Forza Arancione!

Today I left the house at 9:00AM to walk to school and didn’t walk back through the door until 9:00PM… it was a looooong day.

Started off with the usual… Italian class. Today it was even more annoying than normal – it’s liek I notice new things about the class that bother me everyday. AHH! I must say though, our 20 minute “intervallo” (break) half way through the class is awesome. There is a patio outside our classroom and Marilena and I usually plant ourselves on it for the full 20 minutes. Today we stretched out liek cats and tanned; I listened to music and it was nice because it helped me forget how annoyed I was with my class that I have everyday for two hours…

After Italian I had printmaking; today was our last day of dry-point and since I missed the past two classes I was waaaay behind. I really like art classes though because the teachers are usually really flexible about deadlines. My teachers usually just sorta give us instructions and a due date then send us off… if we want to work during class, we can work. If we want to fuck around during class and talk to each other and finish our projects on our own, we can. I have A LOT of work ahead of me this weekend which sucks because I really wanted to either stick around in Rome after our class field trip til Sunday OR take the train up to Venice for the day (since Marilena’ll be up there) on Sunday. Whatever, I guess it’s my fault I’m so behind… maaaaaan.

After class, and after getting into an intense Facebook-message fight which I’m feeling a little bit better about now (but still sorta disturbed that I’m still getting in fights with a boy at HOME, over FACEBOOK… I mean, what?) I went and joined a gym!!! Oh yes, my foot is up and running again, even though I still sorta limp when I walk, and I figured that I might as well get back into the whole exercising thing. Working out today was PAINFUL. It’s been over a month since I’ve walked faster than a snails pace and every single muscle in my body was glad to remind me of that.

Our gym is alright. Most ghetto machines ever, but they get the job done. While I was exercising some odd things happened: firstly, I got bit like 10 times by mosquitos (I was just telling someone the other day that I thought mosquito season was over; ugh); secondly, rather than listening to headphones, the lady next to me plugged in and was blasting a huge boom box – I had to turn up my ipod full volume to drown out the shitty music she was listening to! I mean, c’mon lady… And lastly, I felt like guys were, liek, checking out Marilena and me. At home I’m used to boys at gyms being so overly involved in their routine and their body and their everything that it’s not a big deal to go to the gym and look like crap and sweat your ass off; here I felt like I was being watched the whole time… I didn’t like it but I guess I’m going to have to get used to it? Meeh, oh well.

After the gym we headed back to school then hopped on the bus to the other side of the Arno to cheer on the Santa Clara boys (on the Syracuse team) in the soccer game. SUF has a team that participates in a really small organized league that plays against other study abroad schools in the area. When I first heard about the soccer league I was really excited to play, but then I broke my foot… sooooo yea. Marilena has been promising Ryan FOREVER that we’d go watch one of their games and tonight, since they managed to make it to the finals, we figured it was time to go. I was proud of us for navigating ourselves there on our first try and we even showed up about 10 minutes early. The cheering section for SUF consisted of me, marilena, Kate, Jim, Chris and Navid’s host family, and a few other teachers I’d never seen before.

When we got there it was about 7:00 and it was freezing. Marilena and I were both in our gym clothes (shorts and tank tops) and even though she was brave and sat in the cold in shorts the whole time, I KNEW that if I didn’t change I’d complain for the entire game sooooo, in the middle of the stands I took my shorts off and put jeans on. HAHAHAHAHA – what??? There were only liek 10 people there anyways… I’m in this funk lately where if something isn’t right and I know I’m going to start get annoying about it, I immediately do something to fix it myself.

If the other team hadn’t have been really really really good (they seriously were) we might have won. Okay, it was painful… we couldn’t even score a goal :( Oh well, it looked fun and I was impressed by the boys on our team. Then a lady from our school drove Marilena, Ryan, and I back to school and after waiting with Ryan at the bus stop for his bus, we walked to the grocery store to pick something up for dinner.

God I love the Italian grocery store. There was a little bit confusion though when we tried to buy tomatoes and when we tried to find a jar of pasta sauce (wait, what? They don’t sell jars of pasta sauce? Hmm… what to do…). It ended up working out though – we ate super late and were dead tired afterwards and didn’t have any energy to go out. Aaaaah, I must say though it feels REALLY good to be tired at night. It makes me feel like I had a successful day!!!

movies and their "Intervallo"

I know I say the same thing every week but I need to say it again: Tuesdays are painful. First there was Italian. Boring and easy and stupid as usual. I seriously don’t think i’ve learned one thing in that class that I didn’t already know before I got to this country. It’s going to be painful to get back to SCU and have to start up the NEXT level of Italian (22); actually I doubt that they’ll even let me take it; Italian 3 SHOULD transfer as Italian 21 but seriously… we’re still going over things that we learned in SCU’s Italian 1 class. Stressing a little bit because for my international business minor I have to get up to Italian 101 and certain classes are only offered certain quarters and… yea. Crap. I’ll deal with that later…

Then there was Family and Gender (which I absolutely hate and am only there because I have to be since it transfers to SCU as my stupid gender studies requirement). Not once have I raised my hand to say something in that class because I seriously could care less. PLUS it doesn’t really help that the first week of school we had to answer questions about a reading assignment (which I SWEAR I actually read) and she picked up my paper and read my answers and proceeded to tell the class all the reasons why everything I wrote was completely wrong and how I completely missed the point of the reading assignment. Ouch. That was a little discouraging, to say the least, and since then, I guess I just don’t really have an opinion or observation to make about anything that we talk about… I’m literally there to learn the material and hear what other people have to say.

Well, lately the SAME people have been raising their hands to speak and she’s been drilling us with the “I… want… new… voices… (va bene… va bene… va bene…)” and even though I never make eye-contact with her I feel those words being spit directly at MY head. I’ve been a bitchy student and totally ignore her request for me to speak (I am bitter and embarrassed that she told the whole class that my answers were completely wrong), but today rather than the ambiguous “new voices” comment she flat out was liek, “Tera. Let’s start with what you have to say.” FUCK. What was the question? My answer was total bullshit and I’m glad all the other chicks in my class that have opinions about everything ended up taking over the discussion but still… it was humiliating. I hate SUF.

THEN there was Michelangelo. After two in-class presentations about two of Mike’s pieces (which were so boring that I took mental notes on ways NOT to present when it’s my turn to do my presentation), we trekked out as a class to the Accademia to hear a presentation on Mike’s David.

The whole, stand-in-front-of-the-REAL-David-and-hear-a-presentation-about-it is a really cool concept BUT when you’re actually there, and have to wait in line for 20 minutes (with a really heavy backpack), then have to stand with a million people to look at it (with a really heavy backpack), then listen to a girl READ her paper on it for 30 minutes over an earpiece that had service that kept going in and out (with a really heavy backpack), then listen to you’re teacher repeat the girls entire presentation for 30 minutes after she’s done (with a really heavy backpack)… yea, it was hardly as romantic and I imagined it to be. PLUS, the David is something I remember very clearly from the last time I was in Italy years ago and well, it hasn’t changed, um, at all sooo it really wasn’t that exciting to see again. I was a little disappointed.

Now I’m at home and we’re working on figuring plans out for our semester break coming up at the end of this month AND our plans for going out tonite. I still feel a little sick but seriously, there is no time to be sick in this country. I still want to do anything and everything!!! I’ll nap and get better later… haha.

And later on…

Tonight Rachel and I shared a cab downtown and met up with Natalie, Laura, and Ben and we all went to the movies!!! We saw SCOOP – em, I thought Scarlet Johannson was really annoying (but that Hugh Jackman was really beautiful and I want to marry him) and am not sure if I really liked the movie… i’ll prolly never watch it again. It was cool going to the “cinema” though. The film was in English (woo!) and was shown in a HUGE theatre… we sat on the second story (not because it was too crowded on the first story but hey, how often do you get to sit on the second story?!)!!! Some girl fell down the stairs; I’m so mean, I totally laughed.

I missed Marilena! Tonight was the first night that I went out without my roomie; she had a paper to write for tomorrow morning and was a good student and decided to actually FINISH it. I was so proud of her! Hahaha. Big day tomorrow. Tons of things to do – Ah! Buona notte!

cough cough

Last night I woke up at 4:30AM with the worst sore throat I’ve ever had in my entire life. It hurt to swallow, it hurt to talk (I called my mom about 20 times hoping she’d use her magic mom touch to make the pain go away), and it even hurt to breathe… When I couldn’t get a hold of my mom I called Steph to see if she could offer some of her best friend magic to make me feel better but I ended up leaving a message (which made my throat hurt even more). I am so sick of being sick.

I layed there for about an hour trying to think about other things but only being able to focus on the pain in my throat, the heat in my face, and the freezingness of the rest of my body. What the hell; I mean, it was understandable for me to be sick everyday when I lived in the dorms since it’s basically a germ breeding ground, but here in Firenze I’m in a house and am clean. I’ve even been making sure to take my Flintstones vitamin everyday! Maybe I need to upgrade to adult vitamins… AAHHHHHH.

I spent Italian class watching the clock, counting down the minutes until it was over. For printmaking I showed up, got the assignment, got my new piece of plexi-glass, promised my teacher that I’d do all the work at home on my own time, then left to go home and go to sleep. I’m thinking I have strep throat. I seriously can’t swallow anything and I am pretty sure I have a fever.

If anyone wants to send me a care package or a get well card it’d be greatly appreciated.

OH AND BY THE WAY - i editted my settings so that you don't have to have an account to leave me comments... i dunno, just thought i'd throw that out there in case anyone wanted to show me some love. heh.

sweet sweet Firenze

I’m back in Firenze now and am thinking back to this morning and realize now that it was pretty much a big blur. It went something like this:
3:30AM – wake up in total darkness… 5 minutes later alarm goes off (I always do the wake-up-5-minutes-before-the-alarm thing. It’s weird)
4:00AM – fall into taxi wearing ½ of my outfit from the night before and sweatpants (first time I’ve worn sweats in public since I’ve been here)
4:20AM – get on bus and sleep/sit there dazed at the fact that it’s still totally dark outside
5:30AM – get to airport and decide I hate RYANAIR for having only 1 flight out of Brussels to Pisa today and it’s at 6:30AM
5:30AM – pump sets off metal detector (first time ever) and I’m escorted to a little curtained room to get checked for, I don’t know… knives? Bombs? C’mon look at me. I’m far from dangerous.
5:40AM – Dan gets drunk off of Passion (something like Malibu) and Fanta
6:30AM – plane takes off and I realize, yet again, how much I hate flying
7:30ish AM – sun finally comes up (one of the most vivid oranges I have ever seen) and we pass over the snowy Alps which was an awesome sight also
8:15ish AM – land in Pisa and awkwardly stand in parking lot waiting for our bus to Firenze
8:40AM – get on bus and pass out for entire ride
9:45ish AM – arrive at Firenze bus station and say bye to Ben and Laura then start the long walk to my apartment with Dan
10:10ish AM – start to get grumpy and tired when Dan makes me stop so he can admire a Lamborghini
AND FINALLY 10:35 AM – walk through the front door of my apartment, lay on my bed, and pass out.

It’s good to be home.

Our last day

Oct 7 (written Oct 8)
Ok, I woke up to the, “click click clicking,” of high heels on the tiled floor of the room above us… I’m not kidding, this lady must’ve been having a nervous breakdown or something because I could hear her pacing around the apartment for, liek, 30 minutes. Any other morning and I would have been liek whatever, but this particular morning I woke up feeling like my head was going to fall off and the clicking made it a bajillion times worse.

Of course we all slept through breakfast again; the morning was painful but after a shower, some advil, and liek 4 bottles of water we hit the streets in search of breakfast (in the country that, oh yea duh we learned this yesterday, doesn’t eat breakfast). We ended up at the bar that Dan and Ben ended up at on our first night in Brussels. When we walked in the dude that was working behind the bar made a big scene and I’m pretty sure he was making fun of us but since none of us even knew what language he was speaking there was really nothing we could do about it. Psh. Asshole.

We ate omelets – wait, no, Ben and Dan ate omelets while Laura and I enjoyed ketchup with a little bit of egg. God it was good to see/taste Heinz again! This continent seems to think that it’s okay to use mayonnaise as an alternative to ketchup. Uh-uh, I’m sorry, that’s not okay with me.

So then, after being lost in the metro station for a while, we finally managed to navigate outselves to the ATOMIUM. Ok. The Atomium. Google it right now. Here’s a little description as stated by the brochure I got: “Designed by engineer Andre Waterkeyn, for the International Exhibition of Brussels in 1958, the Atomium represents an iron crystal molecule, magnified 165 BILLION TIMES.” This shiny, glistening, thing is in the middle of nowhere and is 102 meters high… it looks like a fatty UFO just decided to land in the middle of some trees. 102 meters high is one big ass atom. It was the most bizarre structure I have ever seen; the inside (oh yes, you can go inside… and we did) was more random that the outside.

To get to each ball (literally, it’s a bunch of big silver balls connected by silver tubes) you had to either walk up and down huge staircases OR ride escalators up tubes that were liek 30 yards long… it was what I would imagine being sucked up a vacuum might feel like. Each ball had something totally bizarre on display in it: a Barbie doll exhibit, a case of silver dishes, some of those bent mirrors that make your head all gigantic and your legs all midge, some huge carved out balls with mattresses in them that you could only gaze at through glass and couldn’t actually sit/lay on – being hungover and claustrophobic in those balls and tubes made me want more than anything the opportunity to climb into one of those hollow-ball-beds and pass out… it was such a tease.

The dorks that decided to build this thing had to be total drug addicts. In fact, I recommend that anyone that goes to see the Atomium drops acid before hand; literally though… maybe then I would have been able to appreciate the ball with black walls and a neon, green, hanging, light thing cuz I seriously didn’t get it.

After our adventure with the Atomium we stopped at a little restaurant for some chocolate waffles; god they were good.

At the waffle place we were harassed by two ghostly, mutant, cats that really acted more like pigeons than actual cats. They were prolly the first cats in my life to ever really gross me out (besides the cat that used to live by my old house who’s nose was totally cut off; yea that one was way worse than these ones).

When waffle break was over we considered heading to “Little Europe,” where they have little, Laura-sized, versions of all the famous monuments and statues in Europe. Yeah, the tourist attractions in that part of Brussels were totally wacky. We decided that we’d rather spend the admission fee money on beer instead (what? We’re in college).

So then it was back to the metro (where somehow I managed to get hit directly in the mouth with a smelly dog tail – no joke. I almost gagged).

We made a quick stop at the local grocery store cuz a) we wanted some strawberry beer for evening cocktails and, b) you can learn a lot about a country based on the things they sell in the grocery stores. I enjoyed roaming around.

Raspberry beer/group massage/spill raspberry beer all over Ben AND the bed Tera sleeps on (yea, me) at night/watching “Made” dubbed in French with Flemish subtitles on MTV/talk about stupid things and laugh at each other time was incredibly entertaining and relaxing.

Before heading out for the evening, we packed all of our stuff and set our alarms for 3:45AM – oh yea, did I mention that we had a flight back to Pisa the next day at 6:30AM? Oh, and that to get to the airport we had to take a 45 minute bus ride that left at 4:30AM? Oh, which meant that we had to be in a cab on the way to the bus stop at 4:00AM? Yea, which made it so that we had to be out of bed and ready to go at 3:45 IN THE MORNING?!? Cuz we did. It was so painful to think about that we all kinda tried to ignore the 3AM concept and just enjoy our last night.

For dinner we hopped on the metro and navigated ourselves to the Grand Palace (AKA tourist-ville) and after a little bit of strolling around, taking pictures of chocolate fountains, and asking a Chinese lady if she enjoyed Chinese food, we found the most incredible ally of restaurants I’ve ever seen. The ally was 50ish yards long and was jam packed with restaurants all offering the same food… it was actually really overwhelming and Laura, Dan, Ben, and walked down and up the entire ally before a dude working at the restaurant negotiated some crazy seafood platter deal and we gave in.

It was one of the most entertaining meals of my life. Between watching the host-dude-guy jump out of the shadows at the tourists passing by in attempt to lure them in, and watching Ben and Dan chow down on fatty platter of shelled and scaled organisms, there was never a dull moment. We even had a group snail eating moment – yea the world thought it would never come but TERA LINSLEY ATE A MOTHER FUCKING SNAIL. And it was a mother fucking nasty snail. And I’ll prolly never do it again.

After dinner we strolled around tourist-ville, shopped, enjoyed our buzz, the architecture, and the full moon then decided to make a final stop for one last desert waffle before calling it a night. It’s crazy to think that for almost three whole days the four of us had spent every sleeping and waking moment together; we’d sat down to eat, ridden the metro, slept, shopped, traveled, walked around, danced… together for three days straight and yet never seemed to run out of things to talk about. I was freaking out before the trip cuz I was liek the “random girl” in the group; seriously though. Ben, Laura, and Dan, had been doing stuff together for the past month whereas I sorta was good enough for a: “Hi. How are you. Good. Kay bye.” A lot of times I get super self-conscious around people that are already really close but the three of them were so awesome that I hardly ever felt that way. I’ve felt a little bit unhappy for the past year or so and am only realizing now that maybe it’s cuz I need new people in my life. I dunno… it’s one of those things I have to sit and think about for a while. All I know is that I like how I feel right now.

Before heading to sleep around midnight (ha, I had just consumed one of the sugariest waffles of my life and didn’t have a tired ounce in my body), Dan and I watched some super mellow, sorta weird, sorta scary movies on his I-pod (which I need to get a new one of also cuz mine is lame). Something about those movies totally knocked me out and I didn’t wake up again until it was 3:30 when it was time to leave…

rain in Bruxelles

Oct 6 (written Oct 8)
Our first day, we woke up around 10 (which means we missed the hotel’s complimentary breakfast… figures) and after layering up - literally had on 4 shirts a hat and a scarf - we hit the town in search of some famous Belgian waffles. Ok, the four of us totally forgot that Europe, liek, doesn’t eat breakfast and literally walked for almost an hour before we settled on chocolate waffles from a little stand. I was starving and they tasted fabulous in the moment but about 20 minutes later we were all kinda regretting having eaten that much sugar in the morning; it’s just not healthy. Heh. Whoops.

A quick detail to mention that I thought was so funny that I had to walk away because I couldn’t stop laughing, was the uni-brow on the dude that sold Laura water… omigod, it was THE most perfect uni-brow I have ever seen and I will never forget it.

Anways… after trying to get some directions to a few touristy places in the city from the guy at the front desk (who was actually a big douche bag to us; ugh I miss US customer service) we trekked back out in the rain to the tram that runs all over the city and hopped on. Where we were going exactly? None of us really knew. We put Ben in charge of the map (even though he really sucked at folding it up). It was full of a billion colorful lines going all different directions, all labeled with words in a language that we had no clue how to pronounce. Actually, I still really don’t know what language the map was in.

All I know is that not once did we pay for public transportation… I seriously think that buying tickets was optional or something. Hahaha, actually I’m sure that we prolly woulda gotten in big trouble if we were caught, but Belgian patrollers must suck at checking those things and not once did we have to buy a ticket.

We hopped off the tram at a random stop and walked through a random park… really pretty (and freezing and wet) but random. Actually, we did manage to find the Royal Palace; word on the street is that Belgium has liek a king or queen or something, and that was their house, and they um… ok, actually I have no idea but I assume that since it’s called the “Royal Palace” and since there were two uniformed guys marching in front of it with big, scary, guns, someone “royal” MUST live there. We took pictures; I think they came out well.

Another quick detail: it feels good to not be recognized as an American. Twice while we were in Belgium people came up to me speaking some-language-other-than-english (German maybe?); I actually prolly looked really retarded when I blankly stared at them with my mouth open… whatever. It was exciting.

After the ROYAL Palace, we stood in the rain (Yea. That was fun. Ugh. Rain.) and hopped back on the tram in the direction of what we thought was the GRAND Palace. Um, after about 20 minutes on the tram and not being there yet, and after realizing that the buildings/people on the tram started to look really ghetto we sorta started to freak out. A lady told us that we were definitely going the wrong way and that we had to get off and go back the other way… so we got off the tram. In. The. Belgium. Ghetto… oh fabulous.

Fortunately there was a really beautiful cathedral nearby and figured we might as well check it out (I mean, we didn’t come to the ghetto for nothing, right?). Pictures. Pictures. Pictures. Then we wandered into a really incredible cemetery; the contrast between the bright yellow leaves all over the floor and the sad grays of the really extravagant tombs and gravestones made for fabulous pictures. I’ve decided that one of my next big investments is going to be a new camera; I’m sorta sick of Dan rubbing it in my face at how good is camera is…

For 15 minutes we attempted to hail a cab and finally gave in and hopped on ANOTHER tram which ACTUALLY took us to the Grand Palace area. Our first stop was a restaurant for some french fries and beer... it figures that we would pick the only fucking bar in Belgium that didn’t serve french fries.

Whatever, I discovered my new favorite alcoholic drink: RASPBERRY BEER. Omigod. It’s like drinking juice. Liek, really really really good juice. Everyone should try it. So anyways… after chatting for a while, and eating Dan’s cheese platter, the rain finally died down, and we headed out to find some REAL lunch.

Ten minutes later we were in another restaurant happily munching our beloved french fries and drinking some local beer (that had a hint of cinnamon in it? It wasn’t my favorite…). It was fun sitting in the window watching and laughing at tourists’ umbrellas flip inside out, getting rained on, and tripping over cobblestones… haha, suckers.

For the rest of the afternoon we napped (everyone was dead tired and dehydrated). It was perfect time for napping cuz I think there was a serious downpour outside… I could hear the wind from inside our room and all I have to say is, I’m glad I wasn’t outside because I can assure anyone that if I was I probably would have thrown a fit because I hate hate hate being cold.

When nap time was finally over (it lasted for liek 3 hours), we bundled up again and took on the city for the evening. When we first left the hotel it was POURING rain. Usually I hate rain but for some reason this rain didn’t bother me – I guess Belgium rain is just better than American rain. Hm.

After walking up and down streets full of restaurants and reading menus that none of us could understand we settled on a place called “Au Boeuf Gros Let” – omigod it was so refreshing to learn that our waiter spoke Italian… how awesome is that?? We’re so used to Italy/the Italian language that even though none of us are even CLOSE to being able to fluently speak Italian it made us all feel a little bit more comfortable with the situation.

Dinner (foodwise) was interesting. I had really yummy French onion soup, chicken in a cream sauce that tasted like black licorice (yea, ew), chocolate mousse, and of course (since they eat them at every meal and it’s AWESOME) french fries. I’m proud to say that I did attempt to branch out of my eat-only-chicken-at-every-meal bubble: after A LOT of convincing (and a few glasses of wine) Laura and I each ate a mussel. Unfortunately it tasted exactly like I’ve always imagined those barnacles growing on the legs of the Manhattan Beach pier to taste and never plan on eating one ever again but I’m proud of myself anyways.

From the food, to the company, to the conversation, to the wine, to the Albert Einstein man who was sitting behind me, to watching Laura put the entire bowl of sugar cubes into Dan’s cappuccino… dinner was fabulous.

Afterwards we went out to find a bar to hang out in and ended up at an Irish pub (god it’s exciting to encounter people that speak English in Belgium). After more drinks and chatting and pictures, we spent a few minutes eavesdropping on the bartender telling a few chicks the directions to a cool discotek nearby… naturally we decided to check it out.

We didn’t make it there til hours later though… after ALMOST drunkenly wandering into a strip club (but being told not to by a local who was watching us from across the street) we ended up in a fabulous smoking lounge (where no, there was NOT a birthday party going on). Earlier during the day Ben and Dan bought Cuban cigars and wanted to smoke them sooo the decision to go to “Havana Corner,” wasn’t that difficult to make.

I’m having trouble trying to come up with the right words to do this place justice cuz it was freaking awesome. Um… dim lighting, elegant older people (we were definitely the youngest people in the whole bar), a live band playing classics I knew all the words to, two cigars (that I tried and sorta enjoyed), 120 euro of champagne, and three really cool people to hang out with… it was hard to tear ourselves away but eventually the champagne was finished and the cigars, um, died (or whatever cigars are do when they’re done) and we moved on to our next destination.

Louiza (or something like that?) was a HUGE under-the-mall discotek. This was by-far the best discotek I’ve been to in all of Europe. I know, I’ve only been to liek three total cuz of my stupid foot, but of all those this one wins. It totally reminded me of the discotek that they go to in Eurotrip; anybody? Anybody? Ok, well it makes sense to me…

God, I have a million random things to say about this place: random cokes as chasers cuz we were too cheap to buy one; Laura getting hit on by a little posse of Belgian boys; sitting in really cool thrown-like chairs but then being kicked out because they were reserved for a private party (or something like that); Dan talking to two guys that spoke MAYBE ten words of English total and telling them he was from LA and that yes, he was a famous musician; dancing on the tallest platform we could find in the dead center of the room; my arm being used as an ashtray… literally, someone put their cigarette out in my arm and the next day I woke up with a purple, pussing, burn mark on my arm where it happened. It hurt really bad and I definitely wanted to complain about it for the rest of the night but was having such a great time that I just sorta forgot about it.

Let’s see… what else… oh god, how could I forget? Half way through the evening the DJ stopped playing music and was replaced by a live performance of two ugly, wannabe, popstars that couldn’t sing and couldn’t dance and should definitely quit now and start looking for something else to do with the rest of their lives. Hey, I’m just being honest. It was painful and after a final dance to SEXY BACK (that was ruined cuz those two chicks kept chiming in on the mic) we peaced out.

So there we were: drunk and wandering the streets of Brussels at 3:30AM wanting nothing more than a chocolate covered waffle… unfortunately all the waffle stands were closed so we had to settle for the next best thing: QUICK. Ha. It’s sorta like, “Welcome to the Belgian McDonald’s.” At the time, eating there seemed like the best thing in the whole world and the food (which we’re not even 100% sure WHAT it was) tasted incredible. It wasn’t until the next morning, when we were all feeling sick and grossed out that we had eaten Belgian-fast-food-surprise at 3AM, that we realized Quick was prolly a really bad idea.

The night ended at 4AM with Laura at the front desk asking for a toothbrush, our neighbors complaining that our music was too loud, and the best massage of my entire life.

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh Belgium. We love you.

so they speak Flemish here?

Oct 5 (written Oct 8)
The adventure to Belgium began at the Firenze train station around 4:30 on Thursday afternoon when Laura, Ben, Dan, and I hopped onto an old-ass train to Pisa. The ride was about 1 ½ hours and the trip through the Italian countryside was really beautiful. I felt like I was being awkward and shy (ugh I hate when I do that) but I couldn’t help it because the realization that I was heading off on an adventure in a foreign country, with people that were all already good friends but that I didn’t really know very well, for the whole weekend, freaked me out a little bit. I mean, c’mon. Totally understandable.

On the train we met two girls that went to Duke and were studying in Firenze through NYU – one of the girls was friends with a girl in my Italian class at SUF; it really creeps me out to realize what a small world it is.

We showed up in Pisa three hours before our flight so, liek all the other times in this country when there’s time to be wasted, we bought two bottles of wine, sat outside at the ONLY café that the midge Pisa airport had to offer, and drank the time away. After a while, when the wine was finished and the mosquitoes unbearable, we paraded inside for our tickets. I was stressin out about my plane ticket cuz I was only 50% sure that I had one. When I booked it online I never got a confirmation e-mail/number and only had proof that I had a ticket based on the fact that my credit card got charged… everything turned out fine.

Before we got on the plane, there wasn’t anywhere to sit so we planted ourselves in line, on the floor, against the wall, in everyone’s way… hahaha I hate when people do that. While we were in line I whipped out my ghetto torn out shreds of paper to make notes about our trips so far (I like to remember all the details of everything) and Dan showed me his journal/sketch/everything book and we started talking about writing lyrics and poems and stuff… honestly, until recently I have never considered doing anything like that. I was always kinda into drawing everything I see but now I’ve gotten myself into a habit of writing down all the things I see as well and am considering trying out the whole creative writing thing. I think the problem with my writing style is that I write the exact same way I talk and when I talk I can never sum up how I feel about something in one perfect sentence or phrase. I always feel like I have to use a million words to describe something so that I can be sure the person I’m describing it to understands the whole picture… ok. Focus.

Oh yea… Belgium… the plane ride there had one of those applaud-when-the-plane-touches-down-because-we-all-were-sure-we-were-going-to-die landings. When we got off the plane it was raining, surprise surprise… I was so worked up from the landing of death that I was grateful for the rain and the cold air.

After feeling disappointed that I didn’t get a “Belgium” stamp in my passport but then feeling happy again when I saw a vending machine with waffles in it (!!!) we bought tickets for the bus that took us into Brussels. The ride was about 45ish minutes and by the time we got to Brussels it was almost 1AM.

The taxi from the bus stop to the hotel was kinda weird because the driver, firstly, was speaking a language that we have no idea to this day what it was and secondly, after we were seated comfortably and ready to go he opened the doors and shoved another group of people into the back seat… um, group taxi? After a taxi, then a train, then a plane, then a bus, and another taxi, it felt damn good to finally arrive at our hotel (even though it did take us liek 10 minutes to figure out how to get IN through the front door since it was one of those sliding doors that locks after a certain hour).

We checked in and headed up to our room on the 7th floor – yeaaaa unlike Firenze, Brussels actually had TALL buildings… something about that was oddly refreshing to me. Our room was pretty cool; it was set up like an apartment and had a bedroom (that Laura tapped for she and I the SECOND we walked through the door), a kitchen, a pretty cool view, and a tv room with a fold out couch – happy spooning boys! Haha, ok, so that was kinda mean of us… by the time we got settled it was around 2AM; Laura and I were dead after our day of traveling and spent the rest of the night watching the travel channel (narrated in some unknown language) then passing out while the boys went out to check out the nightlife. Our beds had liek a plastic layer covering the mattress and every time either of us moved there were crunching noises… it was like sleeping in a big diaper. Hahahaha. Sweet dreams Belgium!