing), and the Wi-Fi is not free whatsoever. At this point we’re hating life and just want to sleep. Unfortunately our heat is not working so well in the room, the people above us are having a trampoline party, and there’s this little Asian boy running up and down the hallway. Oh, earlier we also got ripped off on power adaptors. We just got back from having decent cheeseburgers (the first in months…we also had fish and chips today! We’re not eating pasta while we’re away and we’ve vowed to eat lots of meat) and watching the semi-final world cup rugby match between South Africa and England. South Africa won. We are tired and delirious and still have no idea what time we can get to the hostel tomorrow because it’s not written anywhere and the hostel people were mean to us today. This trip will get better when we drink some real Guinness and buy some Ireland shirts. Maybe those giant Leprechaun hats too.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

2007-10-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

10/11: Traveling to Budapest this weekend! Julie and I decided to go to Budapest and visit the sites of a Soviet country. Our plane was at 8:15 out of Rome so we decided to take the 3:40pm train out of Perugia to Rome (a 2:30 train ride), but we had to transfer twice to get to the Rome Airport: Foligno and Roma Termini. When we arrived at the Rome Fiumciano airport, we had about an hour before the plane boarded. Luckily, Julie spotted the Malev Airlines ticket counter. It was a tiny ticket counter in the middle of the huge checking-in area. So we walked over to where this youngish guy was checking in another lady to a plane. When it was our turn the guy took his sweet time checking us in, answered at least two phone calls from his mother, tried to get us to talk about ourselves in Italian, and then finally gave us the tickets. He did, though, allow us to carry-on two bags instead of just one. We thanked him and ran to the security line. It was very long, but we got our stuff all ready and waited our turn. Going through security was fine; the guy in front of me left his belt so I handed it to him as his luggage was getting looked at at a separate counter. He thanked me as I walked back to the security belt to wait for Julie to get through and to get the rest of my stuff. One of the airport security guards came up behind me; “Do you speak English?” “Yes, I do.” “Did you have the liquids?” WHAT? I did bring some liquids, but they were all in my little 3-1-1 bag, and I had taken it out of my bag and put it in one of the bins. He waited for Julie to grab her stuff and then motioned for us to follow him to another counter so he could look through our stuff. He asks to see our liquid bags which we hand to him. “Do you have any more liquids?” At which we replied no; we really didn’t have any more liquids. He gave us a strange look, stared at us; we stared back. But we really did not have time for this since our plane was boarding then. So we tried to hurry things along with him. He finally asked to look at our plane tickets, saw we were late for the plane, and allowed us to go. We ran to passport control and waited impatiently for the line to go. Some people behind us tried to tell us that their plane was leaving soon and wanted to cut in front of us to catch their plane. After we told them that our plane was boarding NOW, they apologized and went back to their spots in line. We got through passport control and ran down the airport to our gate. But instead of a gate, we had to wait for a shuttle to take us to another terminal. We jumped in front of the shuttle door, hopped on, and got our ways to the front of the shuttle – right in front of the exit doors. The door opened we sprinted up the escalators, not really noticing the lady at the top of the escalators who called out to us which gate we were suppose to go to. Thinking that she knew where we were going was quite strange we just thanked her as we rushed by. Julie was in front of me when she ran past the gate, so the lady at the top of the escalator yelled at us that we were passing our gate. I slid to a stop and turned back to the gate. The two gate agents quickly stood up. Before we were even at the gate, they told us to get out our documents. We handed them over quickly, and they started talking in rapid Italian. One started to get on the phone, but the lady at the top of the escalators had run after us and told the other lady she had just called whoever the other one was trying to call. The man gate agent got us checked in and on the plane. We were so relieved that we made the plane that it took a couple of seconds to realize we made the plane because they had held it for us. That has never happened to me before. They never hold planes or call out your name if you haven’t boarded. But they did this time. It was amazing. We could not stop talking about it the entire plane ride. Unfortunately with all the stressing and running we had sweat through our clothes and just shed most of them on the plane. We were also a little worried that Malev airlines was going to be very sketchy, but that plane was very nice. Not sketchy in the least bit. The plane ride went smoothly; we arrived in Hungary, and grabbed a taxi to my friend Dan’s apartment where we were staying for the weekend. Julie and I felt so gross and tired that we just fell asleep as soon as we got there.

10/12: I woke up very early Friday morning. I started turning a little bit which woke up Julie (since we’re sharing a bed this weekend). Julie was hungry so I went downstairs and awoke Dan from his comfortable couch-bed so he could make us eggs for breakfast. We ate and then started the adventure that is Budapest. Our first stop was St. Stephan’s Basilica. Part of the church was closed (but closed I mean you could not go down the center aisle) because there was a funeral for an old Olympic athlete occurring. But we went to the roof of the church. We walked up and up. Finally we came to about a half-way point with an elevator, tried to get on, but a church employee yelled at us not to get on it so we found the stairs and continued up. But the view was worth it. Plus, it was very cool to walk around on some sort of permanent scaffolding in the innards of the famous church. We started back down, but the only way down was by elevator. That was definitely fine with all of us. The first elevator took us back to that middle point, and that’s when we realized that the reason the lady yelled at us about the elevator was because it was the wrong elevator, and she was yelling at us to get on the other elevator. Oh well, we got our workout. After St. Stephan’s, we walked to an ice cream place (different than our gelato but still good), figured out how to get stamps at the post office, and then walked across the river to Buda, since the entire time we had been in Pest. In Buda we walked up this massive hill to Buda Castle and Fisherman’s Bastion. We all got so hungry walking around so we found a restaurant close by where the waiter confused Julie’s “We want to eat” with “Black teats.” No idea how that one happened, but we ordered some goulash for lunch which was very tasty. The restaurant, though, was playing some of the most interesting music. It was mostly big American hits from the 80s and 90s, but the singing was replaced by a recorder, like the instrument you learned how to play in the 4^th grade. Lunch was followed by a quick stop at Dan’s apartment to get bathing suits, and then we headed for the Turkish baths. It really wasn’t a “Turkish bath” because it wasn’t built by the Turks, but that was about the only dissimilarity. It was a very surreal experience. We had bundled up to get there since it was freezing cold outside. Julie and I have on sweatshirts and our North Face jackets, and I put on my ski cap. We got to the bath house (huge and yellow and very ornate) which looked like an old Russian palace. Julie and I were left on our own to figure out the women’s locker room and met Dan outside. The air was so chilly, but we hopped in one of the pools as soon as possible, and the water was so warm. And the pools were packed. We kept laughing at how this very macho man was getting a back massage from one of the fountains in the pool. We switched it up with the pools every once and a while, but it was miserable every time we got out of the water since the air temperature was so cold. After about an hour and a half we decided it was time to head back to the apartment to shower and make some dinner. We went to get our refund for the baths (we were suppose to get 400 forints back, but the lady checking us out knew we were foreigners and never gave us our receipt for the refund. We realized she was taking advantage of us like 30 seconds after it happened, but the way the system worked, we tried a couple times to explain what happened to other people, but they kept pointing us to other people. There was no way we were going to get our money back so we just gave up. With wet heads we decided to take the metro back (the first metro in the world!) back to the apartment, stopping at the grocery store for some chicken (turned out to be some sort of mystery meat) to cook for dinner. During dinner some of Dan’s friends came over to talk and pick up stuff they had left in the apartment a couple days ago. Right after they left, Dan’s roommate Claire came back with like 4 friends. We hung up for a little bit, went up to their apartment’s roof which has a very neat view of the city, and then decided to head out to some sort of very laid-back club. We walked a fair bit to this place to find out it was closed. After walking to another place that this guy, Mike, was leading us to for about 45 minutes, I finally asked him exactly how much further it was because it was 2am and we had been walking for such a long time. He never gave us a straight answer back, so Dan, Julie, and I hailed a cab back to the apartment since we would have had to walk about an hour back. Very tired because we had walked about a total of twelve miles that day, we headed to bed as soon as we got back.

10/13: Today we slept in so much and didn’t get out of bed until about 11:30 which was glorious. Julie made us eggs for breakfast. We planned a course for the day: House of Terror followed by a little bit of shopping and a nice dinner. The House of Terror was amazing. It’s a museum dedicated to the atrocities committed by the Nazis and Soviets in Hungary during their occupations of the country, but the museum itself is in one of the old interrogation/execution buildings. Each room was set to music – starting with some music similar to Black Hawk Down when they were explaining the Soviet and Nazi occupations and take-overs. And in the basement of the building are the old prison cells as well as some solitary confinement cells and some torture rooms. One towards the end of the tour had a video where some of the women who were placed in one of the prisons confronted their guard – in the present day. Somehow the producers or whoever got all these elderly women together, back in the prison room with their guard, and they were explaining to her how much pain and suffering the lady put them through. It was very strange, but sort of neat how they were able to confront this lady many years later and explain to her how terribly she acted. After the museum we came back to the apartment and re-headed out to McDonalds because Julie and Dan were both hungry, and we all wanted to visit the first McDonalds built behind the Iron Curtain. It was definitely an experience. The food is still terrible, but we decided it was okay since it could be a tourist stop. The McDonalds is in the middle of a very large shopping street so we window shopped for a little bit, got very cold, and went to a café for some caffe latte and hot chocolates. We were going to go out for dinner, but it’s so cold outside and we are still so sore from walking everywhere yesterday that we’re ordering in Pizza Hut and watching a movie tonight – mainly because we’re getting picked up by a cab tomorrow morning at 5:30am. Julie justified McDonalds and Pizza Hut today by saying that we needed an “American” day, and we haven’t had one yet. So this is it. Calling Pizza Hut was a bit of a disaster since after finally getting the number and finally calling them and telling them the address and order they said there were technical difficulties and we had to call back in a half hour. So did and got the pizza and it was delicious! I can't believe we ate McDonalds and Pizza Hut, but we did and it was....well McDonalds and Pizza Hut. We also decided to watch a movie, Amelie, since Julie had never seen it; we took a break in the middle of it because someone was shooting off fireworks which we watched from the apartment roof. We tried to go to bed early since we had a cab picking us up at 5:30am but Julie and I didn't get to bed until about 1-2am. That girl is a tickling monster!

10/14: Julie and I woke up at 5am. I am not a morning person to begin with so waking up really early is not my thing, and its worse after only like 3-4 hours of sleep. So we got all our stuff, said our goodbyes, and jumped in the cab - it was still pitch-black when we got to the airport. At the airport we got our tickets and hopped in the passport check line. When we were very close to the front this elderly woman comes over to us and starts speaking to us in Hungarian. Looking at her blankly and then telling her we spoke English, she got really excited and told us she spoke English too. She had picked us out to start talking to because we had the same looking passports (She was most definately holding a US passport too. Why she thought we spoke Hungarian while holding a US passport is beyond me. I've been thinking about it for about 7 hours now). After asking us where the line was and pointing her to the back, I think she pretended not to hear and continued to talk to Julie and cut tons of people behind her. But she graciously let us go first at the passport check since we were there before her (If you can't tell, I am incredibly grumpy in the morning and did not want to make small talk with this old lady). Unfortunately, both Julie and I did not feel well so we were sitting and trying to drink some water, but it wasn't really working. So we both just slept on the plane ride back which made some of the sick feelings go away. From the plane we took a train from the airport to the main train station. We got off the train, tried to buy tickets from some broken ticket machines, helped a German family figure out the ticket machine in German (I was quite impressed with that). We were walking down to the restrooms when I realized I didn't have one of my bags and had left it on the train. I sprinted back to the train, forced myself on, but unfortunately the train started to move with me on it. So I got 2 free rides to and from the airport today. Got back to Roma Termini with about 5 minutes before our real connection to Perugia. The train was packed, but we got some seat together. Unfortunately for us today (and wonderful for the rest of the week) since EuroChocolate is happening right now in Perugia so its mad packed. Julie and I were mean and just pushed through the crowd. But we made it back to the apartment!

Pre-Birthday

2007-10-09T04:24:00.000-07:00

Julie and I decided to kick off Kate's 21st Birthday celebration by going to a karaoke bar. Turned out to be really fun. The bar, well pub since bars in Italy are just caffes, was full of Americans at first and then the Italian showed up. But all the songs played were old songs like "Its Raining Men" with some newer stuff by RHCP and Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys thrown in the mix. Julie kept telling everyone I was turning 21 in 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 5 minutes, 2 minutes. It was a ton of fun. We said we were only going for a hour - that turned into 2 hours. When we got back much later than anticipated Erica and Jeanette, who didn't come (grrrr), were waiting with a chocolate birthday cake for me! It was delicious. Earlier that day we said we were going to wake up super early (6am) and watch Hot Fuzz before classes. Going to bed around 2am, Erica called me from the next room to discuss movie plans in about 4 hours. So of course we decided to sleep through it and this morning, my birthday!, everyone was awake when I woke up. Usually I'm the only one awake in the mornings since my class is hours before the other roomies. And when I got back from class this morning, the whole kitchen was decorated in princess and birthday decorations!

Lago di Como

2007-10-08T06:05:00.000-07:00

10/5: This weekend I had been planning on going to Venice with some friends. But when everyone bailed on me, I also decided that I was not interested in traveling to Venice – one of the most romantic cities in Italy – by myself. Instead, I decided to travel to Lake Como and visit my parents for the weekend. I was very nervous with the train situation since all the trips I've been on thus far have included some sort of problem with the trains: train strikes, missed trains, ticket problems. I got to the train station in Perugia about 20 minutes early. I bought my tickets; I had two train changes to make, once in Firenze SMN and one in Milan Centrale. Each had about a 20 minute 'layover.' The train leaving from Perugia was delayed 5 minutes which was fine until it was 10:10am – 15 minutes late. Then 20 minutes late. There goes my layover, and I knew I had just missed my train in Firenze. But there was nothing I could do, and I'd wait until I got to Firenze and just get the next train to Milan and then to Como. No need to fret over it since last trip home from Cinque Terre that was all I did and we got home safely while making every train. So I waited patiently to board the time and got on. Somehow the train managed to make up all the time so I got to Firenze and onto the next train without any problems. My train from Firenze to Milan was very nice except the screaming toddlers. But even they are incredible. I have idea what he was saying but if he was speaking it English I feel like it would have been something like this, "Mama, my soul is weeping with sorrow. My heart is pierced by this cruel existence." He was probably hungry or upset that his mom took away a toy, but there was so much emotion to his voice which could only be caused by a deep wound. Despite what I thought he was saying, I still got a splitting headache listening to him screaming in aguish. But no matter. I got off the train in Milan very hungry and went to a vendor for a salami sandwich. The place was packed. I finally ordered my panino and the guy behind the counter took forever asking me if I wanted the panino hot or if I wanted a beer with my sandwich. I think he took offense when I said I just wanted the sandwich and he didn't have to toast it; I would eat it cold. After all, it was a salami sandwich and I brought a water bottle with me. Not really thinking about the time because I had 30 minutes in Milan I headed to my train platform and realized that it left in 5 minutes. I quickly got on and found a seat, not noticing that this train had assigned seats and I was nowhere near my train car. I walked through 3 train cars until I got to one that barely had anyone in it and decided this was good enough. The train staff could move me if they wanted to, but there were only like 20 other people in the car which could hold about 100 so they probably wouldn't. I arrived to Como on time. The first time that has ever happened! My parents were there to greet me, so we hopped in the rental car and drove around the lake a little bit. We decided upon where George Clooney lives – a nice, big, yellow house right on the water with a private drive going up to it. After the driving tour we went to the hotel since my parents hadn't gotten there yet to drop off all the suitcases and everything. It only being 6pm we decided to wait a little bit before going to dinner. At first we wanted to get on a boat to go across the lake to other town for dinner, but all the boats had left. So we hopped back in the car to go to this little restaurant my mom read about in her slow foods book. After an hour and a half of searching for it and road signs we arrived to find out that the place was booked for the night. Starving at this point we headed back to the hotel and had dinner there. It was delicious. Tagliatelle with 'prawns' and zucchini followed by tiramisu for dessert. I couldn't ask for a better meal. So we are back in the hotel room for the night, most likely getting up earlier than I would like to explore more of Como and the other surrounding towns. Maybe George Clooney will be flying in tomorrow and we'll meet him. Hey, you can only hope…

10/6: Today we woke up early (9am) to catch a ferry from Como to Verenna for the day. We got good seats on the ferry and made frequent stops along the lake. Lake Como is gorgeous and huge. There are a ton of little towns up and down the coastline with lots of very big old Italian manors with acres and acres of gardens surrounding them. We get to Verenna and have a quick look around before deciding to eat. That's my family's most favorite past-time: eating (probably explains why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday). So we found a restaurant in a tour book that was suppose to have amazing food. It did. I am in love with ravioli and tortellini. My mom forced some wine on me even though we were going for a hike later that day (you guys are wonderful role models!). After lunch we grabbed some homemade gelato - also incredibly delicious. Then started the hike up this mountain to the ruins of an old castle. We started up the mountain, ended up far away from the castle and in a cemetary. Went back down the mountain, looked at map and realized our mistake and hiked all the way back up it. None of packed well for the trip; instead of wearing shorts and t-shirts we all had on long pants and long-sleeve things and jackets. We finally reached the top all hot and sweaty. It was definitely worth it; the castle ruins were gorgeous with great views of the entire lake as well as a falcon demonstration that we happened to stumble upon. We hiked back down and got on a boat to Bellagio. I don't think I would recommend visiting unless you want to shop; its like Disneyworld for the wealthy. After about 40 minutes we decided to leave and got in line for the high-speed ferry back to Como. Next to me in line (lines in Italia are more like clumps) was an older man and his wife, most likely German. He tried to get ahead of me in line, but the only way to do that was to push me which isn't kosher at all. So when the ferry docked and people were allowed to get on the ferry he tried to get in front again. But being my father's daughter, I quickly sidestepped in front of him which is when, I'm pretty sure, I learned some bad German words. After securing good seats on the ferry, my parents and I had a good ferry ride. We arrived back in Como about a half hour later, starving, and went to a small pizza place since my parents had yet to eat pizza in Italy (granted they had only been in Italy for 2 days now). After dinner, where the waiter told me I stop Italian beautifully (I said one word), we ran back to the car in the rain because it had started sprinkling during dinner. Luckily, the rain really started coming down right after we got back in the car. And then back to the hotel for the night where they were hosting a smallish wedding dinner.

10/7: All three of us woke up early on Sunday to get to the train station. My parents decided like that morning to train with me to Milan where they would spend the day and I would continue onwards back to Perugia. I was slightly nervous because my connections in Milan and Florence were 13 minutes and 25 minutes, and if the trains were late, I'd have to wait about 2 hours at the stations. So about 10 minutes late a train arrives on our platform, we get on, only to realize its the wrong train. We're going to Milan, but we're not on the direct train to Milan so we're stopping at every single stop from Como to Milan (which is a lot) which means I've missed my train connection in Milan already and then my connection in Florence. We're also not arriving at the same Milan train station so we had to figure out the metro in Milan. When we did get to the correct Milan train station, there was a train leaving for Florence in the next 5 minutes so I ran over to the platform, talked to the train workers about having a ticket to Florence just on a different train and everything, but its Italy so they were like, "Whatever. Get on the train." Trying to find a seat and walking the length of the train, I got stuck behind a foreigner like me with two rolling suitcases; that's a difficult feat to accomplish when train aisles are narrow so I helped her by dragging one of the suitcases along with my two other bags. I felt so bad because people were giving me dirty looks for trying to drag this bag along the train instead of putting it up somewhere and I think I ran over a couple people's toes. Once the girl found her seat (there were assigned seats and since I didn't have a seat on this train, I was hoping to find a carriage with lots of empty seats) and I helped her get her bags up and out of the way. She sort of repaid me by telling me to sit in another seat close to hers by telling the guy sitting next to the empty seat to get up so I had a seat! The entire time I was slightly paranoid that I was going to get kicked out of my seat since it technically wasn't my seat. But I had a nice long time on the train, in the same seat, and was bale to get most of my homework done. When I got to Firenze I had to wait about an hour and a half for the next train going through Perugia, but I got back when it was still light which is always nice.

Opera Night

2007-10-08T06:00:00.001-07:00

Tuesday Julie, Jeanette, and I went to the opera – The Barber of Seville! We decided to get dressed up since we rarely get really dressed up to go out. We met up with some other Umbra kids and staff for appertivi at a pub or restaurant. It was more like a buffet and you were allowed one drink on the house (well, we had really already paid for it when we got our ticket for the opera). So I ordered a glass of white wine. Everyone else had just a little bit of wine pulled into their glass, but the bartender decided to fill my glass to the brim with wine. TO THE BRIM! Luckily, my roommates helped me finish it because there are no way I would be able to drink all that in one sitting and be able to pay attention to an opera, especially one in Italian. After our appetizers we headed to the opera which was supposed to start at 8:30. We walked up and up and up to our seats. We reached one level when we realized the stairs to the next one were plain concrete and we had to open this little attic door to go up the stairs. So up we went again until we reached our seats. They were actually pretty decent since they were right in the middle - just very high up. Also they were bench seats without backs. The 6 of us in our little box sat in the box in our nice dresses on these very uncomfortable wooden benches for hours and hours. I think it finally let out at midnight. For 3 hours we sat on these benches. Every other level had nice chairs with cushions on them. I guess I shouldn't complain since I basically got a dinner and tickets to the opera for 20 euro. The opera was fantastic. The music was wonderful, the playhouse was gorgeous, and the actor's voices were unbelievable. Unfortunately we were just dog tired at the end of it and then had to walk back to the apartment. I was in awe with the Italian women and how often they wear heels on those hills. Now I have a new appreciation for them. Walking uphill is not the problem. The problem is walking downhill in heels. It's virtually impossible: it's much easier to just sort of jog down the hill. Maybe rolling would have been easier, but I didn't want to get gravel stains or cuts in my dress. Plus, I would just look silly rolling down a rocky, stony street.

Cinque Terre

2007-09-30T04:36:00.000-07:00

Julie, Jeanette, and I had been planning a trip to Cinque Terre for about 2 weeks now. Erica was unable to go since she had a mandatory fieldtrip with one of her classes on Friday, and, therefore, would not have enough time after visiting Siena to get back on a train for 4 hours to meet us up north to hike early the next morning. For about 4 days prior to the trip Julie had been feeling awful – she had this wicked bad cough. So the night before Cinque Terre, she tells us that she’s not going; it was the best decision since Cinque Terre is about a 5 hour hike up and down some mountains and through 5 little towns. So early Friday morning, Jeanette and I woke up to head to the train station via the bus station. For some reason Jeanette was under the impression that our train didn’t leave until 10:20am when it really left at 9:54am. So Friday morning Jeanette took her leisurely time eating breakfast until I came back from trying to internet to tell people my phone decided that it no longer had minutes on them and I could not make any phone calls and also to fill out a trip form that all Umbra students are suppose to fill out if they leave Perugia on the weekends. But the internet, of course, didn’t work so none of that got accomplished. When I got back to the apartment I rushed Jeanette and got her to start packing and we left the apartment at like 9:25am. We were sprint walking to the bus station to take a bus to the train station. The bus arrived at the train station at about 9:52 which left us 2 minutes to buy tickets and get on the correct platform. Jeanette got the tickets as the train was suppose to be arriving so we ran through the sottopassaggio (underpass connecting all the platforms) and raced up the stairs. Luckily, the train was about 2 minutes late so we heaved a big sigh of happiness that we had at least made the first train. Our ticket said it was going to Pisa Centrale via like about 4 cities, including Firenze SMN. At Firenze everyone else got off the train, but we had no idea what to do since our ticket was to Pisa, and usually they give you different tickets for every transfer you have to make. So we stayed on the train as it re-boarded and then, to our dismay, started heading backwards. Fortunately, Firenze has another train station about 2 minutes away so we hopped off, bought another ticket back to Firenze SMN and got back to the main train station. Deciding that since our ticket said we were going to Pisa, we didn’t need to buy another one so we found the next train heading to Pisa Centrale. The next ticket was to La Spezia. Our ticket had a time and a date on it; we missed the time but we figured that since it was the same day it would be okay, but just to be safe, we went to the information counter and they said it was fine. So we got on the train to La Spezia. I forgot to mention earlier that the reason we had woken up early and were fretting about the trains was because the hostel we were staying at closed its reception hours at 5pm. It was now about 3:30pm, and we still had 2 trains to catch. We finally arrived in La Spezia, and caught a train to Riomaggiore, the first of the towns in Cinque Terre, where our hostel was. We got into Riomaggiore around 4:30pm, so happy to finally be there. It’s located right on the sea, and the view from the train was gorgeous. There were high winds so the sea had massive swells in it when we first got there. We arrived to the hostel, hoping that we could communicate enough with them to tell them that Julie wasn’t with us because she was sick and secretly praying that we didn’t have to pay for her bed for the 2 nights we were staying. The receptionist was actually an American and did not charge us for Julie’s bed even though we gave them absolutely no notice that she wasn’t coming. She then took us up to the hostel room; it was a 9 person mixed co-ed room we were staying in. There were 3 Australian girls each traveling on their own, 2 American girls from NYU, and Oliver, a very light-hearted goofy Croatian who had been coming to the same hostel for many years. We never could figure out how old he was, but we think he might have been in his late 30s. That day Jeanette and I looked around Riomaggiore with 2 of the Australian girls, Anne and Catherine. Since Jeanette and I hadn’t eaten all day (except for Jeanette’s leisurely breakfast and I had 2 granola bars on 2 of the trains) we were both starving so we got some pizza and then I had some peach gelato despite the cold winds blowing at us. We headed for the sea edge or a lookout point to get a better view of the sea. When we got there I was mesmerized by the massive, massive swells. They were at least 15 feet, crashing into rock barriers and splashing over them. I don’t remember how the conversation started, but all of a sudden this American lady was talking to us about how part of the trail, from Manarolo to Corniglia, was closed because a couple on their honeymoon had been taking some pictures just right off the trail and had gotten washed away by one of the waves. The lady talking to us was retelling how she and her husband watched all the paramedics rush to the scene and all the helicopters and boats were sending divers and PJs to search for the two people. The man survived, but the woman apparently hit her head and died, but they were having problems locating her body. Later we found out that an old man was also killed on the same part of the trail. Horrified and a little selfishly upset that part of the trail was closed we headed back to try and figure out what to do about that closed section. We could either hike up the mountain at that point and around, coming back down to the other town, or we could take a train from one to the other. Oh, sorry, another very important detail I forgot to mention was the train strike. It was going to occur throughout Italy from Saturday at 9pm to Sunday at 9pm. Great, we thought, we’re going to be stuck in Cinque Terre for another day and have to use our ‘sick’ days for classes. If anyone is ever stuck there because of a train strike, there is probably no more beautiful place to be stuck, but we had a deadline and had to be back. We decided that we might want to actually leave Saturday after the hike, but we were going to check with our hostel and then with the train people the next day. Friday night Jeanette and I decided to splurge on a nice dinner so we went to this place called La Lampana. Just as we got there Anne and Catherine came from another direction and decided to join us for dinner. We waited about 45 minutes for a table. I’m still not really sure how the restaurant qued up its clients. They didn’t take reservations, but 3 people who arrived after us got seated before us because they “were in the book 2 days ago”. None of us saw or heard of this book, but we dismissed our confusion because the food was supposed to be very good. We finally got seated and had an excellent meal. I had penne pasta with salmone followed by a dessert of tarfufo nero, a chocolate ice cream dessert thing. I can’t really describe it other than it was delicious and ya’ll need to come to Italy and try it. We all had a bit of each other’s desserts: Anne got the same thing as me, Jeanette got some sort of almond cake, and Catherine ordered their homemade tiramisu. Around 10pm we got back to the hostel where everyone else was in the kitchen having a bottle of wine and talking. Since at dinner we had split a bottle of wine between the 4 of us, I really didn’t think it wise to have any more wine since we needed all the hydration we could get for the hike. I left the conversation a little early to get a shower. I think I figured out why we travel on the weekends, again. I had the most wonderful shower, again. The 2 American girls by this time were actually on their 3^rd bottle of wine and went for some gelato with Oliver at 11pm. While they were gone and everyone was waking up early the next morning we got into bed and went to sleep. Much later that night they come back, very drunk and very loud. Apparently, the little blonde one did not or cared not that there were sleeping people in the room because she started yelling and laughing and talking in a much louder than normal voice. Her friend was trying to get her to talk quieter, but it finally took Oliver to come out of his little semi-private room to tell them to calm down. She finally stopped yelling, only to start coughing. I have no idea how long this went on, or how late this was, but it was very late and she coughed for a long, long time. The next morning Jeanette and I woke up early, having had barely any sleep because of our drunken American flat mates, to start the hike. We were trying to be as quiet as possible until we stopped caring if we accidentally woke them up. The day before was so chilly that we packed as much cold weather stuff as possible which was not much at all; we thought it was suppose to be warm that weekend. Our plan was to catch a train in Rio to Monterosso because the last part of the hike is supposed to be the hardest and we wanted to start with that and then finish it up with the easiest parts. We also talked to the train people about the strike who were unsure if it was still going to happen and didn’t give us clear answers. We figured we would deal with that after the hike so we got on a train to Monterosso and from there started the hike. Monterosso to the next town Vernazza is the hardest and steepest part; it takes you basically straight up the mountain and then back down multiple times in the hour or so it took us to hike it. When we got to the train station in Riomaggiore we had to wait an hour for the next train so we decided to walk to Manarolo and then catch a train there to Monterosso. So that’s what we did; we got off at Monterosso and started the long journey back to the hostel. For part of it there was a couple walking the trail. I’m going to focus mainly on the woman because the man, for the most part was dressed for a hike, minus his nice looking pointed leather shoes. The woman however was also wearing leather shoes, high-heeled boots to be more precise while smoking. Jeanette and I were quite amazed at this feat but soon passed them on the hike. When we got to Vernazza we were very hungry and ready for a break. Ravioli and a sit-down restaurant would have tasted so good, but with a couple hours left we didn’t want to eat anything too heavy…so we had pizza with pesto on it. There was also this pastry shop, Il Pirate del 5 Terre, that was recommended to us so we stopped there, got a cannoli since we heard those were wonderful there and then asked the man to pick out the best pastry for us. It was some sort of filled nutella bread thing with cinnamon and sugar on the outside. After our wonderful pastries we headed back on the hike just as it was starting to rain. As we were heading out of the city, we ran into Anne and Catherine who had decided to hike it together. A bit later on we ran into our American flat mates on the trail, exchanged a few words, and we quickly walked away not wanting our anger to get the best of us. Vernazza to Corniglia was also a long stretch, maybe an hour and a half, but it was less steep and an easier walk. Anne and Catherine had also told us that the path from Corniglia to Manarolo was open, so we were excited that we would be able to hike the entire trail. Onward we hiked through the deadly part of the trail. It was morbidly exciting that we were hiking the same place where the day before 2 people had died. But the winds were not as high, and the water was much calmer than the day before. From Corniglia, you can see Manarolo and just as we got to the city, we stopped to watch a wedding from afar. It was very pretty. We decided to finish up and walk from Manarola to Riomaggiore even though we had already hiked that part that morning. To get from one city to the other, the path takes you through the train stations. So at the Manarola train station there was huge tour group, and it had started to rain. To get on the road back to Rio, we had to walk up a couple flights with all these old, pushy Europeans with their umbrellas. Bad thing about being tall: they don’t really care who’s around them, those old people hold the umbrella where they want to and aren’t afraid of whacking or poking you with it. I felt like Jeanette and I were doing Matrix moves to keep from being hit by the pointy objects. Once we were off the stairs we weaved in and out of people trying to get to the front. About a 1/3 of the path from Manarolo to Riomaggiore was covered so we slowed down when we were in a covered section since we could enjoy the walk and not get rained on. At the end of the covered part I decided to get my rain jacket out of my backpack and we both huddled under it and finished up the hike and got back to the hostel. We talked to our hostel lady again and she recommended that we talk to either the people in La Spezia or Monterosso about the trains. But first we were going to lie down and take some showers. After getting all nice and clean, we decided to pack all our things up and head to La Spezia; there was no point in going to La Spezia, back to Rio, grabbing our stuff and then going back there. If we couldn’t get back to Perugia before the trains went on strike we would just come back that night. Oliver said he would drop off our keys if we didn’t come back that night and gave us big hugs and tried to convince us to stay the night. He thought we were being overly cautious, but this being our first train strike, we decided it was better to be overly cautious than underly cautious. From Riomaggiore we caught a train straight to Pisa Centrale. Our ticket to Pisa said via Sanzara on it, so we asked like 10 people if the train was actually going to Pisa. They probably thought we were dumb, but we were not going to make another mistake. The train did go straight to Pisa. For the last 30 minutes of the train ride, this middle aged man sat close to us. He had his shoulders hunched up and generally just looked very creepy. I would catch him staring at me through the reflection in the windows. I realized that he also had some sort of clothing he was playing with. It took a little bit of time to realize it was, for no better word I can use, a banana hammock: male underwear very similar to female underwear. For awhile he was just playing with it in his hands, stretching it out and smelling it. Then he attached it to the headrest on the seat across from his. He would stare at it for about a minute, then lean over, rub his face in it, giggle and sit back down in his seat. I think he did this about five times. Once I’m pretty sure he licked it. A couple minutes later he took it off the seat starting throwing it in the air above his head, and I was petrified that he was going to throw it over at us since he continued to look over at where we were sitting. Once we were in Pisa we high-tailed it to the fast ticket issue machines which refused to take our credit cards for some reason. From that machine we realized there was a train leaving in about 5 minutes to Firenze and then a connection to Perugia. Jeanette ran to get in line at the ticket counter. I went to customer help to figure out about the train strike which was still going on, but if we did manage to catch these 2 trains we would be okay. I high-tailed it to Jeanette who was next in line at the ticket counter. The train we needed left at 19:54, and it was 19:53. It took some convincing for the lady at the ticket counter to give us the tickets we needed from Pisa to Firenze and then from Firenze to Perugia because she didn’t think we’d make it. We didn’t either, but we were going to try. We ran to the platform and had missed the train by about 2 minutes. The next one didn’t come for another 20 minutes. That wasn’t a problem as long as we were at Firenze before 21:43 because that’s when the last connection to Perugia left. If we didn’t get in then, we would be sleeping in the Florence train station. We were asking all these people about the train, making sure it was the correct one we were waiting for. 2 very nice Italian ladies helped us and basically told us we would have 10 minutes to get on the train in Florence. We also were worried because our ticket said Via Empoli on it. We used our Italian skills on a Australian lady, thank god, because then we were able to better explain ourselves and she explained to us what it meant and everything. The train to Firenze was supposed to arrive at 20:29, but didn’t get in until 20:39. There were those 10 minutes we needed. The entire train ride I was so nervous. I couldn’t stop talking or moving. I was making Jeanette so nervous, but I just couldn’t stop or I would go crazy. We keep looking at our phones to check the time. When the train starts to slow down in Firenze, we get to the doors so we can be one of the first people out. Its 21:42. We sprint to the board that tells us what train we need and from what platform. We needed to catch the train to Terni on platform 13. We’re on platform 2. I yell at Jeanette the platform and take off. Occasionally I turned around to make sure she was following. I had so much adrenaline and was so ready to be on that train that I could have picked her up and run with her to the train. Everyone was looking at us since we were carrying all our hiking gear sprinting through the station, but as I slid around the corner to Platform 13, and yes I did slide, the train was still there and I saw the conductor which was a good sign. Jeanette yelled at the train workers to make sure that the train was going to be stopping in Perugia. We made it! We were so excited, but we couldn’t stop shaking since we had been fretting about it for like 2 hours non-stop. I cannot begin to tell you how glad we were. Jeanette called Julie to tell her that we were not going to have to sleep in the Florence train station, and we were going to be home! We were a little disappointed that Julie did not sound more excited on the phone, but it didn’t matter. We were going home! The train arrived, we got bus tickets back to Piazza Italia and got home to a welcome party of our two roommates and two other friends, Doug and Robert. After the boys left, Jeanette and I had a stretching party, Julie got a bloody nose, I realized I left my glasses in Cinque Terre, and Erica and Julie got into a bit of a wrestling fight. No matter. We are home!

"They're beautiful"

2007-09-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

That's just the last thing said to me at this point by one of five Italian men walking past Julie and me, in our sweats and on the computers outside on some steps. Anyhow, the rude girl struck again today. I need to let it slide by me, but I just find it so unbelievable that she has the nerve to say that. But the day got better as my another friend Becky and I went again to our favorite pizza place for lunch, then had a nice talk with an old lady at the tabaccio shop about how pretty Italy is, and then loads of classes. I also had time in my monstrously long break between classes to watch The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy; it was a very strange movie. Julie and I attempted to make chicken and rice tonight. The chicken was delicious, but the rice we got tired of waiting for it to finish so we threw it out... For dessert we had some Vienetta, but the placement of the plate on the stove with me cutting the ice cream dessert was all wrong, and the plate landed up smashing all over the kitchen floor, missing my bare feet by centimeters. Stretching party take 2 is also tonight, maybe followed by some more of Dante. I'm so close to finishing it! So far I've traveled to Hell, Limbo and now its on to something different until I decide to get back in the saddle and read Paradiso.

Juice Boxes and Stretching Parties

2007-09-25T05:26:00.000-07:00

Today was a very interesting day. First off, its Monday. No good ever comes from Mondays. In my Italian class of, at most 15 kids, I witnessed and was victim to one of the most overt acts of rudeness I have witnessed in many years. I’m sitting in class, minding my own business, trying to understand our teacher explain our homework to us when this girl sitting next to me for some reason didn’t catch the homework assignment. Figuring I knew it, she put her hand in my peripheral vision, moved it spastically, and said, “You. What’s the homework?” You? I was and still am in shock that someone has the audacity to actually say that out loud. Classes proceeded, with my EU politics class and then to Early Christianity. Becky, my friend, and I have decided the only reason to go to that class is because the professor is very attractive…and Italian. Unfortunately, he is much older, married, and has two children. After classes, Julie and I booked hostels and looked at train tickets for this coming up weekend to Cinque Terre. Its going to be gorgeous hiking on the northern coast of Italy. After that we had been planning on going grocery shopping at which we found a very surprising thing. Did you know that they make juice boxes for wine? Well, they do, and we are now the proud owners of 6 such ‘win boxes’ as well as the cheapest box wine we could find: 65 euro cent. We’re going to use the money we didn’t use on decent wine for some very good cheese and bread. With our backpacks and purses full of food we got back on the bus to our apartment. From there I decided to get on the internet to skype and check my emails. After about an hour of sitting outside up against a building, my body told me I had to get up and go home to finish homework and visit my roommates. I get back from the internet, walk into the apartment, and find Jeanette sitting on a chair with half of her hair on the floor. She’s combing out her dreads!! From there on, the night got strange. Julie and I had a stretching party that hopefully will continue for the next of the semester so we will be able to actually touch our toes and not have bad backs when we’re old. Perhaps we’ll even get adventurous and throw in some abs, push-ups and walk sits. Erica, Jeanette, and Julie were all making fun of me because I immediately got hyper upon my arrival home and could not stop bouncing off the walls. A pillow fight was to be held a little later with Julie the unexpected victim of multiple attacks. Erica had the ‘brilliant’ plan to zip the pillows around her hands which only unzipped when she tried to pillow-attack me. Jeanette was and still is combing out her first dreadlock in the bathroom. Once I won the pillow fight, I had to announce my retirement for the night as to finish reading about the Maastricht Treaty and the treaty which made the European Union into the European Union. Quite an exciting night I must say.

Chocolate Pie!

2007-09-22T03:47:00.000-07:00

Last night Jeanette and I made chocolate pie!! Well, mainly Jeanette. I cut up the chocolate into thin slices. It so sooo good. We went to like 4 different places to get everything. A couple days ago we found a grocery store, Parma, that's so close to our apartment so we got ice cream for Fanta floats (there is no root beer in this country!) and some butter. We haven't been able to find butter since we got here, but we found some! Next we went to the chocolate store for some delicious, world-famous Perugina chocolate. To the other grocery store, Coop, for sugar. We came out of Coop with Vienneta, corn, jam, sugar, and peanut butter. Back to the apartment to make the pie while watching the end of Amelie and then all of The Devil Wears Prada. However, the movies were put on hold while Jeanette and I had a looong conversation which was nice. So movies didn't start until like 10pm. Then this morning we woke up late and ate
a pastry covered with our new jam. Delicious. And we still have 3/4ths of the pie left for today! Its going to be another lazy day, I think. But tomorrow there's a soccer game!

La Carta Verde!

2007-09-20T05:43:00.000-07:00

We got a green card!!! If we get another one next apartment visit, we might get a free pizza! Pizza here is delicious, and the free part makes it about ten times better. Julie's mom bought us pastries and chocolate to celebrate. Another part of our celebration involved doing 0 dishes that night. We made a huge mess all over the kitchen and table, and no one felt any guilt about it. After our lovely dinner party the 4 roommates went to this thing called Tandem; its a program set up so that Americans and Italians can talk in a casual setting. So we basically sat in small groups, and we would talk in English for a little bit and then talk in Italian next, and back and forth for a little more than an hour. It was a ton of fun, and one of the Italians I talked to is actually in one of my classes. I made a friend!

Massive Cleaning Party

2007-09-19T08:03:00.001-07:00

This week is apartment visits where this lady, Catarina, checks out all the apartments to make sure we keep them clean. We get cards (green, yellow, red) depending on how clean the apartment is. 2 greens in row = a free pizza, but 2 reds in a row = 2oo euro fine to go to a cleaning service to keep the apartment clean. So we had a massive cleaning last night because our apartment visit is today. Hopefully it was already happened because we need to be able to cook dinner tonight, and I'm tired of tip-toeing around the bathroom. Also last night Julie's mom took us all out to dinner at a really nice restaurant, La Taverna. There were so many other Americans there, but the food was outstanding! Plus, we all got dressed up and had a fun and fancy dinner!

This week has been relatively uninteresting. Lots of homework and reading for class. I was under the impressive that study abroad classes were suppose to be a little easier because the teachers understood that, while you were there to learn, you were also there to experience the culture. However, I still find myself in my room, hovered over my desk reading hundreds of pages a day. Maybe hundreds is a little exaggeration, but its A LOT!

Thank God We're Home

2007-09-16T11:31:00.000-07:00

We woke up early today to go to Ancona, a port city on the east coast. Trains were easy today; we had about a 20 minute layover in Foligno where we picked up another train to Ancona. Upon arrival, we had no idea where the hostel we had booked reservations for was. All we had was the name so we asked information at the train station, and luckily the hostel is about a 2 minute walk from the train station. So we walked with our very heavy backpacks to the hostel (Julie has 2 bags) to find out that they were closed until 4:30pm (it was 1pm when we arrived to the hostel). Having no place to put our bags we decided to grab some pizza at a nearby pizzeria. It looked like a McDonalds with all red and yellow furniture and walls, but the pizza was pretty decent. After pizza we looked for a gelateria since we still had many hours before we could dump our belongings in a room. We walked and walked for this gelato joint. Finally, with backs hurting and those awkward straps on backpacks around our stomachs and chests, we spot a ‘park’ with some benches so we throw off our heavy loads, and lo and behold, a gelateria/cafeteria is right across the street. Julie, Jeanette, and I go get some gelato while Erica watches the bags. We eat the ice cream which is so delicious after hours of traveling. Julie and Jeanette decide to break out the homework and begin reading for class. Erica and I are pigeon watching; it is very interesting to see pigeons fight over food and interact with each other. After a couple minutes of this, I grab my Purgatorio book and begin reading it. After reading one canto I got very sleepy and fell asleep on the park bench. I wake up occasionally to find that Erica is listening to her iPod, Julie has slumped over her knees and got out her North Face to keep warm, and Jeanette is asleep on the end. I nodded off again. We all awake later to find Erica laughing at us; she never fell asleep and has been taking videos and pictures of us because Julie looks dead, Jeanette’s mouth is open the whole time, and I keep shaking. The entire time we all have our sunglasses on, and passerbyers think we’re all asleep, and Erica told us they were pointing and whispering about us asleep on the benches. Finally, it was time to get back to the hostel. We arrive at 4:35pm and its open! So we go in and tell the lady working at the counter that we have a reservation for 4. I did not think ahead at all and didn’t print out any document that said we had made reservations; I wrote down the reservation number, but that was about all. We’re apparently not on the list, but she did have a room left, so that’s where we are right now. Julie, Jeanette, and Erica have all fallen asleep in their beds. I am hoping to find internet because I was able to get on for about 30 seconds before the signal went away, and we still have to contact the university to tell them we’re gone for the weekend. After everyone woke up from their naps, we headed towards dinner since it was about 7pm and we were hungry. So we talked to the man at the hostel downstairs and he told us to get on this ¼ bus. So we get on it thinking it will take us to the centro or city center. Slowly, throughout the bus ride everyone starts to get off until there are only 3 men and us on the bus. We’re in some sketchy neighborhood when the remaining 3 guys get off, and the bus driver tells us that it’s the end of the line and we also need to depart from the bus. Not knowing where we are but having an idea about the area of town we are in, we quickly start backtracking until we are finally lost and ask for directions at a hair salon. A lady working there helps us and tells us to catch a bus further down the road since walking back to our hostel or the center of town is a long walk. In order to get on the bus though you have to buy bus tickets at the Tabaccio shops and he told us that the bus only came about every 30 minutes and we would have better luck walking a little further on down a hill where the bus comes more frequently. We walked a little further on down the hill, but none of us ever saw a Fermata (bus stop) sign. We come to a dead end in an apartment complex, and Jeanette asks this young guy for directions to a bus stop. He was really patient and kind and gave us pretty clear directions to a Fermata. Go down, left, down some more, right, and then straight. We followed those to a T and walked straight for a long time. About the time we had give up hope, we turned a corner and there was a bus station. After all this walking to a restaurant and still having not eaten, we were all starving so when a restaurant was spotted we basically ran towards it and sat down, gobbled up all the bread they gave us. The waiter brought us toasted bread and olive oil because “you look very hungry”. The restaurant had some televisions in it where we made up dialogues for the implausible RAI soap opera on, followed by K-19: The Widowmaker. It was dubbed over in Italian so we continued our fun dialogues until we got the conto (check) and left for home. The trip back to the hostel was nothing in comparison to the previous bus trip. The only incredibly annoying thing was that we waited for about 30 minutes for the bus because on the map it looks like a long walk from the Piazza with the buses to the train station where the hostel is and since we had been walking all night, we were tired of walking. We’re on the bus for about 2 minutes when it comes to the train station; there was absolutely no reason for us to take the bus less than a ¼ mile to the train station especially since we waited for so long to get on it. But we are safely back at the hostel. I took the most wonderful shower here. It was real water pressure and the hot water is evenly dispersed throughout the showerhead, unlike the one in our apartment where all the hot water is in one giant hot drop in the center surrounded by lots of cold water. Erica’s on the phone, Jeanette and Julie are in bed with their eyes closed, and I need to read some more of Purgatorio.

Sept 15: Today we got off to a late start. Erica is one of the hardest people I know to wake up. After we were all awake and dressed, Julie reminded us how cranky she gets when she gets hungry so we stopped at a grocery store down the street for some breakfast: bananas, assorted cookies, kit-kats, and some Ritz crackers. We ate them on the way back to the train station to buy bus tickets for the bus to Sirolo which supposedly has very nice and pretty beaches. We buy the tickets and are nervous that the bus trip to Sirolo is going to end up like the bus trip to the centro the previous night. However, we had learned our lesson and got on the right bus which took us to this little town about 10 miles south of Ancona called Sirolo. The bus drops us off near the park entrance, but we are still really hungry and stop for some pizza and Fanta first; we have decided that the Fanta here has more of an orange taste than in America. After lunch we hike back to the park entrance and see signs for the spiagge (beach) S. Michelle. It’s a 4 something, maybe kilometer walk down the mountain to the beach with lots of hairpin turns. Erica and I decide to take a short cut, which did end up being shorter, but while we waited for Julie and Jeanette to catch up to us, they went a different way and waited for us while lying on the beach, soaking up the sun. After waiting and searching for them for about 30 minutes, Erica and I decide to head down to the beach and hope that they are down there. We look up and down and finally spot them. The beach was gorgeous, and I think we were the only Americans there. We laid out for about 3 hours; Julie and Jeanette got in the water which was pretty cold. When the shade started creeping towards us, we decided it was time to get back up the mountain and started the long and strenuous hike back. Sweaty and just feeling gross we find la fermata and catch the bus back to Ancona. After showering, Erica with paper towels, we decided to get back in the saddle and try to go to the centro for dinner. So we bought tickets for the ¼ bus, again, but this time we asked the bus driver if the bus was going to Piazza Roma because had we not asked the bus probably would have taken us back to Drug Land. The streets in the centro were crowded with people, mainly kids between the ages of 12-18 years. We couldn’t figure it out until we were at a restaurant. First off at the restaurant, there was the cutest little boys with a toy gun playing around; it doesn’t sound cute, but it was. Back to the story, all the waiters and waitresses were wearing Notte Bianca shirts. Notte Bianca is a festival, or series of festivals, celebrating the end of summer and stores are open very late. So it was one big party downtown with a couple of stages and one DJ playing Beat It, Sweet Dreams Are Made of These, and Get Into the Groove. Unfortunately we were all dead tired and wanted to head back to the hostel. So we got back on the bus, but before getting to the hostel, we stopped at the gelateria at the train station. Julie refused to get any after looking for it downtown, Erica got cacao Amsterdam, and I got yogurt and crema all’ouvo, or egg cream. Quite delicious actually. We are back at the hostel getting ready for bed since we have to get up early and be out of the hostel at 9:30am tomorrow and our train leaves around 11am.

Sept 16: Today’s trip was not as well executed as yesterday’s. We woke up on time, were out of the hostel at 9:30am, at the train station at 9:45 waiting for our train at 11:10am to leave for Perugia. Not fully understanding exactly what platform 2ov meant, we got to Binari (platform) 2 right after 11am, and starting searching for our train. We headed up and down the platform and right at 11:10, we noticed 3 platforms over a train leaving for Binari 2 ovest. We watched as our train left the station and as our afternoon diminished as well. The next train didn’t leave for another 2 and a half hours which was just fantastic since we had already been there for an hour and a half. The only silver lining I could find was that at least I was getting some homework done. The train pulls up and we got on, heading towards Foligno, our layover point. In Foligno we had an hour and a half layover. Thank god nothing at all happened to that train. We were all on the verge of just screaming at each other if something else went wrong. Finally we arrived in Perugia; I couldn’t imagine a more welcoming sight. We got off the train and basically ran towards the first bus, so excited to be home. The bus was jammed packed with people, but we were so happy to be home, no one really cared that they no longer had any personal space. To top off the entire trip, right as we got off the bus, it starts pouring down rain. So we hiked back to the apartment in the downpour, and of course, we open the apartment building door and the sun came out. Julie and I decided that we deserved the steak tonight for dinner after such a tumultuous weekend at Ancona.

We thought the weekend adventures were over. Not so much. We get back to the apartment; Julie and I are so ready for the steak its not even funny. So we start to thaw the steak, but we are so ready to eat so we just put the steak on the stove and start to cook it. I move over towards the sink to start boiling water for rice, stand up too quickly, and hit my head on a couple of our one shelve which knocks the shelf and causes both the glass nutella and glass peanut butter containers to shatter on the floor. So we take a break from the steak to clean up nutella and peanut butter. Luckily, after a couple of flips on the steak, we notice that part of it is good to go, so we start sectioning off parts of the meat and just eat as we go. Most of the way through the steak eating, the flimsy counter gives way and the meat goes flying on the floor. Erica calls the 5 second rule, and we continue to eat the meat. Nothing else could go wrong tonight. It could, but after this weekend, I am ready for anything. Pictures, and there are pictures, will come.

Not Creative Enough for a Title Today

2007-09-13T03:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I tried to go and blog. I really did, but the internet decided not to work, again. I was planning on getting so much needed life planning out of the way, but instead that had to wait until today to figure out the rest of my GW career. Due to my excellent study skills I had no homework to do last night which was so nice. The roommates and I were planning on going to Cinque Terre this weekend, but we were about 2 hours too late to book hostels unless we want to stay in 14o euro a night rooms. So instead we're going to Ancona - a city/town on the east coast of Italy to hit up the beach while its still sort of warm. It'll also give us some more practice learning Italian since its not a very touristy place, and we don't know how much stuff there is to do there. Should be fun - we're looking forward to just relaxing on the beach. Today I'm waiting on friends to finish class so we can go to lunch somewhere, but it'll probably end up being a pizzeria. I need to find more food because in about a month pizza is going to start to be really old, and I don't want that ever to happen. I like pizza too much to be sick of it for a long time. I need to find some a panino or something else to eat for lunch. Oh. As of later in the week or next week I will no longer have plans on Nov 2 and Dec 1. I've decided to drop the Early Christianity class because, as interesting as it sounds, its not really. After taking Eastern Religions at GW, I think I'm done with learning the names of each group's different group of war or Jeff the God of Biscuits (Eddie Izzard skit) since its not so much early Christianity as it is what was before Christianity for some of the course and then some Christianity. I thought it was going to be more crusades like which would have peaked my interest a whole lot more than relearning the differences between anthropomorphic and anthropocentric.

Bells, Boys, and Garbage Trucks

2007-09-11T05:05:00.000-07:00

Second day of classes today. Unfortunately, my first class is at 9am and the others aren't until 13:30 and 15:15! So I have this long long break in the middle of the day. And I was good today and finished all my homework up to this point so hopefully I won't fall behind on my readings. I've forgotten all this time to tell people about the bells! We've gotten used to it, but bells ring every 15 minutes here to announce the time. Its going to be weird coming back to the States and not knowing the time every 15 minutes. However, there is a bell tower near our apartment that goes crazy sometimes. My hunch is that it happens at noon, but the bells don't stop ringing. It goes on and on and on for probably like 3-4 minutes straight. Different story: I was at the grocery store yesterday buying milk since our apartment goes through a liter of milk a day. First off, I could no figure out which milk to buy; one had a picture of a little girl and said something like Interno on it while the other had a grown woman and something like Scermo on it. I made the executive decision to buy the one with the grown woman since we were more like her in size. I think it ended up being skim milk. While I was in line buying the milk a little boy was in front of me being held by his mother. He was screaming his head off and pointing to some coffee. His mom tried to appease him by getting something for him. That stopped the temper-tantrum for about 30 seconds. When it started up again, another little boy, probably a year or two older than screaming boy, tugged on his shirt, put his hand up to his mouth and gave him a very very dirty look to quiet him. At this point I was laughing on the inside; I started to actually laugh but everyone else in Coop looked stern and unamused, so I tried to keep it in as much as possible. I'm actually not sure if he ever stopped screaming. And the last and final story; its not like a fact really. The garbage trucks here are TINY! They look like Tonka trucks. Everytime I'm with Erica and Julie they crack some joke about it, and I can't help but laugh. They're so tiny!!

Classes: 1st Day

2007-09-10T08:28:00.000-07:00

Last night was the last official night of summer. All my roommates and I had signed up for a historical walking tour of Perugia led by one of the Umbra staff, Zach. It was very interesting with true and very untrue facts about important buildings and people in the city. We learned about the last name Altuni - the name used by the orphanage when they gave last names to the abandoned children of the city. The orphanage sounded quite interesting though. In the side of the building near the door there used to be a turn-table sort of thing where mothers would place their unwanted babies and turn the table so the baby would be inside the orphanage. After the tour ended we were all starving; Julie and I had been eating ALL DAY but our never satisfied stomachs were craving more. Julie re-met this kid, Keane, on the tour, so we invited him back to our apartment for pizza and Top Gun. We were planning on a double feature of Eddie Izzard, again, and Willow, but Jeanette had a meeting and wouldn't be back until late, and Erica and I were the only ones who knew who Val Kilmer was. We needed to rectify this most seriously overlooked problem and decided Top Gun would give the much needed introduction to Val Kilmer without us having to restart Willow for Jeanette.
Today was the first real day of classes. It started with Italian at 9am. I am now the first person awake in the morning in the apartment and therefore must remain as quiet as possible and get dressed in a mostly dark room as to not disturb everyone else sleeping. After Italian I have about a 2 hour break where I have to get some lunch and change out my books. Today I also spent that time getting my permesso di giorno, basically the official document that allows me to stay in Italy for more than 3 months. Without it I could get thrown out of the country. So then I went to The Politics and Economics of the European Union class which apparently is suppose to be a difficult class according to the teacher. Then I had another long break were I got some reading done and headed off to The History of Early Christianity class. The teacher is a little difficult to understand, but we're going on two field trips which should be interesting: one to Rome and the other to Spoleto. So, if you've wondering what I'm doing Nov 2 and Dec 1, that's it.
And the random picture for the day: any guesses? We thought this was very neat. Its a cigarette dispenser. Although none of us smoke, we were all taken with this contraption.

Last Day of Summer

2007-09-09T05:01:00.001-07:00

Today is officially the last day of summer. Classes start tomorrow, and I have three: Italian, Politics and Economy of the EU, and the History of Early Christianity. Ugh. They sound interesting, but I am not looking forward to writing papers and studying for tests. Especially if there are any of Monday. I WANT TO TRAVEL! And don't worry parents, I'm also picking up the Italian language as well. Last night after we got back from our train and bus rides around the country, I walked to our internet point for a long time and got some stuff done. When I got back to the apartment I found Erica and Julie watching Eddie Izzard's Dressed to Kill. There's a part of skit where he talks about the guys on mopeds in Italy, revving their engines, "Ciaaaoooo." When Mike and I first saw it years and years ago, we both thought it was hilarious, but actually being here, its about 10 times funnier. Today, I was hoping on going to a calcio (soccer) game. Perugia apparently has a pretty decent team, and there is a home game today. Unfortunately, I slept until about 11:38 and with breakfast and shower and getting ready, it was past the time when everyone was meeting at La Fontana to go down to the stadium to tailgate. Plus, the game doesn't start until 3pm, and my roomies and I signed up to go on a Historic Walking Tour of Perugia at 5pm. So I would be rushing to get to both of them, and not going to the calcio game allows me to be a very good student and skim my books and course readers and perhaps read some more of Dante's Purgatorio. Picture is from the train yesterday. The windows are quite dirty, but we thought the countryside (campi, I think) was beautiful and tried to take some pictures of it.

Orvieto or Bust

2007-09-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

Today, Erica, Julie, and I decided to take a day trip to Orvieto. We checked out the bus/train routes, we researched things to do there and places to eat. Unfortunately, the trip was a bust. When we got to the transfer point, Ternotola, we realized that the next train would not be coming for another 2 hours which meant we wouldn't get to Orvieto until about 7pm - right about the time the sun goes down. So, instead, we changed our ticket to take up back to Perugia, and we just went back to the apartment where we did a massive cleaning of the apartment. It is now spotless and organized. We even found a place for all our excess food that doesn't fit in our kitchen. After cleaning we did a whole lot of eating. I feel like Julie and I have been snacking the entire day. For breakfast I had pieces of salami and bread, an egg, some pear juice, and lots of other random snack foods and have continued that trend all day today. After the Coop yesterday, Julie and I feel a little obligated to start cooking all the pasta and cake mixes for meals since we spent so much on food. We're planning on hamburgers and steaks soon...as soon as we can figure out some seasonings for the meat.

Coop and Erso

2007-09-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

This is a unique day because I have time to blog TWICE! After this afternoon, we went back shopping for some school supplies. Pens and pencils and notebooks are so expensive here (parents, can you bring lots of pens and pencils with you, please?). Julie and I also got some push pins for our bulletin boards which is the only place we can put up pictures. We had already cut out our favorite quotes from Cosmopolitan and Seventeen (most of jokes or stupid quotes that we found really funny) and put them on our boards tonight. We also took our first adventure on the buses...to the giant Coop near the train station. We bought so many groceries, and hopefully we'll be cooking a lot in our tiny kitchen. After we left we were waiting for the bus to come pick us up again when an Italian man came over to us and started talking. Its so different over with how men act towards women, but we realized that its kind of nice. It gives us a chance to practice our Italian. Apparently, we are all pretty girls, but Julie is the prettiest; he asked her to marry him, but unfortunately, she was/is unable to. Which stinks for me because I have my pretty Italian dress ready for a wedding! Tonight we were planning on going to see Harry Potter 5 in Italian, but we have no idea where the theater is, so plans have changed to us watching a movie in the apartment, I think.

Wetting the Bed

2007-09-07T06:05:00.000-07:00

Ciao. Today was the first real morning we were able to sleep in. Unfortunetly, yesterday afternoon my water bottle opened in my bag all over my bed so in order to have a nice, dry place to sleep, I had to sleep on the couches in the living room. Those are some of the most comfortable couches I have ever sat on, but they are a little too short. Before bedtime we had a roommate night watching The Usual Suspects. Good movie, but I was expecting a comedy for some reason. This morning Julie and I ended up sleeping until about 11am; it was wonderful. We took our time getting ready this morning and went exploring. The temperature is perfect today. We got some gelato before lunch; it was been such a nice day. On our way back to the apartment for the afternoon (everything closes from 1-4 for la pausa) and stopped at UCB for some more hangers. It was the shadiest thing I've ever done. I felt like I was stealing from the store. Every other time we've been there, they give us a bag and tell us to fill it up near the door. This time she handed us a bag and told us to go upstairs. So we went upstairs and started just grabbing all the empty hangers. When we came back downstairs we were stopped and told we could only take black hangers (our bag was full of white ones). One of life's greatest mysteries: why does United Colors of Benetton have 2 different color hangers and why is one dispensable while the other is not?

Covert Trash Run

2007-09-06T06:02:00.000-07:00

Last night we had out first 'family' dinner in the apartment. A couple nights ago, Julie and I made our first real meal, not including the cereal we eat in the morning for breakfast, but last night all the roommates ate dinner together on our dining room table, if you want to call it that. We made this type of hollow pasta with tomato sauce with a side of cucumbers and carrots as our vegetables or bread if you wanted it. The pasta was just strange; I was able to use it as a straw for a couple of sips, but it wasn't easy. We also realized we had to dispose of the trash in our room since it was piling up, but we had no idea what to do with it. So all the roomies and I each took a bag, and we hunted for a trash can. But the closest trash can we could find was a private one, so we made sure no one was around, dumped our trash in the cans, and left quietly. And I thought I'd add a random picture in here. This is the view out of our balcony in the other bedroom - to another person's balcony across the 'courtyard.' I know its such a wonderful view. Today was the last day of Intensive Italian classes since we don't have classes on Friday!! Julie and I had decided that we are most definitely sleeping in tomorrow morning. This morning was killer to wake up; when I got to class everyone was talking about how it was the worst morning, and they just wanted to sleep in today. This weekend should be fun though. Saturday there's a walking tour of historic Perugia which I want to go on, and Sunday is a Perugia calcio (soccer) game! We'll all meeting alla fontana and then tailgating before the game! And hopefully going to the grocery store sometime this weekend to stock up on the essentials, like pasta and sauce.

Our First House Guest

2007-09-05T07:06:00.000-07:00

In Italy, at least for us, no one is allowed to stay in our apartment if they come and visit. They must register with the local police and stay in a hotel or hostel or something due to the anti-terrorist laws here. But last night we had a very uninvited guest in our apartment - in our kitchen to be more exact. A centipede found its way onto our tiny kitchen counter, and the entertainment for the night (after our first homemade dinner and watching La Vita E Bella) was trying to catch the thing and putting it outside. It took many seconds of crafty thinking to blow it onto a flat surface and then use the old glass and piece of paper trick. Eventually we did get him outside and out of our kitchen!

Since Julie and I have been feeling under the weather for the past couple of days, last night we made pasta with olive oil and got giant bottles of sprite and watched La Vita E Bella on our very comfortable couches.

This is going to be a very short blog since I am starving. Instead of eating pizza I had lettuce for the the fiber and I am very very hungry now.

Rainy

2007-09-04T05:53:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day that we have not had an incredibly sunny day. It started off cloudy, and now its sprinkling and cold. Luckily, the apartment is not far from any of the classrooms so we're only cold for a little bit. But I thought that I should put up some pictures of what life is like outside of my apartment since all the pictures are of our home for the next 4 months. This is the street where we live, Via della Cupa. The building straight back with the dark shutters is our building, I think. The picture is taken from Via dei Priori. If you take a left you end up on the main corso, Via Vannuci which is listed in the 1000 Places to See Before You Die. Everyone is there at night and during their breaks. The town is very quite except during these times when the entire city decides to pack onto one street. If you take a right you head to the steps where I can pick up wireless and where I usually talk on skype since its the closest wireless point from our apartment. This other picture was taken on the west side of the center of town, I think. I'm not really sure what those buildings are, but I know that the tall one that's sort of in the middle was pointed out to us as something important. I thought as the last picture I should put up my roommates again since we do hang out alot. We frequently take walks around the city to see if we find any small little pizzerias or other fun little restaurants. This is one of the wonderful views of the city. Again, for those who have forgotten, from left to right, its Julie, Jeanette, and Erica. There will probably be no walk today since its so cold, but Jeanette and I are going to go in search of some jeans. Hopefully the place is close; either way I'm going to be putting on a big coat. My battery is running low, and for some reason, an associate partner of the study abroad program is going to be looking at our apartment in about an hour so I have to get back and clean it in a jiffy!

Intensive Italian Week

2007-09-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

We started classes today. By classes I mean we had to start going to class. Our regular classes start next week; this week is devoted to Italian; from 9-3 with an hour break in the middle I sit in a room with 6 other girls (there are no boys at my level) and our teacher, Francesco, and learn how to tell our landlord that the stove is leaking gas or the power doesn't work - like it didn't tonight. Somehow the power is our apartment went out so instead of going to dinner at 7pm like we planned, we left at 8:15. For that hour we sat in the dark. Well, Julie had a flashlight and was doing her homework (the only one of us to get homework on the first day), and I sat in our window reading Cosmopolitan to my roommates where we learned some very interesting things like that smoking can kill unfertilized eggs in the womb. But back to the subject - Italian class. Francesco, our teacher, is surprisingly not Italian; he's French but has a flawless accent and also a droppy left eye. He's a good teacher and, of course, we only speak Italian in the class which is a little hard, but at the end of the week my Italian will drastically improve. After classes Julie and I went in search of hangers, a hair dryer, and some plug converters since all the electrical things I brought have their own power converters so I only need to change the plugs! We first went to United Colors of Benneton for the hangers; we heard there was just a big box of free hangers in the front of the store. We were glad to get them so now we can hang up some more shirts and skirts, but why would a store just throw away its hangers. That seems like such a waste of money when they could reuse the hangers. Oh well, now I only need like 8 more hangers until all the clothes piled on my desk can have a home in my huge closet. Jeanette has lost her voice, and we constantly find ourselves all whispering when we talk to her since she has to whisper. When someone comes home and they find Jeanette and one of us talking to her, they instinctively whisper back and ask what the problem is. This wouldn't be that funny, but she hasn't had her voice for a couple days now. I was afraid that I handed off my cold to her, but they seem to be doing 2 completely different things to us so I now think she has something else. We are also in desperate need to go grocery shopping. We have to go out for every meal right now because as Erica put it, "When I open the fridge I have the option of salami, cheese, or coke." We also have orange juice, 2 types of milk (not sure if they're 2 different types of milk or what types they really are either), and some orange fanta.

Pictures

2007-09-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

So as of yet, I don't know how to add in pictures with captions in the blog so this post will just be pictures. This is my roommates, from the left, Erica, Jeanette, and Julie. Erica is from California; Jeanette is from Minnesota, and Julie's from New Hampshire. We are in our living room which we have since rearranged because that eating table was right in the middle of the room, separating the two couches on either side of it. It was a bit awkward so we made some changes. Okay, I've just realized that this post is also going to look very strange since I'm not very blogger savvy yet. This is our amazing bathroom with the bidet and washing machine! Not much of a shower but it does the trick. This other picture is of our TINY TINY kitchen. I'm standing in the opposite corner so the only thing not in the picture is the refrigerator. The stove is on top of the oven so we have absolutely no counter space. No idea what we'll do about that yet. Luckily, these are the only two small rooms in the place. We have two bedrooms for the four of us, and both bedrooms are huge! This is my side of the room. We don't have enough hangers yet for all our clothes to go in the closet, but tomorrow we're going to United Colors of Benneton to get free hangers! Once we get everything for organizing our room and such it'll look a lot less cluttered and messy. The other is Julie's side of the room with the window. And unfortunetly, we don't get internet in our rooms! We have to go about 5 minutes to some steps outside one of our classrooms for some free Wi-Fi. So in the winter past 8pm (when the institute buildings close) I have no idea how often I'll get on the internet since I don't want to sit outside on brick steps in the snow and freezing weather. This is the building where we live. I think we live on the second floor - its a bit confusing to us so its either the second or third floor, but on the backside and its a little hilly so its hard to tell.

The Bidet

2007-09-02T06:29:00.000-07:00

Second full day in Perugia. Last night I met some guys from Wabash; we bonded with the whole Indiana thing. But today we had a full Umbra meeting - met most of the people who work at the school and then had a talk with a police officer about crime in Italy. My roommates and I have been eating as much pizza as possible. Its so delicious. I have yet to get gelato though. Yesterday I was going to but then it got cold all of a sudden. Julie, Erica, Jeanette, and I took a walk, looking for supposedly free clothes hangers, took us to some gorgeous views and some escalators in an old castle/fortress. Tomorrow morning we have our Italian language exam at 9am, but we have to met at the main fountain in Piazza IV Novembre at 7:45am! Not looking forward to that - tonight I'm going to be studying as much Italian as possible. On Sundays, a lot of stores are closed but a tobaccio (place to buy cigarettes, stamps, phone cards, etc) was open near our apartment so we stopped to get postcards and phone cards. The old lady working there seemed to really like us - we have made a friend! We have found a new use for our bidet! Its a perfect PERFECT place to shave legs. I mean perfect. Just the right amount of water and everything.

1st Day

2007-09-01T09:46:00.000-07:00

Hello all. I arrived to Perugia, Italy, yesterday night but really did nothing that day except meet my roommates - Jeanette, Julie, and Erica. We live on Via della Cupa 7 - about 4 blocks from the main piazza - Piazza IV Novembre. The city is beautiful. Everything is old, and there are pretty doors and windows on most buildings. Today, we got into our apartment and set everything up. Ate pizza (AMAZING!) at a little pizzeria outside, went on a quick tour of the city, and found a great internet spot on some steps right outside of a gelateria. Right now there are about 6 13-14 year olds chatting to each other and having a grand ole time in front of me. The table just peer pressured one of the girls to smoke. I don't think she liked it, and I think some of them just noticed me looking at them. In about 2 minutes I have to go back to the apartment to grab Julie, drop my computer, and go to dinner with a small, select group of people (everyone has a different time to go to this restaurant). We also did a little grocery shopping today - have some cokes, bread, cereal, milk, and of course lots of pasta! I'll put up pictures of the apartment later tonight, I think since I can't get on the internet from my room unless we figure out how to break some passwords which might be a little illegal with Umbra Institute.