Arrivederci Firenze!

Dec 21
I’ve been here long enough to…

…type 154 pages of journal entries (bytheway, after 100 pages Word told me that there were so many spelling and grammar typos that it wasn’t able to continue spellchecking for me!)
…break a bone in my foot and have it heal completely
…officially change the pronunciation of my name
…add another generation to my Alpha Phi family
…get hit on enough by enough boys to satisfy me for the rest of my life
…use Costco-size bottles of shampoo and conditioner
…use a Costco-size box of tampons
…use an entire tube of toothpaste
…use an entire stick of deodorant
…change my Facebook picture 3 times
…use an entire tube of anti-itch cream (to soothe my millions of mosquito bites)
…have my hair grow about 3 inches
…ruin 4 pairs of jeans
…get a really big blister on my thumb from Marilena’s Italian hair straightener
…feel fat then skinny then fat then skinny again
…try a million new things (wine tasting, cigars, mussels, snails, bars, clubs, limoncello, Hooters, crutches, space-cake, whiskey, public transportation)
…make a new screen name
…visit 21 museums
…rotate my wardrobe 20 times
…receive 127 e-mails/facebook messages
…send 111 e-mails/facebook messages
…multiply my amount of luggage by two
…cut my nails 12 times
…meet new favorite friends
…celebrate 3 important holidays
…receive 197 Facebook wall-posts
…miss my niece grow from an infant to a toddler
…get a 3-month membership to a gym
…wear a hole in the toe of one of my shoes
…detox 3 times
…watch my skin color change from dark brown to glowing white
…realize who my good friends at home are
…visit 11 cities in Italy (Firenze, Roma, Pisa, Napoli, Capri, Positano, Amalfi, Lucca, Ravenna, Chianti, and Fiesole)
…travel to 9 different countries (Italy, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, Hungary, Holland, France, and Switzerland)
…rack up a $500 cell phone bill
…stay in 5 hotels and 7 (scary) hostels
…take 16 flights
…cry 4 times
…be sick 12 times
…drink 67 bottles of wine
…take 1,283 pictures
…use three boxes of pump supplies
…eat a whole bottle of Advil
…miss my favorite restaurant to burning down to the ground
…hear people speaking Italian and know exactly what they’re saying

I think it’s about time to go home. See you all in 20 hours!

the FINAL final

Dec 20
THE Schedule For My First Day In Manhattan Beach

7:00 AM – wake up and open day #22 on my advent calendar
7:10 AM – eat a piece of toast with peanut butter
7:20 AM – get in car… turn it on… take a few practice laps around downtown MB
7:30 AM – Coffee Bean for a regular, sugar-free vanilla, ice-blended, with whip cream OR regular, iced, non-fat, sugar-free vanilla, latte… I haven’t decided which one I want yet
8:00 AM – hair appointment
10:30 AM – eyebrows/any other necessary hair-removal appointment
11:30 AM – 17 minutes of faux tan at Cop-A-Tan
12:00 PM – buy KROQ Christmas CD (if my brother hasn’t bought it for me yet)
1:00 PM – Sloopy’s (Chicken, caesar-salad, wrap, with french fries, a ton of ketchup, and a Diet Coke)
2:00 PM – manicure and pedicure with mom at Perfection Nails
3:30 PM – unpack/do laundry/wrap Christmas presents/check out all the Christmas presents already under the tree/space out on the couch cuz I’ll prolly feel totally crappy and jetlagged
5:00 PM – (sunset) jog on the strand
7:30 PM – margaritas, chips and salsa, and whatever else at Pancho’s (RIP El Som)
10:00 PM – go out with my friends until odd hours of the morning

shout outs

Dec 19
With only 2 more days left, I’d like to dedicate this entry to a few important individuals that deserve attention for the nice things they’ve done for my during my stay in Firenze:
Thank you…

…mom and dad first and foremost. I can’t even begin to explain how thankful I am for being given the opportunity to be here. You have both made this experience incredible in so many ways. Thank you for little things like calling me all the time, mailing me packages, sending me e-mails about everything and nothing, and commenting on my blogs AND for the big things like visiting me and supporting me financially. I love you both and have missed you more than anyone else.

…Marina for commenting on almost everything that I post online. A lot of times I’d start feeling lonely here, like no one was missing me (or even realizing I was gone at home) then I’d read a note from you and it’d make me smile. Even the one sentence-ers meant so much to me. I put a lot of work into my journal and am glad that I was able to entertain you!

…Steph for keeping in touch with me as if we weren’t in completely different continents. We talked so often that there was never a “how are you?” that had to be asked; we always knew how each other were already, skipped over the small talk, and cut straight to things that were important; it was as if she wasn’t thousands of miles away from me. For that, you are getting, by far, THE coolest present out of anyone I know at home – I’ve been working on it since Day #1.

…Marilena for being the best roommate ever. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun living in the same room with anyone else, well, ever. I love that we can spend all day in class together, travel on weekends together, go to the gym together, eat every meal together… and not get sick of each other. Thank you so much for laughing with me, crying with me, studying with me, being drunk with me, traveling with me, eating with me, walking to school with me, shopping with me… the list can go on forever!

…Derek and Grandma for each sending me a letter and post card; so many people promised to send me letters and you two were the only ones that actually followed through! Your cards have been posted on my bulliten board this whole time and I look at them whenever I need a smile.

…Laura and Ben for being the best travel partners ever. Honestly, I would go anywhere with you guys in a heartbeat.

…Kike, Susana, Manuel, and Luca for providing us with the coolest apartment, best food, and numerous things to laugh about. Oh, AND for spending 4 hours in the hospital emergency room with me, holding my hand and telling me everything’s going to be okay. I seriously think that Marilena and I were put with THE best host family of all of them.

You all are the people that made my trip here possible and I can’t say thanks enough for everything.

Also it’s been a pleasure posting my life on the internet everyday for people to see BUT two days from now, that’s it! No more free peaks into the private life of Tera Linsley… you’re all going to actually have to make an EFFORT to hear about how my life is going. Hahaha! ;)

2 days to go

So today is December 18. I turned in my final Family and Gender paper this morning (and rips my book and all papers that had to do with that class to shreds because i'm soooo freaking happy that it's over) and have nothing left to do but study for my Italian oral and written exams which are on Wednesday. Ugh. Sick of school. Sooooo sick of it.

I'm already basically packed and ready for home. Now that i think about it, i have no idea what i'm going to do for the next two full days i have here. I was considering taking a train up to Venice just to check it out (since last time i was there was a few years ago) but i'm not sure if i want to... i am so traveled out. I had a bunch of plans for winter break at home (snowboarding trips and road trips and the sort) but now i've realized that i don't want to do any of that. I just want to be in Manhattan Beach with my friends and family. Tear...

So, even though i still have two days left, i've already finished my journal. I'm posting it all today so that i don't have to worry about whether or not i'll have time to do it later this week.

I feel a lot better than yesterday. My head is no longer feeling as though it was run over by a big truck - now though my stomach and heart are hurting... i think it has to do with leaving here; i'm really going to miss it. Not gonna lie, while i miss home more than anything i'm also dreading going back to the real world... man oh man. Enough of this.

Buona giornata everyone; i hope the holidays are going well!

ZA ZA

Dec 17
Whoa, I just woke up horrified by the fact that it’s 2 in the afternoon… I don’t sleep in this late EVER. What the hell??? WHAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT?!

Hahaha, I don’t think it was really that crazy of an evening so my exhaustion from it just shows that I don’t go out enough??? Last night around 7:30, Marilena and I walked downtown to meet the posse at Robin Hood’s for a drink before going out to dinner. Ben made a reservation for 25 at Za’Za’ so that we could have a final meal all together. It was CRAZY how many people actually showed up… unfortunately it was more than 25 and some people were turned away from dinner with us. AH!

It was a big drunken feast! Our waiter hated us I think. Somehow we managed to all sit at one big long table and when he brought our food out no one was paying attention and it took about 20 minutes to get everything distributed.

The food was good. The wine was good. The company was fabulous! It was an excellent last supper. Afterwards when we were drunk and full we headed out to the bars. Somehow the group got split up but it was okay because I ended up with my 6 favorite new friends here Firenze. Marilena, Laura, Natalie, Navid, Dan, and I went to an Italian bar (literally, we were the only Americans) and had drinks and hung out outside under the tented off area. It started raining… figures. It would rain on our last night out.

Afterwards we walked to Old Stove where basically all of SUF was there partying. By this point in the evening my memories are non-existant… ? I have a million pictures last night but don’t remember taking any of them. Marilena keeps asking me if I remember seeing so-and-so or talking to so-and-so... and I don’t. Ehhh… keep reading.

Today, after getting up to eat lunch with the fam, I slept and slept and slept until about 6:00 this evening. I was thinking about it today – there was something weird about last night. I mean, I drank a lot (wine and two cocktails) BUT it really wasn’t any more than I usually have with my friends. AND I drank it all over a period of about 4 hours WHILE eating dinner yet, for some reason I hardly remember anything AND have the most terrible headache and bodyache of my life… ? Maybe one of my drinks was tainted…? I dunno… it’s scary to think about. I’m glad I was with my friends even if i did end up getting totally lost! :)

how many days?

Dec 16
Mom, please forward this on to St. Nick:

Dear Santa: Yesterday afternoon instead of working on my final paper I got to listing all of the things that I would like for Christmas this year. The list, like all my others in the past, got to be quite long and full of big expensive things but after thinking about it for a while I realized that none of these things will make me as happy as my time here in Firenze has made me. I’ve been a very good girl all year long and have worked very hard at so many things but am not sure that I deserve any more presents than this trip that I have already received. Sooo… for the first time in my life, I’m not asking for any gifts at all. All I really want is time with my parents, sisters (and all the other family that comes with them), brother, grandmas, and cats because that is the one thing that my stay here in Firenze is lacking. Grazie mille e buon natale!

Sincerely yours, Tera Felice

PS – i BEAT the ADVANCED LEVEL of MINESWEEPER today (for the first time)!!!
PPS – I’ve been having terrible stomach problems for the past week and it bothers me so much that I had to include it in the journal. UGH… c’mon body, only 5 more days to go!

feeling jaded

Dec 15
I’ve been feeling homesick lately… this has been THE slowest week of my life.

I think that fear of the unknown is starting to set in a little bit. The way that I feel right now is the same way that I felt right before leaving for Firenze over three months ago… very apprehensive. I am so used to life here, and friends here, and family here and am anxious to see how all these new things are going to fit into my old life at home. I feel like I’ve worked myself up into a frenzy thinking about how things will be the same but different from before.

Last night I could not sleep for the life of me and today, after sweating my butt off at the gym for a looong time, I packed. I know we have 6 days left but I feel overwhelmed about the millions of things I have to accomplish before leaving and thought that maybe packing would set my nerves at ease a little bit. It did. So that’s good.

I think that the way I feel is showing in my face because today at lunch my family asked me about a million times if I was okay. Physically I’m fine (for once). Mentally, um, I’m a little bit concerned about myself but I’m working through it and am sure that once finals are almost over I’ll be myself again.

I also pulled out my US cell phone today, dusted it off, and charged it. I’m so used to my Europe phone; it’s crazy how foreign it looked to me!

PS. I heard today that a friend of mine’s dad passed away yesterday… I feel terrible about it and hope that she and her family are doing alright. :(

l'ultimo giorno di classe!

Dec 14
I remember now why I hate taking adderal. The next morning I always wake up feeling like I went out drinking the night before and my jaw is always sore from the teeth-grinding I don’t notice myself doing the entire time I’m on it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t always take the stuff… there have actually only been a few desperate occasions where I have in order to get a huge amount of work done all at once. Yesterday was one such occasion.

After waiting two hours for Incubus to download to my computer I sat for three and a half hours straight and whipped up a paper about a topic that I knew very little about this morning. One paper down, one to go!

Today was our official last day of class! Italian only lasted for about 40 minutes; we spent the time reviewing for our final coming up next Wednesday. It shouldn’t be too bad. I’ve already started making an outline and am sure that if I spend a few hours going over it then I’ll have all the grammar and vocab down.

The internet was down at school today; add that to the list of reasons why I think that Syracuse University in Florence sucks… the internet is down during finals week??? They didn’t know when it would be fixed either. Ugh. Annoying.

To waste the two hours that we had between Italian and Fam and Gender Marilena and I splurged and walked downtown to buy ourselves Oil Shoppe for lunch. MMMM… I’m really going to miss my turkey with sun-dried tomatoes, parmasean, artichokes, spinach, regular tomatoes, pesto, oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper on a wheat roll…

Anyways, we headed back to Villa Rossa afterwards and ate lunch out in the courtyard. It was a beautiful day today! The sky was clear, the sun was out, and even though it was freezing cold I felt very content.

In Family and Gender this afternoon we had THE most interesting discussion that we’ve had all semester long. The talk was about contemporary arguments in Italy over whether or not gay couples should receive rights the same as a married heterosexual couple (hm, apparently the ENTIRE world is struggling with that right now). We watched (well, started watching a film) about a woman whose husbad of 15 years dies. After he dies, she discovers that he had a male lover for 7 years… god. That would SUCK.

Anyways, the lecture/discussion that we had as a class afterwards was really great and my teacher actually, for the first time, did a fabulous job as the moderator of it. Usually she stands in front of the class and tells us what the right opinion to have about a concept is and doesn’t accept our own interpretations of things (which is why we all hate her) – but her attitude today was awesome. It figures that it was the last class… what the hell?

YAY FOR THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOOOOOLLL (and the parties that go along with it)!

After class Marilena and I headed down towards San Lorenzo to do some last minute Christmas shopping before we start packing our bags for home. I am going to miss San Lorenzo shopping so much when I finally get home.

At 3:30 we went to the Odeon Theatre and bought tickets to see the film, “Marie Antionette.” If you haven’t seen this film, don’t waste your money. When it first started I didn’t even think that we were in the correct theater because the music that it opened with and the font that the actors’ names were written in were totally inconsistent with the subject of the film. Though the costumes, make-up, and cinematography were absolutely incredible the movie lacked a plot. Liek, literally. The story was so bad (and completely absent from the film) that half the time I didn’t even know what was going on! Marilena and I spent about 45 minutes afterwards talking about the bajillion things that were totally retarded about it.

Before our walk home we sold back our books to Paperback Exchange. When I first got here three months ago I bought a book (that I only read the first chapter of) for my Michaelangelo class (that I ended up dropping) for 45euro… I got 6.50 euro for it. Ugh, places always screw you over with that kind of stuff. Whatever, I needed some money for wine tonight… 6.50 is MORE than enough!

Omigod I forgot to open the door on the advent calendar today!

perspective

Soooo maybe i'm not exactly dying but i swear that yesterday afternoon i wasn't going to make it. It was so weird. The room was spinning, i was roasting hot but freezing cold and seeing ninjas (I always see ninjas when i have a fever; it's so weird), and my stomach was the most unhappy thing on the planet. BUT after one good final heave i felt MUCH better and went on with my life. I went to sleep around 11 last night and even though i was woken up twice (once by text messages and once by a mosquito that ended up making a really good snack out of my cheek and eyebrow) i slept all the way through the night. Yea, what was THAT all about?!

So i was just organizing the rest of my time here and the near future following my return home and this is kinda what it looks like:
-1 more day of school left
-1 more weekend in Italy left
-1 (really stupid) Italian oral presentation (today, that our teacher told us about yesterday; asshole) - today was EVAL day and i gave him really bad scores; i'm sorry Alessandro, but you were one of the worst teachers i've ever had.
-1 art critique (today...ah!) - it went well... i think my teacher was very satisfied with my overall progress in the class. I CAN'T WAIT TO GET HOME AND START PAINTING AGAIN!
-2 family and gender papers due (one tomorrow and one Monday)
-1 Italian oral exam (Wednesday morning)
-130 euro in cash left
-8 more days until i'm in California
-12 days until Christmas
-14 days until 2007
-44 days until i'm 21

There is much to be excited about!

HEELLLPPP MEEEE; i'm dying

Dec 12
I felt really weird all morning long and thought that maybe I was still tired from the weekend. My body felt totally exhausted and my stomach was a little bit upset. I made it through both of my classes but 5 minutes after walking through the door of my apartment my insides totally gave out on me.

I feel like death. My face is a very awkward shade of green and everything I put in my mouth comes back out 5 seconds later.

If someone wants to bring me some 7-up it would be greatly appreciated. The third day in Italy I broke my foot so I guess it only makes sense that I’d spend my last days here barfing and doing homework. Aaaahhhhhh, why meee?

i just want to sleep all day

I made the decision on the bus last night that I was going to skip Italian class this morning. I slept in until 10:45 (THE latest I’ve slept in since, well, about a year ago!). But even with sleeping in I felt disgusting all day long. Drinking on Saturday night mixed with the 8-hour bus ride last night killed me.

I woke up to a phone call from Pete. Man oh man. The way I feel about him is so messed up that I don’t even have the energy to go into it (which will prolly make him happy cuz he hates when I write about him anyways). Compared to the screamfest that I had with him on Saturday night, today’s talk was a good one. Happy but sad at the same time. Meeh.

I’m ready for home. I feel burnt out from school here. Today I felt myself going through the motions: wake up, take a shower, eat Corn Flakes, walk to school, play on the internet, go to Printmaking, eat an apple, work work work, play on the internet some more, walk to the gym, walk home and get in bed in attempt to warm myself up since it’s freezing here, eat dinner with the fam, get back in bed and mess around on the computer.

Well, actually, in printmaking a journal-worthy thing happened today. Our class is so much freaking fun. At first I really didn’t get along with anyone in it; we are all so different it’s, liek, funny to see us all talking and laughing together but somehow we’ve clicked. Wednesday is our final critique and we’ve been begging our teacher to let us bring in a pot-luck type snack day complete with a few bottles of wine and champage. The SUF policy is “no alcohol on campus.” Liek, zero. None. Buuuuutttttt we’ve been begging Kraczyna for weeks and weeks to let us and backed it with “We’ll all be so much more honest and willing to speak during the critique if you let us have a few drinks.”

Well, today he came into class and was like, “I just had a very important conversation with the dean of students…” (we’re all liek, ‘oh crap, this sounds bad’) “…and I convinced her that it’s okay for you all to bring in a few bottles for the critique on Wednesday.” Kraczyna is awesome.

The rest of my day is going to be dedicated to writing about our weekend in Switzerland, working on my Fam and Gender paper, unpacking/packing (!!), and catching up on some much needed sleep. Ciao ciao!

happy 21st pete

Dec 10
After breakfast I got back in my bed and prayed that the pounding in my head would go away. It didn’t all day long. It never does actually, so I’m not too sure why I even tried to fight it. I didn’t feel like doing anything on Sunday. There was talk of horse back riding but I hate horses sooo I turned it down. All I wanted to do was curl up in my bed and piece together the night before.

Eventually I managed to pull myself together and after buying myself a little present (a new sweatshirt from Balmers and a Toblerone) I headed downtown with the ladies and Dave for lunch. It was warming up again and all of the snow started to melt but it felt good to be outside. Chicken fingers and french fries cheered me up a little bit. After lunch we headed back to the hostel and basically sat around and ate Toblerone’s until it was time to leave.

Even though we did basically nothing all weekend long, it was the exact kind of weekend that we all needed. We were in a city with no museums, no monuments, no nothing. All we were really able to do was let our brains rest and enjoy ourselves and the company of new friends that we’ve made while we’ve been in Europe. Actually, I don’t know about everyone else, but I needed this trip and overall I did have a fabulous time.

Our bus ended up leaving around 5ish. There was no drinking on the way back this time – we didn’t even have to talk about it. Everyone was totally alcoholed out. We watched the Bird Cage and Love Actually before we finally got to stop and hop off the bus for food and air and bathroom and stuff. At the truck stop however… our bus broke down. We were at the stop for about an hour because seriously, the bus driver would turn the key and nothing would happen. We all had to unload and hang out while, liek, 8 guys tinkered around and tried to figure out what the heck was wrong.

An hour later though, we were back on the bus and it was working again. I would have killed someone if we would have gotten stuck in Milan. We had a good 4 more hours of driving after that. My head was still pounding and I was totally uncomfortable sitting in my seat. By the time we arrived at Santa Maria Novella, I was a total zombie. Mar, Rachel, her roommate and I shared a cab home and within about 10 minutes after walking through the front door I was curled up and snoring.

What a fabulous “last weekend.” :)

Zurich, Hooters, and waaay too much to drink

Dec 9
The day began with my phone alarm going off at 7AM – the bus for snowboarding was leaving at 8 and we were sposed to be out and ready to go by 7:45. Waking up wasn’t that bad because everyone was pretty excited about hitting the mountain. It’s been forever since the last time I woke up early in order to bundle up and head out onto the mountain; ahhh I miss that so much and can’t wait to go snowboarding at home!

Outside, Interlaken (which was brown when we showed up the day before) was covered in a huge white blanket. It snowed A LOT and was still snowing! Cooool! Somehow we all managed to get ourselves downstairs and were all bundled and sitting on the couches ready to go when Simon came in with the news. “There is a 50/50 chance that we’re going to be able to go… sit tight and I’ll get back to you guys in about 15 minutes.” WHAT?! When he said that I knew that we weren’t going. If the roads and runs weren’t open right then, and it was still snowing outside… UGH.

We got all dressed and excited for nothing. Snowboarding was cancelled for the day. I was totally disappointed and sat on the couch and pouted about it for about an hour after he made the announcement. I wanted to go on this trip for the snowboarding… boo. We didn’t know what to do for our day after that. The rental place made us return all of the jackets, pants, gloves, and goggles that they rented out (no one but me had actual snowboarding clothes there) sooo the option of playing in the snow was out also. BOOO.

Simon told us that Bus2Alps was offering a day-trip to Zurich for only 30 franks instead. Sounded better than nothing soo we all decided to go on that. The trip left at 11… we were up at 8 with nothing to do. We ended up sitting around the lobby discussing politics and religion; well actually, everyone else I was sitting with was discussing politics and religion while I was coloring and playing MASH (two of my favorite things).

The bus ride to Zurich was only about an hour and a half long (which is crazy cuz it’s clear on the other side of the country compared to Interlaken). Switzerland is tiny. I was freezing the entire ride there. I had my hood of my sweatshirt on, my scarf wrapped around my entire head about 5 times, and my arms inside of my shirt. Laura, who was sitting next to me, looked cold too – she was curled up in the tiniest ball that I’ve ever seen a person in! We watched Batman Begins. I didn’t really get it sooo I spent a lot of the trip napping.

When we finally got there it was cold and rainy. We originally set out in search of a restaurant with about 15 people but somehow our group turned into three: me, Marilena, and Dan. Zurich was a really cool place. TONS of awesome shopping (there was an H&M on every block, no joke. It was hard to resist going into all of them!) and really beautiful. We picked the right place to go to get in the Christmas spirit. The entire town had decorations and Christmas lights up. I loved it!

We walked for about 30 minutes before we finally found a restaurant that wasn’t ridiculously expensive to eat at. Switzerland is freaking expensive. EVERYTHING there. They don’t use the euro; they’re on the Swiss Frank (which from now on I will refer to as Frankfurters since that’s what Laura and I called them all weekend long). The exchange for the frankfurter is even worse than the dollar which doesn’t really help too much I guess. I took 200 frankfurters out of the ATM on Friday morning and it turned out to be a perfect amount for the weekend – phew.

We ate at the Swiss version of the Hardrock Café. I think the three of us were so cold from walking around that we didn’t really care where we ate as long as it was warm!!

After lunch we headed back out into the cold in the direction of an outside (but well heated bar) by an ice skating rink inside the courtyard of a giant castle. Cool! On our walk there we ran into Navid, Laura, Rachel, and Dave… somehow the girls convinced the guys to go shopping with them. Ha, I’m so shopped out from this trip at this point so we headed on to the bar.

The Ice Bar was really cool. I was in Christmas heaven. Seriously, I have never been to a place that got me more in the Christmas spirit than that bar (except maybe Naples in Long Beach). We ordered coffee and sat out under umbrellas and heat lamps and just enjoyed everything around us.

After the bar we headed back to the meeting spot cuz it was already time to head back. Inside the train station there was even MOOORREEE Christmas! Aisles and aisles of booths were set up selling Christmas/holiday stuff. In the center of the room was a HUGE Christmas tree completely covered in Swarovski ornaments!!! I’d kill for a tree like that… it was the most beautiful Christmas tree I’ve ever seen.

Eventually we had to head home from Christmas paradise. On the bus we watched Animal House and drank wine. Classic. God, that movie never gets old.

Back at Balmer’s we bundled up and headed out in search of dinner. Marilena, Laura, Natalie, Adam, Navid, Rachel, Dan, and I ended up at Hooter’s. Yup… Hooter’s. More than anything else, Hooter’s makes me think of Big Daddy. It was a lot of fun. Platters of chicked wings and pitchers of beer for everyone! The walk back home was a lot warmer than the walk there, that’s for sure. On the way home I was tackled into the snow by Adam… he better sleep with one eye open cuz I’m going to get him for that.

By the time we got back to the Balmer’s it was already around 10:30. We opened a bunch of bottles of wine and champagne and sat with about 13 people in our room drinking and talking and taking pictures. I was getting really nervous because oh, did I mention that Pete’s 21st birthday was the next day?? Which meant his 12:01 was that night? I was waay nervous to call him because I already knew how the entire situation was going to go: I was going to call him at MY midnight in Switzerland all excited about his birthday, and he was going to be not even as close to excited as me about it which was going to make me sad because I was going to start wondering why I even bother trying to do nice things for him. Then, since I was drunk, I was going to get sad and cry and drink more, then when I was totally ridiculous I was going to call him back and yell at him for making me feel stupid.

My prediction was DEAD ON. I called and cried after because he hardly reacted at all to my calling and passed his phone onto Stephanie for me to talk to? Don’t get me wrong, I love Steph and all but um I was calling with the sole intention of talking to Pete. On his birthday. I think that by now the world is pretty aware of the fact that I LIVE for birthdays and doing special things for people. It’s hard to want to care about someone that doesn’t even notice things that you do for them; and yet I still do and end up just getting angry at myself for still feeling like that. I dunno, I think I deserve a little more of, well, I dunno, something I’m just not sure what. Uh huh, yup.

ASLDFKAJ;SOEIAMS;LDKFJIEASN;DLKGAOIDGNKDFALOAIDF!!!!!

Anyways, when I came back into our hostel room full of about 10 people I admit that my crying did cause kind of a big scene and I’m so happy that I had incredible friends there to make me feel better. I was telling them all day long that I was going to be a huge disappointment of a phone call and everyone thought I was just being paranoid but when I came back in crying (I never cry these days) they knew I was serious. “You need this more than I do,” is what Natalie said to me as she handed over a more-than-half-full box of wine (which I finished in a matter of minutes). I don’t know HOW they did it but somehow about 15 minutes later I was back on my feet downstairs dancing. And dancing. And dancing.

To make a long long long evening short I’m just going to be honest and say that I don’t remember much past going down the club to dance. I have a memory here and there of calling Pete again and telling him a long list of all the things that he does that makes me sad (it’s a loong list too). I remember loving all of my friends again for making me feel better. I remember Dan trying to make me feel better. I remember hearing really great stories before falling asleep. I remember waking up the next morning in the jeans and tank top I’d worn “out” the night before. And I rememeber going down to breakfast and still being drunk and eating all the toast with Laura (who was still drunk also).

Wait, I just moved onto the next day… there were tons of pictures from the night before and none of them helped recover the events of the night before in my brain. Maaan. Overall, midnight on December 10 was probably my low point of, well, the year. Hahahaha, all I have to say is thank goodness I was in a hostel with good friends and no where to go.

a ruckus at Balmer's

Dec 8
I woke up this morning around 7AM to Navid going in and out of the room about 20 times. One of the activities that the program puts on in skydiving and he and Chris were both scheduled to jump that morning. I was in no mood to be awake at 7AM considering that I had just fallen asleep only a few hours before. When they came back a little bit later we were all still in bed sleeping. Unfortunately skydiving for that day was cancelled because there was too much wind.

I have no desire to ever go skydiving. It’s not that I’m too scared or anything, but honestly it just doesn’t sound that something that cool to do and to be honest I’m not that impressed by people that do/have done it. AND it costs a ton of money…??? I really don’t get it. I gues the adrenaline rush would be cool but honestly? Go run a mile and you’ll get the same feeling. I didn’t argue with anyone that wanted to do it; I mean it’s THEIR $400 afterall.

After showering in the sketchy water-fountain-esque shower and brushing my teeth in the traugh-like sink the girls and I headed towards downtown Interlaken. The city of Interlaken itself was tiny but really beautiful and German-mountain-village looking. I loved it. We hit every souvenir store that existed in that town. Unfortunatly, a lot of places were closed because December 8 is a big holiday for Europeans (the Immaculate Conception) but it was fine.

Swiss people are not very nice. Natalie got yelled at in the first bar we went to for some coffee. Then a few stores later we were all yelled at again. Ehhh, whoooaa everyone, calm down! Jeez. I didn’t end up buying anything except some chocolate from a really awesome chocolate store. Whaaaat?!? C’mon, the Swiss are famous for their chocolate, beer, knives, weird hats, yodlers, and cookoo clocks and it only made sense to purchase one or two of the things on that list!

There was no snow in Interlaken. The air was cold and we were bundled up with scarves and gloves but there was no sign of snow (except on top of all the really tall mountains that surrounded the town). Our plan for the next day was to go snowboarding and unfortunately the nearest resort that would prolly be open was a good three hour drive away! Ugh.

After walking around for 30 minutes trying to find a non-Italian restaurant, we grabbed some sandwiches and each bought two different, really pretty cans, of beers and headed back to the hostel. We sat on the comfy couches in the living-room area of it and kicked back for a while. Have I mentioned that our hostel was awesome? Rick described it as “the place to go if you’re missing your frat house at home.” It had a TV room, pool tables, ping-pong tables, a comfy living room, a dining room with cheap (but not too bad) food, a souvenir store, AND a really cool bar/discotek that everyone in the city goes to at night! Sooo maybe my parents wouldn’t like it so much, but we loved it!

The plan after lunch was to go ice skating at the rink down the street but by the time we were done defrosting and eating the session was already over. Instead we popped in High Fidelity and spaced out with our second beers and Toblerone’s.

Part way through the movie we headed next door to the snowboard/ski rental place and rented boards and boots for snowboarding the next day. Yay! I WAS SO FREAKING EXCITED TO GO SNOWBOARDING! AND this was the thing I got for free sooo it felt doubly as good to be able to go riding for a day paying nothing when everyone else had to pay 220 euro.

Then the drinking began. Our hostel conveniently had TWO happy hours so of course we were at both of them! The first happy hour began at 5:00. To pass the three hours before our fondue dinner reservations we pushed two tables together, all bought two beers each, and layed some playing cards out for a good old fashioned game of Kings. I don’t even remember the last time I played Kings because it was so long ago. God I love that game. We had about 12 people around the table playing too, which made it even better.

At dinner the drinking continued with an unlimited pitcher of wine. A pot of cheese fondue and several pitchers later the conversation turned serious. Adam, the most fabulous gay boy I have ever known that I love love love so much, sat with us and answered all of our questions about homosexuality that we’ve all had in our brains but always lacked an appropriate person to ask. I’m not kidding when I say that I’ve never met anyone like Adam. He is the most secure, comfortable in his own skin, guy that I know.

Eventually after dinner we headed down to Metro (the bar in Balmer’s) and danced until it was time to go to sleep. Dancing is still probably one of my favorite things to do in life. I could dance all day and night if I possible.

Half way through the evening I wanted to go out to get some air annnddd to my surprise, IT WAS SNOWING! I was so excited because that meant that snowboarding the next day was going to be fabulous.

Our entire room was in bed by midnight. Hahaha. I guess it had been a long evening since it started at 5:00 happy hour ANNND we were all going snowboarding the next day and didn’t want to feel tired and dead for it so it only made sense. I slept reaaaallyy well. I wasn’t even THAT drunk either. Based on the wide-range of snoring in our room that night though I’d say that majority of the room was pretty out of it. Navid tried to convince me that I was one of the snorers since he was sleeping next to me but I’m sure that (for once) it wasn’t me. Psh.

The 8 hour bus ride

Dec 7
Around 6:15ish Marilena and I emptied the contents of a wine bottle into a water bottle (glass bottles are just waaay too heavy to walk and drink out of) and made our way down to Piazza Savonorola. The bus was due to pick us up at 7 and since soo many kids from SUF were signed up to go they made a special stop at Syracuse for us. It was a big drunken fiesta in the piazza before the bus came. EVERYONE had drinks! Some girls even found a place that sold juice boxes of wine!!

The program that was taking us on this trip was called “Bus2Alps” and the dude that ran the whole thing was an Australian named Simon. He was cool but you could tell that the whole thing was totally disorganized. First of all, he didn’t have a final head count and two people (he was one of them) didn’t end up having a seat. One kid had to sit in the aisle and Simon stood the whole time until we go to the half-way point and met up with the other bus.

Santa Clara took up the back half of the bus. I think that all of the other people on it hated us. It might have been from our screaming sing along with music blasting out of iPod speakers. It might have been one of us getting up to go to the bathroom every two minutes (the liquid starting kicking in all at once). It might have been from us talking waaay too loud or taking a million pictures… who knows.

The girls sitting in front of Marilena and I sucked and put their seats back as far as they could go which made our seats about half the size of how they should normally be. Ugh.

The ride was looong. It took about 8 hours to get there (we arrived at the hostel at 3 in the morning!). We stopped once at an Italian-style truck stop for some food then drove on. At one point everyone seemed like they were dozing off. I could not sleep for the life of me. I even took one of Dan’s mystery pills but it didn’t help me fall asleep. I felt totally relaxed and wide-awake. AHHH. It was so annoying. When we finally got to the mountains everyone was back awake with me.

The snowy Alps out the window were incredible. Even though it was pitch black outside, the moon reflecting off the snow made them glow a little bit. I was content with being awake to watch them go by. Only the last 45ish minutes of the drive had twisty roads, so that was nice. Other than the girl that got sick from drinking too much no one barfed. Haha, ew. Gross. Thank god.

When we finally got to the hostel and unloaded all of our stuff, we checked in and headed to our rooms. I ended up in an 8-person room with Marilena, Laura, Natalie, Rachel, Navid, Dan, and Chris. It worked out perfectly. Our room had 4 bunk beds; it was the biggest slumber party I’ve ever been to.

After about 10 minutes of chatting we realized that we were all totally exhausted and the room (other than a few snore-ers) was totally quiet until the next morning.

Art Show and Interlaken

Oh, did I mention that i’m in an art show today? Three of my prints are on display in the SUF student art show today in the painting studio in Piazza Donatello. Ha, whoops. I guess a lot of stuff has been going on and it totally slipped my mind. I had my first art show over the summer and I spent most of the summer slaving away over my two paintings in it; I think the fact that I worked so hard on my pieces was the reason why I was so excited for that show.

For this show, I admit, I’m not that excited. Firstly, I don’t really like printmaking that much. It’s a cool art-form and I’m really glad that I got to learn about and experience it first hand BUT I think it’s a little bit out dated. I don’t like it half as much as painting; there are a lot of variables in printmaking and I always feel like I don’t have total control over how the final image turns out.

My first image is a plexi-glass dry-point of the leaning tower of Pisa, the second is a zinc etch of a lifeguard tower and the Manhattan Beach pier, and my third print (that I finished yesterday) is a zinc etch of a picture of Marilena, Kate, Amelia, and I that I took on Halloween in Barcelona; I like the third one the best. It bothers me that my images aren’t perfect. They def are a good display of the printmaking learning process and you can see through all the pieces that I get more and more used to the technique with more experience. However, I hate that it’s a show about “improvement” rather than “look at how freaking good I am at this!” Ifthatmakessense…?

Anyways, I wasn’t even planning on going but Susana, Marilena, and Laura convinced me that I should (I’m a sucker for other people that are excited about my art). It starts two hours before the bus leaves for Interlaken sooooo I GUESS it won’t hurt to stop by for a second to check it out. Now that I think about it, it’s going to be cool to see what everyone else has been working on all semester long.

My mom called me yesterday evening to tell me that she missed me. :) Usually I’m the one to call people at home cuz I’m the one missing them; it felt good to be the one being missed this time. I MISS YOU TOO MAMA AND I WISH WE COULD HAVE GONE CHRISTMAS SHOPPING TOGETHER!

Bytheway, I’ll be home in two weeks… crazy!

In Italian please?

Dec 6
The weather report for Interlaken this weekend looks crappy: rain and cold on Friday, snow and cold on Saturday, then clouds and cold on Sunday. Meeh, whatever. I’m still really excited because about 60 kids from SUF are going (majority SCUers I assume) and even if there’s nothing for us to do we can all just hang out and party together for our last free weekend before we head into finals and packing for home. Unfortunately it’s looking like snowboarding isn’t going to happen because, well, Interlaken doesn’t even HAVE snow yet! What? I thought the Alps always had snow… hm…

Today is a mellow one again. I actually plan on doing work this afternoon. I know, what?! Me?!? Work?!?! I told my famiglia Italiana that this morning and they laughed at me and thought I was joking. Yup, they still think I’m stupid. Fabulous.

Last night, I scolded the fam because they ALWAYS speak Spanish to each other! It takes me twice as long to understand what they’re saying in Spanish than when they speak Italian (which makes eavesdropping really difficult) AND in Italian class lately I’ve been mixing up Spanish and Italian words sooooo I told them that the Spanish has got to stop. Solamente parlate Italiano per due settimane! This morning at breakfast they kept messing up and switching to Spanish. I had to yell at them, liek, three times!

Hey, it’s pretty cool that I can recognize the difference between the two the second they start speaking…

Let’s see… what else can I say about today? Oh, I’m buying a new shampoo and toothpaste since the bitches at the Amsterdam airport confiscated mine. Oh, and I’m packing for Svizzera. And um… yea, that’s it. CIAO!

THREE months!

Dec 5
I haven’t been in the USA for three months (94 days to be exact)… that’s a loooong time. The countdown to go home is getting small and smaller; I think everyone’s pretty excited about that. It’s painful to STILL be in school. Ugh, the semester system sucks. It’s such a freakin looooong time to be in the same class! SCU started 2 weeks after us and are already in finals week right now. What? Another reason to add to my list of reasons why I hate Syracuse in Florence.

Speaking of lists, I added/edited a few things to my “Things I’m Starting To Miss At Home” list that I posted about a week ago:

#3 was El Sombrero but seeing as that is no longer a possibility since it burned to the ground, I’m going to have to replace El Som with “Mexican food” in general
# 5 has been edited to read: “Diet Coke and non-fat milk” because even though eating my morning cereal with warm cream was good for a while, it’s gotten old and I’m really missing the ice cold watery milk that I’ve been drinking my whole life
#16 was added a few days ago: “the nook.” I’m not even sure if there are a lot of people that even know what this is, but for those who do (and especially to the specific person whose nook I miss) you’d feel the same way if you used to have one too.

Finals coming up are seriously starting to make people go crazy. I noticed it today down in the dungeon where the computer lab is. I usually arrive around 9 every morning to get all my blog/homework/printing/gossip column reading/e-mailing out of the way for the whole day – usually at 9 it’s nice because it’s completely empty. Today however, it was jam packed and people were basically beating eachother up and getting in fights in order to get on the computer. WHOA EVERYONE.

This afternoon after the gym Marilena and I zoned out and had arts and crafts time. Our project was a little Christmas card for our brother Manuel. About a week ago when I bought my Cosmo magazine it came in a package with another magazine, a SIMS sampler, and a poster of a girl modeling some Christmas lingere. Welllll, it only made sense to write a little speech bubble coming out of the lingere model’s mouth saying, “Ti amo Manuel! Oooh baby!” Right now the poster is sitting on his pillow waiting for him to come home. :) “Buone Feste Manuel – from, le tue sorelle.”

Mamone was over for dinner and a sleepover again. Ugh, I haven’t written about Mamone yet huh? Well. Where should I begin. Mamone’s real name is Nico and he is a friend of Susana and Kike’s from Argentina and now lives and works here in Firenze. He lives with his mother… she’s old; we met her at a dinner party one night. Anyways, Marilena and I call him “mamone” because our Fam and Gender teacher told us that the technical term for an adult male that still lives with his mother (yes, there really is a technical term) is “mamone.”

Anyways, I’d say Mamone is in his 40’s and is kinda weird and ugly and, until tonight, not very nice to Marilena and me. His mother has been visiting family in Argentina for a few weeks now and Mamone has pretty much moved in with us until she gets back. No joke. This dude is at our house more than Marilena and I are here. He eats dinner with us every night, he sleeps on the fold-out couch, he showers here, and he eats breakfast here every morning. The few times I’ve been home during the day, he’s here too…? Ehhh…

He only speaks Spanish and Italian and usually ignores Marilena and I (even though we sleep, liek, a wall away from him and eat basically every meal together) but tonight he was sitting next to us in Manuel’s usual spot (who was MIA tonight) and it was actually pretty fun. Usually at dinner Susana and Kike pour us the saddest little glasses of wine but tonight, Mamone was in charge of pouring our wine and he did a very good job at basically keeping our glasses full all meal long. Then he actually spoke to us and even though it was in his broken English/our broken Italian he told us jokes and actually laughed at ours when we told them back! I was very surprised… I’ve been hating him for about a month now and all of a sudden tonight he was cool. Maybe he was drunk? Hahaha.

Oh and PS, I just walked to the bathroom to brush my teeth and walked by the fold-out couch with Mamone comfortably snuggled up on it… that’s the 3rd time THIS WEEK; it’s TUESDAY!

X-mas lights in Le Cure!

Dec 4
It rained on my walk to school today but it was fine with me because my new sweatshirt is soooo comfy that I hardly even noticed the rain. Yup that’s right, I broke down in Amsterdam and bought myself a hooded sweatshirt. I’ve been without one this whole time and figured that since I only have a little over two weeks left it’d be okay. :)

Nothing too exciting happened today. Everyone’s starting to get stressed about finals. Luckily I only have one actual final exam and it’s Italian (piece of cake). I have a little 5-pager to write for Va Bene and a three-question take home test but I’m not expecting either to be that hard. Actually, the hardest part is going to be the action of making myself sit down to write them both out! I think next week I’m going to spend the whole week finishing everything/studying… this week I’m still taking it easy.

Hahaha, I actually have so few things to do that I volunteered to help Natalie’s group out for their marketing project. They have to create a business and they asked me to do all the illustrations of how they want the store to look for their proposal. Since I have really nothing to do (at the moment) I said I’d do it. I LOOOVVEEE stuff like this anyways sooo it’s not that big of a deal.

After the gym on my walk home I was really excited because all of the Christmas lights were put up in Le Cure. I took the long cut through the piazza instead of under it through the graffiti tunnel (even though it was raining and freezing and I was wearing soccer shorts) just so that I could look at the lights and get myself feeling all holday-ie. Ahhh, I can’t wait til Christmas!

Okay, enough procrastinating. Back to working on other peoples’ homework!

back from Amsterdam

out of respect for my mama and papa i have chosen not to post my entries from Amsterdam.
if you're interested in the details, e-mail me and i'll tell you everything. :)

Amsterdam was weird and beautiful and sooo much fun.
more stories to come later -- 17 days to go!

Buone Feste!

Nov 30
Today all Florentine’s are celebrating. No one’s at work, stores are packed with people, and… I had school. Booo. I don’t understand. SUF claimed that the reason we didn’t have Thanksgiving off was because they want us to live like Italians but then a day like today comes along where all Florentines have the day off to celebrate and we still have school. What bitches. Syracuse sucks.

Oh, bytheway, the holiday today? They’re celebrating the fact that Florence was the first place that abolished the death penalty. Hey, I’d prolly be pretty proud of that too? I think that Kike and Susana are going to a big dinner party tonight with friends. Susana’s been cooking all day long (our house smells incredible!) – hopefully, the party’s not here. Oh god. What if it is?!?

Turns out that dinner tonight WAS a party. There were 10 fast-talking Italians sitting around the dinner table with Marilena and me. Luckily we planned ahead and had been sipping wine all afternoon and were able to actually enjoy ourselves and the company for the entire meal.

Italian was cancelled today so Marilena and I took our extra two hours this morning to walk downtown and do a little bit more Christmas shopping. I’m excited about the things I got but am not going to give away any secrets!!!

Va Bene (our Fam and Gender teacher) showed up 15 minutes late today? Er? She’s really cool as a person (she came in bitching about how retarded people who work at SUF are) but as a teacher she’s just terrible. It’s really too bad. We started watching a movie today called “Angela.” We moved onto studying women’s roles in the mafia – cool! Unfortunately it was a subtitle movie aaaand a girl with a big head was right in front me sooo I only got to read half the words, which made it really hard to understand what was going on. Something about an affair, and dealing coke, and someone being murdered and dumped into a river? I guess it was just your typical Italian mafia movie actually.

I got a few really fabulous surprises in the mail today – my award for sending in my Christmas letter to my mom first was a teddy bear wearing the most awesome outfit I have ever seen (now Lily has someone to keep her company during the day) and a little bit of spending money. Yay! Thanks mama! I love them both!!!

I talked to Pete this morning. It was a save-this-conversation-and-read-it-later-when-I’m-feeling-sad-about-our-realtionship kind of talk, so that’s cool. I feel like I’m starting to get nervous about seeing him again, notgonnalie. Ah!

Tomorrow we leave for Amsterdam; I’m a little bit anxious but at the same time really excited. I’m going to try to be open-minded about what the city has to offer. Hehe. My luggage for this trip consists of a backpack full of 3 shirts, 4 scarves, a toothbrush, shampoo, some sweatpants, and a few diabetes supplies. Hahaha, I’m flying to a different country and only bringing these things… it’s crazy. At home over the summer I’d drive to San Diego FOR THE DAY and bring a bag twice as big as this backpack for this weekend. Things change I guess?

Marilena also packed while I was packing – this weekend she’s going down south to visit her Italian family in Bari. They are crazy. Apparently they plan on surprising her by renting out a banquet hall so that all SIXTY of her relatives can gather for dinner and get to know her. She’s like a celebrity. All the fam (that speaks only Italian and are all total strangers to her) will be there! At this point it’s hard to tell who’s more nervous: me going to Amsterdam to do who knows what or her going down south to meet the fam.

All I know is we’re both going to have fabulous stories to tell eachother when we get back!

the usual

Nov 29
It was clear today but the air temperature was about 10 degrees (that’s maybe 45? 50?). I always shower in the morning and as I’m walking to school get really mad at myself for wearing my hair out wet since it always makes me about 10 degrees colder than my already freezing self.

For my 20 minute break between Italian and Printmaking I bought myself a beer at a near by grocery store – it only costed 30 cents! No one would be able to resist that… it was nice to tune out and drink my beer and download my music during my lunch break. I might have to do that everyday…

I just found out that next week we have a student art show and our teacher is requiring all of us to submit two prints from this semester... i'm a little bit dissapointed because even though i have learned a lot about technique and style, nothing i've made is really that great since i'm still trying to figure out how to actually DO everything. I'm a total perfectionist when it comes to my art and i'm not happy about having to display stuff that i don't think is exactly the way i want it to be. UGH.

I only spent about 20 minutes at the gym this afternoon. A combination of a low blood sugar and really bad stomach pains made me decide to call it a day and head home.

I’m still upset about El Sombrero. I talked to my friend at SCU about it and his response was, “Don’t worry, just have Chipotle instead.” Um. No. If he had said that to my face I would have slapped him. I think I’m in phase #2 of grieving because this made me really really angry. Wait, isn’t that right? Phase #1 is sadness, 2 is anger, 3 is depression, and 4 is acceptance? Something like that? Watever, I’m def angry.

Mona Lisa Smile and Iraq

Yesterday -- Nov 29
I bought an Italian Cosmo magazine this afternoon because Rachel Bilson was on the cover and I love her. It only costed two euro and included a second gossip magazine called “Tu,” a poster of a girl modeling some Christmas lingerie, and a CD with a sample version of the Sims computer game. Cool! I’ve only flipped through Cosmo for a few minutes so far but am excited because I think that if I really sat down and concentrated I would be able to understand about 90% of it. I’m excited because at home it takes me about an hour to get through an entire magazine and I’m always sad afterwards because unless I want to read the same articles over again, I have to wait an entire month for the next edition to come out. BUT with my Italian Cosmo I figure that it’s going to take me about two weeks to get through the entire thing! THEN I only have to wait two more weeks for the December issue!

I’m surprised by how many words don’t translate from English into Italian AND by how all the celebrities in the magazine are American. I’m not sure if that’s exciting or a sad. Whatever, I guess Cosmo IS an American magazine after all and I shouldn’t be complaining.

Today at school was hardly a “day at school.” For Italian our class had to meet at the Horne Museum (which turned out to be a good 30 minute walk away from our house; ugh, it’s GREAT to not have a broken foot anymore). Our tour was in all Italian. I understood pretty much everything she said. A few times I caught myself not knowing what was going on but I think that might be because it was so FREEZING inside the museum (that’s actually a house) that my brain was more focused on raising my body temperature than translating Italian to English.

After the museum tour, Marilena, Christy, Mardee, and I took advantage of being downtown and grabbed sandwiches at Oil Shoppe for lunch. I’ve been there about 5 times now and have ordered the same thing every time. A #1. If anyone ever goes there, that’s the sandwich to get.

We made it to Fam and Gender right on time. We watched the rest of Mona Lisa Smile today; god I love that movie. HOWEVER. I have a huge problem with my teacher.

Firstly, she’s trying to convince us that the director decided to shoot this movie because it has huge statements to make about America’s involvement in war with Iraq. The entire class thinks that she is full of shit. Here’s what she says:

-Mona Lisa Smile was not filmed in order display what life was for women back in the 1950’s, it is really propaganda supporting America’s war with Iraq.

Wait what? I’m not saying anymore; it gets me too angry.

The Worst News Ever

I have been crying for the past hour. El Sombrero burning down to the ground is the most tragic thing I’ve heard since our cat Tootie committing suicide off our roof deck last summer. I’ve been planning since BEFORE I left home for Firenze, my first day back in Manhattan Beach and a big part of that first day was going to be spent eating as much as I can fit in me at El Som. I feel like a family member died. That’s how much the news hurts. I had a lot of stuff to type about today but now, none of it seems that important. Maybe I’ll save it all and post it tomorrow. :(

Today’s entry is dedicated to El Som #1. RIP.

grey skies in Italy

November 27
Because of a three hour nap yesterday afternoon (after working so hard at the gym that I made myself feel sick – ah!) I had a really hard time falling asleep last night. I feel like I always have a lot of things on my mind these days and before I go to sleep is always difficult because that’s the time of day when I have unlimited time to do nothing but think and stress and feel happy and get lonely about everything.

I started Running With Scissors. It is freaking classic. I was laughing out loud the entire time I was reading. I think Marilena might think I’m crazy.

Pete called me before I fell asleep also. He was leaving to drive back up to SCU – ugh, I hate the San Diego to SCU drive… it’s looooong. Oh well, it was good to hear his voice.

This morning I got a 6:30AM wake up call from him. I was in phase-four of sleeping and was ready to cuss him out for waking me up but when I realized why he was calling I stopped myself. His car had broken down on the grapevine and he had just been towed and now was staying in a motel overnight until tomorrow to get his car fixed. Maaaaaan. He sounded reasonably calm; I would have been a total hurricane of anger/panic/fear if it was him.

It’s hard being thousands of miles away because I wanted to help but I didn’t know what to tell him to make him feel better (I hate when that happens). I was kinda worried about him (um… the grapevine/5 is a sketchy place full of truckers). I called my dad after we hung up and passed the problem onto him. I love my dad. I hope that wasn’t weird of me to ask him to check up on Pete… oh well, there’s not really anything else I could do.

We talked again while i was at school; three calls in one day? a for sure sign of lonliness. poor guy. :(

It’s cold and foggy in Italy today. Hopefully it’s one of those days that starts out grey but ends up clear.

le domeniche

Nov 26
Sundays in Firenze are always really mellow. No stores are open. No one’s out on the streets. People just hang out all day. After a loong time on the tread-mill at the gym I headed to school to catch up on some work that I’ve been putting off for, um, a few weeks now.

That’s where I am right now. School. Blogging. And writing e-mails. And downloading music. And doing everything BUT studying. Heh.

Viva Firenze!

November 25
Yesterday… let’s see… what happened yesterday… I don’t even remember.

Oh, wait, yea I do. Yesterday was day #2 of “Viva Firenze.” Marilena and I had an entire list of museums and monuments and famous sights in Florence to go visit. Unfortunately due to some bad blood sugars we only went to two of the eight places BUT they were both awesome.

Our first stop was the old monastery in San Marco. Lots and lots of frescoes depicting. The. Same. Things. Over. And. Over. Again. Religious frescoes are really beautiful BUT when you see a million of the same one they get a little bit old. I’m glad that we went to the monastery though because the upper level of it was the sleeping quarters and all of the cells were open for the public to see. It sorta looked like a really depressing dorm with lots of religious symbols everywhere. It was really cool to see. Considering how much of an asshole he was, Savonarola was given a really big room.

After San Marco, we continued our walk downtown and were planning on heading up the dome of the Duomo but a long line and a low blood sugar stopped us. Instead we went to the Uffizi. Even though I’ve been to Firenze before and even though I’ve lived here for three months now, I have never been in the Uffizi. Unacceptable.

The line was reasonably short which was nice. The Uffizi is really great. Huge and full of super famous stuff. Even though we just sorta power-walked through it we did go to every single room. It’s cool because I have now taken so many art history courses that I don’t need a guide to tell me about any of the pieces. It’s like I can give myself my own tour of famous museums! Botticelli’s Birth of Venus was as impressive as I’ve always imagined it to be.

For lunch we ate at Yellow Bar. When we got there the guy seated us in a booth that fit four and already had two 13 year old boys sitting in it… eh, they really cram people into their restaurants. The boys looked horrified to be sitting next to us. It was awesome. A really good pizza and a really good beer (and a really good buzz) later we decided to head home.

At a bookstore on the way home I bought myself a new book. It’s been, well, three months since the last book I read (I just couldn’t get myself through the one I brought here, Wuthering Heights, for some reason) and have been itching to get back to reading – at SCU I always have about 5 books lined up to read. I ended up getting Running With Scissors. I can’t remember who it was that told me this was really good but I’ve been wanting to read it for a long time now. YAY! I’m so excited. Ahhh, new books; it’s the little things in life!

For the 10 minutes we were in the bookstore, it rained. How lucky are we?

For the rest of the afternoon Marilena and I watched one of the only in-English movies our family has. Out of Africa? I think it’s called that. We only finished about half of it but so far it’s been good. It was so freezing in our house that Marilena and I both pulled our huge comforters out of our rooms to bundle up with on the couch – we got laughed at by the entire fam. Figures.

The plan for the night was to go to dinner at a well-known restaurant called Za’ Za’. We were excited cuz a) it was, liek, the first time that we were eating out for dinner since we’ve been in Firenze (Susana’s cooking is so good that we’ve been resisting eating out) and b) a lot of our friends wanted to go with us. Well… somehow our group of eight people ended up being a group of three. God I hate flakes. Well, it’s not even flakes – I hate when people say their going to do something then decide they’re not going to but assume you know they’re not doing it anymore and never formally let you know. Whatever.

Dinner with Marilena and Amelia was so much fun I’m actually happy no one else came. Our waiter LOVED Marilena. He kissed her on the cheek. Hehe. It was cool because he only spoke to us in Italian even though he knew that we were American and spoke English. AND it was even cooler because he knew that I understand everything he was saying and, liek, complimented me on it! FINALLY. Jeez.

Gnocchi, pasta del mare, bruschetta, a liter of wine, bread, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar later we headed home. On the way Marilena got in a fight with a lady in a gelato shop. It was retarded. Wait, no, the lady working in the shop was retarded. The whole scene was really funny actually. So gelato was nixed and our second option (which we settled on) was McDonald’s soft serve. It was yummyyyyy (and reminded me of late night trips with Steph to get soft serve at school; ahhh miss you steph!). At home before bed we tried to watch more of Out of Africa but it was so late and we were so dead that we only watched it for about 10 minutes before calling it a night. I must admit, our Viva Firenze weekend was a real success.

let the christmas countdown begin

November 24
The first thing I did this morning (after drinking a whole bottle of water and taking a few Advils… heh) was turn on my Christmas music playlist!!! Oh yes, the countdown to Christmas has begun and I am soooo excited!

Marilena and I decided to spend our entire day today Christmas shopping. We’ve been planning our shopping day today for weeks… no joke. We left the house around 11ish and headed downtown towards San Lorenzo. I can honestly say that San Lorenzo is MY MOST FAVORITE PLACE TO SHOP IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. It took us a little while to get into the swing of things and to commit to purchases but once we did time and money flew by. Eventually, my bags weighed sooo much and were cutting off the circulation in our arms and hands so badly that we decided to call it a day and head home. I hope everyone is excited for me to come home – if not, they should be because I’m going to be, liek, the blonde version of Santa Clause with a big sack of treasures for everyone!!!

I’d love to list off the millions of things that I bought for everyone BUT (in the off chance that anyone still actually reads my blog) I don’t want to give away any of the surprises. Some funny things happened today while we were out… let’s see, we witnessed the Africans selling illegal purses and sunglasses get the signal from their homies that the cops were coming and they all literally packed up and in a matter of seconds were SPRINTING away – I could not stop laughing. Also, a guy selling us **** ***** ****** (I don’t want to give anything away) had a huge crush on Marilena and I and gave us some Hello Kitty pins for free. Eh… THANKS buddy; we weren’t really sure how to react. Around the time he offered us his lunch that he packed himself for the day we said our “no thanks’” and moved on. Hahaha.

On our walk home there was a Manuel sighting… he was riding by us on his bike in THE most classic outfit I have ever seen: aviator sunglasses, a snow hat (the kind with string that you tie around your face and a big fluff ball on top), and a really small, bright, turquoise sweater!!! Just picture that. I laughed so hard that it hurt.

After we got home and sorted through our loot we spent a few hours at the gym working off our turkey feast from the night before. It felt good to sweat, notgonnalie. We were confused by the abundance of cute boys at the gym today… I think that’s the first time I’ve said that in all the three months that I’ve been in Italy. We were more confused than excited about it… haha.

Our room has been FREEZING lately. Right now more than anything i’m missing my usual SCU outfit of Uggs, sweatpants, and hooded sweatshirt – if anyone sees me over winter break, don’t be surprised if this is what I’m wearing. Everyday.

Dinner conversation was really entertaining last night. Susana and Kike were out for the evening sooo it was Manuel, Marilena, and I. Manuel went into a tangent about how Santa Clause only wears a red suit because Coke wanted him to so that he’d advertise for their company… I told him he was full of shit and we got in a fight as usual. He and I have a love/hate relationship and I think we both get a lot of pleasure out of telling each other that the other person is stupid. Ohhhh Manuel.

We’re trying to convince the family to decorate the house for Christmas; well, I am atleast – besides carving pumpkins, decorating for Christmas is my favorite decorating time of year! I’ve learned so far that on December 8 ALL Italians buy their Christmas trees (it’s, liek, designated Christmas tree day or something). Unfortunately Marilena and I will be in Switzerland that weekend BUT I’m going to bother them everyday to make sure that they buy one for our apartment!!! Ahhh, I’m in such Christmassy mood already and it’s not even December yet!

After dinner Marilena and I dragged ourselves downtown towards the Duomo and met up with Navid, Natalie, and Chris (her boyfriend from SCU that’s here visiting) at Astor for a few drinks. Navid cracks me up. It was a mellow night and we ended up coming home around midnight-ish. Lots of stuff to do tomorrow….

"thanksgiving dinner"

November 23

Man oh man… I cried today. A bunch of times. That’s all I’m going to say about it. BUT, ironically, today waaasss a much happier day than yesterday.

Class was the same as usual. Nothing exciting to say about it EXCEPT that today was the first time in 20 years that I’ve been required to be in class ON Thanksgiving day.

After Fam and Gender, Marilena and I headed downtown to a hair salon. Marilena had a hair appointment this afternoon to get highlights… FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE! She is prolly one of the only people I know that’s NEVER gotten her hair colored, it’s crazy! She was really nervous and I originally planned on sticking around but there were no waiting chairs soooo after I grabbed her a sandwich from Oil Shoppe (to calm her nerves, of course) I headed back towards home. Her hair, bytheway, turned out really pretty! It has really pretty sun-kissed-light-brown-tints in it! She’s having trouble getting used to it, but I’ve already decided that it looks awesome.

The gym was the same as always. Full of Italian creepers. Ugh. Oh AND, my newest annoyance with the gym: the locker room FULL of naked Italian ladies. I’m sorry but I think it’s really weird when people walk around/lather themselves with lotion completely naked. Liek, 20 of them are in there everyday. All the boys I tell this too get all excited and, liek, think it’s “cool” but seriously… naked, really hairy (and I mean REALLY hairy; girls here don’t shave anything), middle aged, bodies, that have eaten one too many bowls of spaghetti, and should have taken the stairs instead of the escalator, talking about politics and their husbands is really gross… I try to avert my eyes…

When I got home the dinner table was set for nine (god; extra plates meant GUESTS were coming over) and all ready for a big feast… man oh man. The first thing I did after locking myself in our room was pull out a bottle of wine from our wardrobe stash and pop it open. This was def looking like a night where being a little drunk before dinner wouldn’t hurt! Two bottles later, Marilena and I were eating turkey, rice and olive oil, hummus, corn, potatoes, and artichoke hearts with the family. It was a FABULOUS dinner; not quite your typical American Thanksgiving meal BUT it did the job and we were both totally satisfied afterwards.

I finally talked to Pete after dinner.

Marilena and I were PLANNING on going out after dinner but after our feast and our wine we felt a little lazy and instead, curled up in bed to play a few rounds of Solitaire. A few rounds turned into us passing out for the rest of the night.

missing home on the holidays

Nov 22 AND 23
I feel sorta blue right now. It’s the first time I’ve felt like this since I’ve been here… I tried to snap out of it by decorating my bulletin board with new pictures and letters people have sent me recently; I helped but didn’t take the feeling away. Today was just a regular day sooo I’m not too sure what actually triggered the blueness. I think it has to do with something a friend and I talked about on AIM this morning; I dunno.

This morning our Italian teacher was nice and took our class out for coffee – having class in a bar instead of the classroom made it much less painful and more enjoyable, that’s for sure. Later in printmaking my friend Jackie had a brilliant idea to make dry-points of hand-print-turkeys. It was really fun… my turkey/handprint had a mohawk, a pierced gobble, sunglasses, bling, and an arrow through its heart. Hahahahahaha. Afterwards I started working on my next zinc plate… um, the image looks a little bit scary right now BUT it’s getting there… I’m not giving up until it’s perfect.

I’m glad I had those things to distract me from feeling depressed. I went straight to the gym afterwards hoping to get some endorphins flowing… it helped a little I spose. I really wanted to call Steph to chat about anything and everything BUT my poor little friend got her wisdom teeth out on Monday and I’m pretty sure that making her talk to me on the phone would be a form of torture. So then I called Pete; he does a really good job of cheering me up when I’m down – I called him a million times and couldn’t get a hold of him once. Boo. So then I called my mama. They were up in San Francisco at Ree and Kev’s for Thanksgiving dinner.

I love my mama; by the end of the conversation I was smiling and laughing again. It felt good to talk to her. I think that I’m starting to feel homesick. This time of year is one of my favorite times at home because it means Christmas shopping, family, friends coming home, snowboarding, a long winter break, Pete’s birthday, the advent calendar… and I’m missing all of it! It’s hard to be happy when you feel like you’re missing so much.

However, Italy is still fabulous. It’s starting to get Christmassy around here too. Stores are all decorated, Christmas lights are going up, it’s freezing cold… Tonight Susana says that she’s making us “Thanksgiving dinner” (this should be interesting) then tomorrow we’re keeping up with American tradition by going shopping since the day after Thanksgiving is THE biggest shopping day of the year.

But anyways, it’s the next day now (Nov 23; HAPPY THANKSGIVING)… I’m feeling a little happier today BUT if anyone happens to be bored and have nothing to do give me a call. I’d appreciate some love. CIAO CIAO!

PS. Pete please call me. = /

Ouzo, PROTECT ME!

Nov 22
So last night Marilena and I laid in our beds and watched the horrible storm going on outside. It was POURING rain and alternating between bright lightening and loud thunder ALL THE WAY THROUGH THIS MORNING… More than rain, i HATE HATE HATE thunder and lightening. I think it’s because when I was younger my mom made me watch “Poltergeist” with her… yea, I think I was traumatized. Ouzo is scared of the thunder and lightening too – he was in our room all night because we were the only people home to protect him! It’s a bummer because a lot of people took Thanksgiving break to come out and visit people here in Florence… they got here at the worst weather we’ve had this entire time!

Hahaha, speaking of people visiting I had another “small world” moment yesterday down in the Villa Rossa computer lab. A guy came into the computer lab that looked a lot like a guy I know at home in Manhattan Beach but I wasn’t completely sure it was him. Sooo I sat there for a minute and eavesdropped on him talking to someone else to see if I could recognize his voice and sure enough, it was Kevin Halcomb! He was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He’s here visiting a friend of his from Boulder that’s in the SUF program too. Hopefully if the rain let’s up we can hang out… at this rate it’s hard to tell.

Last night at dinner was funny. It was me, Manuel, and Marilena. Manuel is seriously more excited about my trip to Amsterdam coming up than I am! That’s ALL he wanted to talk about. Hahaha, I think he just wants me to sneak some souvenirs across the border for him ifyouknowwhatimean. Sorry Manuel; unlike you and your family thinks, I’m actually a good kid!

ps. thank goodness for marilena's boyfriend and all his knowledge about drugs... we think manual has a meth lab in his room; would that surprise anyone?

1 month to go!

Since we have only 30 days left I figured today’s an appropriate day to post this:

“Things I Really Miss At Home”
1) “MY” things: my beach, my strand, my car, my camera phone, my Vans, my big bed, my straightener, my computer speakers, my DVD’s
2) people: Steph, Molls, Taryn, Chow Mein, The Fam (obviously), Gus
3) El Sombrero
4) blonde roots
5) Diet Coke
6) American electrical plugs
7) wireless
8) fabric softener and dryers
9) somethinginappropriateformetotypesincemydadreadsthis :)
10) movie night with Pete
11) not being injured, sick, or hungover
12) manicures and pedicures
13) professors whose first language is English
14) Coffee Bean (specifically sugarfree vanilla ice-blendeds w/ whip cream)
15) a variety of clothes to pick from

what day is today???

November 20
This ones going to be a quick one because I am freakin exhausted. The days are starting to blur together and it’s getting hard to keep things straight… our train pulled into Firenze at 9:30 this morning instead of at 7 like it was sposed to. It was pouring rain and everyone missed morning classes. I was relieved to have the morning to bober around and do random things… I mostly just messed around on the internet and replied to e-mails people sent me (thanks everyone and I miss you all too!), checked out pictures of my beautiful little niece, and caught up on my tabloid gossip.

After printmaking (happy birthday Thomas!) Marilena and I made a quick trip to the grocery store then strolled home. I’ve been in my bed ever since; completely exhausted and ready to sleep for the night.

To: my future husband

November 19
Since I wasn’t able to fall asleep until around 3AM (and was awoken several times throughout the evening to POURING RAIN; yes it was raining so hard that I was woken up!) I had a little trouble waking up the next morning. I slept in til 9:45 (which is crazy for me). We dragged ourselves down to breakfast in full pajamas cuz we thought it was going to close then pulled ourselves back upstairs to pack everything up to go. We were taking another night train back to Firenze and had until 6:00PM that evening to do whatever we felt like.

Originally the plan was to go to Versailles but since it was raining sooo hard overnight and still sorta drizzling outside that morning we decided against it.

The first thing we decided to check out was the Moulin Rouge. Unfortunately, tickets to a show and dinner were almost up to 100 euro sooo we weren’t able to actually go to it but we saw the outside with its big red windmill. It was really cool actually. This is another place where my future husband and I will be going on a date to. (Future husband, if you happen to be reading this, you’d better be taking good notes!)

Afterwards we didn’t really have anything to do so we roamed around and did a little souvenir shopping. We almost saw a movie (most of the ones playing were in English with French subtitles) BUT none of the times worked out with our schedule.

For lunch we had fondue. Okay. I could live off of crepes and fondue for the rest of my life. It was DELICIOUS! The three of us agree that French food (minus the frog legs and snails and stuff…) is awesome – got that future husband? If a boy ever wants to impress me/have me as their instant best friend all he has to do is take me to get fondue or nutella and banana crepes. Hahahahaha.

After our fabulous lunch we sat at our favorite crepe café and watched all the people go by. Eventually it got really cold and started to drizzle so we headed back to our hotel and hung out in the lobby until it was time to go.

Soon SUF students started to pour in… Mar, Rach, and I agree that some of the girls that came in were THE most obnoxious girls we have ever heard. Here are clips of the convo that they were REALLY LOUDLY shouting about: “I WAS SO DRUNK LAST NIGHT THAT I’M SURPRISED I DIDN’T GET RAPED.” “I WAS TOO BUSY SUCKING FACE WITH A RANDOM GUY,” as said by a disgusting girl. “I MET A GUY FROM AFRICA; HE PROLLY HAD AIDS.” No joke. We were sitting there like, you guys are the reason why Americans are laughed at/hated by EVERYONE in the world. Ew, god, I mean, c’mon. Later on when we were talking about the huge scene we saw and heard about in the lobby our friend pretty much summed all of them up: they have no standards.

Friends, if I’m ever like that, EVER, please please please just slap me in the face. Thank you.

We were hearded to the train station around 6ish and our little crew lucked out and got our own room to the 4 of us again. It was weird to get on a sleeper train that left at 7PM cuz we were really sure what to do. We were going to have to wake up the next morning around 6ish sooo we knew we should prolly go to sleep kinda early BUT what were we sposed to do until then?

I bought a bottle of wine a little while before getting on the train, drank it, and contently spaced out until it was time to go to sleep. Unfortunately again, I couldn’t ever fall asleep. I was thinking too much again… I actually got up around 1ish (after laying there for 4 hours and not being able to relax) and wrote down all the things on my mind:

-how badly I have to go to the bathroom but don’t want to because a) I’d have to climb down from my top bunk and b) the power was out for most of the train ride and it was PITCH BLACK… when you’re scared of the dark, that’s kinda crazy. I kept thinking a robber or a killer was in our car the whole time.
-how much going to class tomorrow is going to suck since tonight seemed like it was going to be another “no sleeper” night.
-how to lose all the nutella’s worth of weight I’d gained over the weekend.
-a text message I’d received that day.
-what kind of bed to get once I get back to school… I’m thinking a small one wouldn’t be that bad.
-getting stoned in Amsterdam.
-Pete
-What to get people for Christmas
-what to write in my family Christmas letter about myself.
-taking 5 classes next quarter
-going to Mammoth for new years and how i’m not sure if I REALLY want to drive all the way there…
-how much I hate flying.
-how much I love my i-pod (and its ghetto-ness) and how much I love my “Boys Really Suck” mix.
-what to make my new website (I’m making for my art) look like.
-turning 21.
-what image to use for my next printmaking project
-my sore throat.

That’s about it for today. Man I loved Paris.

every monument in Paris

November 18
We were out of the room by 9 in the morning and didn’t return to it until 11 at night… today was quite a day:

1) breakfast in the hotel’s mini dining room – uneventful except that I drank two American size mugs of espresso. Yes, I was quite jittery afterwards...

2) metro to Saint Chapelle Cathedral– yet again we were serenaded by a rather pushy homeless woman… it was really funny actually.

3) Saint Chapelle Cathedral – thank goodness French metal detectors are there for decoration (?). Marilena went through the detector with her Swiss army knife (AGAIN) and the dude wasn’t even looking at the screen when our purses went by! Ooh well! Hehe, Saint Chapelle was awesome – tons of gargoyles and stained glasses.

4) walk from Saint Chapelle to Notre Dame

5) Notre Dame Cathedral – really beautiful inside and out… it was HUGE too. The outside was cluttered with gargoyles and flying buttresses.

6) walk to the “island behind Notre Dame”

7) SHOPPING on the “island behind Notre Dame” – we went in just about every store on the island because they were all fabulous. Most were very boutique-ie. I wanted to buy every hat that I saw but I resisted… it was tempting. I figure that since my roots are about 4 inches long I can allow myself a few new hats to cover them up.

8) long long looooooong walk along the Seine to the Orsay Museum. Seriously, according to Rick the two were really close to each other… they weren’t at all. It took us about 45 minutes to get there. Fortunately, it was a beautiful day AND along the Seine there were tons of little stands set up selling touristy type things… I was quite entertained the entire time. I might have bought a gift for my best friend at home… hehe.

9) lunch/bathroom break at a little café where the ladies were big bitches and kicked us out because we didn’t pay to eat there… or something weird like that. We ended up eating on the steps of the Orsay. It was nice (minus the pigeons with the nub-legs that were harassing us).

10) Musee d’Orsay – LOVED THE ORSAY! Loved loved loved it. I was freaking excited and was running around like a crazy person looking at all the Degas, and Monet, and Manet, and Van Gogh, and Cezanne, and Munch, and Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec, and Seurat, and Renoir, and Matisse, and Klimt, and Courbet, and Daumier, and Delacroix, and Renoir.... Omigod. GO TO THE ORSAY. Set aside maybe two hours for it too. It was freaking awesome.

11) more walking…

12) a stroll up Champs Elysees – there were tons of people and tons of shopping and it was really cool.

13) Arc D’Triumph – Rach climbed up it to check out the view from the top while Mar and I went in search of some coffee/Coke Light. We ended up in McDonald’s listening to Paris Hilton (Paris in Paris… hehehe, we’re so clever) and getting harassed by moooore homeless people.

14) walk to the Eiffel Tower…

15) up the Eiffel Tower (!!!) – by this time it was dark and the tower was already lit up for the night! It was so exciting! We waited in line to go up it (the stairs were closed and we had to take the elevator) for about 45 minutes. It was FREEZING cold. We were bundled and spent most of the time in line evesdropping on the three kids in front of us trying to figure out WHAT language they spoke. Seriously, it was really cool cuz they kept switching off between 4 different ones!

Marilena only headed up to the first level (she was scared of heights) but Rach and I wanted to go all the way to the top. Half way up you have to change elevators… we waited in line for about 30 minutes on the second level and it was about 20 degrees colder up there. Rach and I hardly spoke because we were so freaking cold AND annoyed by the stupid people in line behind us that were being super loud and super American.

The view from the top was INCREDIBLE. We were freaking HIGH too… I’m not usually scared of heights, but looking down from the top of the tower made me a little nervous. It was pretty lonely because EVERY SINGLE PERSON UP THERE was snuggling up with another person. Even Rachel was busy making a romantic phone call to her boyfriend of 3 years at home… psh, iiiii wanted to call someone toooooo. I looked through my cell phone book about 5 times before I settled on calling Derek. Hehe, that’s what little brothers are fooorrr… I was really excited to say “I’M CALLING YOU FROM THE TOP OF THE EIFFEL TOWER!” and he seemed pretty excited to be chatting with me (even though I think I woke him up). Whatever… that’s another thing on my to-do list: go on a date up to the top of the Eiffel tower. :)

16) walk to a café for some din din…

17) Dinner at Café Corona – I had a really really really good grilled cheese, ham, and fried egg sandwich. Marilena and Rach got really yummy omelets; the French know how to do eggs, that’s for sure!

18) walk BACK to Saint Michel – After some wine and some defrosting, we headed out on the trek to Saint Michel for some desert crepes from our FAVORITE crepe man. The walk there was a looooong one but we all felt rested and a smidge tipsy after our wine sooo the fact that it was freezing cold and starting to rain didn’t really make that big of a difference.

19) Crepes – nutella and chocolate crepes… my newest favorite food. God they were good. We sat out in the freezingness and watched people for a good hour while we ate.

20) metro back to Hotel Rocroy – no serenaders this time BUT we did run into Julie who was visiting Paris for the weekend (I think she’s studying down in Barcelona)… haha, small world!!!

Seriously, this was the longest sight-seeing day ever but I loved every minute of it (even when my feet were completely flat from walking too much). Amelia called me about going out with them to some dance club but it was past 11 by the time we got home and I was exhausted. I thought I’d have a really easy time falling asleep but for some reason I tossed and turned for a good 4ish hours before I was able to doze off. I think I had too much on my mind. I’ve actually been having a lot of problems falling asleep and staying asleep lately and I really think it’s because I think too much when it’s bedtime. It’s the time of day that I miss home the most…