Fiorentina ha vinto!!

Italians take their soccer seriously. Unlike US sports, people here go to the game to watch it… I mean ONLY watch it. They’re not there to meet girls, or socialize with friends, or even get drunk. Last night was ridiculous how obviously American we must have looked. Let’s just say that it was really easy to find our group of friends when we got there…

The game started at 8:30 and when we got to lo stadio (which was only a 15 minute walk from our house) I bought my purple “Toni” jersey and we set out to find our friends. It wasn’t very hard… Pretty much all of Syracuse was there which makes it inevitable that Santa Clarans were everywhere. We sat in the front row behind the visiting team’s goal… Well, we were HARDLY in the front row since the bleachers we were sitting in were about 50 yards away from the actual field. The players were so small that I basically could only follow the game based on the reactions that the crowd made (unlike US sporting events where you can watch the big screen the whole time…). It was such a ruckus; literally the entire stadio would break out into songs and chants; they waved HUGE flags the entire time; flares were lit in the very very very packed stands… I loved it! It was funny cuz the ENTIRE stadio was rooting for Fiorentina and literally the non-viola-rooter-forers (the guys cheering for Parma) were given seats that were GATED OFF from the rest of the stadium seats. I’m not kidding that the visitors had to sit IN A CAGE!!!

I was into the game. I like soccer. I like Lucca Toni too (even though he got red carded for elbowing a guy in the face...). People were beat up all over the place and the little stretcher-carriers went “hut, hut, hutting” onto the field many many times. They ended up winning 1-0 though, so yay! FORZA RAGAZZI!

Dinner before the game was awesome. Marilena and I split a bottle of wine while we were getting ready and quickly realized that a bottle of wine for two girls that hadn’t eaten all day was prolly not such a good idea. I could not stop laughing for the life of me. Our host mom, Susana, thinks we’re crazy but loves us. She told us that she liked us because we talk very loud all the time. Hahahaha, I guess it’s true. Marilena in her drunken couragesness got manuel’s (our host brother’s) phone number!!! She is my hero. He said that his friends have been asking about us. HAHAHAHAHAHA.

It’s crazy because even though we can legally buy alcohol here, I feel like people look at us funny. Hm. Two, young, girls, buying 3 bottles of wine (for our stash) at 2:00 in the afternoon. However, here, buying is the easy part. It’s the secretly-sneaking-the-host-family’s-cork-screw-into-our-room-
because-it’s-impossible-for-us-to-open-it-with-Marilena’s-mini-
swiss-army-knife-then-finishing-the-bottle-and-hiding-the-evidence-
so-that-our-host-family-that-we-love-still-has-
respect-for-us that’s the hard part. :)

Ugh. Thank goodness it’s Thursday. I love having 3-day weekends every week!

Typing on italian keyboards is very complicated!

To Mr. Sun God,
Can you please make a decision about what weather you want it to be? I mean, it’s great that it ends up being about 79 in the afternoon with 88% humidity but it’s not cool that it starts out around 50 in the morning when i have to walk to school. Because of you I am going to have to do twice as much laundry this week (which i’m not looking forward to since last time we did laundry i nostri mama washed our clothes with a brand new red towel which barfed red thread balls all over our clothes). Thank!
-tera

Everyone’s seen Office Space right? Yesterday on our walk home Marilena and I totally experienced the very beginning of the movie when the dude is stuck in traffic and he looks up and sees the old man in the walker walking liek 5x faster than him only, i was the old man in the walker! (well, the young lady with the old lady crutches).

Not too much to report today (well, so far atleast because it IS only 9:05AM)... we have plans to go to a soccer game later tonight tho which i am sooooooooooooo freakin excited about! Fiorentina? Hm. Maybe i should make sure that’s the team we’re cheering for – i KNOW for a fact that they wear purple though and to me that’s pretty much all that matters. It’s crazy getting tickets for games; firstly, girls cost 16 euro and boys cost 20. Well, yay for being a girl and saving 4 euro! Secondly, when you buy tickets you have to show ID and give them your full name and birthday. Since i wasn’t able to gimp to the stadium i gave a guy in one of my classes money to buy me one sooooo hopefully that worked out ok...!!! i’m pretty sure that all of Syracuse is going tonite too – YAAAAYYYYY.

I talked to my beautiful twin yesterday – it’s been liek over 2 weeks since we last talked on the phone! I love her so much, halfly cuz she reminded me that i’m in italy and that i shouldn’t be wasting my time thinking about a boy at home (that’s not even nice to me), and also because instead of talking about how much we missed eachother we started making plans for my return home..hey, december IS only 3 months away: yay for new years!!! if anyone doesn’t have plans yet, we’re going to mammoth and would LOVE for anyone and everyone to come with us!!! Unfortunately i still can’t wear the engagement ring that she gave me... actually i prolly won’t ever wear it again since it totally turns my finger green... but it’s ok steph, it’s the thought that counts :)

Sorry i haven’t been able to post pictures (i literally have about 100 to put up) but wireless at our school sucks and it takes forever to load and by the time it finally does my (broken) dell gets and ‘error’ message... i try everyday to do the whole picture thing soooo maybe today will be my lucky day, va bene? Bacci!

Feeling a little sick to my stomach

So I’ve decided that Tuesdays are for sure the hardest days of the week. I have class for 7 ½ hours straight every Tuesday: Italian for 2 hours, Italian Family and Gender for 2 hours, then Michelangelo for 3 hours. AND that fact that I have a huge headache and upset stomach from going out last night didn’t help time go by any faster.

Last night Marilena and I met up with the usual SCU crew at Robin Hood’s Tavern (we love that bar and it helps that the bartender loves all of us). After a few drinks and pictures we decided to walk to Space Electronica – it’s sposed to be this really cool discotek but none of us really knew where it was. Well, for some reason I have it in my head that I don’t need crutches anymore and decided to go out that night without them. It took over 25 minutes to get there… I was limping the whole time and cussing at myself for not bring my old lady poles with me. After getting lost liek 8 times we FINALLY made it and OMIGOD IT WAS SO MUCH FREAKING FUN!

Discoteks work weird around here: when you go in you don’t pay but you get a ticket. The ticket is good for one free drink at the bar and THEN when you’re LEAVING you have to pay the 5 euro cover charge. They sorta mentioned this at orientation; I guess if you lose your ticket while you’re inside they charge you something like 60 euro to get out. I dunno, I think it’s a pretty cool system.

Dancing was incredible! My foot was dead this morning when I woke up but I think it was totally worth it. The SCU boys we were with were on “creeper patrol.” Everytime some guy even approached any of us on the dance floor Bravo, or Navid, or Chris was there a second later to scare them away. It was pretty cool to not have to worry about creepers. Thanks boys!

So I’ve felt pretty gross today. The walk to school was painful, the throbbing in my head was painful, sitting in class was painful, reading “pete is no longer in a relationship” was painful… ? I know, what? I think that I got dumped today and I’m kinda confused about it. I’m not really sure what brought that on. I know I called him last night when we got home and I got upset because he pulled one of the “you sound tired, you should go to sleep” lines. Um HELLO! I am calling you from ITALY… iiiitttaaaaaalllllyyyyyy. I mean, seriously, i LOVE calling people at home because they always seem so excited to hear from me. everyone is like that except pete who acts more like he’s confused that I’m even calling him. This is the guy who, only a little over a week ago, stayed up late so that he could call me to say good morning… ? What? Ugh. It’s things like this that make me feel so stupid for wasting so much time this summer making that stupid book. It kills me.

My advice for anyone that goes abroad: completely cut off your boyfriend before you go or bring him with you otherwise you’ll end up feeling confused and disappointed like me.

I’ve been so upset that I haven’t been able to eat more that some crackers over the past few days (good and bad) and mia mama keeps asking me if I’m ok… haha, even if I wasn’t ok I’m for sure not gonna let it bring down my time here.

My third class of the day is Michelangelo; it’s once a week from 3-6 in THE hottest room in the whole building (liek literally hot… I sweat my but off sitting there). Anyways after “coffee break” (we have coffee break in every class) our teacher was like “now I’m going to read you guys a little bit out of a book I wrote.” What?! YOU’RE reading us a book that YOU wrote? Cool! Well… he ended up reading us the WHOLE book. I wanted to lay down on the floor and fall asleep; actually had I not had 8 million things to sort out in my mind I prolly would have. It wasn’t even about his art; it was about his bank accounts and investments and stuff… art historians are such stalkers.

Oh! Quick note – highlight of my day yesterday: in printmaking class we had to make two prints then put them up on the wall for a class critique and for the first time since I started that class my teacher had very very very good things to say about my prints!!! YAY. I was freaking out because it was taking me a while to catch on…

But um… yea, I think that’s all for today. Time to walk home (with my granny crutches).

PS. The mother of all spiders bit me last night and now I have what looks like a tumor the size of a small hamster on my hip. Nice.

Another thing. If you haven’t noticed I am VERY open about what I write in this blog. This is my journal of my trip and I’m going to put anything and everything in it. Ok that’s all for reals this time. :)

Our famiglia just got 10x better

Still trying to figure out what exactly happened last night…

Marilena and I spent the evening doing homework. Around 7:30 Susana and Kike went out to a movie and left instructions for making dinner. After we ate, Manuel (aka Seth Fuller) shows up… with an entire posse of friends. Marilena and I are pretty sure that he went out and told all his friends, “I have two American girls living at my house with me and you ALL have to come over and meet them,” because none of them really seemed that surprised to see us there. Ok. This kid is crazy – we were all sitting around the kitchen table (me, marilena, manuel, luca, and like 8 other boys whose names ranged from Ya Ya to Fabio…) and while Manuel was cooking everyone dinner the rest of the boys were busy rolling joints… um, yea, what?!?

At first I didn’t understand what they were doing. They asked us if it was ok that they smoked and I was kinda thought to myself, wow that was really polite to ask if we minded their smoking cigarettes in the house. Ha, too bad they weren’t asking about cigarettes. Italian weed looks nothing like American/California weed and until they started smoking it (and I smelled it) I literally thought they were just making fancy cigarettes. Hahaha, I’m not much of the smoking type but I must say that it was really fun to sit around with these boys while they all got stoned (minus the fact that I smell like a big ashtray this morning).

So, watching Manuel cook them dinner was an event in itself. He made pasta (simple, easy) THEN for desert each boy peeled an apple (no one washes fruit here, they just peel the skin off) THEN, the best part: he made them all coffee!!! Yea, a 21 year old kid made all his pot smoking friends coffee at 10:00 at night.

Most of them spoke English (which we were grateful for; we were feeling a little bit overwhelmed by all the boys and all of our Italian skills flew right out the window) and were very interested in getting to know us which was cool. Our conversations ranged from how we liked italy so far, to cheerleading, to Paris Hilton, to how cuss words translated into Italian… Haha. We made plans to all go out together when my foot gets better (stupid foot); they said they’d take us to bars that locals go to rather than the bars we’ve been going to with all the Americans.

They left the house before Susana and Kike got home from their movie and Marilena and I were FREAKING OUT because the kitchen was a huge mess. Dishes everywhere. Ashtrays everywhere. Beer bottles everywhere… But our host parents didn’t seem to mind. (In fact, this morning at breakfast they were more concerned with whether or not Marilena and I managed to eat dinner the night before and didn’t even mention anything about the condition of the kitchen). HOW COOL IS THAT?!

When we first moved in here Marilena and I were freaked out about what behavior was ok and what wasn’t ok and now we know that basically anything is ok because they have two sons that literally do whatever they want! They prolly think that we’re socially retarded or something; because of my foot we’ve hardly gone out at all… when I get better that’s going to have to change for sure.

Man oh man. YAY!

Chillin on Sunday

It’s been a while since the last time I experienced a huge rainstorm. Last night, only minutes after we arrived at the bars it started POURING rain. I’m glad that my roommate is responsible and brought an umbrella (I tend to follow in the footsteps of my dad: “what? Nah, it’s fine; we don’t need an umbrella). Well, we needed it!

At JJ’s we congregated with the usuals: Amelia and her roommate, Becca, and her friend Kelly. Becca is crazy! She has no fear when it comes to Italian boys. Seriously, a little posse of sketchy looking boys was chillin outside of the bar and she totally just walked up and sat on their laps and got them all to buy her a drink… we all kinda sat there watching with our mouths open like ummmm, no thank you. We ended up meeting the sketchy boys that she befriended (they didn’t speak a lick of English). One guy was in a matching jeans and jean jacket outfit (HAHA), another guy told me he was 28 (I assume he still lived with his mama), and the third guy was cool but the fact that he was hanging out with two sketchballs made him sketchy too.

Last night we made friends with a lot of Americans. It’s kinda sad that I pass as nothing but American. A guy walked buy us and was like “Americans,” (the entire bar was pretty much from the US or England). I figure it’s me that gives away the whole group… meeh. Oh well. We befriended some guy from CA that talked us into walking to another bar called The Old Stove. It was quite a trek. The rain on our walk there was the hardest it’d rained the whole day. I had decided not to bring out my crutches (even though my foot was still throbbing from our day in Pisa and Lucca) and started to regret it. To walk about 3 blocks it took me about 30 minutes. I wore out regular shoes without a brace so to people walking by it looked like I was a girl with a bad gimp (not a girl with a broken foot).

We finally made it. The bar was cool. All the bars are cool around here actually. Well, to be honest, before coming to Europe I had never really even BEEN to a bar (minus, liek, the Mermaid in Hermosa which doesn’t count). Haha. At The Old Stove we hung out with our new friend (who turned out to be kinda sketchy too; he was liek 30. ew). Around 1:30AM after doing a round of Jaeger bombs and a video interview on my camera we decided to call it a night.

Amelia’s crazy roommate had disappeared hours earlier with the original sketchballs we met at JJ’s and she couldn’t get a hold of her to get back home. I didn’t like that. I mean, it’s ok that her roommate wanted to go off and go dancing but it wasn’t ok that she wasn’t answering her phone when Amelia was calling her. Ugh.

This morning we woke up around noon. Yesterday we saw our host parents all of ZERO times! When we left in the morning they were still sleeping and when we arrived home at night they weren’t there (?). Apparently they spent the day and night at their house in the country. Marilena and I are beginning to think that our family is loaded based on a few observations: 1) they have a housekeeper that comes once a week; is that normal for italy? For some reason I didn’t think it was… 2) They have two houses, 3) They have a boat, 4) They buy us whatever we ask for, and 5) The interior of their house is very artsy and chic. Hm… lucky us!

This morning we met Manuel (their youngest son that’s 21…). My first thought when I saw him was Seth Fuller? Seriously, something about him TOTALLY reminds me of Seth. Kike told us that he was sposed to study in Barcelona but failed his test sooo he’s going to be living and studying HERE with us for the rest of the year. Hm. So now there are SIX people living in this house that comfortably fits four. I’m sure, had Kike and Susana known that their sons were going to be here this fall, they wouldn’t have hosted students like us. Oh well… I’ve always loved having a big family. Today we had our first family lunch. It was pretty cool/awkward at the same time. We’re all the same age and the fact that we’re all living together for the next few months seems really weird. (note: at lunch today Susana offered us “little green balls,” (aka peas). I’m so immature – it made me laugh for like 10 minutes.)

This afternoon is for homework – oh yea, wait what? We’re here in Firenze to learn? Sometimes that totally slips my mind.

Pisa and Lucca

Longest day ever. To make up for doing nothing exciting yesterday Marilena and I decided to go to Pisa today. SU puts on trips every weekend to different Italian cities and today happened to be the trip to Pisa and Lucca – even though you’re SPOSED to sign up ahead of time, neither Marilena nor I had signed up sooo we showed up at school this morning at 7:30 (busses left at 8) to see if we could squeeze ourselves on.

It took about an hour to drive to Pisa, then after unloading in the bus parking lot it took me about 30 minutes to walk to where the famous leaning tower was. Stupid foot. We got the privilege of touring the baptistery, cathedral, and cemetery. The tour was very interesting – Neil was our tour guide and he is here in Firenze doing his dissertation at SUF. We all had to wear little radios around our neck and earpieces and Neil had a microphone so that we could hear his little shpeals. He was cool. As we were walking around listening to him he’d always ask if “tera had caught up” and I’d have to like raise my hand cuz I was going so slow. Hahahahahaha.

Some funny/random/cool stuff to know about Pisa: a) there were a MILLION bugs flying around. I’m not kidding. We were bombarded several times by literal hurricanes of bugs. It was freakin nasty. B) there were “purse people” everywhere (for anyone NOT in the Linsley family, a “purse person” is a black guy that lays out all their fake Gucci’s, Prada’s, Chanel’s, etc on a tarp to sell, then peaces out the second a cop shows up since what they’re doing is incredibly illegal in so many ways).

I got great pictures!

After trekking past the purse people to the bus we headed toward a little town called Lucca – ANYONE THAT PLANS ON VISITING ITALY IN THE NEAR FUTURE SHOULD DEFINETELY STOP BY LUCCA! Marilena, Amelia, and I had a lunch at a little outdoor restaurant then used our 2 hours of free time to go shopping at an out door market/fair. (I bought a pink coin purse… I love it). Lucca seriously has excellent shopping. Very chic, expensive, stores… if my foot wasn’t killing me I totally would have spent most of my summer earnings today.

THEN it started to rain. This was the first time I had to be outside, with my crutches while it was raining. (oh, we also bought umbrellas). The tour of Lucca probably could have been really cool but I was in so much pain from walking/crutching/leaning that I didn’t enjoy a minute of it. My friends and the tour guide were all really friendly and understanding and helpful though which was nice. Amelia, Marilena, and I ended up ditching the tour early and headed back to the bus (where the tour group ended up only 5 minutes after us… I know, I’m slow). We got kinda lost but a cute guy was cool and showed us the way…

We finally got home around 6:30ish and were exhausted.

My awkward story of the day (that I’m still feeling awkward about): SU requires that our host family only makes us dinner Monday through Friday… today is our first Saturday where we were left to fend for ourselves. Around 8 we started to brainstorm what to do for dinner when Luca (our “host brother”) came in and mumbled something about cooking pasta and blah blah blah blah blah (all in REALLY REALLY REALLY FAST ITALIAN). Marilena and I were stoked that he offered to make us pasta until we realized that we probably didn’t hear him right – 15 minutes later he was sitting on the couch happiliy eating pasta… hm, um, Luca? Were you ever going to tell us that dinner was ready?! So we pranced into the kitchen to find… nothing. Wait, what? I thought he was going to cook us dinner. I guess not. My dinner tonight consisted of some saltine crackers and sour grapefruit candies that I found in my backpack!!!

Friday

Today, for our day off, Marilena and I decided to go run errands. Before we set out our list consisted of: 1) going to the bank to exchange her travelers checks, 2) going to Florence Copy to buy one of my text books, 3) buying a journal for me, 4) buying umbrellas, and 5) getting gelato at Cavini. We were out for about 4 hours and only managed to accomplish two things on the list…

Overall, I’d say we walked about 1 ½ miles (trust me, that’s a LONG way when you only have one good foot), and my right foot is totally flat, and I have permanent indentions from my crutches on my hands… We stopped and got panini at “La Taverna Degli Artisti,” which was pretty cool (even though I’m still in a funk where I seriously don’t eat during the day). After, we went to 4 different banks to exchange Marilena’s checks – not ONE bank would do it! It’s weird… maybe we’re going to all the wrong places?! If anyone has any advice, please let us know!

On our way back we stopped at Cavini and while Marilena was in the bank next door to the store I waited for her in the chairs outside. I was mobbed by Italian guys. They weren’t the latin lover type that everyone wishes they’d meet while they were here, but more like the mall rats of Italy. Seriously. The first guy that came over to talk to me was asking about my foot and what I was studying here and blah blah blah, small talk. He hardly spoke English and I was so exhausted after gimping around the city that I started to get really annoyed, especially since he wouldn’t go away and kept calling more and more friends over to talk to me. FINALLY Marilena came out of the bank and we managed to escape – ugh. These guys were annoying cuz they were whipping out the “hey baby! You’re beautiful baby! I love you baby! Baby! Baby! BABY!” AAAAHHHHHHHHHH – SHUT UP!

The only good thing that came out of the conversation was the fact that it felt good to be called beautiful on a day that a) I didn’t shower, b) was sweaty and greasy, and c) looked totally retarded gimping around with my crutches. It’s cool that, unlike Americans, Italian boys are very quick to tell you that you’re beautiful (even on days you know you look totally nasty).

Anyways, it feels good to be home even though I have tons of reading to do for class on Monday. Whatever; work now and party tonight!!! YAY!