Arrivederci Firenze!
Dec 21I’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 20THE 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 19With 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 17Whoa, 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 16Mom, 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 15I’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 14I 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 21There is much to be excited about!
