European Vagary

The Unending Adventures of Hula Hoop and Hawaiian Lion

2011-06-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

That’s right fan(s), today is your lucky day. I am creating a blog post, as we speak. You have Jessica Kennedy to thank for this, as she insisted that I blog about our trip to Hawaii. Yes, we just got finished spending a week in Hawaii with my father and stepmother. It was fantabulous and sunny and Hawaiian and all of those lovely things. We know it’s you.

Alright, I shall try to begin at the beginning and end at the ending. This will be quite difficult, as Jessica is currently sleeping next to me and we all know I can’t remember anything without her. However, I shall attempt nonetheless.

We arrived in Kona on Sunday, June 19, 2011, full of hopes and dreams and confusion. The confusion was mostly on my end because I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Hawaii, but I was pretty sure that the weather would at least be nice. So, naturally, as soon as I step foot on the tarmac, it starts raining. I was quickly caught up to speed on the fact that it rains in Hawaii. Judge my ignorance if you must, I certainly did.

Our timeshare was fancy and pantsy, what with the pool and the sharing of time. There were also golf courses afoot. We couldn’t check in immediately so we went on an expedition, which culminated at the Macaroni Grill (trust me; this was a very Hawaiian thing to do). Once we were able to check in, we settled in and then decided that we wanted to go check out the pool. So we did, we drank bizarrely green drinks and proceeded to feel very Hawaiian.

The next day (Monday) we wanted to see a beach. I’d never been on a Hawaiian beach (as this was my first trip to Hawaii) and I refused to believe that we were actually in Hawaii until I went to the beach. So I drove Jessie and myself up to Hapuna Beach State Park and we immediately went to the nearest hotel bar because, when I say I wanted to go to the beach, each and every one of you should know exactly what I mean by that. We were introduced to spiced mango daiquiris and proceeded to fall in love with ourselves. General drunkenness and frolicking ensued.

The next day we had scheduled a helicopter tour of the volcano, which necessitated driving to Hilo. We made the two hour long trek to the other side of the island, by way of Tex’s which furnished us with delicious malasadas. We also believe in the adage “waste not, want not” so we made a point of utilizing all sides of the highway. The helicopter tour was fun and clydey and I got motion sick. Also, lava is my favorite color of orange. We went on a “tour” of the Mauna Loa factory and consumed macadamia nuts to the point of illness. At this point, you should know I wouldn’t joke about a thing like that. My dad cooked Korean barbecue for dinner and merriment was had by all.

Wednesday, Jessie and I had an adventurous dolphin swim/snorkeling tour scheduled. So we woke up super early and we drove out to Puako bay to swim with the dolphins by way of a zodiac. I kept building it up, telling everyone how I’d always wanted to swim with dolphins for my ENTIRE life and I was going to tame the dolphins with my eyes and they would make me their queen. I was quite sure of this. Turns out, I wound up on top of a group of about 100 dolphins, by myself, watching them swim off into the murky depths and simultaneously came to terms with the fact that I’m afraid of dolphins. The snorkeling part of the tour was fun though. We saw a multitude of colorful fish and saw turtles being groomed by tiny fishies on a coral reef.

We spent the rest of the daylight at the beach and then drove out to downtown Kona to experience the Big Island Nightlife Scene. As it turns out, the Big Island Nightlife Scene is not all it’s cracked up to be on a Wednesday night, and it wasn’t cracked up to be anything. We were carded and told that we look like we’re 42 years of age simultaneously, which would have been impressive, if it weren’t offensive.

We went back to the beach on Thursday and spent the day hanging out and making friends with Luther and Froilan, the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel bartenders. Now, I feel I should mention that we were not guests of the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel. In order to purchase drinks from this hotel, we were required to conceal this fact. Also, I had my dad’s credit card and wished to be able to use it. The only way to surmount all of these obstacles was to become friends with the bartenders. Luther was this large Hawaiian dude who seemed legit and liked listening to our stories. If you are friends with me on The Facebook, you will be able to view a video reenactment of one such story, as told to my father. If you’re not friends with me on The Facebook, then you should either friend request me or stop reading immediately.

Froilan is a tiny Filipino gentleman who refused to believe that Jessie is, herself, Filipina until 3 days after they met when he realized she had developed a tan. He believed I was Filipina the first day he met me. I just have one of those faces. My dad eventually showed up at the bar, we all drank mango margaritas and then swam out into the ocean to touch a buoy, just because we could. Did you know that Hawaiian beaches have a flag that they put up to indicate that there are EITHER strong winds OR jellyfish? The flag does not specify which. All that can be said in response to this fact is: omg.

On Friday, we went to a new beach, the Mauna Kea. This beach was extremely fancy and we made friends with the bartender, John, and proceeded to be hit upon by men with womanly names who invited us to go out with them in their minivan. Obvi, we told them we’d meet them somewhere we never intended to go. We swam around in the water and drank mango margaritas and fell in love with ourself. Oh! And we made friends with the finches and fed them mixed nuts.

On Friday night, we all went out on a glass bottom dinner cruise. There was an open bar and a delicious buffet and a hula dancer and it was quite exciting. Apparently my dad hula danced. Obviously, he made a point of doing it when I wasn’t looking so I can neither confirm nor deny. I do, however, have it on very good authority that his hips don’t lie.

Saturday morning, we were up early to head to Hawi for a ziplining adventure. It was SO FUN. I love ziplining. A major motivation of mine is to look for any excuse to leap off of a cliff. We all had a blasty blast and took videos, which might make their way onto The Facebook, if you’re lucky. After ziplining, we had a delicious lunch at Café Pesto and then Jessie and I made one last trip to Hapuna Beach. We were sad to say goodbye, but we had to leave eventually to go out to downtown Kona to find out if it was actually capable of being exciting.

We drove to Kona and grabbed dinner at Bubba Gump (delicious, as usual) and then walked over to Lulu’s for drinks and dancing. Luther the bartender showed up and offered to buy us drinks. I reiterated the fact that we had boyfriends. He indicated that he was aware of this fact. I asked him why he wanted to buy us drinks then. He said that they were non-alcoholic. Because, obviously, when I drive 30 miles to go to a bar on a Saturday night, what I’m really looking for is a quality smoothie. Luther, we know it’s you.

Eventually, we drove home and slept a bit before waking up to pack and head out on Sunday. We checked out of the hotel, wtf-ed each other, and then drove down to Kona to explore the area during the daytime, as our flight didn’t leave until the evening. We visited the Kona brewery and drank a lot of Kona coffee and looked for classy belly button rings.

When we got to the airport, we realized that Jessie and I didn’t have seat assignments. So, we waited, awkwardly, until we were allowed to ask for them. Eventually, we peeked around a corner to see what was what and were met with a man loudly exclaiming, “Ma’am, MA’AM”, to which Jessie replied “don’t worry, she’s not trying to cut in front of you”. His response to this friendly information was to icily glare at the both of us and slowly enunciate: “I. Didn’t. Say. That.” Now, he was trying his damndest to be intimidating and rude, and ordinarily, I we would have let him think that he had been. But it was just too much so Jessie and I proceeded to crack up in his face. Sorry, Angry Airport Guy, you took it a bit too far.

Soon, my dad’s patience wore thin and he stormed over to the ticket agent lady to give her a piece of his mind. Somehow, this resulted in Jessie and me getting bumped up to first class. We didn’t know this until we got on the plane and just assumed that we were being put into the emergency exit row, as per usual. To this assumption, I gave the ticketing agent lady a knowing nod and a wink. In retrospect, she probably thought I knew about the upgrade. Story of my life: if I look like I know what’s going on, it’s probably because I think something else is going on and I’m reacting inappropriately to that thing that I think is going on.

So now, here we are, in first class flying back to Los Angeles. If you wish to view picture/video evidence of our excursions, please feel free to peruse my facebook. Also, if you would like to see my Luther impression in person, I am always happy to oblige. Especially if you’re willing to submit to Jessie recording your reaction.

It's not jokes

2010-09-03T20:25:00.000-07:00

FINALLY. You all get to hear about Ireland! I know you were on the edges of your seats. So. What I failed to mention in my last post was that upon our arrival at our hostel in Dublin, we found that we had apparently been upgraded from a 12 bed mixed dorm to a 4 bed female dorm. Not only that, but the other two beds were empty! Nice. Also, the shower had great water pressure. And our beds were a couple of the most inviting beds you've ever seen. Crisp white linens with a fluffy down comforter. What I'm trying to say here is, we lived like kings. Yes, kings.

After I posted last, we went to a pub called, I believe, Bachelor's? I actually have no idea. I should have asked Jessie while I had the chance. We were starving so I grabbed a Guinness and Jessie grabbed a cydrrr. Then, we were still starving, so we purchased food. Such delicious, heavy, heart-warming food. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves, at our corner booth, listening to live music and being all Irish. We were saying to each other, "we belong here, yes, our Irish roots have served us well".

Now, I feel at this point I should back up a bit and share a little tale. A few days before Ireland, Jessie had been explaining to me a theory, conceived by a friend of hers. The theory was that attractive women lead entirely different lives than less attractive people because they don't have to take "no" for an answer. This changes the dynamic of our lives drastically and we become complacent about the ease with which we live. He told Jessie to appreciate her influence. She told me to do the same.

Deep, right? Fast forward to the pub (or poob, as Dubliners call it. Even though they might take issue with that translation). Jessie and I are thinking to ourselves, this buttered bread is DELICIOUS. Yes, we must have more. So we request another order of the bread that came with our stews. The bartender brings it. We request another order. He suggests crisps. Okaaaay, fine. Crisps. We request another order of the bread. He refuses. Cool, thanks. Wait, what? But we'll pay for the bread. It's not about the money, apparently. It's too time consuming to butter bread. Well, what if you just butter a bunch at once and then we won't ask again? No.

Theory debunked. Feeling incredibly awkward and much more ourselves, we decided to go back to our hostel and sleep in our deliciously comfortable beds. 15 hours later, we woke up, ready to tackle the day! We went on the internet for a bit in our hostel and then headed next door to grab lunch at the pub. Two steps later, a couple of Irish guys have stopped us and asked us if we want to grab drinks. Ummm, yeah, okay, I guess, sure, whatever, I don't know, yeah, okay, fine.

So we wind up in the bar with the Irish guys, drinking beer and eating sandwiches. We talk for a few hours and then they offer to walk us to the Guinness factory. Cool, Irish tour guides who buy us beer. Not complaining. The Guinness factory was great. We romped in barley. There was romping. Also, we drank Guinness in the gravity bar. No thanks to the Irish guys, who couldn't seem to locate the gravity bar without my assistance. Not surprised.

After the Guinness factory, they took us to Temple Bar which is this super tall bar with a million stories and an underground dance club. So we sat, we drank, we laughed. Particularly at this crazed Hungarian former-male stripper who was wasted and intent upon giving us our own personal show. High-larious. He kept repeating, "I am speak little English". Me too dude, me too.

Then we went downstairs drank some more, until Jessie and I realized that there was an EMPTY dance floor downstairs with a DJ. How did we not realize this before? Our own personal DJ? Don't mind if we do. So we started dancing with our eyes closed, as we are wont to do, and got lost in the music for a while. When we finally opened our eyes, we realized that the club was packed. On a Monday night. There is no other logical explanation. Jessie and I made the club cool. Dammit.

So we bailed because the club was way too cool for us. We went to sleep and dreamt of the Blarney Stone. We woke up the next morning, ready to hop on a bus and kiss that stone like it's never been kissed before. Except... Cork (where the stone is located) is 4 hours away. And the last bus to come home leaves in 4 hours. Meaning we'd have to take a bus there and then take a bus back, without ever seeing the stone, or not go to Cork at all. Those were our options. Okay, so no Blarney Stone then. We needed a plan B. What was it? If you didn't answer food, then you really haven't been paying any attention to this blog.

So we walked, on a search for afternoon tea that would first take us to a restaurant serving traditional Irish breakfast. It was exactly what we needed. Even the waitress was adorable. However, Jessie ruined everything when she asked her for scoins. Yes, scoins. Not scones. So offensive.

Speaking of offensive, that was exactly how we decided to walk from the breakfast place to the tea place. We marched awkwardly the entire way, in a very offensive manner. I choose not to describe it on the blog but if you request a demonstration in person, Jessie or I will be happy to oblige.

We finally arrived at afternoon tea after glaring at a number of locals, and proceeded to get comfortable. Because we were going to be there for a while. At one point, they closed the restaurant. We didn't leave. We didn't leave until Jessie had ordered more tea than she could possibly drink. Yep, one steaming pot of tea on the table and we were ready to skedaddle.

Then we went souvenir shopping. I almost had a nervous breakdown. The choices were innumerable! But I made it out alive. Then we went back to our hostel to have one last relaxing shower before our last night in Europe. Ah yes, everything was going according to plan. Except, we get back to the hostel and the front desk girl stops us. "Um, didn't you guys leave?" No. We're still here. "Oh well, we thought you left and so we took all of your things out of your room and put them in the storage room". Nope, still as present as before. What exactly did you do?

So she called around and pretended not to know what she had done (she was the one who had checked us in). Turns out she had put us in the wrong room and we had not actually been upgraded. Although, I choose to believe that she noticed that the 4 person female dorm was going to be empty for two days so she made a "mistake" that resulted in us having two wonderful nights in our own room. So we grabbed our stuff out of the luggage room and moved it into our real room. Met some nice Canadian girls and took a slightly less-savory shower. But eventually we were clean and settled in. No harm, no fowl.

We then went to the poob and had a few brrs and cydrrs. I still have dreams about the Guinness in Dublin. Man was it good. Then we were hungry and it was super late and please don't judge us we went to McDonald's. Yes, that happened. Speaking of fowl, Jessie got 7 chicken nuggets in her 6 piece meal! The luck of the Irish. We hung out for a bit, went back to our hostel, hung out some more and then slept for a couple hours. Woke up super early to go to the airport and parted ways, as we were taking separate flights home.

Now, for the heavy stuff. Our trip to Europe was life-changing in so many ways. It reminded me of my love for the continent. I've always known Europe is a part of me, and this trip awakened that ardor within. I learned a few things that were lost on me during my last trip. I'm less enamored with french men. Frankly, I'd even go so far as to say that I'm completely disenchanted with the whole group. Perhaps this is for the best. I'm still madly in love with the language. I've also learned that I don't have to be nice to every man that tries to start up a conversation with me. I used to fear being "that girl", the bitchy one who wouldn't give a less attractive man the time of day. But at this point, if a guy is giving me a creepy vibe, I don't feel any obligation to give him an opportunity to insinuate himself into my evening.

But even more important than the personal growth I experienced during the trip, was the growth of my friendship with Jessie. We didn't really know that this crazy social experiment would work. 25 days with someone? After having experienced that length of time, I can tell you that with almost anyone else, that would have ended in a fiery inferno within a week. For that experience to work, two people have to be completely comfortable living inside each other's heads for the entire trip. Thankfully, we both realized that we like being inside each other's heads. We dug around and poked and prodded and learned things about one another and ourselves. I feel like I understand Jessie and myself more than ever. Sometimes you just get lucky.

And now, a celebrity post from Jessie herself:

For some reason, Patty decided to jeopardize the popularity of her blog and asked me to write about my experience upon returning to LA. I’ll start by saying that everything went well checking into my flight from Ireland to Chicago. There was a perfect amount of time during my layover to go through customs, to have a nice sit-down lunch, and then check into my flight from Chicago to LA. I had also been thinking about how all I wanted to do when I got home was sit down and watch good movies all day. So, who was sitting next to me on my last flight? A film student who was more than willing to give me a list of no less than 23 movies that I must see once I get back. All in all, everything was going smoothly… suspiciously smoothly. When I saw Sarahi waiting for me outside my terminal, I told her “I wouldn’t be surprised if they lost my luggage. Everything has been going way too swimmingly today.” So we waited patiently by my baggage carousel and saw person after person reach for their bag and go off on their merry way. Then, there were two bags left on that conveyor belt and neither of them were mine. Was I surprised? Of course not.

So we went to the baggage claim office to report the situation. As we got in line, we noticed a plump, perhaps mentally challenged, older Asian man sitting on a bench inside the office. Since we were waiting in line anyway, Sarahi and I tried to do some catching up. All of the sudden, our conversation was interrupted by this extremely loud fart. We looked behind us and see the old Asian man grinning back at us. If you know anything about me, you know that I am not one to hide my emotions, so I burst into an obnoxiously loud fit of laughter. Sarahi doesn’t contain herself either. The guy in front of us tried to be polite and tried to ignore the hilarity of what was happening, but I’m pretty sure my giggling pushed him over the edge, so he started chuckling too. Every 30 seconds, Sarahi and I turned to look at the Asian guy and he was still sitting there with that giant grin plastered onto his face. We continued this process up until I was the next person in line. By the way, you are welcome guy-in-front-of-me-in-line. Lesson learned. Sometimes, it’s okay to laugh.

I filed the report on my bag, and then Sarahi took me home. I got a call on the way informing me that LAX was able to track down my bag and that they would deliver it to me as soon as possible. At approximately 11pm that night, I figured out why LAX purposely lost my bag. They were thinking “Jess, we know you’ve had a long day. We know you’ve been in and out of airports and airplanes for the last 24 hours. We know that you would prefer not to have to carry your bag home even though it was only 22 lbs. We would be delighted to take care of that for you. That way, we can lurk, we can find out where you live, and above all else, our creepy deliveryman can see you in your pj’s late at night.” And that’s exactly what happened. I’m not sorry about it. LAX, you know things.

Tourtasticism

2010-08-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

So. Paris. We ended up having to rip ourselves out of bed to make it to the bus station so we could make our flight. The bus station was disgusting, full of flies and everything(one) smelled awful. We were exhausted and slept intermittently throughout the travel experience and finally wound up in Paris in the late morning. Except we weren't allowed to check in until 4. Four. Quattro. Cuatro. Quatre. Do you understand what I'm saying? Terrible check in time. ABC, Le Village, ABC.

So we decided to head out and about and grab some food and get acquainted with the culture. Little did we know, the culture was not particularly interested in getting acquainted with us. We grabbed a table at a bistro and attempted to people watch. Until we got stared down by the waiter for attempting to order in English. So we spent the next hour timidly sipping our beers and carrying on a conversation in Spanish with an 80 year old man named Javier. He invited us to tango.

Thus, in spite of the fact that we were hungry, we decided not to give our business to the establishment with the snooty waiter. We marched on and found another restaurant. This time, I used my remedial French skills to try and get something going on. This waiter found my French adorable and even gave me a few corrections. By the end of the meal, we had eaten a couple of the best sandwiches EVER and were getting free wine. Don't ever say Jessie and I crumble in the face of adversity.

The waiter also recommended a place for us to go out that night. It was called Le Queen. Now, I know what you're thinking. "That sounds like a gay club, Patty". Well you would be absolutely correct. Except it was ladies night. Free champagne sporadically throughout the evening? Why yes, Le Queen, don't mind if I do. There were also some very attractive male dancers. I might have danced with one. Okay both. And the hotter one told me to go to the club he was working at the following evening, Le Duplex. Jessie and I were getting a quasi-gay vibe from him, but he was cute and we were looking for somewhere to go anyway.

The day after Le Queen, we went to the Louvre to spend hours taking in some art and being generally inspired. And we were. Except, replace "Louvre" with "Starbucks in the entrance to the Louvre" and replace "art" with "coffee". Because that's what we did. All day. Yes, we might have attempted to enter the Louvre at 5:40, only to discover that you can't enter after 5:30. We might have had to leave the Louvre without seeing any actual art. Some of you might think that sounds like a wasted day. But you'd be wrong.

After leaving the Louvre, we went outside to grab sandwiches and coffee and sit in the grassy sculpture garden out front. We talked for a few more hours and watched adorable children chase one another and throw tantrums. Oh and we made friends with some birds. Only about 50 of them. NBD. Also, I feel I should mention that I love the sandwiches in France. You really can't go wrong. I kept ordering brie sandwiches. Yes, just slices of brie on a baguette. So. Freaking. Good. Jessie had a lot more variety about her sandwich orders. Which is as to be expected.

Then we went back to the hostel to get ready to go out to Le Duplex. While we were getting ready, Jessie gave me my birthday present at exactly midnight. Because it was my birthday. But I'm sure you already knew that. Except you Mom. Since you still have yet to wish me a happy birthday. It's been two days and still nothing. Nice.

We went to the club and waited in line for a bit. They weren't really interested in letting me cut on my birthday. Well fine. But they got a bit more excited about it after we had waited in line for a few minutes. I didn't really mind it, we met some coolish frenchies. People were actually turned away from the club for not being attractive enough. Weird France, weird.

We danced all night long and ended up seeing the cute dancer guy. Yeah he was gay. But it was good because we were unamused with everyone else in the club, which allowed us to keep dancing together and feeling ourselves, until the metro was about to open up again. We were on our way to the metro when this random taxi driver named Sam told us he'd take us home for free because he was done working for the day. Sweet. Free birthday taxi. Then we got back to the hostel and the front desk guy let us eat breakfast two hours before it was officially open. Sweet, early birthday breakfast.

Then we slept for a bit and when we woke up we decided to try Louvre round deux. We metro-ed over and actually made it in this time. We wandered around for a few hours and then Jessie wanted to see some African art. So we went over to Porte des Lions (another area of the museum), only to find that it was closed. But there were these two reeeeally inviting-looking benches in this lovely little niche overlooking the Louvre courtyard. So we napped on them. Duh.

After the nap we went over to the restaurant from the first day with the nice waiter because I loved those sandwiches. And I wanted another one. And it was my birthday so I could do whatever I wanted. After dinner, we intended to go to Moulin Rouge and purchased some wine so that we could mentally prepare ourselves for the adventures in store. Well, we ended up just staying on the terrace drinking until 3:30 in the morning. But honestly, I couldn't have asked for a better birthday. Easily my best birthday ever. Except for maybe the day I was born. Even that.

The next day we woke up and trained over to Eurodisney. We had SO MUCH FUN running around and acting like little kids. Yeah, we bought Minnie Mouse ears. Be jealous. Also, their version of Space Mountain is cooler than ours. We had dinner at the Blue Lagoon restaurant overlooking Pirates of the Caribbean. The food and the wine were soooo good. It was the perfect fancy birthday dinner. Plus, before we got dinner, we went on Pirates and Jessie roared at everyone. You'd have to experience the roar to appreciate what that means. It was super awkward. I.e. hilarious. I felt like the experience of laughing at how pissed off everyone was, was a birthday present in and of itself.

After Eurodisney, we went home and stopped at the Eiffel Tower. It was extremely touristic. I ate a kebab and spilled it all over myself, necessitating actually washing my clothes when I got back to the hostel. Did that, we got ready to go out and we headed toward Minx, which was a club our front desk guy recommended. Club recommendation FAIL. The club was closed. Forever. So we taxi-ed over to Le Queen, went in, danced for a bit and then left. On the way home, we met this weirdo named Ben who kept trying to give Jessie free Sephora. Ew.

Then we flew to Dublin and we are currently in our hostel, freshly showered and getting blogging out of the way so we can go to a pub. Brrr and cydrrrr, here we come!

¿Te gustas?

2010-08-17T11:49:00.000-07:00

So kayaking and snorkeling went well. If you call a swarm of jellyfish well. Which I obviously do.

It all started quite unassumingly. I saw something that looked like a white piece of trash bobbing innocently on a rock. I peered into the depths and after a lot of pondering, decided that it was a jellyfish. I told the guide (BJ) and he dove down and confirmed my suspicions. I wasn't surprised and had already named the jellyfish squisherwhistle.

BJ swam us over to another area to get away from squisherwhistle. Which I thought was a bit dramatic, but I suppose that's why I'm not the guide. Thank god he swam us over there, because we were promptly surrounded by a swarm of yellow jellyfish with purple spots. Which also sting. So we cried uncle and swam toward shore. On the way, I saw a small pink jellyfish with loooong clear tentacles looming menacingly... A FOOT in front of my face. Something about that jellyfish struck fear into my heart. I think it was the color.

Also, we kayaked through some caves on the way back to shore. Jessie and I led the way into a cave that was pretty much exactly the width of a kayak. And exactly the darkness of black. The Australian guys with us wanted to keep going so we let them go around us because we weren't too keen on sitting in a pitch black cave/coffin on a kayak of doom. When they returned, they complained that there wasn't anything to see in the cave. Um, duh?

We slept on the hour drive back to Barcelona and then walked to the "Travel Bar" to eat dinner. Jessie might have infected some guy that wanted to finish her bread for her. Did I mention we're sick? Just the plague, nothing to worry about. Before we went out to go kayaking we had purchased some cold medicine that contained a european dose of pseudoephedrine. The only side effect I got was alertness but Jessie felt weird for days after taking the meds. So we won't be giving her those pills anymore.

As a result of the medicine/lack of sleep/day long workout, we decided to sleep it up. You know, just a short nap before we were going to go out to the club. 17 hours later, it's noon and I have no idea what day it is. I start freaking out because I think our flight to Paris is that night. Took me about 3 hours to realize it was the 16th and our flight is on the 18th. My sense of time has taken a nosedive in Europe and it wasn't so great to begin with.

Upon waking, we did laundry (cleanliness is an underappreciated quality, lemme tell you) and went to a cafe. Drank up some sangria and befriended a waiter who invited us to a fiesta. Didn't make it to that, but I am pleased to report that we managed to successfully contest our bill when they charged us for one too many liters of sangria. Yes, we drink THAT many liters of sangria. But not so many that we don't know when we're being overcharged. We're high functioning alcoholics.

Then we went to the hostel, got ready to actually go out and... get this... we went out. Yep, we stopped at a smoky bar and ordered cheap beer and got free shots of tequila to boot. Then onward to the metro to find the club. Got distracted by some kebab and then we were on the road again. We managed to take one metro before they closed the whole system on us. So now we're stranded atop La Rambla with no real clue how to get where we're going. Thankfully, this guy lied to us and told us we were an hour and a half from the club we were aiming for and convinced us to go to his, called DMix.

We made it into the club and took some chupitos and befriended the DJs. Got them to play Stereo Love. We were a little offended when they wouldn't play it on repeat. But all was forgiven when they gave us free drink coupons and even told the security guard it was cool for us to come and go into their DJ booth as we pleased. We're incredibly cool people. So cool, in fact, that we managed to develop a foolproof method of keeping the men at bay. BOTH of us dance with our eyes closed. Genius. However, eventually, we made friends with some french boys and they taught us how to french dance. Which is a lot like normal dancing, except fancier.

On the way home, we tried to take the metro but when Jessie fed her ticket into the machine, it made some spastic noises and... no ticket. Probably had something to do with the fact that we were sweating all over them. The guy let us onto the metro and told us where to go to get a new ticket, implying we should go right that minute. Well what time is it? 5:00. Well what time does the office open? 8:00. Hahahaha, no.

The next day, around noon, we wake up and walk over to the metro office. They give us shiny new tickets and we walk down La Rambla, stopping at an upstairs cafe. We managed to snag the one window table with a view of the street and sat eating paella, drinking beer/sangria and people watching. Despues, we walked further down La Rambla, stopped at an outdoor market and smelled some very fishy smells and saw some very fishy things.

We continued down to the beach and successfully avoided some very expensive establishments in our quest for an outdoor cafe. We eventually found one and enjoyed tapas and sangria and the company of children. I.e. one another. Also, got called guapa for about the one millionth time. Not complaining.

We then metroed to get some more kebab. We're pretty huge fans of kebab. We tried to fight it for a while, pretending it was only a drunken excursion, but today we admitted to ourselves and each other that no matter how much we ever love a man, he could never surpass kebab.

We have a flight to France in a few short hours (flight leaves at 6:55 AM, so we'll need to catch the bus at around 2 AM). Should be quite the adventure...

Sometimes, you gotta take a taxi

2010-08-14T08:18:00.000-07:00

So we're in Barcelona now. Yes, I'm aware I didn't blog throughout our entire stay in Ibiza. Ibiza's not a very bloggy place. So I suppose I must reach back into the bowels of my memory and talk about our last moments in Rome.

The next day after the last post, Jessie and I wanted to experience another quintessentially Roman day, so we wandered/ate/caffeinated. That night, we went to the Spanish Steps to meet Robbie and his friend Clyde. We saw a free opera and then went on a third walking tour of Rome. What can we say, we like to walk.

We wound up in Trastevere and stopped at a bar for birre. Also, Jessie and I took Clyde to get chocolate shots. The three of us decided we wanted to head over to La Maison and see what was what. So I took everyone on a little Tevere adventure and we eventually wound up at La Maison. Or some sort of old person convention, masquerading as La Maison. People were, no joke, waltzing in this club. The club looked exactly the same. Same lighting, same couches, same dance floor. But with waltzing. We marched in there and decided, "you know what? We're going to talk to the DJ about switching this up". If only I could post a picture of this DJ so you could experience the same realization that we had when we turned and looked at her and realized... she was an old woman. Looking very classy in her string of pearls. Looking less than willing to play anything other than Italian waltzy music. Okaaaaay, so we waltzed.

After the waltz, we decided to head to Mood to see if ALL of the clubs in Rome had simultaneously gone pazzo. Nope, Mood looked poppin. Alright, va bene, we entered. There wasn't anything really wrong with Mood that night, but there wasn't anything really right about it either. I began dancing with my eyes closed, which I've found does a pretty effective job of keeping the boys away. Until I realized that Jessie and Clyde had ditched me in my dancing stupor. Also, upon opening my eyes, I realized there was a random Italian dude dancing in front of me but not touching me so that everyone in the club knew we were together. Except me. Not creepy at all. But they were upstairs getting fresh air, so crisis averted. We walked Clyde home, might have planted some ideas in front desk guy's head and boom, we were out.

The next day we checked out and flew to Ibiza. Romans are pretty serious about Ibiza, fyi. Especially the flight there. The party does not start in Ibiza. It starts as soon as the plane takes off. Don't make the same mistakes we did.

The title of this post is a profound statement uttered when we were unable to locate our hotel in Ibiza without the aid of a taxi. But I'm inclined to believe it's applicable to other areas of life. Even those not involving taxis. Also, I think it's profound that in spite of the fact that we hired a taxi, we still managed to get lost on the way to our hostel. Apparently there are two "Monterrey Apartments" in Ibiza. Naturally, our driver thought it appropriate to drop us off at the non-hostel, private living establishments. Joke was on him, because we are huge fans of wandering through the desert looking for hostels.

When we finally made it to the hostel, we headed straight to the hotel bar. Obvi. We started drinking, laying out by the pool, drinking, making friends, drinking, etc. A few of these friends were Italians who were interested in purchasing chupitos (shots) for us and taking a taxi to San Antonio. Nothing wrong with that. After a whirlwind of Italian and chupitos and gin, somehow we found ourselves in San Antonio. We wandered a bit, danced a bit, sometimes simultaneously, and ended up with glow-in-the-dark paint on our faces. At one point, we hit the mother lode at a kebab stand. Soooo good. Idk whether to credit actual deliciousness or drunkenness, but we were definitely not sorry about the kebabs. In the process of spilling our kebabs all over ourselves, we managed to attract a group of men. Because, trust me, Jessie and I are never more attractive than when our feet are strewn with kebab.

The men turned out to be American Berkeley law school grads. We hung out with them and somehow wound up at a beach and just generally had a grand old time until the sun came up. Then the guys went to sleep and Jessie and I sat on the beach drinking liters of sangria. Yes, plural. No, I'm not comfortable quantifying just how plural. We gazed out at the water and took in both G and R rated sights, sometimes both.

Eventually we decided to make something of ourselves and go out to Amnesia that night. We got all dolled up and went out to grab a taxi. Somehow we got distracted by some french guys...? Idk. Jessie wanted me to make sure that everyone knows we FORGOT to go to Amnesia. That joke was alllll JK.

The next day we rented a vespa so that we could explore the island. Yes, I can drive a vespa. Or, at least, I can now. Anyway, we vespa-ed over to Cala Tarida which is a beach on the west side of the island so that we could watch the sunset. We wound up at an incredible restaurant with a view of the beach and the coldest beers I've had in recent memory. Jessie drank fancy island drinks. You gotta understand, she is a very fancy girl.

After the sun had set, we drove back to the hotel to get ready to actually go out to a club. We had plans to go to Pacha because David Guetta was spinning. Muy bien, we were excited. We got dolled up again and went to pregame with Roberto (the bartender) and muchos chupitos. We ended up meeting Cedricle at the bar and and making plans to roll out to Pacha with him. Ummm, yeah. We ditched him. Whoops.

So anyway, we get to Pacha and have to pay mucho dinero to get in. The club was a very fun club, but after paying so much to get in, we found the price:fun ratio to be a bit on the painful side. Whatevsies, we saw DG and he looked old/confident. Above all else, he wasn't sorry about it.

The next day, we went out on the town and got henna tattoos. I ended up getting a huge tribal on my back to be ironic. Jessie got something very cute and dainty on her leg which suits her perfectly. Then the henna guy wanted to give me a free butterfly on my hip. Which was all well and good, except now I'm not so sure that the butterfly might be so ironic as to have brought me into a realm where I look like I actually would choose such a tattoo. I'm hoping that the tribal balances it all out and brings it home.

We drove around for a bit on the vespa, gassed up and wound up at a Scottish bar/pub/restaurant thing with a live entertainment. A very large, excited, Scottish man named Ray Moss. Dinner was tasty and we ordered a Punky (penguin full of ice cream) for dessert. Not as good as our french/persian dessert, but I make it a rule to never pass up an opportunity to eat from a penguin.

After dinner we went back to our hotel and Cedricle came over with rum and we had mas chupitos. Then we sent him away and fell asleep, some more awkwardly than others.

The next day (today) we had a flight to catch so we returned the vespa. I'm leaving out the fact that it poured rain last night and so the vespa didn't start. So I had the pleasure of walking the vespa about a mile back to the rental place. A very effective early morning workout, highly recommended. We flagged down a taxi and managed to arrive at the airport. We felt way too cool because we were actually able to CHECK our bags for free and so we drank cava in the airport bar to celebrate. Don't even pretend you're surprised.

We arrived in Barcelona, psychically found our way to the hostel and attempted to book a boat tour. But that was a no-go because the kitchen burnt down. Uh? But it was actually fortuitous arson because it led us to booking a snorkeling/kayaking adventure instead. Which is much more our style and we're pretty excited about the whole endeavor.

Ahora, tapas. Despues, todo lo demás.

This is the life

2010-08-09T04:22:00.000-07:00

Jessie's in the room asleep right now and it's giving me serious writer's block. I can't blog without her anymore because so many things happen every day and it all runs together in my head. Jessie's the only one who can keep it straight.

Whew, she just showed up and we've managed to write down a list of everything that has happened. I'm tempted to just publish the list. Anywho, here are a few things that happened that I failed to mention in my last post:

First, when we were hanging out with the guys in Trastevere, Jessie and I walked away for a moment to buy new beers. When we were crossing the street, this Italian guy stopped us. "Excuse me. I am a very very straight man and I want you to know I think you are very attractive. So I want to know. Would you sleep with me right now?" My response? "Not right now..." "OHHHH, so MAYBE LATER!!!!! Okay, thank you!!!" And he leaves. Uhhhhh, okaaaaaaaayyyyyyy...

Also, there is a phenomenon in Trastevere where street performer guys yell GUARDA right before they perform a trick. Jessie and I saw one while we were waiting for dinner at Dar Poeta. Not only do they perform tricks, but their tricks have very sexual undertones. Jessie and I obviously support this.

Now, onto the chronology. After blogging last, Jessie and I went into the center to explore some monuments and eat some of the food that I've come to know and love. I took her to Largo Argentina to show her the baby cat sanctuary. We both chose one cat each to represent who we are and took pictures of them. If I were to show you the pictures, you would have no difficulty deciding who belonged to which cat.

We then walked to my study center which was closed, but I was able to show Jessie the piazza. Then I took her to the enoteca by my center and we drank cappuccini. Then onward to my favorite gelateria in the center. We walked to piazza navona and decided to grab dinner. We wound up at this random restaurant slightly off the piazza and immediately befriended the waiter. His name was California. He has a real name and a) I don't remember it and b) I don't want to. We had pasta carbonara and it was alright. Also, we drank wine because that's how we do.

After piazza navona, we started wandering toward the trevi fountain. We passed through this free limoncello tasting shop. I wanted Jessie to try it to see if she hates it as much as I do. She doesn't. No one does really, I'm still not sure why I have such a violent reaction to this vile liquid. But we met this guy from cuba who was doing the tasting and he asked us to meet him back at the shop at around midnight and he was going to take us to a concert. That was about the fifth date that we've stood up in Rome. I'm not sorry about it.

On the way to the Trevi, we saw a lady selling bracelets on the street. She was weaving together words and then tying the bracelets on the customer. I had an epiphany, I was going to get a bracelet that said Jessica and Jessie was going to get one that said Patty. Jessie looked at me like I was retarded and said we should get two bracelets that say GUARDA. Ummm, that's what I meant.

So we ended up having to chase this lady around Rome while she made our bracelets because she was running from the polizie. A+ for authenticity. But we have our bracelets now and y'all better guarda.

Then we found ourselves at la fontana di trevi. We took pictures and basically stood there looking particularly attractive. We ended up befriending a guy we had asked to take a picture of us. His name was Paolo. He was the least creepy Paolo we've met in Rome. Yes, we meet that many people.

After trevi, Jessie and I walked to Trastevere because she wanted to see the lungotevere (a series of tents set up along the river that are basically a bunch of carnival games and bars/restaurants). We wandered around for a bit and I'm sure drank some. I honestly don't remember but I think, statistically speaking, we were drinking. Then we started heading over to La Maison which was a club right next to Castel St'Angelo. We had asked California where it was located and he had implied that he was going to show up there too. Not worried about it.

On the way to La Maison, Robbie and the guys randomly drove by in a limo and we said hello. What are the odds that this would happen? To other people, maybe 10%. Jessie and me? 96%.

We finally got to La Maison and walked right in. We were not dressed for a club at all and yet we waltzed right through all of their bouncers. Idk why but for some reason Jessie and I are treated like celebrities in Rome. Is it any wonder we love it so much?

We sat down for a bit and ended up making friends with some girls. You could say they hit on us. You could say they didn't hit on us. But you can't say they didn't love us, because they did. Then came the boys. First was Paoletto Gay. We called him this for so many reasons. He spoke English pretty well. I mean, he still sounded Italian but when we complimented his accent, he was all "Oh I know". Ew Paoletto, grab some modesty while your ego's up there. Paoletto's friend Massimilliano was also hanging out with us. Jessie kept calling him Massimo but he didn't mind. He was just happy Jessie was talking to him. Also, California and his friend stopped by. He was very upset we weren't fawning over him.

At this point, I feel I should tell you that Jessie and I could not stop anywhere in the club for more than 10 seconds without a group of guys surrounding us and talking at us. I mean, I'm all for external validation but it began to get a bit ridiculous. And every time a new group of guys tried to talk to us one of the previous groups of guys would come over and promptly inform us how jealous they were. I wasn't aware you were allowed to be jealous since we just MET 15 minutes ago. Ugh. They kept asking us how many guys in the club we knew. All of them, Paoletto Gay, all of them.

The worst part is that there were a couple of guys that we recognized from Campo dei Fiori. These guys were particularly attractive and had been too shy to approach us at the time. But we found them at La Maison and were having a nice little conversation when no less than 3 separate guys came by and cockblocked us. Wow. Getting cockblocked: another experience you can't leave Rome without.

So anyway, we put up with the men whenever we didn't want to dance and danced whenever we didn't want to put up with the men. We adopted a finger wagging strategy when we were on the dance floor to keep the men at bay. They still surrounded us like predators but at least they weren't touching us. The guy to girl ratio in Rome is pretty absurd. You'd think it would be good for us, but when we only want to dance with each other it just makes things difficult.

Then the club closed and we sat for a few minutes watching people trip over a torn up patch of rug. Naturally, a couple of guys stopped to watch with us/hit on us. They invited us to go swimming in the Trevi. We were down, more for the swimming, less for the them. So I started walking us toward the fountain and so started the never ending tirade from this guy Derrick about how he has a motorcycle and wishes he could ride it in Rome and blah blah blah. Jessie said it and I'm repeating it because it's the perfect description: this guy was a douche. Douchus maximus. Unnecessary.

Thankfully, we lost the douchers and continued our trek to the trevi. It was about 5-6 in the morning so everything was empty. We passed through a bunch of monuments and there were no people to be seen. It was so cool to see everything in the calm of the early morning. When we finally ended up at Trevi, there were only a handful of people. Jessie and I took pictures but didn't end up being able to swim because there was a bonafide police presence. Eh well, at least my shorts are dry. Then we walked all the way back to our hostel. That's right. We walked all the way from Castel St'Angelo to Termini. Anyone who's been to Rome is shocked right now. Be impressed. Also, we made it back to our hostel just in time for breakfast at 7. Or dinner, as we've taken to calling it.

Then we woke up at around 3:30 and headed over to the Vatican. I showed Jessie the basilica and FINALLY got to climb the cupola. Anyone who read my blog before knows how hard I tried to climb that damn thing and they kept closing it on me. It was totally worth it. Jessie would call it delayed gratification. I would call it anything but.

After the Vatican, we walked to Trastevere for dinner. I got lasagna and Jessie got some seafood pasta, which she had been craving. We also had a bottle of white wine. Robbie wandered by. Of course he was on that same street at the exact same time. Not surprised. Dinner was delicious and afterward we went to the chocolate shot place and I made a date with the chocolate shot guy. Obvi didn't make it to that.

Then we went over to a bar and had a liter of white wine. The waiter sat us in the darkest back corner and brought out the check with the wine. Geez dude, a) you are probably overestimating how quickly we can drink white wine and b) it's cool, we don't like you either. Also, two random guys from La Maison stopped by. "Jessie, Katie, it's so good to see you again. Do you remember us from La Maison?" Um, no? And they left. We're kind of a big deal.

Then we started walking back to our hostel to get ready to go out and we heard the sweetest sound in the world: GUARDAAAAA. Obviously, we ran toward the call and wound up right in front of the restaurant I had been searching for the first night. Now, I love this restaurant. But I can only find it when I'm drunk. And it's also entirely appropriate that guarda called us there. We showed him our bracelets and ran inside for second dinner aka lunch. A liter of white wine and a pizza margherita later, the restaurant was closing.

At this point, we went to our hostel and got ready for the Colisseo party. And by got ready, I mean that we changed into shorts. Sexy. Then we went to the Colisseum. The bus we were on took so long to leave that I actually took a nap while waiting. Just powering up.

When we got to the Colliseum, we heard some music coming from nearby, but not where I remembered the Colliseum party being. So we wandered a bit, couldn't find the party, and ended up following the music.

It was just some random outdoor bar/club near the Colliseum but it was so late that at this point it was pretty dead. So Jessie and I just ordered a couple of flat waters and listened to the music. The waiter took pity on us and brought us some free shots and cheetos. He seemed cool, his name was Marco and he had brought us free shots so I liked him.

As the night progressed, somehow we wound up with Marco sitting at our table along with a french guy named Karim. We were trying to talk to Karim about some lady troubles he was having and Marco was asking me about my troubles. His solution? "Kiss me". Umm, slow down kiddo. Asking someone to kiss you is a pretty surefire way to guarantee that they won't ever kiss you.

After a while, we ended up peacing out to go back to the hostel. We wound up at the bus stop around 3:30, waiting for the n2. This random brazilian guy stops by and starts hitting on Jessie. Except he doesn't speak English so I'm translating for him. In the process of the conversation, he tells me how great Jessie is and how he doesn't really like me. Dude. I'm translating for you. Probably the wrong person to be insulting if you're trying to get at my friend.

So we wound up at home and now, the next day, I am blogging.

Also, I need to write out a text message that we received because it deserves to be memorialized on this blog:

Massimo Enriques: "Where are you? :p you are so sweet babies..i wanna stay with you..call me..see you..smack! :p"

And that's all I have to say about that.

Falling in love with myself

2010-08-07T05:55:00.000-07:00

Stiamo a Roma! I'm going to be completely honest with you guys. Because I'm pretty sure only my mom reads this blog. I haven't cried in a long while. I don't know why and I'm not sure how I feel about it. But once we landed in Ciampino and were on the bus through Rome to get to Termini, I began to feel overwhelmed with a desire to stay. It's like I'm reliving my last 5 days in Rome all over again. That feeling of being ripped away from everything that I am. And I cried. Jessica is my external hard drive of emotion so naturally she cried too. She's already cried multiple times. I kid you not, she cries every time it would be appropriate for me to cry and I can't. Examples to follow.

So after we got to Termini, we walked over to our hostel and I ended up having to ask directions. I'm pleased to report that my Italian came flooding back, like riding a bike. We found the hostel and once we got settled in I took Jessie over to Trastevere. I wanted to take her out to a place called Dar Poeta tucked back into the recesses of the town. After a significant amount of wandering, we located the restaurant. It's a very popular restaurant so we ended up waiting for about an hour. We didn't mind, the listo guy was cute.

Dinner was delicious: bruschetta, vino, pizze, e calzone. After dinner I wanted to take Jessie to Campo dei Fiori but I ended up going the exact WRONG direction. Like 180 degrees of wrong. But we found our way after a while and made our way back to the hostel. Campo dei Fiori would have to wait for another day.

Also on the bus ride home, I was a little intipsicated from the vino. I kept hanging on the bar and swinging around. Basically I was a monkey. Also, coined a new phrase: "judge me".

Woke up the next morning and got ready. Then we took the metro over to the Colosseum and Forum because Jessie had to see them and I wanted to get it out of the way. A few hours of touristing later, we were through the gauntlet. We walked over to Piazza Venezia and Jessie saw the wedding cake, but she didn't get to climb on it. Then we went over to Largo Argentina and I showed her the cat babies. Then the Pantheon for granite and scaffolding. Gotta love restoration.

After the Pantheon we went to the TIM store and finally got Jessie a SIM card for her phone. So we are now officially on the grid. I was going to get one for my phone as well but it turns out my phone is broken. I can't say I'm surprised.

Then we hopped on the tram to Monteverde because I wanted to show Jessie where I used to live. I had wanted to see my signora but I was pretty sure that since she hadn't responded to my last email that she wasn't in Rome (she had said she would tell me when she got here). So I just planned on taking her to my favorite sandwich place in the whole world and wandering around my old stomping grounds.

We got off the tram and were planning on going over to my old home but Jessie had to use the restroom. FINE. I take her to a bagno and then we start walking toward where we were going, but on the opposite side of the street. Then I see a familiar face sitting in front of a pizzeria. Holy shit, could that be my signora? As I'm staring dumbfounded and Jessie's grinning like a fool/already crying, my signora notices me and adopts the same expression of utter shock. We run toward each other and embrace and she begins speaking to me really quickly in Italian. It takes me a while to figure out what she's saying and by then she's begun speaking in English. She tells me all about what she's been doing for the past 2 years and I tell her about how I'm done with school and traveling before I begin work. She introduces me to her companion, a male friend from Switzerland who speaks many languages, and invites us back to her place.

So we drove in her car (my first time in her car, she almost never uses it but had driven to the beach that day) back home and went upstairs. I was able to show Jessie my old room and balcony and terrace and kitchen and just was overwhelmed with the fact that I was back home. Then we sat on the terrace as the sun was setting and drank wine and ate antipasti e pizza. One of Ruth's friends was there, a really nice Italian lady who consistently speaks to me in Italian, which I love. It was lovely catching up and Ruth was just as wonderful as always, if not more. Jessica kept crying intermittently whenever something particularly moving would happen. We took a bunch of pictures and after a few hours, they had a concert to go to and we went out to a bar/club. I still cannot believe the luck of finding her on the street. Jessie's bladder: always making things happen.

Then I took Jessie to Pan Zai for my favorite sandwich. The same guy still works there, I'm not sure if he recognized me. The sandwich-making process was slightly different (a departure from the 20-30 minute process 2 years ago) but the taste was all there. Heavenly. Then we trammed back to il centro and walked over to the bar/club we wanted to try out.

Sooo we walked by and it was EMPTY. Like, two sketchy dudes sitting out front and nothing. I nudged Jessie, "just keep walking Jessie, just keep walking". So not down for an empty bar. We ended up at Ponte Sisto drinking Peroni and talking. This random group of four Italian guys stopped to chat with us for about an hour and invited us to go to the beach today to watch their band play. Obviously, since I'm sitting here on the computer at 3 in the afternoon, we will not be going to the beach today. They were fun though and didn't speak much English so I got to practice my Italian.

Then, as those guys were leaving, Robbie texts me to tell me he's on Ponte Sisto. Robbie's a friend you might remember from the last time I was here. He's living in Rome now. So we wander over to him and he's hanging out with his 3 roommates: Chris, David and Rob. We drink Peroni and chat and the guys play the bottle throwing game (try to throw bottles of the Ponte onto a concrete island and make them break). Then eventually we decide to walk over to Campo dei Fiori.

We hang out in Campo for a while, drinking and chatting. Robbie and his friends knew a bunch of young expatriates and they kept coming by and talking with us. At one point, this guy created Jessie's and my new favorite quote: "So there I was wearing my purple shirt and my pink helmet, looking at myself in the rearview mirror and I was falling in love with myself". Trust me, it's hilarious when you're drunk. At one point we got 3 euro absinthe shots. Just as gross as I remembered.

After a while of drinking and hanging out, we went over to a club called Mood that the guys used to promote. It was super crowded and everyone was shoving to get in. We all linked arms and the GUYS got US in. Rome, you're weird. When it takes 4 guys to get 2 cute girls into a club for free, you're doing it wrong. But anyway, we got in and it was fun. By then I think it was around 2 in the morning. I was dancing with this one guy and kept taking sips of his drink. I remember thinking, 'wow, this guy likes his drinks really strong'. Turns out it was whiskey. Ew. But that definitely explains the intoxication level. So Jessie and I are dancing with peeps and hanging out and wandering and periodically re-finding one another. We ended up losing the guys and left the club around 4:30. Shenanigans ensued and we wound up at our hostel around 5.

We made a beeline for the kitchen and started drinking free stale bread. Then the front desk guy started setting up for breakfast and eventually busted out some cookies. We asked him for some and he obliged. And then we took about 50 and shoved them in my purse. We thought we were being really sneaky, but in retrospect, the security cameras probably gave us away.

We woke up around 2:30 in the afternoon and are now at the computers communicating and blogging. And eating our cookies out of my purse. I love Rome.

Mind your P's and Q's

2010-08-04T21:26:00.000-07:00

Why should I mind my P's and Q's, you ask? Well, the origin of the phrase is... honestly I don't feel like writing it out. If you haven't heard the story, I recommend wikipedia. But it is relevant to today. Because at one point Jessie and I wound up in a pub and definitely DID NOT mind our P's and Q's. But we'll get to that.

So we woke up late this morning. And by this morning I mean yesterday morning. Because it's 5:30 in the morning and I just got home. Wooooooo.

After waking up we went to the Post Office to run an errand. Because we're RESPONSIBLE GIRLS. That was for you Mom. After the Post Office we got majorly rained on. Because it's London and that's how London rolls. We ran into a kitchen supply shop and asked them where we could get afternoon tea. The lady told us to go to Piccadilly. Off we went with nary a qualm.

We found Piccadilly and were struck with the realization that: this is where we should have been the whole time. It was bustling. We found a visitor information center and asked them where to get tea. The lady there helped us set something up, she was super nice. Except for she kept asking us if we wanted scoins. Turns out she meant scones. Don't worry. We corrected her. Also, the visitor information place was right next to a Cinnabon. Which was fortuitous because, who doesn't like a good cinnabon?

Immediately after scarfing a cinnabon, we walked to afternoon tea. Naturally, we walked right past where we were aiming and ended up in Trafalgar Square by accident. Don't worry, we took awkward pictures.

We did an about face and found the Haymarket Hotel where we managed to procure afternoon tea. We spent hours drinking Oolong tea and eating scoins and tiny sandwiches. UNLIMITED scoins and tiny sandwiches. Be jealous.

After tea we went back to the visitor information center and purchased our tickets to: Enron, the musical. At least, I think it was a musical. There was some music involved.

So, Enron. I invested a lot in the show (monetarily, emotionally, grammatically) and so I was already more than setup to be let down. However, in spite of this predisposition the show was actually really good. It spoke to Jessie and me in a very real way. We've been struggling to find meaning in our future jobs and the show was a fascinating commentary on the pointlessness of an existence devoted to the production of intangibles. More fodder for our depressingly existential conversations. Great.

Also, I promised I'd explain the title. Before the show, we stopped in a pub for a brrr and sydrrrr. Don't ask, that's just how we're saying beer and cider. We don't feel the way we did when we got here. So we asked her for a beer and a cider. And she responded "so you want half and half". Because we're stupid Americans, we thought she was planning on mixing the two. So we argued with her back and forth for an unnecessarily long time. Then, a benevolent englishman at the bar gently informed us that she was asking if we wanted two half pints. Of course we did NOT want two half pints. Full pints only for us, thankyouverymuch. The transaction was awkward, embarassing and insulting. I.e. exactly what we intended.

After Enron we wandered to find dinner. On the way, a promoter stopped us and talked up this club. I was down but Jessie was hungry. So we found food. I'm embarassed to say, we ate at McDonald's. I think the last time I had McDonald's for dinner, I was in Rome. Jessie wanted fries and the food in England sucks. Don't judge me.

After McDonald's we wandered around Piccadilly and this other promoter tried to lead us up to the club. But we wanted coffee. He told us to get stamped and then we could leave and come back. (Something about entry being cheaper before 11? Idk.) So we started to follow him in and the first promoter shouted that we should have gone in with him. Ahbviouslay we ran back to the first promoter and awkwardly ditched the second guy, causing unnecessary animosity and chaos. Just your average Jessica-Patty exchange.

We made it into the club, got stamped, and promptly left to find coffee. Upon purchasing said coffee, we loitered in Piccadilly and proceeded to intentionally ruin peoples' pictures of these signs on the floor by sticking our feet in them. Repeatedly.

Then we finished our coffees and went back up to the club. It was called Penthouse and was on the top of a building. Pretty sweet view and legit music. Plus it was open until 3am, which is always a plus. We danced for about 5 hours, drinking throughout. We're convinced that they water down their alcohol. There is no other explanation. We felt the way we did when we got there. We also made new friends and, no, did not take any pictures. I'm sure you're not surprised. Also, there was this guy dressed ENTIRELY in white who would not stop trying to dance on us. Yes, on us. I was super offended and wanted to inform the guy that you are not supposed to wear white anywhere near labor day. And by labor day, I mean me.

Then we got out of the club at 3:30 and wandered to the tube station and were "surprised" to discover that it was locked. So we decided we were going to wait until it opened at 5:30. We purchased some chicken concoctions and sat down on the sidewalk to wait it out. Two english guys (Harry-not hairy, and Sam) stopped to keep us company. They were cool. They taught us about respect and pashing. We taught them about good heart. A worthy exchange. Also, they convinced us to look for a night bus. Good heart guys, good heart.

We found the N13 night bus taking us back to Swiss Cottage and even saw it coming shortly thereafter. SWEET, no waiting. Oh, no wait, it's driving past us. Quick Jessie, run to catch up! After banging on the door, the bus driver lets us board. Phew, now we're on our way. Wait, did the prerecorded bus voice just say this bus terminates here? Oh shit, the lights just all turned off. Aaaaand we're stopping. Nice.

We ended up waiting for a while on the street and the same bus restarted itself and took us home. Now we're back at the hostel. We're going to grab breakfast and then head out to do some quick touristy stuff before frolicking to the airport. Roma here we come!!!

Veni Hengey Vici

2010-08-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

It took Jessie a full minute to wake me up this morning. Apparently she shook me for a while. I don't know about that, but I do remember having a dream about an earthquake.

So we got ready, went down and grabbed free continental breakfast, and ran out the door to the tube station. Tubed it over to Baker Street in an attempt to find the McDonalds where we were supposed to be picked up for our day trip. As soon as we stepped off the subway, 10 minutes ahead of schedule, I turned to Jessie and mused, "I wonder why the guy at the hostel told us to take 30 minutes to get here, the ride only took about 5". Her response was, "He must have thought we were too stupid to find it". And we laughed.

Turns out front desk guy was right. About the stupidity. We spent about 10 minutes walking down the wrong street before we realized our error. At that point, we had the adventure of running around central London like stupid Americans. So basically your average Tuesday morning.

The bus ended up being half an hour late. Naturally. Then we rode to Stonehenge and wandered around taking pictures and generally desecrating the monument. Visual proof to follow. Also, we ate an egg and cress sandwich. Honestly, the food here is lackluster. Everything looks good and seems like it should be good until you put it in your mouth. It's a buttertaste.

After Stonehenge we rode to Bath. Bath is a quaint little town that has long been known for its hot springs. We wandered around a bit and then went into the ancient Roman baths. SO many tourists. Holy canoli. Buuuut, afterward we went to the Pump Room which is this great little restaurant/tea house.

Now, I don't know if you've met Jessie and myself, but we fancy ourselves tea aficionados. It was like a pilgrimage to mecca. We ate tiny sandwiches, scones and various pastries. All whilst drinking from an extensive selection of teas. Coincidentally, I'm also a tiny sandwich aficionado (aficionada?). There was live music playing in this large tea room and everything felt very elitist. Just the way England intended it, I'm sure.

Then we got on the bus and rode back to London. Upon arrival, we had an exhausting conversation with 'questionable desk man' about which pubs are best. He drew us a map. On it, he pointed out various pubs/clubs, including those that were closed. Why? Idk. But we ended up extricating ourselves from the conversation long enough to run to the bus stop and found ourselves on Camden Street. We wound up at a Jamaican pub and drank Jamaican things. I was not drunk or hipster enough to feel comfortable. But the beer was good and eventually we wandered our way home.

Tomorrow, more sight seeing and a potentially epic evening planned by 'questionable desk man'. This can only go well.

Made it to London!

2010-08-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

Hello all. Currently in Europe fighting over computers at the hostel. Lovely. Actually Jessie's fighting. Quite a scrapper that one.

So the flight into London went well. It was long but I slept so I didn't really notice. Upon landing I loaded myself up on caffeine and waited for Jessie's plane to arrive. FINALLY she showed up, walking out of the international terminal. It was a reunion for the ages. A scene out of Love Actually.

Then we caught up on the past month and a half and tubed our way to our hostel (Palmer's Lodge). It's a good hostel. Still a hostel, but there's free internet and breakfast so they're covering all the important bases. After dropping our bags off we went to a bar and tried a couple of bizarre drinks. Pictures were taken and will be posted upon my return to the ole USofA. Then we went to see the London Eye (overpriced) and the Tower of London (therapy session ensued... more productive than sightseeing, quite frankly). Then we tubed it back to Swiss Cottage (the metro exit near our hostel) and actually ate dinner and had beer at THE Swiss Cottage. Which is apparently a pub. I fully support this.

Back to another bar, more drinking, more friending. We came back to the hostel and played 'good cop/bad cop' with the front desk guy. Guess who got to play bad cop? I'm sure you're not surprised. However, we purchased a day trip to Stonehenge tomorrow. So I will write about that and other things later. Loving London! Super relaxed and fun vibe. Write again soon :)

Musings

2008-12-10T06:20:00.000-08:00

First off, let's examine the word musings. It has the word muse in it... I wonder if there is some connection to the concept of the Muse. Like maybe my random thoughts are inspired by the Muses? These are the kinds of things that my mind does now that I've developed a newfound passion for linguistics. It's quasi-annoying because now when I speak even in English I'm always wondering about what I'm saying and where the word came from and all of that. My signora and I laugh because she has the same problem, since she knows so many languages (German, Italian, French, English... and those are just the ones she knows well. She also learned Portuguese and Spanish). Oh well, I guess it's just a cross I'm gonna have to bear ;)

Anyway, let's talk about feelings. Namely, mine. I'm having a hard time thinking about leaving Rome. I mean I really start to freak out when I think about it for too long. I feel like I'm losing a part of myself that I don't want to give up. It almost feels literally heavy when I start thinking that I'll be leaving behind all that I love about Rome and Europe in general. I honestly love myself when I'm in Europe (that sounds weird, but I'm at a loss for a better way to describe that particular emotion). I feel happy, confident, capable, and complete here. Really the happiness is what I'm going to miss the most. Not to say that I'm an unhappy person in America, but here there is a perpetual state of bliss that never goes away. Everyday when I go home from school, I walk from the tram to my apartment listening to my iPod and I feel like I could burst from joy. Seriously. Every single day. You'd be sad too if you had to give that up. The feeling of joy comes from just looking around and seeing the signs around me in Italian and feeling the Italian streets underneath my feet and watching the little cars zip by. I feel like I've been accepted into a culture other than my own. It's an amazing sensation. I'm going to miss all of the monuments in Rome and the beauty that is such an integral part of the city. But mostly I will miss the everyday moments. Sitting on the tram on my way to class, tripping over cobblestones, eating pizza and spilling all over myself at Pan Zai (an excellent sandwich shop by my and Ashley's apartment and a favorite of ours), speaking in Italian and teaching English to random strangers, meeting new and interesting people almost every single day, hearing TONS of different languages swirling around me on a daily basis, lying in my bed and staring out my window at the city spread out before me, taking showers in our teensy tiny shower, arguing politics with my signora, going out to Italian clubs, and just stopping every once in a while to admire whatever captures my interest.

I will miss my classes, particularly Italian and Science and Religion. Italian will be missed because class with Rita (my teacher) is absolutely wonderful every time. She does the coolest things: we played taboo in class, had class in a bar where she bought cappuccinos for all of us, had a party on the last day of class where we were allowed to drink wine, and she's always doing cute things (for example, she loves to play the matchmaker... she's quite the romantic). Science and Religion will be missed because Father Larrey is a great teacher. He made class interesting and entertaining each and every day. I was allowed to interrupt him when he was speaking and ask questions about what the Catholic church thinks about various issues. I cracked jokes in class regularly. He went off on tangents and told stories all the time, which I love in a teacher. I also learned a great deal about religion in general from that class. I'll also miss Bruno, the doorman in my building. Every single time we saw each other I would say "Ciao, Bruno!" and he would invariably respond "Ciao, bella, ciao!" He once said that I was like a picture, I was so beautiful. He could always put a smile on my face :)

Well, tonight I have my farewell dinner to attend. Teachers and students alike will be there and we will all be able to say goodbye. I made a ton of new friends here and it will be sad to say goodbye to them. However, after the dinner there's a party going on at the guys' apartment for Paul's birthday... so I won't have to say goodbye to my closest friends until after that. Wow, it's really weird to think about saying goodbye to all these people. Studying abroad is an amazing experience because it gives you so much. But it also takes a lot of it right back at the end and that process is painful.

However, I don't think that it's going to take everything back. This experience has definitely changed me, I think for the better. There are going to be a lot of differences in my life when I get home. I dress differently, carry myself differently and think differently now. I will continue to live in the moment and work hard to achieve my goals. I even have new goals now as a result of this experience (I have it in my head that I'm going to teach myself and minor in French... where there's a will, there's a way!) I can't wait to get home and enjoy the rest of my college years. But after living in Europe, I really can't wait to get started on the rest of my life either. There's so much that the world has to offer and I intend to experience as much of it as possible. I've found new passions and I can't wait to pursue them. There's just a fresh new perspective on everything and I'm taking that back to Los Angeles with me.

I told a friend yesterday, that these few days (and times like these) are the reason the word bittersweet was invented. I'm thrilled to be done with finals because I worked really hard in my classes and earned every good grade I got (except maybe in Italian). I toiled and stressed over finals and when I wrote my last word yesterday and turned in my 20 pages of work, relief washed over me. (Fun fact: I've hand-written around 60 pages in the past 2 days... my hand has never felt so much pain) At the same time, the end of finals coincides with the end of this experience. I and all of my new friends (including Roma) must go our separate ways and continue our 'normal' lives. This is just life.

Fortunately, I intend to make Europe a part of my normal life in the future. I will move back here, even if only for a short while. I can't live without Europe, it's that simple. When you find something that moves you and changes you in a way you never thought possible, you don't let it go. And so, I will continue to keep Europe and Roma in my heart, for they are my new lifelong loves.

My blog

2008-12-05T08:20:00.000-08:00

Alright everyone. Five new blog posts below (not including this one). Read them at your leisure.

Thanksgiving in Rome

2008-12-05T08:09:00.001-08:00

So Ashley and I decided quite a while ago that we were going to make Thanksgiving in Rome. We just can't live without it. So finally, the day rolled around and we put on a show. We had told our signora to invite a friend and we had invited our friend Matt, so we were able to show a whole group of Italian people what Thanksgiving is all about.

Ashley did all the grocery shopping, bless her heart. I only had to go out and get the stuff that was forgotten. Because what is Thanksgiving without having to go back to the grocery store multiple times? Then we spent hours and hours cooking and preparing everything. We made deviled eggs, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, carrots, gravy, cranberry sauce, and apple crisp. Our signora brought a cake, her friend brought cookies and Matt brought vino. Everything was delicious and cooked perfectly. The sweet potatoes were a little bizarre because Italian sweet potatoes are not like American sweet potatoes. I was the only one who really enjoyed them and that was just because I'm obsessed with brown sugar. We did a great job if I do say so myself. The 5 of us just sat, drinking wine, eating and talking. It was a great evening and we didn't even get done with dinner and dessert until 2 in the morning. Quite an experience and my first Thanksgiving cooked without parents!

Some pics:
The 5 of us well into the dinner
Ashley and I with our signora
Matt cutting the turkey, he was really a perfectionist about it :)
Proud cooks!
Check out that spread!
I made great friends with this turkey. I got to give it a bath and stuff it and rub it down with oil... super fun.
The cooking process. We kind of tore apart our signora's kitchen. But we cleaned it all up that night before we went to bed. Every last dish.

Fun in Rome!

2008-12-05T07:47:00.001-08:00

So the weekend after Amsterdam, I was visited in Rome by some very special people. My friends Bree and Kristina from elementary school (i.e. La Crescenta/back home) and Bree's cousin Caitlin came and I showed them a good time.

They arrived Saturday and we tried to meet at the Vatican before it closed. But we didn't make it on time so all we got to see was the Basilica. But that's cool in its own right. After the Vaticano, we went out to dinner at Campo dei'Fiori. Everyone had delicious wine and pasta, it was good. After dinner we went our separate ways to get ready for the evening. My friend Christina works at a club and we were planning on going there that evening. I met them at their hotel and we spent some time hanging out there before we went out to the club. When we got to the club, all of my friends from the program (who had arrived 2 hours earlier) were upset because everyone had trouble getting in. But they had come with 40 people right when the club opened, obviously they weren't going to get in. So the four of us went in and met Christina and we all just danced the night away and had a grand time of it.

The next morning, I met the girls at Piazza Venezia and we grabbed lunch. They had gone to the Colosseum and Forum that morning without me, at my request (didn't want to pay to get in when I've already seen it... that and I wanted to sleep). Lunch was delicious and we had the funniest little waiter who couldn't stop singing. The girls were amused at the fact that I was speaking with the waiter in Italian. I have to admit, I was speaking Italian more than I usually would... for their amusement more than anything else. After lunch, I walked them up to the Trevi Fountain, to the spanish steps, back to the trevi, to the pantheon, piazza navona, piazza dell'orologio, castel sant'angelo, the tevere, trastevere, and to my guy friends' apartment to go the bathroom. When we got there, Boris recommended a great place to get dinner. So we went out and got chocolate shots (they had never had them) and then went to the place Boris recommended. They had the most delicious nutella/ricotta calzones. Really top notch. The pizza was great too. Then I took them up to Gianicolo park and showed them the fountain and the view. Afterwards, we went back to their hotel because they were staying across the street from a bar that I happened to know had beer pong. Now, beer pong is a great American pastime of our generation. There is nothing more that needs to be said. We were thrilled and we played for about an hour. Then, when they stopped selling beer, we played with water. We're that dedicated. All that evening we were just cracking up about every little thing and calling the bartender The Man because he had cut us off and just acting hilarious. We had sooo much fun and I laughed more than I've laughed since I can remember. Thank god for those girls. I can't wait to get back to La Crescenta and hang out with them. After beer pong, I went back home and they went back to the UK where they're studying.

Some pics:
Acting silly on the Spanish Steps
Yes, we really were laughing that hard
After The Man sent us packing
Taking the shot
Setting up the game
Chocolate shots
Frolicking in front of the Pantheon
More Spanish Steps ridiculousness
I loved it
Where did the calzone go?
Lovely Trevi Fountain picture. If you look closely, you can actually see the coin. Kudos to Bree on taking that picture.
Lunch at Bibo with the funny waiter.
Fun at White club on Saturday night
Caitlin is such a cutie
From left: Bree, Me, Caitlin, Kristina and Christina. Super fun bathroom picture... haha.

Amsterdam

2008-12-05T07:11:00.001-08:00

Amsterdam was waaayyyy more fun than I thought it would be. You hear about Amsterdam for only one thing (and I think you know what I mean), I didn't really think there would be any more to it. But Amsterdam was a world of wonders. Let's take a look. (Oh and there's a picture that might be offensive to some, it's not too bad... just know you were warned)

So, our trip to Amsterdam started out a bit shakily. Ashley and I had a helluva time getting to Fiumicino airport to make our plane. It was pouring rain and somehow a tree had gotten knocked over onto the train tracks, delaying our train to the airport. The train itself was packed beyond comprehension, standing room only with our suitcases. Then we finally got to the airport super late and had to run to the check in line, except I got off on the wrong floor on the elevator and got lost. Great. We finally checked in and ran to the security line. The security line was hundreds of people long. We had 15 minutes to make it to our gate, so we cut. Everyone. It was crazy. But no one got mad, strangely enough. Then we RAN to our gate which was the farthest gate humanly possible. We're talking a mile here people. In boots with heels. We must have looked quite comical. When I finally got to the gate (Ashley was carrying her bag so she was way behind), there was no one there. So I ran to the information desk which was surrounded by disgruntled individuals. Ashley and I ran around like chickens with our heads cut off for a while and finally found that we had been told to go to the wrong gate and our plane was running 2 hours late. Awesome. So we sat and recuperated from our impromptu workout.

When we got to Amsterdam, we checked into our hostel and then decided to go out and grab a beer. We walked around Amsterdam, admiring the scenery (the place was gorgeous) and then we stopped and grabbed a bite to eat. Then we went to a bar and met some cool people and just danced and chatted for a while. It was a fun evening.

The next day we decided to go on a little walking adventure around Amsterdam. We went to the red light district and saw the girls in the windows and visited a sex museum. Yes, they have those there. It was interesting and hilarious at the same time. Then we ran into some guys who go to UCLA and are in Zack's frat (Zack is a good friend of Ashley and I). So we grabbed a few beers with them and talked, fun times. Then they went home and Ashley and I went to a dance club. The usual Ashley/Patty-ness ensued and then we went back to our hostel.

Next morning, we rented bikes and biked to the Anne Frank house. It was really moving. Tears were shed. After the Anne Frank house, we biked over to Vondelpark and had the BEST time. I really didn't stop smiling the entire time I was on the bike. I've decided that bike riding in Amsterdam is my new 'happy place'. It was that great. After that we went met the guys at the Van Gogh museum and saw some pretty cool things. I found out that everyone pronounced Van Gogh wrong. It's not van-go, or van-gog as a lot of Europeans pronounce it, it's van-hoch. But weirder. I can't even describe it. It's a sound beyond my auditory comprehension. Anywho, after the museum Ashley and I went on a dinner cruise that we had purchased tickets for earlier. The cruise was so much fun and it was all you can drink. So we just had a great time cruising the canals of Amsterdam, eating and drinking and taking pictures and laughing. We were the only people on the boat who weren't having a romantic evening, sooo funny. After our cruise we went ice skating OUTSIDE! I love doing that, it's only the second time in my life that I've been able to ice skate outside (first was in Chicago). I kept falling over because there were no zambonis involved. That and I'm terribly uncoordinated at times. After ice skating, we went to bar and made some more new friends. I love Europe.

The next day we went to go return the bikes. I got Ashley to bike around Vondelpark one last time before we had to give the bikes up (I really could have biked for hours and hours and hours). After returning the bikes we went to Hard Rock Cafe Amsterdam. We had a really funny waiter and had a great time eating some good American food (I had a pulled pork sandwich, sooo good). After lunch we went back to our hostel. We had received 2 free drinks the day before because of a mix up with our rooms that resulted in us having to change rooms in the middle of our stay. Kinda lame, but the free drinks were pretty legit. So I had a beer and Ashley had a vodka strawberry (strawberry what you ask? nobody knows, it was mystery juice). Then we left EARLY to go to the airport and had a much more leisurely time of it.

Amsterdam was so great. Really, the feeling in the city was just magical. The people were really laid back, I loved that you could bike everywhere super easily, and the city itself was gorgeous. As of right now, my favorite cities in Europe are probably Paris, Rome and Amsterdam. Just don't ask me to put them in order :)

Some pics:
On the dinner cruise!
Hanging out with Ronan, Erik and Scott, our friends from UCLA.
On our way back home, the stress of travel has taken its toll on Ashley.
Free drinks in the hostel!
Candid photos at Hard Rock
We love ice skating!
On a giant chessboard pretending to be horsies
We made up a new phrase for our trip: basta. It means enough in italian. We decided it applies to a lot of things. The two fingers are the symbol for basta.
Yeah, I saw that.
I love my bike!!!!!!!
Acting silly on a bridge
Beautiful Amsterdam streets
Sex museum... now you see.
First night there, hanging out in the bar. Lots of fun and love!

Paris!!!

2008-12-05T06:18:00.001-08:00

Alright so Paris. Paris was amazing. Ridiculously gorgeous city (so pretty it should be illegal), beautiful people, delicious food, great vibe and a language that pretty much made me melt EVERY time I heard it. So yeah, can't say enough about Paris.

With that in mind, let's move forward. Ashley and I arrived in Paris on Tuesday morning. We grabbed breakfast with Pierre (he had met us at the bus station) and then I promptly went to sleep. After waking up, we all hung out at the guys' (Constantin and Pierre's) apartment, just relaxing, drinking and talking. That's what I mean about the vibe being so great. I loved that everyday after work/school, people just sat and talked. Then a bunch of their friends came over and we all went out to a creperie and I had the most delicious dang crepe of my life. There were mushrooms and bacon and cheese... it was sooo good. After dinner the group of us went out to a bar where they were playing the election results on the TV (it was daytime in America). Everyone in the bar found out that we were American and BAM we were celebrities. Good times. Then we went to another bar where Ashley and I were dancing around and basically being us. It was a cool night, a great introduction to Paris.

The next morning I woke up super late (as I am wont to do) and everyone told me who had won the election... Obama! It was good because I would not have wanted to be American in Paris if McCain had won... we would have been assaulted :) We spent the day relaxing (and by day I mean afternoon, when I say I woke up late... I mean it) and Pierre cooked a delicious lunch for everyone, with a perfectly cooked (i.e. rare) steak. God I miss steak. Then the guys took us on a walk around Paris. It was so much fun we saw the Sacre Coeur and Moulin Rouge and Galeries Lafayette and the Opera and other cool stuff. Then we went to Notre Dame and I wandered off by myself because I was the only one of the four of us who hadn't been there. It was soooo great. Then we went out to one of the most amazing dinners of my life. We're talking numerous courses, delicious wine, live pianist, sparkling conversation, Ashley and Constantin acting silly... the whole 9 yards. It was fantastic, couldn't have been better.

The next day, Ashley and I had a little adventure. She had the whole day planned out for us so I was just along for the ride. I love that. She took us to the cemetery where we saw the graves of Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde among others. Then we went to a museum/school where we got lost (accidentally went in the school instead of the museum) and then I saw Foucault's pendulum!!!!!! I'm a nerd and I don't care. It was awesome. They had little metal rods set up that would get knocked down in succession due to the pendulum's interaction with the rotation with the earth. I don't want to get too nerdy on you and explain how the pendulum works, suffice it to say: I was enthralled for a while. Then we went shopping for the guys (whiskey and cigarettes, naturally) and went home. That evening we stayed at home and some friends came over and we all just joked around and partied and had a great time.

The next day I went on an adventure. I had broken one of my contact lenses the night before and so I set out to find a new one. I had the pleasure of wandering around Paris, not knowing a word of the language, to try to find and optician who would sell me the contact lenses I needed. After much strife, I managed to locate a very helpful girl who spoke English and we worked everything out. I ended up buying the wrong prescription (because I'm ridiculous), but it was good enough for government numbers. Then I wandered myself over to the Louvre for a little solo excursion. It was raining so I got in tout de suite and I stuck in my ipod and basically walked around the place for 3 and a half hours. I had sooo much fun and I saw the Mona Lisa about 5 times. I kept going back. Then I grabbed lunch at the cafe IN the museum (I just think it's cool that I ate lunch in the Louvre). Afterwards, I met Ashley and Constantin to go on a visit to the catacombs. Ashley was really excited about them. They were cool... not completely my cup of tea but it was still a fun experience. Got kind of boring after a while really. Bones are bones, I always say (well actually I don't always say that, but I should). That evening we went to a bar and met a bunch of the guys' friends. I had a lot of fun that night because I met a bunch of their girlfriends and I was able to talk to them for a while. They were sooo cute and sweet!!! I really loved everyone that I met while I was there, and I miss all of them. All of the girls kept saying that they didn't speak English which was hilarious because they totally did. Meanwhile, I can't even form a single sentence in French. Haha.

The next day Constantin had to leave to go to a wedding. So Pierre, Ashley and I all went to the Eiffel Tower! I was really excited and Pierre and Ashley were just laughing at me because they had already seen it, and probably thought my level of excitement was a little ridiculous anyway. It was so cool though because the tower was lit up in my favorite shade of my favorite color (blue). Then we went out to another wonderful dinner. Steak tartare... yummy!!!! I also had creme brulee... but it wasn't quite as good as my dad's. After dinner we all went home and hung out for the rest of the evening.

The next morning, Ashley and I had to get on the plane to go back to Rome. Our week was fantastically, ridiculously, stupendously amazing and I just loved every minute of it. I need to learn French though. That's next on the list...

Some pics:

Pierre, Ashley and I at our post-Eiffel Tower dinner.The three of us at the Eiffel Tower (yes, my pictures are out of order)
Yay, I know my mom will like the picture :)
There were some contests to see who could drink the fastest... but I lost because I spilled on myself (could it have gone any other way???)
Pierre and I on our walking adventure!
Constantin and I in the catacombs
Oscar Wilde's grave, what a cool guy.
At a bar, late into the night. Haha.
Why yes, we ARE adorable.
This picture makes me laugh.
Pretending to be scared in the catacombs.
Oooohhh, the Louvre.
Pretty picture that I took of the street from inside the Louvre.
Venus and I go way back.
Ho ho, the Mona Lisa!
FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM!!!! Sweet!
The first nice dinner that I was telling you about, with the pianist. Such a great night.
Notre Dame, loved it!
From left: Pierre, Constantin, Ashley, Enguerrand, and Paul. Lotsa fun!!!

Edinburgh

2008-11-18T08:20:00.001-08:00

Alright so after Barcelona we went to Scotland. We flew from Girona to Glasgow and had to take a train from Glasgow to Edinburgh at around midnight Sunday night. It was reeeally cold in Scotland, especially at night. But it was super fun just to hear the Scottish accent that I love so much... even if I didn't know what people were saying part of the time.

When we got to our hostel we checked in and saw our amazing rooms. Really, amazing (well, at least by hostel standards). We had huge down comforters with duvet covers and clean sheets and looong beds (I love long beds, for obvious reasons) and everything was in working order. The bathrooms weren't too crowded and even though we had paid for 2 beds in a 4 person room, the other 2 were empty the first night so we got our own room.

After checking in, we decided to head out and try to find a pub. We ended up wandering around looking for Dropkick Murphy's (a pub that the guy at the front desk recommended) for a while and finally found some guy on the street who offered to help us find a pub. Well, we found one but the guy we were with wasn't allowed in because he wasn't dressed well enough. We offered to not go in, but he told us we should go without him because we were only going to be there for a day. So we went in and we met some cool people, drank a beer and watched the live band.

After going home and sleeping for just a bit, we grabbed breakfast and then we went to our hostel to take the FREE walking tour of Edinburgh that they offer. It was a Monday so there was no one on the tour except for Ashley, the tour guide (Cal) and myself. We had a great time wandering around Edinburgh. We went to the famous cemetery, saw the coffee shop where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book, went inside a church, climbed the Scott Monument, walked through the royal gardens, watched the cannon on the castle get fired (it is fired once a day, I believe at 1 pm) and got attacked by a squirrel. Cal was hilarious because he's from Australia and apparently they don't have squirrels in Australia. So he just about lost his mind when this squirrel came up to us and started climbing all over us. Literally. I had a squirrel on my leg and climbing behind my back. Closest I've ever been to a squirrel, I'm glad Cal was there to appreciate it.

After the walking tour the 3 of us grabbed lunch. I ordered haggis (sheep intestines, traditional dish)... it was not so delicious. But it wasn't gross either. I was proud of myself for ordering it though, I like to try different cuisines. After lunch, Ashley and I went to the castle so that we could go in and do some exploring. I wandered around a bit and then realized my lack of interest in Scottish museums and my abundant interest in Scottish sunsets. So I sat, listening to my ipod for about an hour, watching the sunset... on top of a castle. Probably one of the coolest experiences of my life. Then I did a bit more exploring before they closed the castle on me.

After our castle experience, Ashley and I grabbed dinner at a pub. I had the most delicious steak pie ever! It reminded me of my mom's beef stew that she makes (that's going on the list of things that need to be made when I get home, by the way). I ate the whole thing, which was quite a feat considering the portion sizes in Scotland. Then Ashley and I went back to our hostel to take a nap (I had to do laundry too).

Then we went downstairs and met up with Cal because he was leading the hostel's FREE pub crawl that evening (lots of freeness... really the best hostel ever). We had a lot of fun at our first pub where we played pool and I drank and Australian beer at Cal's recommendation. It was good, but very different from what I'm used to. Then we went to the second bar which happened to be Dropkick Murphy's. Ashley and I were a little perturbed to find that it was actually right next to our hostel the whole time. Whatev. It was here that we met a couple of guys named Lewis and Sam who were also both Australian. We hung out talking to them for a while and planned on meeting the pub crawl at the next pub. Well, we went to the next pub and they weren't there, but karaoke was!!!! So Ashley had a GREAT time forcing me to sing Shania Twain (I'm NOT a country girl). Man I feel like a woman... greeeat. But it was funny and we danced/sang the night away with Sam and Lewis.

At 3 am we had to be on the bridge by the train station to meet the bus that was taking us to the airport to go to Paris. Picture this: we didn't get any sleep and we were running through the streets of Edinburgh after having just gone on a pub crawl... you can imagine the hilarity that ensued.

We finally got on the bus and apparently, I took part in the following conversation:

Me: Ashley, I need to go to the bathroom.
Ashley: Ok, go ask the bus driver.
Me: Alright

Me: Scusi, dove il bagno?
Driver: What?
Me: Il bagno? Vicino al'autobus???
Driver: What?!
Me: Parli italiano?
Driver: No.
Me: Donde esta el bano?
Driver: WHAT?
Me: Comprendes?
Driver: NO!

Me: Ashley, he didn't understand me.
Ashley: That's because we're in Scotland Patty, he speaks English
Me: I know that. It's just that he speaks Spanish.
Ashley: No he doesn't Patty, we're in Scotland!
Me: Ok, fine. You ask.

Ashley: Excuse me, where's the bathroom?
Driver: In the back.

As you can see, I was a riot. After this little exchange, I reached my desired destination of the bathroom without any ocular lenses to aid me. Then I fell asleep only to wake up long enough to get on the plane and then sleep some more.

Edinburgh was great though and even though we weren't there for very long, we had ridiculous amounts of fun.

Some pics:

Ashley and I at the karaoke bar

Sam, Lewis, Ashley and I

Lewis and I having a grand ol' time

Trying to find the pub crawl... unsuccessful

Hey, look at us, we're in a red phone booth!!!!

Scottish breakfast. What did I tell you about the portions?

View of Edinburgh from the castle courtyard area... pretty huh?

Haha, it's a castle!

My friend the sunset.

Me+castle+sunset=good times

I'm on top of the Scott Monument here

View of the streets below from atop the Monument

I climbed that (i.e. the Scott Monument)

Ashley and I on our walking tour. Bobby is the dog featured in the picture. He's famous because when his master died, he waited by his grave for 14 years. I want one!

Live band that was playing at the pub we went to on the first night in Edinburgh

This is our hostel. Great place, bad picture.

Barcelona

2008-11-18T07:30:00.000-08:00

So, recently I went on my second and final 10 day break and I did a little jaunt around Europe with Ashley. The first place we went was Barcelona for 3 days. On our way out of Rome, it was pouring rain so we decided to take a taxi to the airport. It was a different airport than the one we usually fly out of, so we didn't know where we were going or what to expect. Looking back it was definitely a good thing that we took the taxi, otherwise we would have missed our plane. We were flying Ryanair which is a very well known carrier in Europe, known mostly for its cheap fares and very stringent baggage rules. Ashley and I walked into the airport with trepidation because we had already broken the rules (you're only allowed one carry on including your purse and it costs 20 euros for each checked bag... we had purses). However, we made it through check in quite easily and proceeded to security. There, the security guy made Ashley take her bike lock out of her bag and told her that she would not be able to take it on board (a bike lock?). Bear in mind that this is all while she is carrying a purse with metal straps that would have been much more effective if she decided to strangle someone. So we trudged away, sans one bike lock and had to wait for a while to get onto our plane but we made it into Barcelona rather uneventfully.

Once we got there, we decided that we would go to sleep in our hostel for a bit and then go out later. Well, after waking up to our alarms at 1 am, we decided that our energy would best be saved for the next day and we decided to keep on sleeping. The next morning we woke up and headed out to greet the day. The very wet day. It was pouring rain yet again, but we did not let that stop us from sight seeing around Barcelona. Ashley had a map and a plan and so we metro/hiked our way up to the Parc Guell de Gaudi to see the super special Gaudi landscaping and architecture decorating this particular park. Here's a picture of me in front of some Gaudi buildings.

The park was interesting in the rain and Ashley and I both got our boots really dirty but I got this picture in front of a cool tree so it was totally worth it.

Next we wandered over to this hospital that was designed in a Gaudi-esque style and it was actually pretty ridiculously cool for a hospital but the pictures I have don't really do it any justice.

Then we went and saw the Sacrada Familia. I took a few pictures but you should probably look it up on google or something because they were doing construction while I was there and it was pretty much an eyesore.

Then we went back towards our hostel and ate some bocadillos (spanish sandwiches) along the way and took a nap. It was Halloween so our hostel was having a pretty substantial party with contests and cheap beer and all of that fun stuff so we ended up staying there for the night and just hanging out. We met some guys from Quebec and Ashley won a dance contest.

The next day we decided to have a festival of food. We had tapas for lunch which were alright but they weren't that great and pretty much not worth the money. But we had yummy churros for dessert so that made up for the somewhat disappointing tapas. Then we decided to wander around the city a bit more and ended up walking to the harbor and looking at all the boats and watching some really great street musicians. There were two guys and a girl and the girl was playing the flute and she was soooo good. I almost died. I'm really mad at myself for not taking a video or at least a picture but I guess I was mesmerized.

Then we went and saw the Christopher Columbus statue and took pictures on one of the lions surrounding the statue. Ashley decided that she needed to properly ride the lion and she had a bit of trouble getting on.

I took the easy way out.

That night we had paella for dinner among other things. It was good but it was on the expensive side. The food in Barcelona didn't impress me overly. But the city was definitely beautiful and I would certainly go back. I guess I'm just getting spoiled by all of the other ridiculously good food I've been eating.

That night Ashley and I went to the "Magical Fountains". They might have been called the majestic fountains, I don't really know. But they were really beautiful. Here's a picture of me as I was walking toward the fountains.

Here's a picture of the fountains up close.

And here's a video (thankfully I remembered to record this).

That night we went home and napped for an hour before we went out to a club called Razzmatazz. It was a gigantic club, the biggest I've ever been to. There were like 10 dance floors and 5 levels and all of them were playing different music and the first floor had a live band. Ashley and I tried to find hip hop but none of the floors were really playing music that we liked so we watched the band and danced on top of speakers and basically spent the whole night getting harassed. Some German guy kept hitting me and pulling my hair so we left around 6 am because he was really freaking me out.

We slept in and then checked out of our hostel the next day and just spent the day exploring and window shopping and then we had to get to the airport so we ran to catch our bus to the airport and then hopped on our plane to Scotland!

Orvieto

2008-11-18T07:12:00.000-08:00

Alright, I know I'm incorrigible. Let's move past that.

So I went to Orvieto a few weeks ago as one of the day trips through the program that I paid for when I first arrived in Italy. It was beautiful and is known for this amazingly large church and also a bunch of underground tunnels, both of which we toured. Here's a picture of the outside of the church.

This is a picture of me goofing around in the underground.

And another...

Um, I'm not entirely sure what to say about this graffiti except for, "why the question mark?"

This is a picture of Allison (my Orvieto buddy) trying to take a picture of the front of the church with her super highspeed camera.

After the underground tour, we explored for a few hours. I bought a pashmina scarf and Allison and I ran around looking at the town which was really small and quite clean for Italy. It was really beautiful. Then after our free time, we met up with the group to eat a lunch that came with the trip. The lunch was HUGE. We had an appetizer of meats, cheeses, bread and spreads. Then came the first course of mushroom risotto. Then the second course of pasta. Then the third course of sausage, beef, chicken, potatoes and salad. Then for dessert there was some sort of red velvet cake. It was quite delicious although I was kind of hoping for tiramisu for dessert :) After stuffing ourselves to the point of insanity, we all wandered over to the church for our tour. I had to use my new scarf as a skirt because my shorts didn't go to my knees. Super stylish!

This is me trying to take a stealthy picture of the ceiling in a room where we weren't supposed to take pictures. But I accidentally got my face in it, naturally.

This is the interior of the church while it was lit up for about 10 seconds and I managed to take a picture. Very pretty.

After our church tour we had a bit of time to wander around some more and we went around the town again and just hung out seeing the sights and I was able to buy a few more things (socks and a postcard). The sky was also looking particularly beautiful.

Orvieto was a beautiful trip that did not disappoint and was definitely worth every penny (eurocent?). It was just sad because I was hoping Lina would come and she wasn't able to make it :( But I still had a good time running around being picture crazy with Allison and ditching the tour group to take pictures in strange places in the underground! I'm always running off :)

Site Visits and Slacking

2008-10-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this by saying that I have been shrugging off the complaints of others that I have not been blogging enough, by rationalizing that it's only been a week and blogging once a week really isn't that bad. My discoveries today have been twofold: 1) it has not been a week, but rather two weeks and so I have realized that my concept of time is severely and irreparably skewed 2) my dreams of becoming a professional blogger will most likely never come to fruition. On this note, we embark:

We can start off with a couple of weeks ago when a bunch of us went out to a club called La Maison, lots of fun. Lina didn't want to have her picture taken. Times 2. Or else that's a gang sign.

The weekend after the visit to La Maison I went on an excursion to Pompeii. Three and a half hour bus ride there, 5 hours spent running around and a four and a half hour bus ride back. Very draining. But I did come out with this cool picture of me standing in front of Mount Vesuvius.

Here we have a picture of my Ancient Roman Art teacher (who led the tour in Pompeii) being utterly adorable and teaching us something about wall painting, or impluvia or compluvia... maybe a peristyle or two.

I like this picture of Lina, for reasons that are not abundantly clear to me at the moment. I think it's because it captures her essence... whatever that means.

The reasons for why I enjoy this picture are a little clearer to me. Basically, ancient porn is funny since serious people have to study it just because it's old. Doggie style anybody?

This is a pretty picture from the bathhouses in Pompeii. I like it mainly because of the light, but the bathhouses were quite interesting as well.

The famous 'beware of dog' mosaic. Cave canum!!!

The week after Pompeii I had two midterms, one for Ancient Roman Art and one for Italian. Ancient Roman Art required copious amounts of studying, but it paid off in the end. I also rented this BBC television show called I Claudius from the library at my study center at the recommendation of my Art teacher. Ashley and I rationalized watching it as studying, but we really just enjoy it. We're almost done with the whole thing. Here's a recap of what has happened so far: Augustus was cool but quasi-stupid, Livia was a compulsive murderer, Tiberius was a crybaby/sex fiend (never a good combination), Caligula was f-ed (nuff said), and Claudius was cool (if not also quasi-stupid). I'll keep you posted of any major developments. My Italian test was on Thursday and was easy.

I also had another site visit on Wednesday, this time with my Renaissance Literature class to Castel Sant'Angelo. It was beautiful and interesting. Although, according to my teacher, our guide was uninformed and unintelligent. So apparently I spent the entire two hours being amused by lies. Oh well, we stuck it to them by playing with their ancient cannon balls.

I also stuck it to them by taking forbidden pictures. Here are a couple for your viewing pleasure:

Here's a view from the top of Castel Sant'Angelo. Apparently Benevenuto Cellini made sculptures and also fired cannons off of this structure during the Sack of Rome. Now that's a Renaissance Man.

My next site visit was on Friday and it was to Sperlonga and Terracina to see an old temple and Tiberius's (yes the same crybabysexfiend mentioned above) villa. Here's a picture of Ashley, Linnea and I all being cute among some of the temple ruins. Gotta be cute among temple ruins.

My first time standing in an ancient Roman temple! Well, what's left of it anyway...

This is what Tiberius saw every morning when he woke up. I know right? A**hole... (as a sidebar: check out how good I am at taking pictures!)

This is inside Tiberius's grotto. Now, see that grassy square surrounded by water (water teeming with fish, might I add)? That was where he and his guests ate dinner. They would pick a fish from the water and the servants would grab the fish and serve it to them. He did suck, but at least he knew how to live.

After our little grotto adventure, rain started pouring down on us as we ran to the museum. Here you can see my teacher soaking wet, as we all were. All in the name of art.

My next site visit was to the Pope's summer house (henceforth referred to as the Pope House). I went with my Science and Religion class and had a blasty blast. Here's a picture of the lake that the Pope wakes up to every morning during the summer. How about that vow of poverty?

Hey look, it's the Pope-o-scope!

I asked Ashley to do something Pope-esque and this was the best she could come up with.

I then did my best interpretation. What we have found is that our ideas of what the Pope does with his spare time differ drastically.

Also an interesting story from the Pope House: right to the left of me in that picture you see above is a very inviting looking staircase. Inviting in the sense that you're definitely not supposed to climb it. I saw my friend Anne coming down from the staircase after taking the picture and asked her what she had seen. She mentioned a bronze cupid a flight up, but also said that she didn't go any farther because she was afraid of getting in trouble. Well, the only thing I could say to that was, "Let's go crash the Pope's pad" (literally, that is what I said). So I led her up a huge flight of stairs which ended in a series of columns and nothing else of much interest. There was also another large flight of stairs. Anne wanted to turn back. I said no way. We tiptoed quietly up the next flight of stairs and found ourselves in a hallway of sorts and I suggested Anne take a picture. We then leapt our way back down the stairs and were just getting outside when a Vatican guard happened to be walking our direction. He looked menacingly at me and I smiled broadly and greeted him, "Buon giorno!" He started laughing and then our priest-teacher came around the corner and jokingly said that he was getting ready to shoot us (at least I hope he was joking). Anne and I walked away unscathed for the time being. A few minutes later, the Vatican guard came out of the Pope House and asked to see my camera. I was in the clear, showed him the camera, va bene. But then they wanted to know who was with me, I told them I didn't remember. Unfortunately, padre did. He outed Anne and the guard forced her to delete her photographic contraband. Sad but true. But it was fun and I saw a part of the Vatican that no one else gets to see, whoopee! Apparently Pope John Paul I died relatively close to where we performed our illicit photoshoot. These are the memories we cherish.

So there, veni bloggy vici. I came, I blogged, I conquered. May your days be long and your nights longer. Ciao!

Weekend in Rome

2008-10-07T07:50:00.000-07:00

I had a great weekend this past weekend just "relaxing" in Rome. Friday night Ashley and I got all dolled up and went out to a club called Smart Club semi-close to where we live (nothing is actually close to where we live, but that's both a good and a bad thing). Smart club was fun, we were just kind of running around looking for it and we saw some random club and the bouncer was waving to us asking is to go in. We decided it looked like it was bumping so we wandered in. Turns out we had actually wound up at Smart Club, but we didn't know until we were already in there. It was a fun club, there were 3 dance floors and loooots of italians. Almost no foreigners there. So Ashley and I stood out, like we always do :) When we got bored, we just decided to get home so we got home around 3.

Saturday, Ashley and I didn't really have a productive day. We just hung out around Rome and wandered a bit, getting lunch and all that. Then we decided that we wanted to go out for dinner. We found a great restaurant in Trastevere that had margherita pizza (my fave) for only 3 euros for whole pizza. As in 10-12" diameter. Super good deal. So I was a happy kid. Also, house vino was only 8 euros for a liter, so we split that too. We had a long, late, typically italian dinner. Then we wandered over to Campo de' Fiori. We met some fun guys from Venezuela who, after thinking it over later, we were pretty sure were drug dealers. But it was neat because they spoke Spanish and Italian so they were kind of speaking a mixture of the two languages and it actually made it easier for me to understand. So that was a novel experience for the books (blogs). Then Ashley and I went to our friend Paul's work (he's a bartender) and hung out with him for a little bit. We were going to take him out with us, but that didn't end up working out. Then our friend Christina and an italian boy that she knew picked us up in a car (he had a car, that was seriously the most convenient thing ever... I had forgotten how great cars could be). He drove us to a club called Art Cafe but we didn't want to wait to get in so we decided to drive to another club. I think it was called Babel, but it cost too much money to get in so we walked to another club called Acab or something similar. The italian boy (Andrea) paid for all of us to get into the club which was super sweet and then Ashley decided that was the time to start spending ALL of her money on drinks. She was a little inebriated and she's pretty good about moderating her consumption even when she's drunk so after Christina and I had gone to the bathroom, we walked up to see Ashley just grinning at us. "What Ashley?" "Guess what!" "What?" "I bought you guys shots!!!!" Turns out, Ashley had bought a round for herself and Andrea but then decided that she was too drunk to drink that round so she saved it for us. At this point it was 4:55 and the club closed at 5. I was literally taking the shot as the bouncer was waving us to the door. So funny/ridiculous. Then we had to wait for about an hour outside the club while Ashley flitted around talking to everyone because she didn't want to be sick in Andrea's car. So that was funny enough, watching her make new friends all drunk and stuff. We finally got home and went to sleep.

The next day Ashley and I grabbed lunch and she went to a group project thing she had scheduled while I went back home and relaxed. We met up later and went shopping in Trastevere/Campo de' Fiori and I bought a pair of jeans for 15 euros and a dress for 10 euros. Good deals and I had been meaning to buy both of those. Now all I need are quasi-dressy black sandals and I'll be good to go. Perhaps high heels, we'll see how it goes. We went home and then later decided to go back to the same restaurant from the night before for dinner. We were seated in the same section and the waitress laughed when she saw us. I had the yummiest lasagna. This restaurant rocks because it's super cheap and yummy. It's called Casetta for all of you Italy residents who might be reading this. Then we went to the boys' apartment because I had an appointment to hang out and help Paul with Italian. There wasn't that much Italian going on though, but it was still fun. We got home early enough and went to sleep around midnight. Good times.

Also, yesterday Ashley and I booked our plane tickets for our second and final 10 day long break. We're leaving Thursday October 30th for Barcelona, then going to Glasgow (Scotland) November 2nd, then going to Paris November 4th and coming home (to Rome) November 9th. All four flights only cost 267 dollars.... dollars. Such a good deal. I'm a superstar! Oh and btw, loving that the exchange rate is starting to be my friend. It was sooo bad when I got here but now it's down like 20-25 cents. Shweet! Super excited about that trip. I'll keep you posted of any other trips that are planned for the future.

Today was fun, I got to italian class late and got asked to answer a question in italian as soon as I sat down. But I pulled it out and got it right so I didn't get in trouble, yay for knowing italian! We went to this bookstore and did a sort of worksheet thing, figuring out what's hip and cool on the italian book/film/music scene. Then Paul, Maurenna, Julia and I all went to the Pantheon to this place called Tazza d'Oro that's famous for this coffee drink that they have called Granita. So I had to get it. It was this slushie coffee drink with whipped cream. It was delicious but a bit expensive and I prefer cappuccinos so I'm just gonna stick with those in the future. Good time though. Then I just came home because Italian was the only class that I had today so I've been relaxing, watching movies, listening to music and doing homework the whole afternoon. Can't wait for yummy dinner! Ciao!

Politics

2008-10-02T05:23:00.000-07:00

I'm just going to have to make a comment. This seems to be the best place to do it, so here it is:

It is not a congressman/woman's job to be elected. It's their job to vote. It's their job to represent their constituency. I could honestly care less what the ramifications of their votes will be on their campaigns, I care about the ramifications for the country. I'm honestly getting sick of seeing article titles such as: "Bailout vote may be as risky as Iraq war vote". Who cares how risky it is? Aren't they getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to take that risk? Ugh.

I had a conversation with my dad the other day about politics and the bailout and it's gotten me in a much more political mindset. Then last night, I talked with my homestay signora (who is a political journalist) about politics again. According to her, Europe is very affected by the American economy and political climate and so everyone here is following American news very closely. I just find it interesting that she knows more about American politics than most Americans and she's a German/Italian citizen. Also, Europe reeeally wants Barack Obama to win the election. Like, you have no idea. His biggest rally audience during his campaign? In Europe. They love him. So even for those of you who don't want him to win, at least the silver lining will be that Europe will like/respect us a lot more if he does. That may not matter to a lot of you but it does to me because I'm pretty much in love with Europe at this point :)

So anyway, that's my thoughts for the day. Last night was the first official meeting of Wine Wednesdays (we liked the wine tasting last week so much we decided to make it a weekly thing). It was lots of fun, as usual and I walked up with friends to Gianicolo park which has an absolutely gorgeous view of the city of Rome and a beautiful fountain. A very fun night, but alas, no pictures. So I will just have to go back with my camera and take some later. Ok, gotta run, ciao!

Oktoberfest

2008-09-28T13:25:00.000-07:00

Alright folks, let's do this thing. I just got back from Oktoberfest today and I'm already blogging about it (will wonders never cease?). Alright, so the flight was uneventful and quite short. After flying into Munich on Friday morning, Ashley, Cara, Laura, Anna and I all got on the metro and made our way to our campsite. It took us a while to find it because the directions we had were seriously wrong. But we finally made it and I took this picture of our campsite which was at Olympic horse stadium (that's how I got this nice aerial view, bleachers).

Then we all made our way to Oktoberfest itself and Ashley and I took the picture when we first arrived, aren't we cute?

Then we got into the Paulaner tent and grabbed ourselves a table and some beers. Paulaner beer is the best beer I've ever tasted. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't (didn't) like beer, but my first sip of Paulaner and all I could think was "wow that's good". Definitely my favorite beer of the whole Oktoberfest. Here's Ashley and I with our first beers of Oktoberfest, Prost! (that's how you say cheers in German)

Yes everybody, I drank beer. A lot of beer. Three liters the first day alone. However, it didn't make me drunk. My tolerance has become something of a marvel at this point and if you will please take note, I don't look drunk in any of my pictures. That's because I wasn't. I drank continuously all day Friday and Saturday and I didn't get drunk, just friendly. I guess that's why Oktoberfest was sooo much fun!

Here's a picture of the five of us in Paulaner, from left to right: Ashley, Cara, Anna, Laura and me

After a while, we made our way to Hofbrau Haus, another tent at Oktoberfest. We met some Australian boys who you can kind of see behind us. Hofbrau Haus didn't have beer that was quite as good (but still better than any other beers I've had outside of Oktoberfest). Here's a pic of all of us at Hofbrau:

Here's Ashley and I having a blasty blast in Hofbrau:

Later in the evening, Ashley and I made friends with some German boys. Oktoberfest is an interesting dynamic because you have to be sitting down to get a beer and in order to sit down you usually have to make friends with someone who already has a table. So we made a lot of friends throughout the course of the weekend.

After spending the rest of the night in Hofbrau Haus, we all made it home to our freezing cold campsite at about 11:30. We set our alarms for 7 am so we could make it into the Hippodrom (our preferred tent) nice and early Saturday morning. Then we proceeded to sleep in freezing cold weather with nothing but our clothes. At least that's all Ashley and I had. We had a sleeping bag but Miss Ashley decided to forget it in Rome. So the first night, all we had were our numerous layers of clothing to keep us warm. I'm a good sleeper so I only woke up a couple of times but it certainly wasn't the best sleep I've ever had and by all accounts, everyone else was miserable from the cold.

The next morning we got up and made it to the Hippodrom by 8:30 am and waited until they let us in at 10. We bought our first beers of the day at that point. Well actually, our only beers. For the rest of the day we had our beers bought for us. It was so cool, the guys we were hanging out with kept pouring their beers into our krugs to keep them full and then ordering more rounds. So we drank continuously for the rest of the day for free. Gotta love being a cute American girl at Oktoberfest! Here are our first beers:

Then, after a couple of hours, we were told we had to move because our table was reserved for someone else. So we made friends with a bunch of pink shirted guys (they all had matching shirts) at the table next door. They were sooo much fun to party with and they kept our beers full. So essentially they were our new best friends. Happy faces:

Ashley and I borrowed their hats for a bit:

Yes, I was drinking with all of the guys and keeping up. I actually got a bunch of compliments from the guys about my drinking skills. Yep, little 20-year-old American girl keeping up with a bunch of European guys. I did my country proud.

Haha, at one point, Ashley decided to switch shirts with this guy. He looked really quite amazing in her shirt and the whole thing was pretty cute:

This guy dropped a ring in his beer so we all threw our rings in and made him finish the beer. Too much fun.

Haha, then this guy wanted to wear my shirt. Definitely did not fit him:

Here's a video of the Hippodrom from the inside and you can see the pink shirt guys before we actually met them. This was at about 10 in the morning so it was still relatively tame:

Well after hanging out with the pink shirt guys for a while, we all got kicked off of that table so they introduced us to some more British people and I made friends with this guy, Simon. He was so funny and he pronounced my name "Pah-ay". So we basically spent the whole time making fun of each other's accents and having a grand old time.

Um, this is just a funny sign that I saw in the bathroom. http://www.ass-container.de/, tell me that's not the funniest thing ever.

Then later in the evening we had to find a new table so we sat with these guys who were pretty much loaded or something. The bill at their table came while we were still there: 1,800 euros for the evening. Insane.

Then Ashley and I wandered around some more and basically just had a great time dancing around the tent and being silly.

This is a funny picture. No other words necessary.

Yay, we're so cute.

These were a couple of German guys that we met. The one in the blue taught me a lot of German words which was fun. Then he told Ashley that he wanted to kiss me and she tried to convince me to do it. So I had to lie and say that I had a boyfriend, sorry but random makeout sessions are really not my style.

After the tent closed, we all went home and the second night we had a sleeping mat and even more layers on. I was wearing every single piece of clothing I had brought to Germany. But consequently I was much warmer and slept great that night. Then we woke up the next morning and decided to head into Munich and see the sights for our last day before going home. Here's a picture of me in front of the former Nazi headquarters. I believe it was called the Rathaus but I could be wrong.

Here's a picture of Ashley and I in front of a cool statue of some sort. The statue was actually part of a larger monument, but we couldn't get the whole thing in the picture so we just had to settle for the statue.

Then we got lunch at a German restaurant and made our way to the airport. The plane ride back was even shorter and we were at home in no time. I'm pretty tired now though so I'm going to go to bed. I hope everyone's proud of me for being so conscientious about my blogging! Here's a pretty picture of Oktoberfest I took the first night for everyone to leave on:

My Past Week

2008-09-25T07:32:00.000-07:00

Alright, I've been so focused on blogging about Greece that I've been neglecting the past week, so here's a recap:

On Monday was my first day of real classes. I have to leave home at 8:15 in the morning and I get back at 7:15 at night every Monday and Wednesday. It's a long day. My classes are interesting though, I'm really glad I think I picked all of the best ones for me. I'm taking Ancient Roman Art, Rome and Renaissance Literature and Science and Religion. Science and Religion is my favorite class thus far, because we have heated philosophical discussions in class which I always enjoy. Yesterday we all talked about what we would do if we were in a position where someone was holding a gun to someone we loved's head and told us that if we said we didn't love them then they wouldn't did but if we said we did then they would die. I said that I would definitely say I didn't if I knew the shooter was telling the truth, but if I didn't know then I would still probably say I didn't love the person. I mean, if I were the person with the gun held to my head and I heard them say they didn't love me, I would know they did and that they were just trying to save my life. Even if I did end up getting shot anyway, my last thoughts would be "oh well, at least they tried".

Tuesday was my first day back at Italian class. So much fun as always, I always feel like I'm just having a little conversation in Italian class, I don't feel like I'm actually working. After class I went to Piazza Navona and read for my Science and Religion class. When I finished there I walked to the Trevi Fountain and read for my Lit and Art classes. On my way home from the Trevi, I was stopped on the street by a movie director who told me that he'd buy me a cup of coffee if I let him talk to me about his movie. Free coffee, so I said ok. He told me that he had seen me walking down the street and said that I had the right look for his movie so he semi-stalked me for 2 blocks trying to see my face and then when I guess he liked what he saw, he stopped me. He told me the story for his movie and had me give him my email address so he could email me the synopsis of the movie and his phone number. I didn't actually end up calling him because I have no aspirations as of yet to be an actress, but free coffee was va bene and it was flattering. I was discovered, haha.

Wednesday I had more class and then after class we had the Trastevere Wine Tasting, haha. The boys invited everyone over to their apartment for a wine tasting. We all had to bring a bottle of wine that cost over 5 euros and then we all just hung out in the apartment and drank ourselves silly. There were about 20 of us there, so it was a good time. We ended up wandering back and forth between the apartment and the ponte and then Lina and I got home around 2.

Today (Thursday) I had Italian class again. It was fun because our teacher gave us these one page scenes written in Italian that we had to act out. There were two groups of us doing the same scene and then the teacher was going to decide who did a better job after we both acted ours out. We totally won, naturally, haha. It was really fun though because it was a scene about a husband and a wife who is unfaithful to the husband and her lover comes to take her away and shoots the husband and then the wife says that she hates the lover. I got to play the husband, so there was a nice little death scene in there for me. So fun! I also got my final exam back from the class I finished before the break: 19.46/20... so needless to say I got an A in that class.

So now I'm just sitting here relaxing before I have to get on the plane to Munich in a few hours to go to Oktoberfest. I'm all ready to go, I've got cash and my boarding pass and I'm going to start packing in a bit. I'm so excited! There, now I'm all caught up and I'll have more to say when I get back from Oktoberfest on Sunday. Ciao!

Mykonos

2008-09-25T06:55:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: There will be relatively few photos in this post because I didn't take very many. I'm not going to beat around the bush here people, I was partying the whole time. Cameras are not conducive to partying. Also, you will need to know beforehand that this blog will be about partying and funny/silly/somewhat dumb things that Ashley and I did on the island of Mykonos. If you do not want to read about these things, I suggest you leave now.

That being said, let's start off with the ferry ride over to Mykonos. We took the superfast ferry and actually had reserved seats so that was a nice departure from the first ferry. When we arrived in Mykonos, our resort (Paradise Beach) picked us up at the port and drove us to where we were staying. That was a nice touch. Once we arrived, we checked in and found out that we were staying in a box. No seriously. This was our first taste of Mykonos:

However, I believe the box started us off on the right foot. Once we realized we weren't going to be prissing it up like we did in Pension Stella, Ashley and I essentially let loose. So that day, we went out to the beach and sat for about an hour and ended up meeting the "scuba guys". They basically told us how exorbitantly priced scuba diving was and then told us some insider's advice on getting around Mykonos. They told us that we needed to rent an ATV because the party at Paradise Beach ends at around 10 or 11 and that we would need an ATV to get into the town to continue the party. So we took a bus into the town proper and rented and ATV from "the ATV guys". We asked them where the best places to party were and they told us to meet them back at the ATV rental place at midnight and they would show us. Alright so va bene, we had plans.

We then ATVed back to our box and proceeded to get ready to go out to the club at Paradise Beach, the Tropicana. We got there and the club owner was this crazy guy who kept screaming into the mike "open your minds, open your pussies" (I warned you, crazy things are afoot in this blog post). Then he found Ashley and me and asked us where we were from. (Now, before I go any further, I should point out that Mykonos is known as the "gay island"). Once he found out that we were from, he yelled into the mike "two lesbians from California!" We later had to set him straight, but that was good for a laugh. It was also cute to see all of the guys' disappointed faces in the club when they thought we were lesbians... haha. After that, Ashley wandered off as she is wont to do and so I decided to frollick in the water (I had my bikini on under my clothes). Well, I got cold and I was waiting for Ashley so I decided to sit down next to two french guys who were smoking and drinking on the beach. They offered me some whiskey and coke so I decided that they were my friends.

Then we had a good chat while I waited for Ashley and then I convinced her to come hang out for a bit. We all chatted and drank together for a bit and then Ashley and I had to run to meet up with the ATV guys. So we ATVed over to our rendezvous point and then followed the guy to this restaurant in the middle of the town. The restaurant was closed but the guys we were with knew the owner so we just sat at a table with them outside the restaurant and they gave us free wine. We really wanted food though because we were both starving so they told us to follow them on our ATVs because they were out of food (at a restaurant, yeah right). We followed them on our ATV to this Greek mansion owned by the restaurant owner. It was a gorgeous house on the very top of the island and it was large and in charge. I feel I should also mention that at this point in the evening, one of the Greek gentlemen, Marco, was getting a bit too friendly. He kept trying to attack Ashley and I. So, naturally, Ashley leaves me in the house with Marco, the restaurant owner, and this really cool guy named Matt. Matt was British and he was essentially my protector for the evening. Marco kept trying all kinds of crazy things like turning on porn, undressing and generally being a cad (can't believe I used the word cad, but it appears to fit nicely). So I just decided to eat the food that they had given us (red snapper and shrimp... yummy), watch soccer and talk to Matt. Then Ashley came back in and we skeedaddled. Oh and apparently Ashley talked to the owner guy and he told her that he was remodelling his front yard and was going to put in a giant pit like the one from 300 and he was going to train spartan warrior children on his front lawn. Just thought I'd throw that little gem in there.

The next day, Ashley and I got up for breakfast (they gave us free breakfast, so that was kind of cool) and then decided to hang out on the beach for a few hours. Afterwards, we went into the town of Mykonos to explore and get lunch. I got a gyro and Ashley got a Greek salad, our two respective culinary obsessions in Greece. We also ended up finding this hilariously crowded store where Ashley bought herself a diary. Here's a picture so you can get and idea of just how crowded it was:

Then we ATVed back to Paradise Beach and took naps and then got ready for the evening. We found french boys on our way to the club (Pierre and Constantin were their names) and told them that we'd find them later. We then went to the club and danced all around, drinking for free and basically having a grand time of it. Then we found the french boys somehow and we all decided to roll out to Mykonos town. We went to this bar where we all danced and were having a really good time and then Pierre and I sat and taught each other French and English. Well, he actually spoke English quite well but he taught me French, well he tried at any rate. Then Constantin and Ashley came out and we went to Scandanavia which was the famous discoteca of Mykonos. When we got in there we danced for a bit but I wasn't really feeling it so I went outside and met this random italian guy who kept trying to get me to let him touch my feet. He was hilarious but I wasn't about to let him touch my feet so I just kept telling him in italian that Pierre was my boyfriend, haha. Then Pierre and I just chilled and spoke French to each other for a bit (I wish I could speak French...) and then we all rolled back to the land of the boxes. Here's a picture of Pierre, just for reference:

I know. Anyway, the next morning Ashley and I decided that we were going to spend the entire day on the beach and then party that entire night. Our amiche from back in Santorini found us on our beach and we had Pierre take a picture of us in the water:

Also, at Paradise Beach there is a large rock thing about 15 meters from the shore just chilling with a bunch of plants and grossness on it. I decided, being the exploratory person that I am, to go climb on the rock. It was really yucky but Ashley took a picture so I guess it's ok:

The last night, Ashley and I went to the Tropicana and danced on the bar for free drinks which was fun. Then we found french boys on the beach and chilled for a few hours. Then I passed out, (I know, I'm ridiculous), and the three of them rolled out to the bars and left me to sleep for a bit. Then when they got home, Pierre and I chatted for a bit and then I slept some more. Here's a random picture from some part of that evening or the evening before in the box:

As you can see, it was a glorious box. The next morning it started raining but it was ok because that was our last day. We ATVed ourself into town with our suitcases (pretty pro-status if you ask me) and then took a taxi to the port. We then took a ferry to Athens, a metro from the port to the airport, an airplane to rome, a train from the airport to the train station and then a tram from the train station to home. Lots of travelling but then we were home and we slept for ages. It was an amazing trip and I am soooo glad and so lucky to have been able to take it. There really are no words to describe how much fun I had and I can't wait until I leave for Oktoberfest tomorrow to make more mind-blowingly awesome memories!

Santorini

2008-09-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

Alright I guess I'm feeling quite ambitious today because I have decided to undertake the Santorini post as well. So where were we? Ah the ferry, we took a 9 hour ferry from Athens to Santorini which was semi-uncomfortable but not too terrible and I was able to listen to music and read a John Grisham book the whole way so I was a happy camper (King of Torts... for those who are interested). Here's a picture of Anna and I on the ferry. Our group was split up so Anna and I ended up sitting solo:

Then we arrived in Santorini and George (who I don't have a picture of, darn it) picks us up to take us to Pension Stella. This hotel was gorgeous and George and Stella, who ran it, were probably the nicest people you'll ever meet. They asked us if we wanted iced coffee or orange juice and brought it out to us while we were sitting by the pool, all gratis. They kept our rooms super clean and always changed our linens while we were gone during the day. The bathrooms were wonderful and clean and the showers had fabulous water pressure. Honestly, you I cannot sing the praises of Pension Stella enough. Here's a picture of Ashley, Laura and I in the pretty blue and purple pool:

That night we all went out to dinner in Fira which is the town within walking distance of Pension Stella and one of the main towns on the island. Dinner was delicious, I had a chicken salad of some sort and some wine and we were able to see the ocean far below us. Santorini was seriously one of the prettiest places I've ever been, the prettiest island by far. Everything about it is serene and captivating. Here's a picture of Ashley, Laura and I at dinner. There were other people on the trip but the three of us sat together a bunch, haha.

The next morning, Ashley and I woke up and took the cable cars down to the bottom of the cliffs so that we could ride donkeys back up the mountain. We had lots of fun and my donkey's name was Pierre. That will become a lot funnier later in my stories involving Mykonos :) Here's a picture of me and Pierre... hahaha

After the donkey rides, George drove Ashley and me to the bus stop on his motorcycle (only like 100 meters) and then we got on a bus that took us down to the port for a tour that we were taking of the beaches. This tour was soooo much fun. It was just us and one other family on the boat and we got to go to 3 different beaches around Santorini and jump off the boat into the water and then swim into the beaches. The guys running the tour were really nice and let us do whatever we wanted so we were jumping off of every part of the boat. The first beach we went to was actually a beach on another island. It was pretty rocky but it was my first black sand beach so that was pretty nice. Here's a picture of me Vanna White-ing on the beach:

We then went to the next beach which was the white beach. Interestingly enough, the white beach was still a black sand beach, just with some white rocks and white cliffs behind it. Here's a picture of Ashley and me doing our best Charlie's Angels impression on the front of the boat. The little kid in the picture is Liam, more on him to come.

Now here's a picture of Ashley and me jumping off of the front of the boat into the water. It wasn't a very big jump, but I'm afraid of heights so it was still slightly thrilling. The water was again extremely salty, but I feel like it wasn't as bad as Cinque Terre. Or maybe I'm just getting used to it.

Now here's a picture of Ashley and me in the water just hanging out right after the above jump. Oh, just in case you didn't notice, I feel like I should point out my absurd tan lines on my right leg in the jumping picture. They were fixed later in the trip but I got them on the boat ride from Athens to Santorini because I was wearing shorts and a tank top. Quite fun.

Now here's little Liam. He along with his twin brother Charlie, little sister Amy and parents were the only other people on our boat. They were from England near Liverpool (can't remember the name of the actual town...). But Liam was the coolest kid. He followed Ashley and me whenever we swam into the beaches, he jumped off the boat with us and he spoke in the most adorable British accent I've ever heard and probably ever will hear. He told me that he was six years old but sometimes he said he was five because he forgot. Then he asked me how old I was and I told him to guess. He guessed 9, then 10 and finally 20. He asked me how old my friends were and I told them that most were 20 and some were 19 and 21. Then I asked him and he said, "Well, most are 5 and 6, but some are 20". Sooo precious! So Liam considers Ashley and me his friends and I'm quite excited about that.

That evening we all went out to Fira and shopped around and had a good time. Then next day, Ashley and I went on our second boat tour which was the other girls' first. We went on a tour to the hot springs and the volcano. The hot springs were less than hot and dyed our swimsuits orange (thankfully my swimsuit is black, score 1 for me!). Here's a picture of us all on the boat:

As well as another picture of Ashley, Laura and me, naturally:

We all decided to climb the volcano in our swimsuits, me mostly to correct the unfortunate tan lines I had acquired earlier. It actually ended up working out really well though because it was hot, but wearing swimsuits we were dressed just right :) Also, the boat tour guy, his name was Radoslav (Rale for short) and I became friends and he invited me to stay on the boat for the tour after the volcano tour for free. I would have done it if it hadn't been my last day in Santorini and I still had to see Ia which is known as the beautiful town where you watch the sunset over the water. Anyway, here's me climbing the volcano:

So after climbing, we went to Ia and walked around taking pictures of ourselves in front of the beautiful city. Here's a picture of the five of us. I'm not actually that much taller than everyone, we were on a slant. But it does make me look like something of a giantess.

Here's a picture of me sola in Ia:

Then we went and watched the beautiful sunset over the water, here's a picture of me in front of the sunset. This picture doesn't really do the sunset justice, but I did the best with what I had.

Also, please note the new pretty white dress that I bought in Fira specially for the Ia picture-taking extravaganza. It's really cute, I can't wait until I'm able to wear it again. But with the way the weather is going here, that might not be until I get back to California. Oh well, I'm a trooper, I'm sure I'll find a way. That night, everyone else went out partying and I went to bed early. The next day, George drove us to the port and we got on our ferry to Mykonos. The next installment will take off from here and let me tell you, Mykonos was by far my favorite so stay tuned!

Athens

2008-09-23T11:43:00.000-07:00

Ok I'm doing my Greece trip in three parts because I really cannot handle the idea of doing it all at once. Even three parts seems kind of daunting. Part one will be regarding Athens because I went there first. Parts two and three will be Santorini and Mykonos respectively, but those come later.

Ok, so right off the bat, it begins thundering, lightning-ing and pouring rain right as our plane is getting ready to leave from Rome to Athens. We were all glad to be leaving Rome right when the bad weather started (and we did end up missing most of it while we were gone which was sweet!), but it was annoying because we had to wait forever on the tarmac while the planes were slowly taking off during lulls in the storm. We still ended up hitting the worst turbulence of my life. Ashley and I seriously thought that we were going to die. Here's a picture of the lightning that I managed to take with my camera, I am so pro-status:

When we got to Athens, we all went to our hostels and went to sleep. Which was an adventure in and of itself because we had to take a bus from the airport into the city and then take a taxi from the bus stop. Some taxi driver tried to charge us 50 euros to drive 2 blocks. Umm, no. So we ended up finding reasonably priced taxis (is there such a thing?) and getting to our rooms. Another fun fact: we (Ashley and I) ended up sleeping in the other girls' rooms without a reservation because they would have charged us way too much to book our own room. So we had a lovely time squeezing 3 people onto a queen sized bed (might have been a full sized bed). It was hot and gross. But we were only in Athens for 2 nights so we just made due... don't we always? The next day we went to the metro (metpo- p is r in greek- rho... anywho) and we went on a little excursion to buy our ferry tickets and then to the Acropolis. Here's a picture of the five of us sitting on a fountain outside the metpo station:

Here's a picture of me on the way up to the Acropolis standing in front of an amphitheater. It was neat and we wanted to sit on these old stone chairs but they were roped off and this lady with a whistle was looking very vigilant:

Then we went up to the top of the Acropolis and I stood in front of the Parthenon (naturally):

Then I found Rachel, Linnea, Chantal and Maurenna who were staying in Greece at all of the same places and at all of the same times but weren't travelling with us. Small world... so this is a picture of the five of us atop the Acropolis. You can kind of see the city of Athens in the background. The word sprawling doesn't even begin to describe how huge this city appears from atop the Acropolis.

This is a picture of me pretending to be a column in front of a temple (no I don't know the name of the temple, I'm a bad person who forgets things and it's not like I was on a guided tour :) ).

Then we took a picture of what is supposedly the first olive tree in Athens. I have my doubts (well obviously since according to myth the first olive tree in Athens was given personally to the Athenians by Athena herself) but besides the myth side of things, don't you think a 2,500 year old tree would be more distinguished-looking?

Then we clambered down to the Agora (Agoura... no I think that's a high school... but I confuse myself) and took this picture on top of a smaller hill. That's the Acropolis in the background with lots of lovely construction taking place.

Then we decided it would be fun to break the rules so we all climbed on these very inviting looking pillars and got some American tourists to take our picture for us. We ended up getting whistled for it (what is a trip to the Acropolis without getting whistled?) and having an all-around good time. But here's the infamous pic:

That night we went to the Plaka for dinner and shopping and I got a really cute ring which you might be able to see in some of my upcoming pictures from Santorini and Mykonos. We also ate gyros (pronounced the same way as euros, I can't begin to tell you how confusing that one was for me) which were molti deliziosi. Then we made friends with some stray dogs named Bruno and Eucalyptus (yes we gave them those names, we're quite creative people you know) who followed us all around Plaka and Athens until we walked and checked out the Acropolis at night and then went back to our cramped hotel room and went to bed. Here are the dogs:

The next morning (Sunday morning) we went to the port and almost missed our ferry. But we made it and went on our merry way to Santorini. Next installment you shall hear the fun tales of beautiful Santorini and Pension Stella (the fabulous hotel at which we stayed). Ciao for now!

Pictures

2008-09-11T10:42:00.001-07:00

Ok so here's a picture of me con amiche at the club:

And here's a picture of DJ AM, (so good!):

Also, I was too lazy to post pictures earlier today but I'm more awake now. Today we had a little scavenger hunt at the Pantheon for class. We had a list of information about the Pantheon we had to find and also a church by the Pantheon: Basilica di Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. The church was really pretty so I took a couple of pictures. Here's one of the altar and ceiling with the light rays shining through the window:

And here's a picture of one of the beautiful stained glass windows:

Gotta admit, the church people really do know how to decorate :)

Gilda and DJ AM

2008-09-11T04:40:00.001-07:00

For those of you who don't know him, DJ AM is a famous DJ who was engaged to Nicole Richie and dated Mandy Moore. Well, last night a group of us went out to a club called Gilda where DJ AM was DJ-ing! It was for Linnea's (aka, bella ciao's) birthday and a big group of us rolled out to the club around midnight. We stayed there dancing until 4:30 in the morning (I know, crazy... but it was reeeeally fun and I wasn't going to be doing anything difficult in class the next day). I ended up getting home around 6 and had to wake up at 8, but it was ok because I took a long siesta yesterday in preparation for the copious amounts of sleep I would not be getting that night. Anywho, DJ AM is good. Like really good. I didn't stop dancing the entire time he was spinning. I had myself a little box about 3 feet off the floor that I was dancing on (because I like to dance up high, but you knew that) and my friends would join me periodically on the box. So my evening was basically: pre-party with amici, pay 10 euros to get into the club which came with a free drink, dance on a box for 4 and a half hours, walk to Robbie's house where I left my purse and then get home asap because I was beat.

There was this guy in the club who kept coming up to me and trying to talk to me while I was dancing. He kept telling me how he was famous and all the ladies love him (for all my friends who are reading this, you know who I'm talking about but I'm keeping it G-rated for the fam). He also kept telling me he was gay and decided it would be fun to introduce me to his friend. Well, I let him introduce us and his friend ended up being a relatively legit guy who owns a tour company in Rome and we just talked for a few minutes before I had to run home. But the friend (Steve) told me that the first guy was definitely not famous and was definitely not gay. So I'm a little confused as to why he told me he was gay in the first place... maybe he wants to be? Anyway, it was fun dancing to the amazing beat and meeting new people and funny stories abound as always. No pictures though because I didn't bring my camera. But some friends took pictures of me so if I manage to find one I'll update this post and post it later. Va bene!

Spaghetti alle Vongole

2008-09-09T15:24:00.000-07:00

Today my signora made spaghetti alle vongole which is spaghetti with clams. It was sooo good. I love Italy, people making spaghetti with clams on a Tuesday just because it's the thing to do. She told me how to make it too: while the pasta is cooking, put extra virgin olive oil, garlic and pepperincini or something else picante in a pan and then put the pre-soaked clams in the pan too and while the spaghetti's cooking, the clams will cook too. Then put it all in a bowl with some freshly chopped parsley. Dinner was all kinds of good tonight.

Tomorrow I have my final composition in my intensive italian class. I'm going to try to do well on it because I would really like to get an A in this class. I'm doing well so far though, I got a 14 out of 15 on the written portion and a 9 out of 10 on the oral portion for the last exam. So hopefully I can get a perfect score on the final and pull out an A. We'll see!

I'm really quite excited to go to Greece this Friday. I'm going to be staying there for 8 days and visiting Athens, Santorini and Mikonos. So I obviously won't be blogging while I'm gone but I will definitely prepare another monster post when I get back. Alright, going to be early tonight, ciao!

Cinque Terre

2008-09-08T06:01:00.000-07:00

Alright, I know it's been a while. That's why this post is going to be super long. Longer than long. A word that's longer than long. Anyway. Well, last Tuesday Lina, Robbie, Peter and I went to Trastevere and hung out with Peter's friend Ibu (sp?). We just sat for a few hours and played the guitar/drums and sang. Here's a video of Peter playing:

Please note Robbie's immense drum-playing skills. Wednesday night Lina, Ashley, Robbie, Rachel, Peter, myself and others all went to a party that was being thrown right next to the Collisseum for American students. It was fun and there was a pool, but we weren't allowed in it. Towards the end of the evening on the way home, Rachel swam in the fountain but I didn't get a picture of it. Here's a picture of Rachel, Lina and myself at the party:

Then this past weekend, Rachel, Lina, Peter, Robbie and myself all went to Cinque Terre. It's a beautiful group of five cities in northern Italy. You should definitely google it if you're not familiar. We had the BEST weekend ever. So hilarious. First off, the train ride to Cinque Terre was a blast because we were drinking vino and eating bread, salami and cheese. So delicious. Here's a picture of Robbie and I with the yummy spread:

Then, after a bit of vino, things started getting a little hectic. On our second and final train, unbeknownst to me, the four of them decided it would be an excellent idea to try and touch the walls of the tunnel the drain was passing through while the train was moving... with a fanta can. So Lina asserts herself as being completely competent in all things fanta-related and leans her entire body out of the train, scraping the can and her entire hand along the concrete wall at upwards of 80 km per hour. Don't worry she's fine, not broken just bruised:

When we arrived in Monterosso (one of the five towns of the Cinque Terre-the one we were staying in), we proceeded to look for a room. Yes, it was 1 in the morning and we had not yet booked a room. We knew of a campground a long way off and knew that they had room for us, so we decided to walk there. I (being my best after a long train and a bit of vino) decided that our best course of action would be to climb up and over the nearest mountain. So I led my friends up a mountain for about an hour and a half until they called me on my failure as a guide and we walked back down. We had fun playing water bottle soccer though:

When we realized around 3 am that we wouldn't be finding any accomodations we decided to sleep on the beach. Well, I decided to sleep on the beach. The others had a harder time falling asleep. Who knew I was so good at sleeping during hilariously stressful situations? This lovely statue carved out of the mountain was our keeper for the night and he watched over us while we slept:

The next morning, everyone was sleeping on benches while we waited for hotels to open so we could get a room. We ended up being able to find one at a hotel called souvenir which is where another group of our friends was staying. We got a room for 2 people which was quite possibly the smallest room you've ever seen in your life with only a queen sized bed. Here's Lina and Rachel on the benches:

After we rested and showered in our hotel, we decided to go play on the beach. The beach was gorgeous and there was a wall that people were jumping off of, so we decided to jump off too. It was sooo fun. I think I jumped like 5 times. The water was intensely salty though, surprisingly so. Here's a video of me jumping and the beach itself:

Robbie, Rachel and myself decided to go walk around the "pier" and see what was out there. We ended up finding a bunch of rocks to climb around on and proceeded to have a great time:

Robbie found a cave and decided to climb into it:

He took a picture from inside of Rachel and me:

I went inside too just to see what it was like. It was beautiful and sparkling and it even seemed to go deeper into the mountain, maybe that exploration will have to wait for another day ;)

After showering again, we decided to go get an apperativo and really "do monterosso right" so to speak. We went to a small enoteca (wine bar) and shared a liter of white wine (it was sooo hot so it was nice that the wine was cold).

For our actual dinner we decided to go to a place called Ciak which looked really delicious and had these huge things of pasta which they brought for the whole table:

It was delicious pasta with a bunch of freshly caught and cooked shellfish. The waiter was really funny and good natured, especially when we asked him to bring a bowl of ice for Lina's hand :) Here's a picture of us with Lina icing her hand:

We then moved on to another bar appropriately called American Bar where we met some... Americans!

Another bar where we drank irish coffee:

There were maybe 1 or 2 more bars after this one... but I don't have any pictures :) The next morning we left to go on our hike through Cinque Terre. We took the train to Manarola:

Here's a picture of me with Manarola in the background before we started the hike:

Here's a picture on the hiking trail. In the way background there's Manarola which we hiked from and in the foreground there's Corniglia, the second town we hiked to. This picture was taken in between Corniglia and Vernazza, the town we finished our hike in:

Here's a picture of beautiful Vernazza where we ate pesto pizza for lunch. Cinque Terre is known for its pesto so we had to try it before we left, and you know how much I love pizza. Basically the best thing ever:

After lunch in Vernazza, we took the train home to Rome. I'm really going to miss Cinque Terre. I fell in love with it while I was there, but I'm definitely going back. Just to finish off, here's a beautiful picture that I took in the early morning on Saturday from the beach in Monterosso:

Piu A

2008-09-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

Started my new italian class today! It was a lot more interesting than the ultra-beginning class and I didn't feel weird speaking in italian like I did before. Finally, I'm allowed to know italian in class! Haha. Did really well on my test last week, go fig. We played taboo in class today in italian which was fun. Morning class is different. I can't tell if I like it more or less. Remains to be seen I suppose.

I just spent the day relaxing and I just skyped with my mom (she read me a children's story from my childhood, just for fun... gotta love free calling with video :) ). I was also able to talk to my dad for half an hour which was really nice. We got cut short, but he should be getting skype at his office soon and I can't wait to bug him while he's trying to work (just kidding Dad ;) ). Other than that, I'm just having a good day, looking forward to getting some nice sleep. Bella ciao!

(FYI, piu A is the name of the italian class that I'm now in)

Ponte Sisto

2008-08-31T16:31:00.000-07:00

Today was a day of soccer and ponti (bridges). We weren't able to make the deadline to buy the soccer tickets, so we ended up going to a bar to watch the game on TV. The bar was really cool and we were able to sit upstairs and drink beer while we watched the game on the TV which was actually hung up where we were, here's us at the bar:

After that bar, we all hung out on Ponte Sisto while Lina ran around taking pictures of us:

It was fun to hang out on the bridge just drinking Peroni (that's the thing to do here):

After a while we went to the apperativo for dinner which was really yummy Mediterranean food that was kind of a departure from the italian that we've been eating every day. Very nice. Then we all went to Robbie's apartment and hung out for a while and I read the Economist and drank this weird stuff that everyone else despised but I really didn't think was that bad (something made of herbs and mint...?). Then we just wandered around and went to another bar to relax and grab cheap drinks (I didn't actually drink at all these bars, but it was nice to hang out):

Then we went back to Ponte Sisto and sat while Linea (Lin-ay-uh), I'm not entirely sure that's how you spell her name, was having a good time and she decided to "bella ciao" this guy on the bridge:

So that's her new nickname. Then Robbie took some pics of us girls of which this is my favorite:

I know it's kind of weird, but I like it. Alright so lotsa pictures, ciao!

Lazy Saturdays

2008-08-30T17:16:00.000-07:00

So I slept in until 11:30 this morning. I got back really late last night so that didn't even equate to that much sleep, but that's ok. Lina and I then got lunch and walked around Monteverde (our neighborhood) and just kind of explored. The place we went to lunch was a place that we had been to before and they have this really good, salty bread that Lina was dying for. They also had good pizza, so I was happy. I absolutely LOVE the pizza here. I really cannot get enough of it.

After that, we went to our respective apartments, siesta-ed and then met back up for dinner. Ashley came with and we all went out to this random restaurant in Trastevere that was super busy but relatively cheap. My pasta was good, but I really should have ordered pizza. I should always order pizza.

Anywho, so after a long dinner, Lina and I parted ways with Ashley and while she went home, we went to Campo di Fiori, which is a nightlife hotspot with a bunch of bars and young people. We met a big group of our friends there and grabbed some drinks. I drank my first beer tonight in a really long time. I don't really enjoy beer in the least, but I've decided that since I'm going to Oktoberfest, I might as well get on it. I don't want to be that weirdo who can't enjoy Oktoberfest because she's all anti-beer.

Lina and I then left around 1 am to go home, but the tram took its own sweet time showing up to take us there. We looked at cats for a while (Largo Argentina is a cat sanctuary as well as ruins by the tram station) and then when the tram showed up we got on and proceeded to go home. However, hilariously, there was a group of guys on the train who were our age and appeared to be fascinated by the fact that we were American. So much so, that about every 30 seconds, one would lean over and whisper: "Bon Jovi". Now, I have absolutely no idea where this Bon Jovi thing came from. Apparently they thought it appropriate to associate us with Bon Jovi. So they were cracking up at their little "joke" and we were cracking up because it was utterly ridiculous. They got off and ended up on a bus driving parallel to our tram for a few seconds. They were waving and gesturing towards us from the bus and so Lina and I waved back and I blew them a kiss (gotta give the people what they want). So I hope that those boys enjoyed their little American/Bon Jovi experience. Certainly something to write home about.

Yep, that was my day. Nothing overly taxing and tomorrow our original plans were to go to the Vatican while it was free, but now that we've thought about it tomorrow is probably the worst possible day of the year to visit the Vatican: the free day in August. August has the more tourists and they'll all be looking for a free trip to the Vatican. I have decided that my trip to the Vatican should be stress free and during a normal hour of the day (we were planning on getting up at 6 am... not so much fun). So tomorrow is looking like it will be just as peaceful and relaxing as today and Lina and I have made it our mission to find tickets to tomorrow's soccer game so I'll let you know if we can make that happen. Ciao!

Productivity and Apocalypto

2008-08-30T03:21:00.000-07:00

So yesterday morning I was very productive. I did my laundry here for the first time which was interesting because I had to line dry my clothes:

I also went grocery shopping by myself and even had a small conversation in italian with a lady who asked me to read the expiration date on something for her. Fun fun. Then I had to study for my big test yesterday... kind of a joke. I got a perfect score on the written portion and then when I took the oral exam, my teacher asked me 2 questions and then we started talking in italian about how I'm bored in my current class because I already know everything and how she really thinks that I should move up a level. It was reassuring to know that she thinks that I'm good enough to be in a class that's pretty much full of people who have already taken italian classes in school. She wants me to go to that class on Monday morning to see what it's all about and if I like it. However, I'm still not entirely sure that I want to do it because A) it's kind of nice getting really good grades without trying (I know, I suck, but I am human) and B) because I really like that class that I'm in: Lina's in it with me, I like the people in it and it's in the afternoon. I really like that I have all morning to relax before I have to go to class. So we'll see how that plays out.

Yesterday evening, Lina and I met Robbie at Largo Argentina (some ruins right next to our tram stop in the centro) and we all walked to get dinner. We went to this place with county flags on the table and we sat at the Mexican table. Just cuz that's how we roll. I don't have a picture though. The food was really good. Then afterwards, we walked to Robbie's apartment and just hung out with a bunch of people who were already there and others who kept coming and going. Then we went out to a club called Apocalypto which was this really strange club at the back of a deli style/gelato restaurant. It was really fun. We all just danced all night in this really cramped club that was playing American music. Here's a picture of Lina, Robbie and me:

It was a really fun evening but I didn't get back until quite late which is why I'm posting Saturday morning as opposed to Friday night. Ok, ciao!

Un Bambino Carino

2008-08-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

Today was very regular: woke up, ate breakfast, did homework, got ready, read book, left for class. Class was boring, and then we had a really easy dialogue to write. After class Lina, Robbie and I talked to one of the advisors of EAP and he had some good insight to offer us on what we should do this weekend. Apparently there's a cool pool by the Colosseum where young people like to hang out, so we might check that out on Saturday. That or the beach again. Sunday we're planning on going to the Vatican in the morning (it's free) and then Sunday afternoon possibly La Villa Borghese? We haven't solidified anything yet, except really the Vatican.

Dinner was really yummy today, she made gniocchi (sp?), salad and some meat and zucchini. It was soooo good. I love having home cooked meals. I'm really glad I did a homestay.

There was a really cute kid on the train today (un bambino carino). He kept running around and he was about the same age as my 3 year old brother. He spoke Italian, but he had blond hair and he was just the cutest little thing. I miss my brothers a lot. Funny, right was I was typing this, my mom called me on skype. I can't believe that my youngest brother is already scooting around and pushing himself up. Soooo cute. I love skype! My brothers are so funny, and so is my mom. All in all a great day yet again. I'm starting to think that bad days in Italy don't exist... knock on wood...

You've Got to Love Rome

2008-08-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

So today started out somewhat poorly. I woke up and talked to Eric for a few minutes, but he was in a bad mood because he had had a bad day, so that already started me off on the wrong foot. I wasn't able to shower this morning because I had to leave for school early so that I could get my name on the list for trips to Pompei and Orvieto. Then, on my way out the door, I realized after walking down 5 floors that I had forgotten the ATM card necessary to go to the bancomat (italian ATM) to get cash to pay for the trips. So I walked back up the 5 floors, grabbed the card and was late to the tram to meet Lina. Then on the tram, I accidentally stepped on some lady's foot and she looked like she was going to kill me. Then the bancomat wouldn't give me all of the euros that I asked for, but at least I was able to get enough to pay for the trips.

I was already beginning to write off the day as one of those anomalies where things just keep going badly, but things started looking alright once I got my name on the list for Pompei. Lina and I had a few hours before we had to meet the class to go the the outdoor market, so we just hung out at the Gustolab (student cafe) for a little while and hung out in the student lounge at the school doing homework. The time spent at the outdoor market was somewhat of a waste because none of the vendors really wanted us there writing down how much their fruit and vegetables cost, and they weren't afraid to tell us. After the market though, things started looking up.

I was able to buy a cell phone today which is good because now I can talk to my friends in Rome. Class wasn't bad. It's hard because I already know everything, but I think that the teacher tries to ask me harder questions, so at least that keeps me on my toes. After class, Lina and I hung out for a few minutes and then we went down to the apperativo. An apperativo is an italian tradition where you go out, buy a drink and then you get to eat unlimited finger food. The food was really good and we got to eat as much as we wanted for 6 euros, but mostly the 6 euros was something that I paid so that I would be able to hang out with friends, since living in a homestay keeps me out of the action sometimes. So I had fun at the apperativo. Here's a picture of Lina, Laura and I at the apperativo:

Afterwards, the three of us decided that we didn't quite want to go home, so we walked to the Pantheon just to sit and talk. We talked for a while, here's a picture of us where we were sitting by the fountain in front of the Pantheon:

After a while though, this man came out and started singing on the street to everyone by the Pantheon. It was wonderful and he was really good and I ended up being able to take a video:

As you can see, he was quite a good singer and it was really phenomenal to be able to sit outside and enjoy the live singing while gazing at the Pantheon by night. It was one of those special experiences that only happen when the stars align just right. So today ended up being a great day after all, thanks to that guy with the amazing voice.

My First Normal Day

2008-08-26T13:03:00.000-07:00

Today was relaxing. Just woke up, did homework, got ready for class and met Lina at the tram stop to go to class. I'm getting quite fed up with the ticket machines on the trams not working. I can't wait until September so that I can buy a monthly pass and not have to worry about buying tickets daily.

We grabbed some food and tried to buy a cell phone for me, but they were out of the cheapest cell phones and I really don't want to pay any more than I have to for a phone that I'm only going to be able to use for 4 months. So I'm just going to wait until they receive another shipment of the cheaper phones.

Class was fun, we played pictionary. It's really easy for me because I already know EVERYTHING, that we're doing in class. Makes it decidedly boring, but I'm sure there's some legitimate reason for putting me in the beginning class. Plus, homework takes about 2 seconds to complete and I'll faint if I don't get an A. So at least it'll help my GPA.

After class, we just went back to our respective homestays and I had a delicious dinner of pasta with pesto, a frittata and a rather tasty salad. Our signora makes the best pesto ever! She makes everything fresh. She said that she makes it with basil, garlic, parmesan, pine nuts, salt, and olive oil. I've already asked her and she's going to give me the exact proportions later so that I'm able to make the pesto when I get back. It's going to be yummy!

Now I'm just planning on turning in early after I get a bit of a start on my homework. I'm beginning to settle into a groove so my weekday posts will probably become progressively more mundane. But I still intend to be roaming about on the weekends as much as possible, so you'll have lots of neat pictures and stories to look forward to then. Ciao!

First Day of Class

2008-08-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

Today was my first day of beginning italian class. It was fun because the teacher (insegnante) spoke in italian the entire time and I was able to understand her, so I was quite proud of myself. Class went by relatively quickly, aided by a gelato break in the middle. After class, Lina and I had to RUN back to our homestays in order to drop off our books and change into nice dresses and RUN back to the centro in order to make it to the group dinner on time. We were still late. But not too late and the dinner was really good. The girls that we were sitting with were really sweet and fun to talk to, so that made the dinner go by quickly.

After dinner, we decided to go to Trastevere as a large group just to hang out. Here's a picture of the large group as it was:

After a few minutes, the group dwindled down to this:

We hung out as this particular group for most of the rest of the night and then it got even smaller. We had a fun night though, drinking wine on the cheap and experiencing Trastevere yet again. We even took the night bus home for the first time which was interesting. I'm tired though, so ciao!

Bonus: Trastevere at night (a picture Lina took, I was afraid she was going to drop my camera in the water! :)

Ostia

2008-08-24T12:06:00.000-07:00

This part of the post is dedicated to Ashley:

There was this hilarious little Asian kid at the stop for the tram today. He kept glaring at me in the same way that my little brothers do when they're trying to intimidate me (as in-not effective in the least, but amazingly adorable). So I'm cracking up, and then this kid starts doing some Dragonball-Z, ninja-style moves. Ashley snapped a few pics so here they are:

Funny kid. Anyway, we were at the tram on a Sunday because we went to the beach today. It's a beach called Ostia. We had a fun time trekking through the city trying to find the piramide train station but we eventually found it, here's a pic:

Then we go on the train and it took us to the beach. We were going to get off at Lido Centro (the main stop in Ostia), but then an italian guy on the tram told us that we should wait to get off so that we could go to a part of the beach that all of the italians go to, instead of the part filled with tourists. So we went the way this guy suggested and eventually wound up at a really nice beach. I kind of got the impression that this guy wanted to spend the day with us after showing us the way (he was by himself), but we really didn't want to spend the day with a guy we didn't know, so we thanked him for his help and then went for a walk down the beach. The water was really pretty and cool and it was fun until we walked onto the nude part of the beach. I'm not talking topless nude..... penises. Everywhere. So we promptly turned around and found a relatively penis free beach (even though the penises seemed to mysteriously follow us... go fig). But here is a picture of the beach itself:

And here's a picture of Ashley and myself:

And here's a picture of Lina and myself:

It was a fun day and the beach was the perfect temperature. I didn't get burnt at all which I was thrilled about (I wore spf 50). The travel back home wasn't bad and we stopped and got pizza and beer (I didn't get beer, yuck) on the way back. Now I'm at home, tired once again so I must go. Ciao.

First Time at the Colosseum!

2008-08-23T14:12:00.000-07:00

Another fun day. Ashley, Lina and I went to the centro and grabbed lunch on our way to the colosseum. We met Peter there and a group of us went on a tour of the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill and the Colosseum. Here's a picture from the Colosseum:
Here's also a cool picture that I took of the Temple of Vesta. I love the story of the vestal virgins and the power they held in ancient Rome as well as the rules they were forced to uphold. So seeing this temple in person was fascinating to me:

After our tour, Ashley, Lina and I broke away and decided to grab dinner. We had pasta and wine at a bistro we found, it wasn't the best food but the wine was great. Then we decided to go to the Trevi Fountain and I bought an imitation Prada bag which is really cute. The guy asked for 40 euros but I haggled him down to 20 (it helped that that was all I had on me in cash). So now I have a big gorgeous black leather "prada" bag. I love it and the leather's so soft. The Trevi Fountain was once again mind-bogglingly crowded but here's a picture from the Trevi:

Bonus, here's a funny picture of me playing on the Quirinale (one of the seven hills in Rome):

A fun day, but I'm very tired now and I want to get some sleep. Ciao!

Fridays on the River

2008-08-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

Today was a Friday, always a wonderful day. On the tram this morning, Ashley and I met a girl named Lina who recognized us from the program. Turns out, she is living in a homestay about a half a block away from us. So we chatted on the tram on the way to the centro and then when we got off, we met up with a guy name Peter who apparently lives a couple of stops closer to the centro than we do. The four of us spent the day together, comparing notes on homestays and getting to know one another. It was really nice to make new friends during the trip. Ashley and I were worried that we wouldn't be able to make new friends because we are on the other side of the city from most of the rest of our program (those staying in Residence Candia which are the dorms and those staying in apartments, most of which are near Residence Candia). But meeting Lina and Peter was great.

We got lunch together at a great restaurant, my lunch was only 2.50 euros! That's really good for lunch that you buy out in the centro, which is really the only place for lunch when you're around the study center. We decided not to tell anybody else about the restaurant though because we don't want long lines or anything ruining our good time. There was a really nice guy behind the counter who was German but spoke English and Italian as well. He spoke English quite well and he was sweet and helped us to figure out which was good. I had a cheese stuffed pastry and a mix of vegetables (zucchini, tomatoes, and eggplant). Ashley ended up buying this drink which tasted unlike anything I've ever tasted. We thought it looked like coke, but it ended up tasting like reeeeally bitter beer sort-of. Here's a picture of the drink:

We then went back to the study center and took our placement test. I knew a lot of what was on the test but not all of it. I gave it my best, but I was placed in beginning. I'm assuming it was because I don't know grammar at all well. I understood the oral comprehension but grammar was completely lost on me. I was worried that they would place me in too high of a class and that I would not be able to compete because I've never taken formal classes. So this way I'll have a leg up on the competition, and I won't have to feel bad for intentionally fudging the test (which I didn't do).

We then got gelato together which was tasty and walked toward the Trevi Fountain. Lina and Peter broke off and continued to the Trevi while Ashley and I tried to get cell phones. We didn't end up being successful because the cell phones were too expensive, but we found Lina and Peter at the Pantheon and walked back to the tram together (what are the odds?!). Ashley and I took a 2 hour long siesta which was nice, but I ended up in REM sleep so it was quite hard to wake up. Oh well, it worked out well because it was Friday so we had a late night ;)

Speaking of our late night... The four of us went to Trastevere to explore the scene around there. We first went to a restaurant where we ate good food (I was starving) and drank a liter of wine. I was delicious wine (Dad was right that the italians keep all the good wine for themselves!) and I also had AMAZING lasagna. I'm in love with italian food and it's really incomparable in Italy (of course). The waiter was also very nice and dinner plus the liter of wine (about 3 small glasses each) was about 12 euros. Here's a picture of the four of us at the restaurant/bar, taken by the cool waiter:

After the restaurant, we decided to check out the scene on the river. It was beautiful with blue and purple lights everywhere and people mulling about. Here's an example of the lights:

We played foosball (Ashley and I won!) and I wanted to get a picture but I forgot, but it was really fun and it was only 1 euro to play. I even had my first conversation in full Italian with a guy when I asked him how much the game costs... I was quite proud of myself.

We walked around the river and took pictures and ended up stopping at another bar and buying another liter of wine. This time I shared it with Lina and Peter only (Ashley had a stomach ache) and it was also quite delicious. It's cheaper if you buy the house wine rather than bottled wine, so that's what we bought. A liter was only 3 euros each which ended up being more than 3 glasses of wine. So quite a good deal, and good wine. Here's a picture of the four of us on the river drinking the wine:

We just got home around 3AM, it seems late but things run a lot later in Italy. Hence, the nationwide siestas. So I'm not too tired right now and I'm happy that we were able to enjoy the town and live the italian lifestyle. Tomorrow we are taking a tour of the Colosseum, Palatine Hill and the Forum for free through the program. I'm excited. Sorry that the post is so long but I am experiencing a bunch of new stuff right now. I'm sure they'll get shorter as this all becomes old hat :)

Also, here's the four of us on the river:

Trams, Fountains and Italians... oh my

2008-08-21T15:10:00.000-07:00

Learned all about transportation today. The method Ashley and I use to get to school is that we take the tram and then walk through the center part of Rome to get to our school building. I saw the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain and a couple of other neat plazas and such. It's so different here in the sense that the city is gorgeous. Unlike at home, every building here has old architecture. It's somewhat dirty, but through the graffiti and grime you can see that almost all of the buildings have gorgeous outer walls and inside are stone or tile floors. It's a completely different vibe. I can't wait for the weather to cool down a bit so that I'm able to spend more time outside comfortably. When tourist season ends, I plan on just sitting the day away by the Trevi Fountain, reading and doing homework. I've always been big on doing my homework near fountains and it's like I'm being called home to the mother fountain :)

We had our orientation today. There are 99 students in the program and about 10 of them are boys. So it's pretty amusing because the men are completely overpowered by the female influence. All of the people I've met so far have been really nice. The program seems like it will be really fun. Tomorrow we have another orientation, a tour and our italian language placement test. At first I was planning on not taking the test seriously so that I would be able to skate by through the first language level and get an A. But that kind of thing's not really in my nature. So I'm going to try my best on the test tomorrow to see how well I can do and I'll keep you posted as to what level I'm placed in!

I'm basically living the dream here. The city is beautiful, the landmarks are beautiful, heck even the people are beautiful (if a bit full of themselves at times...). I can't wait to get started with my schooling and travelling and really begin to experience life in Rome.

Here's a picture of myself in front of the Pantheon:

Above is a picture of Ashley at the bistro where we ate lunch. They had the BEST bruschetta I have ever tasted in my entire life. I always liked bruschetta but I never realized how truly amazing it can be. I just want to go back there and order bruschetta everyday for lunch forever. The bread was crusty sourdough-esque bread and it was saturated with yummy olive oil. Then the best mix of tomatoes, fresh herbs and spices was just piled on top of the bread. I can't begin to tell you how good it was. You all know me when I find something I like... I get it over and over and over again! I also had yummy pizza which was waaay larger than anticipated. I thought the portions in Europe were small! We were in a touristy area though so that's probably why the portions were bigger. Overall a great day!

Birthday Fun

2008-08-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

So my hostess cooked our first dinner together for the three of us tonight. Then she came out with a candle, ice cream and prosecco and they sang for me. It was really sweet, she sang in Italian and Ashley sang in English. It was a very unique birthday song. My little brother J and my mom also sang to me today over skype, so I feel extremely loved. J is the cutest little kid in the whole wide world and I just wanted to smother him with hugs. Here are some pictures from the Italian birthday fiesta:

The first is of my birthday candle and of the wine and the second is a picture of Ashley and our hostess. Ashley's on the right and our hostess is on the left (we'll call her R because I don't know if she's ok with me using her name). Dinner consisted of spinach and ricotta ravioli and an Italian summer dish of melon and prosciutto which Ashley and I had never heard of. It was really delicious though with the saltiness of the prosciutto balancing with the sweetness of the melon. Quite an adventure for the tastebuds. A very good birthday indeed.

Also, I forgot to mention earlier the BEST part of the Vegas trip! The bf and I went to the spa together. He got a massage and I got a body scrub. I made the appointments and I knew how he would feel about a man giving him a massage so I requested a woman (she ended up being cute and gave a great massage so I was pleased). But just so things were fair (they must always be fair) I requested a male spa technician for my body scrub. The scrub was so luxurious and it was wonderful to really feel free to be myself in the spa because there were no boys allowed! After I lounged around in the whirlpool and the steam room and the sauna and the showers... I had the scrub. First he scrubbed me with a salt scrub, followed by a rinse, then another long rinse by a crazy shower contraption which showered me with about 20 jets at once all over my body, followed by a lotion/massage. So I really got the good end of that deal: smooth skin+a massage. We both had a ridiculously good time in the spa and intend to make it an annual event!

I'm here!

2008-08-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

Okay so I'm finally in Rome. The flight was wonderful and I'm not really experiencing bad jet lag... yet. It might hit me later but I'm crossing my fingers. I haven't let myself take a nap because I want to get my body on the right schedule. My homestay is really quite wonderful. Ashley and I each have our own room and we're staying with a wonderful woman who is going to cook 2 meals a day for us. She's sweet; and she's speaking Italian to us and I actually understand her! I'm so proud of myself. Best news ever? We have internet in our homestay!!! For free!!! I don't have to pay for internet!!! I reeeallly lucked out on that one. Now I'm able to skype and email and blog and facebook to my heart's content.

Here's a picture of (Corsica?) one of the islands off the coast of Italy that I took from the plane:

It looked really cool from the air. I'll take pictures of my homestay later and post them.

Also, today's my birthday! I'm finally 20 like everyone else I know. This trip is really the most amazing birthday present that anyone could have asked for. It was funny because while I was on the plane I kept thinking, okay so I'm 20 in Italy but I'm 19 in California and what am I on the plane? Also, I ended up losing 9 hours of my birthday, haha. Oh well, at least it wasn't my 21st :)

Oh and Eric and I had a great time in Vegas over the weekend. We stayed at the Luxor and it was fantastic. The first night our room was kind of hokey: shower overflowed, double instead of a king and the A/C didn't work (not a good time, that). But we upgraded the next night to the most beautiful room:

It was a gorgeous suite with a jacuzzi tub and a big comfy bed. We had fun for our last weekend together. We hung out with friends, went out to explore the strip, went down to the casino (where I got some hardcore gambling-watching going on), and played in the pool. A very good weekend and a fitting note to depart on since I won't be seeing him until May :( But thank goodness for skype, that's all I have to say!

Preparing Oneself

2008-08-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

There are a few preparations that I've been undertaking before I leave for Rome:

1) Purchasing necessary toiletries (shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, etc.). I've been made to understand that deodorant in Italy is a tough find and I refuse to be without this particular hygiene item. I'm also planning on clothes shopping a bit more so that I have enough clothing to cover up when I visit churches and whatnot.

2) Spending time with friends and family. I won't be seeing my bf until around May when he gets back from Iraq. So I'm trying to find as much time with him as possible. This weekend we're going to Las Vegas! I'm so excited and I'll probably post about it, since I wouldn't want to forget (I tend to do that, so this blog might be a good thing for my memory). I'll also be going out to eat with family and going shopping with friends.

3) Packing. Not really a worry with me because I'm a pro-packer. I'm going to start packing and doing laundry on Monday and I leave Tuesday morning. That will give me a half a day to pack which should be plenty of time.

I just spent the last couple of days with the bf and we went on a pretty substantial shopping spree. He bought me the most gorgeous bag, here's a picture:

It's a beautiful Coach bag that I fell in love with when we were shopping last week and he bought it for me as an early birthday present. There were also sunglasses and boots which I'm sure will be abundant in pictures when I'm in Italy, so I don't feel the need to post any. Before you get the idea that the two of us run around spending money, he recently received his reenlistment bonus and we had been planning that shopping spree for a very long time. He purchased a gun that he's been wanting for the past couple of years. He's going to pick it up on his birthday and he's very excited.

Sorry that was kind of a tangent, but I just didn't want to forget that awesome day. Besides, it's not like anyone reads this thing anyway :)

First Post

2008-08-11T14:40:00.000-07:00

Alright well here goes nothing.

I'm creating this blog in order to give the people who are interested a chance to know about my travels in Europe. I figure it will be easier to create it before I leave, so I won't be fiddling around with the internet when I'm actually in Rome.

Blogs have always left me with a weird feeling because I feel that no one could possibly be interested in my daily life. But my mom cares and if nothing else this blog will be something that I can look back on when I get home and remember those daily things that make experiences like these worthwhile. Plus it saves me from having to repeat the same things over and over to my different friends and family (theoretically).

So this is my first blog and I will definitely be keeping everyone posted (ha, I wonder how many bloggers have made that joke...)