yay for thursdays

This morning our Italian class had a mock “Spazio Conversazione” day. A class of Italian students studying the English language came to SUF today and we had to sit in a circle and talk to them. In Italian. For all two hours. Without an intervallo.

So our Italian class has 8 girls and we were paired with two Italian girls named… yea, I have no idea what their names were. They were 18 and 19 years old and were from… yea, I have no idea where they were from (hahaha, so maybe I have a little problem paying attention sometimes).

After seeing that we were in a circle with our Italian girls, our teacher, Alessandro, up and left. Feeling claustrophobic, we all decided to move our circle outside the classroom into the courtyard since, once again, the sun was out full blast and it was a beautiful beautiful day. We all rolled up our sleeves and pants and skirts and tried to get tan!!! After a while we all ran outa stuff to talk about… I spent most of the second hour getting to know the girls in my Italian class who are all pretty cool people.

I was excited after class cuz we were just kinda roaming around, wasting time before our next class started, and someone asked me why I was so tan. Hahahahaha, it’s fabulous having Filipino/Native American/whatever blood/skin we have in our family cuz seriously it only takes an hour with good sun in October to get noticeably tanner. :)

Later during Family and Gender (the class where my teacher MADE me say something the other day) we had a “quiz.” Um, hardly a quiz though… we could use all our notes and our text book, then after the whole class had finished, we were going to go over all the answers with the class, and then not have to turn it in, and not get a grade… um, why don’t you just call it a worksheet?!? Well, I guess the word “quiz” is much scarier and it psyched people out and made them try harder… it totally worked on me.

After time was up we started going over the quiz and she asked for volunteers to answer the first question; during the quiz I worked really hard on the first question so that I could raise my hand, answer it before she could ask for “new voices/tera”, then space out for the rest of the class – I thought it was brilliant…

“Does… anyone… want… to… begin… the… discussion… of… question… number… 1…?” So I raise my hand. She looks at me. “Yes… Tera, do… you… have… a… question?” I was liek, ehh, um, no, I um, actually know the answer (you stupid bitch). Ok I didn’t say that, but I did feel really retarded when she assumed I was raising my hand to say anything else but the answer to the question. Needless to say, I got it right. Tera Linsley is no idiot thankyouverymuch.

Went to the gym again today. I’ve always hated starting up exercising again after not doing it for a while and yesterday I thought it was because of how hard it is physically and how sore I get BUT today I realized those things hardly compare with the real reason which is: diabetes. My blood sugar control has been really great while I’ve been here. I’ve gotten myself in a really good eating/sleeping/testing/insulin routine that’s been, actually BETTER than the routine I’m in at home. HOWEVER, throwing an entirely new thing into the mix is messing everything up again.

Both days now, after the gym my blood sugars have dropped so low that, after eating something, I’ve had to completely stop what I’m doing and sit there waiting until I feel able to decently function again. I guess I just have to take a few days to adjust EVERYTHING all over again… how annoying is that?!

Today I sent out a mass e-mail to every single person I could think of in Europe with a schedule of all the trips we (as in Marilena and I) have planned for the rest of our weekends here in an attempt to persuade other people into going on them with us… the more the merrier right??? I was really excited because a lot of people actually responded and are taking us up on our offers!!! Yay for being able to go to a different country every weekend!

Also today, I bought plane tickets for our trip to Spain coming up over semester break. We decided to skip our visit to Prague and are now in Madrid for the first three days, Barcelona for the next four days (and for Halloween!!!), and then Budapest for the final three days… it works out a lot better this way. I want to try to go to Prague another weekend in November but we’re realizing now that getting there by plane from italy is either really complicated or really expensive soooo… I’m not sure what’s going on at this point.

After the gym we popped open a bottle of wine (oh yea, did I mention that yesterday at the grocery store we bought four bottles for our stash?) and were chillin in our room when Manuel barges in wanting to use Marilena’s i-pod… he sees the bottle of wine, starts laughing, then walks out. Great, yet another reason for our family to think I’m crazy and am in the process of corrupting my little, innocent, roommate (who is actually always just as guilty as I am)!!!

At dinner the Berissi had guests over; they were a younger couple and the lady was pregnant (it made me miss my sister and my niece Lucia!). I almost died when I found out what we were eating for dinner. Kike didn’t know how to say what it was in English so he kept calling the concoction, “fish.” THEN he started calling it “octopus.” THEN he started calling it “little octopus…” by then I had caught on to what they were making and was liek, no thank you… I’m going to have to pass on the SQUID tonight!!! Are they kidding?!? I’m still slightly traumatized from eating a snail last week and am in no shape (even if I DID drink half a bottle of wine before dinner) to be chowing down on squid. Me and Manuel, who eats nothing green OR fishy just like me, settled for the chicken. Heh. Maybe next time.

THEN course two comes up… eggplant. Bleh. I’ve tried eggplant before and I know people are liek obsessed with it and say it’s the best thing ever and think I’m psycho when I say I think it’s gross, but seriously… I really think it’s gross.

It was annoying at dinner because the guests found out that Marilena was Italian and spoke to her in only Italian but everytime they spoke to me, they spoke English. UUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH – it’s starting to piss me off that people think that I’m a head with nothing but air in it. I really understand Italian very well and even though I’m a little bit slow at figuring out what words to say I still wish people’d give me a chance.

After dinner we got ready to go out and, for the first time since I’ve been here, set off WALKING to the centro! This is a huge deal for me. Since I broke my foot on day 3, the only way I’ve been able to get places at night has been by taxi which is proving to be really really expensive. With our water bottles of wine (we decided to not waste money on expensive bar/club drinks) we met Dan at Savonarola and the three of us headed to the Lion’s Fountain.

Supposedly the awards for the soccer tournament that we went to the night before were going to happen at this place sooooo tons of people were there. It was fun hanging out and drinking with everyone but when karaoke started it got waaay too loud and crowded (and annoying) so we moved onto the next desitination.

After following drunken Mark, who swore he knew where he was going (but really had no clue) and walking in a HUGE circle, we ended up at a bar/club/cool place called Angels. Gabe, who appeared out of nowhere TWICE throughout the evening (if you know Gabe it should be no surprise that he just randomly appears places because that’s how Gabe is), claimed that the bartender who worked there had the reputation as the “second best bartender in all of Florence.” Hm, second best? What exactly does that MEAN anyways?

We were so excited about our yummy drinks that we all ordered different ones then passed them around the table in order to try them all. They were all dangerously good (dangerous as in you don’t realize there is actually alcohol in it and could drink about 20 and end up completely wasted…). The bartender knew his stuff. I stood there for a good 10 minutes just watching him make drinks.

The rest of the night was kinda a blur. Around 1ish, we walked back towards Laura’s house and went to a “Mexican” restaurant. I was exhausted by then and wasn’t in the mood to order a Mexican-burrito-Italian-style. I tried a few bites and it was OOOKKKKay… Meeh, actually, it compared NOTHING to my beloved El Sombrero at home.

Tonight was fun. It’s nice hanging out with new people everywhere I go. There was some drama and fighting and yelling and stuff (which it felt really good NOT to be involved in and was actually really entertaining to watch), but everything turned out alright in the end.

By the time I was in my bed it was 3:10AM… I set my alarm for 6:00AM and fell fast asleep. Yea… 6AM; did I mention that I had a school field trip to Rome the next day and we had to meet at the train station at 7:40AM?? Oh, cuz we did.