lots of stuff going on

I hate when this happens but I’ve come down with my usual stressed out “elephant elbows.” This always happens… When I’m stressed out I don’t break out, I don’t crave chocolate, I don’t sleep… I get this crazy thing where my elbows start peeling. It’s actually really disgusting. I’m not even sure what I’m stressing out about. Maybe cuz of my midterms tomorrow (that shouldn’t be THAT bad but might impede on my goodnight’s sleep tonite); maybe cuz of my 10-day trip through Europe coming up in two days that I haven’t washed my clothes or even thought about packing for yet; maybe cuz I still don’t have a Halloween costume; maybe cuz my parents are coming in about two weeks; maybe cuz I miss home… ??? I have no clue but I hope it goes away soon!!!

Last night a few of us got together to celebrate Laura’s birthday at Angels. Nothing big, but it was fun. We were actually the only people in the whole bar -

Today I had my esame orale for Italian. I was nervous (as I always am for tests) but thought it went really well. We had to meet with Alessandro for 10 minutes with a picture to talk about. I chose a picture of my mom, Alexa, Marina, Lulu, and me that’s up on my bulletin board; I figured that’d be a good choice because I could go on and on talking about my family! We have our written exam tomorrow and I made a huge review packet of all the grammar last night; I really don’t think it’s going to be that bad. I think that I know WAY more Italian than I thought I did. Cool!

I started figuring out my classes today for Winter quarter at SCU. I think I’m going to overload on units; because I decided to minor in business I’m a little bit behind. It’s totally manageable though, I’m not worried. Plus I got a really early appointment time and should have no prob getting all my classes. Ugh, back to SCU so soon??? It’s not a happy thought!

Today in printmaking we had a little critique since we don’t have a midterm. My plate is coming along really well… until today when I made a careless mistake when I put it in the acid. I think my teacher was happy I messed up though; it’s one of those situations where he was WAITING for someone in the class to do it so that he can show us the process how to fix it. Meeh. Atleast it can be fixed…

The weather in Italy right now SUCKS. For the past few days it’s been in the high 70’s and rainy. Yup, ew. Mosquitoes are BACK; i’m covered in freaking bites! Can it just be cold already?!?

My blog is 74 pages long in Word. That is by far THE longest piece of writing I’ve ever done/ever will do in my life I think. AND we’re only half way done (we’re on day 51 of 110)! Thanks friends and family that have left me comments. It feels good to think that people care enough to read about my adventures (even though most of the time it’s just me rambling on and on about random things!).

My to-do list today consists of packing for Spain and Hungary, studying for my Family/Gender and my Italian midterms tomorrow, going to the ATM (since yesterday I got too scared to go because a bunch of gypsies were flocking around the area where the bank was and I didn’t want to get robbed!), finishing my Dublin blog, buying a huge pack of Saltines from the grocery store (since I plan on not eating in Spain cuz I heard the food is gnarly), going to the gym… mmm… mellow day. I like it.

Happy Birthday Laura!

Today’s Laura’s 21st birthday – yay! I love birthdays, even when it’s not my own. Marilena and I spent the better half of this morning trying to track her down because we were so excited about the present we got her. On Sunday I spent 5 hours in the library drawing her a poster titled “Twenty-One Fun Things to Do On Your 21st Birthday (the day before your midterm in a country where turning 21 means nothing).” Notgonnalie, I’m quite proud of how it turned out AND she totally deserved it! It felt good to draw again because I really haven’t had a lot of free time for stuff like that.

Marilena and I also got her 21 Kinder Eggs. Hahaha… ok. Kinder Eggs are hollow chocolate eggs with a really cool prize on the inside and even though the chocolate isn’t that great, the prizes are always awesome (she got me hooked on them when we were in Belgium). I DID, however, feel really retarded walking up to the counter of a bar this morning with 21 eggs in my hands falling all over the place but, hey, it was worth it. PLUS this morning Marilena (while procrastinating on the way to school) bought her a really beautiful little pillow case from the outside market right by our house. Hehe, a pillow case full of chocolate eggs; i swear we’re really mature… :) Happy Birthday Laura!!! Have a fabulous day because you deserve it!!!

Hm… I have a million other things to say today. I think that I drank too much coffee this morning. Ok. Firstly…

Printmaking yesterday. Our class is awesome. Because we have to meet twice a week for three hours both days (that’s a looooooong time to be in class) we have a sign up sheet to bring in snacks for the entire class. Yesterday was my day so I brought everyone a big bottle of Acqua Frizzante (obviously), some pretzel-party-mix-type-stuff, some cookie/cracker things, and Nutella to dip them in. Psh. The Nutella was a big hit. I didn’t have confidence in my class in being about to finish the whole bottle but they did! It was almost scraped clean! I’m not really THAT big of a fan of Nutella (I’d take peanut-butter over it anyday), but hey it made the class happy and that’s all that matters.

Marina. I called Reenie yesterday for the first time since I’ve been here and for the first five minutes of our conversation we randomly talked about how Lulu’s sick and blah blah blah… it was a little sad because she didn’t really sounds THAT excited to be talking to me. Then we got on the subject of how the time difference between the two of us was 9 hours and all of a sudden… “TEDDY!” My big sissy didn’t realize she was talking to me!!! Psh. Thanks a lot Rinals. It was good talking to her. AHHH, I miss the little Krim clan and still think they should all trek out here to visit me… Christmas is going to be incredible (even tho Lu definitely isn’t going to recognize me)!!

Manuel. Marilena and I spent all of dinner last night (since we ate w/o the fam) analyzing the weird habits of our host brother. Here’s Manuel in a nutshell: he’s 21 years old and just failed an entrance exam to study at a school in Spain. Now he lives at home and attends the l’Universita` di Firenze. He wakes up around 10ish everyday and literally rolls out of the house in the same clothes that he slept in the night before (cropped, black, sweatpants, that he sags so low that his tighty-whities completely show, usually some sort of hideous rainbow sweater, and fannypack around his waste). He comes home from school around 3ish. He lays on the couch and watches a movie while eating the entire contents of the refrigerator and smoking several hand-rolled cigarettes. He eats dinner with the fam and claims to have some sort of cold/fever/illness. Smokes more. Then heads out with friends (to who knows where) and returns home around 2 or 3AM every morning.

So that’s Manuel. He’s a big freak and only talks to Marilena and me about American movies… yet for some reason she and I are both obsessed with him! The language barrier is a bit of a problem though because whenever we try to joke around with him/flirt with him he takes the things we’re saying seriously.

For example. Last night I was doing my Italian homework and was in NO mood to be doing it soooo I called Manuel and jokingly asked him to do it for me. His response? “I am leaving the house now but put it in my room and I’ll do it for you when I get home. Can I give it back to you tomorrow?” Um. Manuel. I didn’t REALLY want you to do my homework… I just wanted a reason to hang out with you for a while… AAAHHHHHHHH.

Let’s see. What else. Budapest. Hm. Apparently yesterday there were riots in Budapest. Something about civilians STEALING A TANK and 40 people getting injured… hmmm… yea… good to know that NEXT THURSDAY WE’RE GOING TO BUDAPEST! If anyone has some free time can they please research the political situation in Budapest for us? Thanks.

Italian class. Today in Italian I learned more than I have all semester long… good to know that our midterm is on THURSDAY. Today I went from feeling like our Italian class was a big joke to feeling like CRAP I NEED TO STUDY REALLY HARD FOR MY MIDTERM OR ELSE I MIGHT FAIL. Our class was liek, laughing when we walked out of the class because none of us know where to even begin…

Family and Gender. Today was “review day” and I was really relieved because I missed class last Thursday in order to make it to my flight to Ireland… Well. Today on the door of our classroom is a sign that says CLASS IS CANCELLED BUT YOU ALL STILL HAVE A MIDTERM ON THURSDAY. Oh god oh god oh god. Is this a joke? It’s a good thing that I slept for 12 hours last night (I literally fell asleep at 9:00) because I don’t think I’m going to be sleeping for the next two days until my midterms are over. HOWEVER I’m not stressing THAT badly because compared to a lot of other people here my workload is pretty manageable.

For example. This morning I woke up to Marilena scrambling all over our room in a frantic search for, well, everything. Liek, she was stressing out so much that she somehow lost ALL SUPPLIES school related (when seriously, everything was exactly where she had left it the night before)… hehe. My roommate makes me laugh. It’s crazy cuz usually I’M the one scrambling around losing everything… whoa to be the calm one! Good luck getting everything done roomie! If you need me to tell you a joke/give you a massage/drink a glass of wine with you/draw you a cartoon, I’m here for you!

Ok. Enough procrastinating on my part. Back to work!

PS. Dublin entry is STILL in the process of being written! Stay tuned!

Il Latini

We’ve just started midterms week… I can’t believe that the semester is half over! My week shouldn’t be too bad. It’s nice taking three classes; it’s been a few years since I had a really easy schedule. I have one REAL test in Family and Gender on Thursday and it should be pretty hard but our teacher is giving us a big review sheet in class tomorrow sooo I’m not that worried about it. Usually when I actually sit down and study I remember everything and get everything done. Then I also have a midterm in Italian on Wednesday and Thursday… I have no clue what to expect for that test. Hopefully it won’t be totally retarded; I figure that since ALL the SUF Italian 3 students have to take it, it should be pretty manageable.

Yesterday it was like a party on the SUF campus. The school is usually closed on the weekends but this weekend it was open for midterm prep. The doors opened at noon. Marilena and I got there around 11:45 (half because we didn’t know it didn’t open til noon and half cuz we wanted to get there early to GET seats) and we waited with about 20 people on the curb in front of the school… Hahahaha, it was funny to think that we were all there early to push and shove to get good seats in the library.

Marilena and I ended up leaving the library around 5:30ish (after I had accomplished one thing on my list of 800 things to do) and headed home. The plan for the evening was to meet up with our friends at Il Latini for dinner in celebration of Laura’s 21st birthday (which unfortunately falls on Tuesday, smack in the middle of midterms).

So at 6:50ish Marilena and I made the trek down to the Duomo in search of this restaurant. After walking in circles for about 10 minutes I called Natalie to get directions, since they were already there… “Then you turn down a really small alley and you’ll see the restaurant because there will be a HUGE crowd of people in front of it pushing and shoving to get in. You need to tell them you’re part of a reservation for 10 otherwise they won’t let you in…” Literally, there was a mob in front of the restaurant! I felt really VIP when the host shoved people aside in order to make room for Marilena and I to go in. I guess the deal with this place is that it has the best Tuscan cooking in, well, Tuscany. There are two seating times and if you don’t have a reservation you basically have a 2% chance of getting in.

Our table was on the second floor in a room with three other big tables of old people, that HATED our table and kept shushing us all evening long… I think they were just jealous. Dinner was really freakin fun. The group consisted of Laura, Natalie, Marilena, Rachel, me (yay Phis!), Ben, Ryan, Dan, Navid, and Chris and by the end of dinner we were stuffed full of red wine and some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. It was a family-style, full four-course meal, restaurant. Every course was incredible. I’m not even sure what I was eating half the time!!! Not gonna lie, the big platter of very very very pink steaks freaked me out a little bit but everyone that ate them said they were delicious… I just took their word for it. Haha.

You know you’re getting old when an event like this is all you want for your birthday. I think Laura was happy (at first I think she wanted to veto celebrating all together cuz of tests) which is all that matters! Turning 21 in Italy, where being 21 means nothing, right in the middle of midterms - ugh. Man!

After dinner we took a million pictures and walked to The Hood. Half way there we came across a merry-go-round in Piazza Della Reppublicca and HAD to have a go on it. It was a ruckus. We were acting like out of control two year olds… Laura was riding her horse backwards, Marilena and I were sharing a horse, Dan and Chris were spooning in the love seat… it was fabulous. After Laura schmoozed with some Italian guys selling glow-in-the-dark-flying-things… god, I love these people. It was funny cuz at dinner we started talking about how none of us knew each other before coming to Firenze. Each of us had only one other person at the tables’ US phone number… it’s weird but really cool to think about at the same time.

Updates coming soon about last weekend in Dublin… it takes me a while to get weekends out, especially since it’s going to be a looong one. AAHHH.