When in Bologna...

Last Few Hours

2009-08-11T21:21:00.004+01:00

Calm, happy, scared, sad, ready, excited, giddy, nostalgic.

What have I learned this year, what have I gained, what have I lost... wow. It's been crazy, ups and downs and in-betweens, excitement and wonder and adventure, heartbreak, sadness, travel, beauty, friendship, love, sunshine... Bologna has given me so much, this year has given me so much. This summer was the best of my life, the best experience I could have hoped for this year.

Walking through Bologna today was surreal. The town is practically empty, of course, because it's August and in August all the Italians run to the sea. I wandered through the streets, saying goodbye to Piazza Maggiore, le due torri, the fountain of Neptune. Wow. I have a few more hours in my apartment, which is also empty. I came home to find everything changed. My walls, which used to be filled with posters and photos, are now bare. Marta moved back to Portugal, leaving behind a sad and empty room. It doesn't feel like my home anymore. It feels strange, foreign. I'm saying goodbye to this place and coming back to my old life, the "same old" but never really the same at all. Wonderful. Oh, side note: I decided to spend my last evening watching Indiana Jones and eating fish sticks. The fish sticks were definitely a mistake, and Indiana Jones was definitely not.

In just a few hours I'll go to the train station, train to Milan, bus to the airport, flight to London and then flight to home sweet home, San Francisco Berkeley Grass Valley California United States here I come!!

Innamorata della Sicilia

2009-08-06T17:58:00.008+01:00

I've fallen in love with Sicily. I wake up every morning and feel so, so lucky to be here. After a long and wonderful year, it's the perfect place to end up, the perfect way to say goodbye to Italy.

The only thing I can imagine which might be more beautiful in Sicily... would be a giant burrito, filled with delicious guacamole and salsa and beans and cheeeeeeeeeeeeeese. I honestly think that Mexican food is the only thing keeping me from being sad about leaving Italy.

Farming in Sicily

2009-07-29T17:49:00.002+01:00

I am currently working on a farm outside of Catania, which is on the eastern coast of Sicily. I thought it was hot in Tuscany, but as I got off the train in Catania I realized that Tuscany was practically a winter wonderland. Working on the farm here is really difficult sometimes, but we usually avoid the hottest hours of the day. We wake up at 6 or 7, work until it gets too hot to work anymore (usually happens around 11) and then rest or work inside until the evening. Yesterday, though, I woke up a little late and ended up working into the afternoon - burning wood. Yep, I was in charge of the burn pile, at noon in July in Sicily! I walked into the kitchen after several hours of that, covered in sweat and grime and dust and ash, and the other American WWOOF volunteer looked at me with an expression of complete horror, as if she'd never seen anything so awful in her entire life!

The funny thing is, I felt great. There's something really satisfying about being completely disgusting after a long day of work. If at the end of the day, I still look clean and smell nice, that means I didn't accomplish much!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to come back to work in Berkeley and stop bathing, or start rubbing food all over myself at the end of a work shift to feel like I worked hard. Haha! No, in fact probably the best part of being so incredibly filthy was the feeling of being clean again after a nice, long shower. This farm is less rustic than the one in Grosseto, so I have the opportunity to bathe every once in a while.

The name of the farm here is "Casa delle Acque" which would means "House of the Waters." The reason is that they collect all of their water from the river running down from Mt. Etna. To water the orange and olive orchards, they use an ancient irrigation system - it's over 800 years old! It consists of a network of stone canals which send the water from the river rushing through the orchard. It's really beautiful because since the orange orchard is on a hill, the water cascades down in tiny waterfalls, and forms little rivers leading to each individual tree. It's amazing that without using any hoses or sprinklers, it's possible to water hundreds of orange trees this way, using just the water from the river!

In Grosseto, the family does something similar, in a way. During the winter, they collect rainfall in huge tanks and then use it to water the garden. It's just such an easy way to preserve water and the rainy season in Tuscany gives them enough water to get through the summer. Imagine if everyone in the world collected water from a natural source like they do on these farms!

I wish I had enough time to post pictures of the amazing countryside, to write about everything I'm learning and experiencing, to say all the things I want to say... but I need to get back to work! There's actually no internet on the farm and the closest internet point is in the nearest town of Paternò... an hour-long walk from the farm! Today Caroline and I made the journey for an almond granita (frozen almond milk) but it's getting hotter every day so I might not be able to post again. I love you all, though, and I can't wait to be home... just 2 weeks from today. Every day I feel just a little more excited.

:)

Lightning Speed Update

2009-07-08T15:30:00.003+01:00

Working on a farm in Grosseto, that is, Southern Tuscany. Harvesting wheat, which we then use to make flour and then bread in an outdoor wood-burning oven. It's very rustic, no electricity and no running water but a few small solar panels so there's a little bit of light in the evening. Organic vegetable garden and olive grove, and I can't even describe how well I've been eating because it would take hours and I would drool all over the computer.

I haven't showered much (at all) since I've been here. There's a water tank which I can occasionally use to splash myself, but I'm still pretty gross. For example, today I was working not far from a pile of donkey poop and realized that there were more flies on me than on donkey poop. I am trying to convince myself that since donkeys eat mostly hay, their poop can't smell that bad...

The family is amazing. Riccardo and Caterina are the parents, Maya (10), Blu (6) and Lumi (2) are the kids and there are 3 goats, 3 donkeys and a crazy old cat named Chili. We all get along great. There's also another American volunteer named John who has been trading books with me. Right now I'm reading Pinocchio in Italian, whenever I don't know what a word means I just ask Maya. She's my 10-year-old living dictionary.

The work is hard and it's HOT but we take every afternoon off to either laze around in the shade or go to the beach. There's also a (relatively) cool wind coming in over the hills so it's not too bad.

Wish I could write more, but there's no time! Gotta go hit hay with sticks (more on that later)!!

Grand Adventures in Germany!

2009-06-19T18:52:00.013+01:00

Are you all tired of my grand adventures yet? :)

Immediately after taking my exam, I ran to the train station, took the train to Milan, bus to the airport, flight to Berlin, bus to city center, then walked to Sonya's house. Sonya is one of Ryan's friends who studied in Rome last semester and is studying in Berlin this semester. Somehow we never met when we were both in Italy, even though we meant to - but she was nice enough to let me stay at her house in Berlin for almost a week. I arrived just in time for a dance party and her house, and a pancake breakfast the next morning. I don't think my timing could have been any better.

Then, joy of all joys, beautiful Joy from Berkeley flew into Berlin to meet me. Joy is one of my all-time favorite people and I was so happy to see her I was barely able to speak! I just kept squealing like a very happy little piggy who hadn't seen her favorite piggy friend in almost a year.
Then, to add to my state of piggy ecstasy, the very first thing we did was go to Sonya's favorite burrito place. Italians don't know the first thing about burritos. They don't even have tortillas. So, this burrito became so much more than a burrito. It was a life-changing burrito revelation, a burrito epiphany. It was burrito nirvana. The perfect state of burrito being. I can remember very few meals in my life that were as satisfying as that delicious, perfect, beautiful burrito. It was a vegan burrito, with black beans, brown rice, lime-marinated tofu, all sorts of grilled veggies, salsa and as I realized in one of the happiest moments of my life, fresh guacamole. Ahhhhhhhhhh.

What's funny is that it was a "gourmet San Francisco style burrito" so the restaurant was completely San Francisco themed. Remember, Joy had just gotten off an 18 hour flight from San Francisco... so it was kind of like she just went in a big circle.

Enough burrito-talk (who are we kidding, you can never have enough burrito-talk but I'll move onto another subject anyway). Sonya, Joy and I got along great - even though I'd never met Sonya before it felt like we'd all already been friends for a long time.

Sonya was an amazing guide and took us to all her favorite places in Berlin. As an artist herself, she knows of all the best galleries. She took us to an amazing installation exhibit, made entirely of those little plastic ties that you'd find in a grocery store. It was like something from outer space, and we were allowed to play all over it! It's not every day you find an art exhibit you can climb on.
I fell in love with the city and I know that I'll go back. I know I say that often but there is just something about Berlin that captured me. I honestly think that part of me is still there, probably enjoying a burrito as we speak. How I envy that part of me!

The city is huge but somehow still feels intimate, like you're a part of a community. It's a feeling that reminds me of being in San Francisco - depending on which district you're in, it's easy to forget how big the city actually is. It's filled with tiny cafes, art galleries, markets, and squats (buildings taken over by artists after World War II). It's also an incredibly green city, and even the busiest streets are lined with trees.

The most famous squat in Berlin is called the Tacheles and is an old department store, now filled with small galleries and exhibits. I guess it was supposed to be demolished but then a group of artists took over and completely transformed it.
In addition to the amazing art and music of Berlin, the city has an incredible history. I've always been fascinated with World War II history and it was interesting to see where everything actually took place. We took a free 3-hour walking tour of Berlin and by the end of it I was completely overwhelmed. We saw a beautiful holocaust memorial, the site of Hitler's bunker, the former SS headquarters, Checkpoint Charlie (a famous crossing point of the Berlin wall), and Bebelplatz, where a group of nazi students burned over 20,000 books. Now, Bebelplatz contains a memorial which consists of a window in the ground, looking down into a chamber filled with empty bookshelves - enough space for 20,000 books.

There are dozens of memorials scattered around Berlin but my favorite is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe which is a huge space (about 5 acres) filled with concrete blocks of varying heights but the same horizontal dimensions.

There are many interpretations of what the architect may have had in mind when he built the memorial. In fact, there's no description written anywhere around the site, not even to explain what the structures commemorate. Everyone draws their own conclusion. Some think that the blocks represent grave stones. Others think that the varying heights of the blocks represent standing up for one's individuality under an oppressive regime of uniformity. For me, though, the most interesting part of the exhibit was walking through it. As you walk through the exhibit, surrounded by these huge blocks, you catch quick glimpses of other visitors to the exhibit. You only see them for an instant, and then they're gone. It felt like I was catching glimpses of ghosts wandering through the aisles of the memorial.
Almost every city in Europe has its own rich and incredible history. What makes Berlin so different is that it still feels so recent - the Berlin wall fell in 1989 and before that, thousands of people were held prisoner in their own country, in their own city. Families were actually divided, friends and family members weren't allowed to see one another for 28 years. Huge portions of the wall are still there, and there's a brick outline on the ground showing where the rest of the wall used to be.
Then there's all the World War II history, which is still so raw for some people that they feel the need to make up for the actions of their parents or grandparents. Students gather every day at Bebelplatz and hold a small book fair, selling copies of various books that were destroyed during the book-burning that took place there - it's a small gesture but I found it incredibly touching.

Sonya took us to a huge flea market and then to see the East Side Gallery. Another of the most beautiful memorials in Berlin, the East Side Gallery is a large portion of the Berlin Wall (about 1.3 km), covered in beautiful murals by over 100 artists. It's now considered a memorial to freedom.

While we were in Berlin we also met up with Kevin, one of the Americans who stayed at my house back in November. The other American, Jeff went home in February but Kevin fell in love with Berlin (and a beautiful German girl!) so he is still there. He and his girlfriend Sima took us to a place called Teufelsberg which is by far one of the most interesting places I've ever seen. It's an artificial hill constructed completely out of rubble, after Berlin was practically destroyed during the war. The NSA built a radar station on top of the hill which is now completely abandoned, so we spent hours wandering around in the buildings and climbed up inside the radar domes. Sonya and I (both photography nuts) had a field day wandering around the ruined station.
There are all sorts of rumors about the hill of rubble being constructed to cover up secret Nazi bunkers, training camps - we heard about a secret escape tunnel but unfortunately didn't find it. It's a very eerie place though, filled with broken glass and graffiti along with old military equipment. The domes were by far the best part, because every single sound echoed dozens of times. Even a tiny footstep or my camera shutter would create an eerie effect so we immediately started making singing and making rocket noises. Also, the lighting inside the dome was perfect, and there were beautiful views of the city!

Finally, we watched the sunset from the tower and headed back into town.

I really, really didn't want to leave Berlin but Joy convinced me that I should give the rest of Germany a chance. So, we met up with Patricia, a German girl who actually studied abroad last year at Berkeley and lived in the coops. She took us to Göttingen, a small University town where she and several Berkeley students are studying this year. It was amazing to see some familiar faces, and while Göttingen isn't quite as impressive as Berlin, it's hard to imagine a more adorable town. Joy and I spent all day wandering around the narrow streets admiring the architecture.
At one point we asked to climb to the top of the old church tower but were told that we couldn't because we'd disturb the birds who were nesting there! We were allowed to climb about half way up though, and wandered around the rest of the church. Outside, it seemed like any other church but inside was decorated like something out of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory - then, ironically had the following sign (not very Wonka of them at all...):

Later on, while wandering around the quirky little town of Gottingen, we found these signs... I'm not sure exactly what they mean. No child zone?

After Göttingen, our next stop was Munich. To get there, we had originally planned on taking the train but when we found out that it costs 100 euro, we had to find another option. Patricia recommended that we try to find a "carshare" which is basically organized hitch-hiking, usually with a small fee for gas. She searched the website for us and found a girl who was heading to Munich and still had seats available. So, for 20 euro each we went on what was the most terrifying drive of my entire life.

At this point I'd already driven on the autobahn (German highway) - Patricia had taken us from Berlin to Göttingen. This time, though, I found out what all the fuss was about. Our driver averaged between 180-200 km/hr which is 110-125 mph. I tried to convince myself that I had messed up the conversion in my head, that there was just no way she was driving that fast, weaving in and out of traffic, dodging semis, in a construction zone where the lanes were extremely narrow... and it wasn't even just the speed that was the problem - she was an awful driver. Every lane change felt a near-death experience, and then every once in a while she would let out kind of a squeal when she did something especially terrifying, like narrowly avoid being merged into by a semi truck as the passing lane was ending or get distracted and almost run into the center divider. To make things worse, the whole time she was driving she was also sending text messages, playing with her stereo, digging around in her purse, eating - at one point she actually peeled a banana and ate it while driving 125 miles per hour AND talking on her cell phone.

I was in the backseat actually praying for my life, and every so often she'd catch a glimpse of my terrified expression in the rearview mirror and turn around in her seat to make sure I was doing alright. Um, of course I was not doing alright. The woman was turned around in her seat asking me if I was doing alright while driving at a speed that would be considered 1) a felony and 2) legally insane in the state of California!!!

Needless to say, I was incredibly relieved when the four hour car ride was finally over. When we stopped for gas, I seriously considered refusing to get back in the car. I was terrified the entire time and at some points on the verge of tears. It might sound silly to someone who wasn't there, but I actually felt like my life was in danger.

I keep thinking that I'll be able to tell the story and laugh, that thinking about it won't make my heart race. As of now, it's still too soon!

Munich. Oh yes, eventually we arrived in Munich (alive, thankfully!) and went to meet our couchsurfing hosts, German twin brothers named Tom and Jerry! They were both very odd, very shy but we ended up having a great time. Also (and this was not explained to me before we arrived in Munich), there wasn't quite enough space for us, so I slept in a hammock that Tom hung across the bedroom. It was one of those hammocks that closes up on you, so I felt like I was sleeping in a caccoon!
Munich was my least favorite city that we visited, except for the incredible beer. Joy and I loved a beer called Augustiner, apparently it's the Pope's favorite! Other than the beer though, I just didn't like Munich that much... It was huge and overbearing, filled to the brim with tourists and everything was expensive. Since we didn't have much time, we spent all of our time in city center. It's possible that the less-populated areas are more interesting, so maybe I'll give Munich a second chance some day, and I'll definitely just take the train next time. I'm sure that Munich would grow on me eventually - it is a beautiful city but it just couldn't live up to the amazing Berlin!

We were in Munich for just two days and then headed to a small town called Heidelberg. The only reason we went there was to catch the shuttle to the airport, but we ended up loving the town. We got in just in time for lunch at a great little Indian food restaurant (it had been way, way too long) and ordered everything extra spicy. It was extra spicy which left us with stomach aches but it was definitely worth it.

Heidelberg is another adorable University town, but a little bigger and more crowded than Göttingen. There's a beautiful castle overlooking the town, and a river running parallel to the main street. Coincidently, we arrived on one of the three days per year in which the city puts on a fireworks show over the river. I wish I could say that they knew we were coming, but it was just a nice coincidence.

Our shuttle didn't arrive until around 2 AM, so we slept for a little while in the McDonalds in front of the bus stop. Have you ever slept in a McDonalds? I wouldn't recommend it.

After I awoke from my McDonalds nap and convinced myself that no, I did not actually want a Big Mac, we took the shuttle to the airport to catch our flight to Croatia. Since our flight wasn't until noon and check-in wasn't until 10, we slept in the lobby until they let us check in. I think we might be the first people in history to show up at the airport 10 hours early for a flight. That was our strategy though, to sleep in McDonald's and the aiport to avoid paying for a hostel. It worked out fine, and after only a tiny bit of sleepy grumbling, we headed to our romantic island getaway.

To be continued :)

Oh, but first - one more thing!

Grand Adventures in Spain and Sardegna!

2009-06-18T11:23:00.008+01:00

Welcome to Part 2 of Kalen's catch-up blogging!

After leaving Marrakech, Kat and I left for Barcelona where we met up with an Italian friend, Francesco. He's studying in Barcelona right now so we stayed at his place and hung out with his friends. He probably thought I was kidding when I said I was going to post this picture on the internet:
Haha, someone took over my camera while I was still sleeping so I am not responsible for the taking of this photo. I am, however, responsible for posting it on the internet for the world to see!

While I've been to Barcelona twice already, Kat had never been. So, I was dubbed the official tour guide of the trip. I took her to my favorite places and showed her my favorite Gaudí buildings. I told her about how La Pedrera inspires visions of myself as a lizard-person climbing up the side of the building... she didn't seem to think that was as normal as I thought it was. Hmm.
We also went to Parc Güell, where I'd never been before! It's basically a huge park filled with works by Gaudí. I felt like Alice, walking through Wonderland - the place is crazy! I think Gaudí toned his artistic impulses down a little bit when designing the buildings downtown but here he was given basically free reign to do whatever he felt like doing. The result is a collection of beautiful but strange mosaics, long serpentine benches surrounding the main square, asymmetrical pillars, buildings with roofs and towers that look like gingerbread houses, and a huge dragon sculpture at the entrance to the park. What's interesting is that despite the strange architecture and bright colors everywhere, the park is still a peaceful place. The architecture almost feels like a part of the nature itself, with pillars that look like tree trunks leading up to huge sculptures resembling birds' nests. It really is an incredible place, and I stand by my previous theory that Gaudí was taking lots and lots of drugs...

My favorite area of the park was the huge open space underneath the main square, filled with pillars. It was perfect for hide-and-seek, and we had a great time running around and taking goofy photos.

After wandering around the park for a few hours, we met up with Francesco and his friends for a festival and parade. His friend had the honor of "pulling the dragon" which I thought would be just a normal float in just a normal parade. I was so wrong. This was the scariest thing since Krampus... first of all, the dragon was shooting off fireworks from all over its body. Second of all, there were demons with fireworks that they would shoot at the crowd. Then, there were the fire-breathing demons. Yeah, that was cool. Not to mention the scary drum music.

The parade is supposed represent the journey into hell, and probably did a pretty damn good job about what that would be like. Granted, I'm a wuss but at one point a demon cornered me, a mother and her small child against the door of a church and sprayed sparks in our faces! By the end of the parade I had tiny little burns on my arms and face but it was worth it for all the photos that I took. Fire-breathing demons might be scary but they're awfully fun to photograph!

We had a great night out (after the demons stopped chasing us) and I made a lot of new friends. Hopefully I'll be able to see them again someday!

Our next day in Barcelona was a much more peaceful one - we walked to a hill called Montjuïc which looks over the entire city and the sea. I expected more of park than what the hill has actually become which is a collection of Athletic stadiums and museums. The 1992 Olympics took place there, and you can tell that they're very proud of it. There are dozens of fountains, sculptures, incredible landscaping, there are even armed guards overlooking the city. Someone stole this one's pants, though...

The best part of the trip to Montjuïc was our ride on the Gondola to the top of the hill where we wandered around the Castell de Montjuïc. I'm not which part I enjoyed more - the fortress, which was built in the 17th century and is on a cliff overlooking the harbor, or the gondola ride itself!

It made me feel like I was flying and made Kat feel like she was on Star Trek. It was especially cool when I learned how to control the gondola with my mind.

I'm just not sure the fortress could compete with that, although I did take a cool picture of a seagull.

One of the funniest things about Barcelona, which I'd never noticed before, is the abundance of outdoor escalators. Apparently they don't think we tourists are capable of climbing the hill to Parc Güell or to Montjuïc. I boycotted the escalators (I called them "ridiculous") and walked instead. This experience gave me a new appreciation for the outdoor escalators...
We had a great time in Barcelona (my third visit!) and but were really excited to be back in Italy when we got off the plane in Sardegna. For those of you who don't know where Sardegna is, it's an island off the west coast of Italy. We spent most of our time in Cagliari which is on the southern coast of Sardegna and absolutely gorgeous! We got to see even more of the city than we normally would have because every morning our couchsurfing host got us up at 7AM and dropped us off in the city center where we groggily moaned and groaned until we either woke up naturally or drank enough coffee to induce a state of full awareness. Kat came up with another, more creative method to wake herself up:

The best part of Sardegna is definitely not the cities (although they are beautiful) - it's the beaches. Oh my word. The water is incredibly clear, and if you go even a small distance outside of the city, the beaches are almost completely deserted.

Somehow I forgot to mention that while in Morocco I managed to burn myself (well, just the back of me) to a crisp. The ironic thing is that it didn't happen in the desert, or in Fes where we spent all day walking around in the sun. Oh no, I managed to burn myself to a crisp while I was studying on the roof of our hostel, recovering from all my other ailments!

You'll be happy to know that I evened myself out in Sardegna and burned the other half of myself just as badly. The thing is, I was constantly applying sunscreen, but when you're as fair-skinned as I am there's just not much that can be done. Since the trip with Kat was essentially the first time I've been in the sun this year, there was no escaping my red, itchy fate.

Even though I was pretty badly sunburned, I spent most of my time at the beach, wandering around the rocks while Kat worked on her tan like a normal person who can be exposed to direct sunlight without bursting into flames! I enjoyed wandering around the rocks though. It gave me time to think, and I stumbled across lots of tiny, beautiful coves that were completely isolated from the rest of the beach.

I also discovered this cool rock, which I named "Kalen rock." I did discover it, after all.

Since we were exhausted from the rest of our trip, we spent most of our time relaxing on the beach. Not too many exciting stories, just three days of relaxing and getting ready to come home to Bologna. I was actually only in Bologna for 6 days, and it was just to take an exam. During those six days though, my friends Amanda and Carmen visited me for a weekend. We've been friends since high school so it was great to see them again and catch up. It's amazing how much can happen in a year, so we spent hours exchanging stories, reminiscing and laughing over a bottle of wine.

After they left, I spent 3 straight days studying for my Sociolinguistics exam. Luckily, I'd spent every minute of down time on the trip studying as well so I was already pretty well prepared. I went to the exam with my backpack, ready to take take off for my next trip. I was afraid that the professor would be upset by that, but he was just amused by it and the exam went incredibly well. I usually hate the exam system here, because the professors are in such a hurry to get you in and out of there that the whole process usually takes about 5-10 minutes and then they just hand you a grade. An entire semester of work boils down to how much information you can cram into a 10 minute oral exam! This time, I was one of the only students taking the exam that day, so the professor wasn't in such a big hurry to get rid of me. We ended up discussing the material for 40 minutes! I'm extremely interested in the Sociolinguistics so I had a great time. It became a conversation about what I found the most interesting and why, and at the end of it he gave me the maximum score! Woo! It gave me a little more respect for the Italian exam system because now I understand that in theory, it should work like that every time. The problem is that 99% of the time, it doesn't. Ah well, in less 2 months I'll be back to what I'm used to - essays and written exams. I can't believe that I'll be back so soon! I'm trying to find somebody right now to take over my apartment and then I'll be doing volunteer farm work for about 6 weeks. Then it's home sweet home!

Grand Adventures in Morocco

2009-06-16T18:07:00.002+01:00

So to make things a little less overwhelming, I've decided to break down my catch-up blogging into sections and post them over the next few days. See, it's just so hot in Bologna right now that I can't bear the thought of sitting in front of my computer when I could be reading my newest book in a cool corner somewhere, preferably on or near an ice pack. It's amazing - since I finished classes and exams, I have had time to rediscover reading. It's ironic that all that reading kept me from reading. Anyway I read A Clockwork Orange which I've always wanted to read and then transitioned straight into Little Women. In retrospect I probably could have chosen a smoother transition! On a whim, I just bought Madame Bovary... I don't know too much about it but it keeps popping up in my crossword puzzles so my curiosity was peaked. (Joy and I managed to completely finish a book of 106 crosswords during our beach vacation!!) Ooh, I also just returned a textbook I never used so I have 20 euro of store credit to spend on summer reading!

Back on track - Morocco. It's been a long time so I may have forgotten a few things, but I'll start at the beginning and hopefully it'll all come back to me.

Kat and I left for our first destination, Fez in kind of a daze. We'd only been in Bologna for 3 days after coming back from Puglia and I had barely finished unpacking. We also had to catch an early morning train We arrived safely in Fez, though and met up with our couchsurfing host, Hassan. Everyone thought we were crazy for couchsurfing in Morocco but I thought it would be the best way to really experience the Moroccan culture which, as we found out, is a very different thing from a tourist's perspective. Also, Hassan had a lot of positive references and lives at home with his parents and siblings so we figured it would be pretty safe.

One of the first things we did was Hassan was take a taxi to his village. This doesn't sound like it would be a particularly interesting or exciting experience, but taxis in Morocco are very different from taxis in the US. Basically, you pay for whatever space you occupy in the taxi. So, in order to pay the least amount of money possible, you have to cram as many people into the car as possible! The backseat counts as 4 spaces and the front seat counts as 2, which I believe is actually illegal in the United States... it was definitely a hot, crowded and smelly ride!

Hassan is from a small village called Bhalil, and I think that its only tourists are the various travelers that he hosts through Couchsurfing. Since he hosts pretty frequently, people didn't necessarily seem surprised to see us there, but they were definitely interested in our every move. Children pointed and laughed a lot - did wonders for the self-esteem! It's a beautiful village, though, still very traditional and practically untouched by tourism.

Walking into Hassan's house (and I use the term loosely) was an experience that I'll never forget. I didn't actually realize that's what we were walking into, since the entrance was just a small door covered by a curtain. When I walked in, I realized that his house was actually a cave.

It was a very homey, cozy cave but definitely a cave - divided into three rooms. There was a living room which doubled as a bedroom for the several siblings, kitchen and "bathroom" which was actually just a small area with a hole in the ground and a candle for lighting. On my first bathroom trip I managed to burn myself which was a little embarassing - apparently I can't manage to pee in Morocco without getting injured. Excellent. There was also a back area of the cave which I was too afraid to go into as it was the darkest and most cave-like. I think it was used for storage. Then there was a small loft, where the parents slept. I don't think I know many people who would be thrilled at the idea of giving up their houses and moving into a cave but it really was a beautiful little home. Inside was dark and cool , providing relief from the heat outside. There were colorful cushions everywhere and even a tiny little tv. I was actually amazed at how much time the family spent watching television, but days must get pretty long in the hot summer and it definitely passes time.

When we entered the living room, Hassan's mother and sisters were waiting for us - his Mom had prepared an amazing lunch of Tajin, which we devoured without thinking of the many food-related warnings we'd received before leaving for Morocco. It was delicious, a kind of slow-cooked potato and tomato stew with grilled fish on top. Aside from the taste, I also loved the way we ate it. Hassan explained that this is how most Moroccan families eat their meals - everyone gathers around the low table, with a large dish of food in the middle and plenty of tasty flatbread to go around. Then you just dig in, using the bread and your first two fingers to scoop up food right out of the main dish. Scraps are left on the table, and are swept into the trash at the end of the meal. There was lots of lip-smacking and "mmmm"-ing, laughing and talking about the day (not in English, unfortunately but it sounded like a good day from all the giggles). To eat the fish, we just picked up an entire fish and ripped off all the meat with our fingers. I've always thought food was especially tasty when there's no silverware getting in the way! Anyway, eating in Moroccan homes is a very communal experience - maybe when I get home to Berkeley I'll host some Moroccan dinner parties and we can all get our hands dirty!

Hassan turned out to be a great guide and showed us around his village as well as all of the nearby towns. My favorite was probably Fes, a bustling city which is one of the biggest in Morocco. In the Medina (or Old Town), there are no cars but the roads are still packed with pedestrians, mopeds, carts pulled by donkeys or horses or even goats, and all sorts of vendors selling colorful rugs, silk, leather, silver, clothing and shoes, and food. The Arabic architecture is beautiful!The city was filled with the smell of herbs, spices, perfumes and sometimes not-so-pleasant odors as well (that's what happens when you have a city filled with goats). The whole town was a sensory overload, with the many smells, shouting vendors, colorful trinkets and delicious goodies to taste. We stopped a few times for fresh-squeezed orange juice, mint tea or Moroccan coffee, all delicious. Morocco is famous for its orange juice and of course the mint tea is incredible - I'd never heard anything about the coffee but it's amazing as well. Sometimes I couldn't decide which I wanted so I would get two options, then stop again after an hour or so for the third!

At one point in the trip, Hassan took us to his friend's leather shop. He showed us the factory where they dye all the leather, using only natural ingredients. Red comes from poppies, yellow from saffron, etc. Kat and I took the opportunity to show off our awesome straw hats that we bought to keep the sun out of our faces (and look awesomely cool while we do it)!

The most interesting experience that we had during our time with Hassan was definitely our trip to the local Hammam (or Turkish Bath) in Bhalil. I've heard lots of stories about Hammams, and I imagined kind of a spa, going from hot water to cold water baths, massage, sauna. As I realized, that kind of Hammam does exist - in the most touristy cities of Morocco. Bhalil, as I said before, is definitely not a touristy city of Morocco. Since they don't feel the need to impress any tourists, their idea of a Hammam is a very basic one - a large, public bathing room. We went with Hassan's younger sister and kind of followed her lead. Now, as I said before, the villagers of Bhalil were interested in our every move, and by this time I'd gotten used to the constant staring. Since we were now naked, it was a little more intimidating. The main room of the Hammam was filled with women, sitting on the ground with buckets of hot, warm and cold water in front of the, All of these women were staring at us, most pointing and giggling at us because we didn't know the right order of hot/cold/warm water bathing, or because we weren't using the traditional scrubbing gloves, or because we were about 10 shades whiter than anyone they'd ever seen before. For these and about a million other reasons, we stuck out like two sore, very naked thumbs. At one point, Hassan's sister motioned to me that she wanted me to scrub her back for her - but apparently I didn't know how to do it correctly because another woman snatched the glove away and took over. I later found out that since these women only go to the Hammam about once a week, they have to make each time count. This involves scrubbing off several layers of skin, as I painfully realized when Hassan's sister scrubbed my back. Owwww.

It was definitely an interesting, humbling and somewhat embarassing experience but I do love the idea of the Hammam. Just like a Moroccan meal, bathing becomes a very communal experience. It's the one time of the day when the women don't have any domestic tasks to perform, so they stay in there as long as possible, laughing, gossiping and scraping off layers of each other's skin. It's quite the bonding experience and I enjoyed it, despite the slight humiliation of being naked and laughed at by about 50 people.

Obviously, I have no pictures of the hammam.

After spending a few days in Bhalil and the neighboring cities, we headed out to the Erg Chebbi, which is a large section of the Sahara desert in southeast Morocco. Hassan has friends who work in a desert resort there.
We spent the day lounging in the shade under beautiful, colorful tents and roaming through a nearby Berber village. Berbers are indigenous people in North Africa who live a very nomadic lifestyle, scattered in tiny desert villages. These villages are sometimes composed of tents, and sometimes of small sand huts. Hassan's friend took us to visit his sister in one of the villages where we joined her family for tea. I didn't feel comfortable taking photos inside her home (she was nice enough to welcome us into her home, I didn't want to turn her into a tourist attraction) but it was a very simple house, with dirt floors and walls, no glass in the windows and the essential tiny television in the corner. After tea, we visited a tiny Berber school house (and later ran from a stampede of Berber schoolchildren during recess!).

During the hottest part of the day, we stayed in the hotel, napped under the tents and even enjoyed an impromptu drum circle with some of the guys from the hotel.

As soon as it was a little bit cooler, the guys rounded up the camels and we headed into the desert to sleep in a Berber camp about 2 hours from the hotel.

Now there are a few things that you have to remember when riding a camel into the desert. First, the quality of your ride depends greatly on the camel that you choose. For example, on the way into the desert I chose a very polite camel who walked around slowly and didn't bounce around too much. On the way out of the desert, I chose a psychopathic camel who made it his life's goal to destroy me. I'm not sure what I did to deserve this, but apparently I did something that this camel really did not approve of. All the pictures you see are from the first ride, when I wasn't holding on for dear life.

The second thing you have to remember when riding a camel into the desert is that camels travel in caravans - so if you happen to be a clumsy American and drop something (for example, a traditional Moroccan hat, a traditional American flip-flop sandal or a lens cap), the entire caravan has to stop while you retrieve it. This was fine the first two times, but my lens cap is now buried somewhere in the Sahara. RIP.

Oh, funny story about camels. Kat and I were taking a lot of pictures of what she thought were "cooooool man, camels and rocks."

Those aren't rocks. They're camel droppings. Kat was very disappointed.

Despite the abundance of camel poo, the desert is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Sitting on a dune, watching the sunset, I realized that it was also one of the quietest moments of my life. There was wind, of course but it was just wind over sand. There were no trees, nothing for the wind to move. Just sand, sand and more sand for miles in any direction. The tracks left by the camels were almost immediately smoothed over by wind, so the dunes always seem perfect and untouched. Even looking behind us during the camel ride, where I knew we'd just been, there was no evidence of human presence. It's an incredible place.

After our night in the desert, Kat and I parted ways with Hassan and headed to Marrakech. The bus was supposed to leave at 10AM, and it was supposed to be a 9-hour bus ride, so we were supposed to arrive in Marrakech at around 7PM and go straight to our couchsurfing house in a nearby village. The bus actually left at noon and it was actually a 13-hour bus ride, so we actually arrived in Marrakech at 1AM. Since it was too late to find our way to our host's village, we found ourselves stranded at a Moroccan bus station in the middle of the night, trying to ward off two extremely "helpful" boys. We checked into the first hotel we saw, and the next day found a cheap but beautiful hostel in the Medina.

We were a little nervous about not having a guide since couchsurfing had fallen through, but it ended up being a good couple of days. Marrakech is much more touristy than Fes and as a result, much easier to navigate. We had a beautiful hostel and spend most of our time wandering around admiring the city's palaces and squares filled with artists, musicians, snake charmers and of course, orange juice vendors!

Marrakech was a great city and I wish we'd had the chance to see more of it but as I said in the reader's digest version, we weren't in the best physical condition so we spent most of our time resting in the hostel. We really should've listened to all the warnings about food... during our three days in Marrakech we survived on a diet of rice cakes, granola cookies and corn flakes. We had an incredibly funny experience when Kat accidentally asked the guy who worked at our hostel for hash, which he then delivered and was confused as to why she didn't want it after she'd "ordered it"! I was also cursed by a snake charmer for refusing to pay him 200 dirhams (20 dollars!) for taking a photo. I gave him 20 dirhams instead, which I still thought was way too much to pay for taking a picture, so he touched my face with a snake and said something which sounded very angry and mystical. I was afraid all my hair would fall off or my skin would turn purple or something. I was very relieved when we left Morocco that neither of these things had happened - I had already been stared at enough and didn't want to be "that bald purple girl" walking around Barcelona... which I will tell you all about in my next blog! :)

What's to Come

2009-06-07T22:09:00.002+01:00

I know, I know, everyone has been telling me. Worst blogger ever. I have a really good excuse though - I've been so busy traveling and gathering material for my blog that I just haven't had time to sit down and write one! (Did anybody buy that??) To prove my point, I'm currently sitting in the bus station in Zagreb, Croatia. My bus to Split, which will also serve as my bed for the evening, leaves at 12:30 so I have a little bit of time to kill. I can't post a proper blog with photos since I don't have them with me, but I figured I'd at least post a reader's digest version of what I've been doing for the past month. As soon as I'm back in Bologna, I'll write a detailed blog about each place, photos included. For now, I'll start at the beginning of May, right after Kat and I got back from Puglia.

May 9, Kat and I left for Morocco. Visited Fez, stayed in a cave house in Bhalil for a night, visited an authentic Hammam (possibly too authentic - you will all love the Hamman story), ate incredibly delicious home-cooked Moroccan food, rode camels into the desert, dune-surfed, ate more amazing Moroccan food and slept in a tent, then headed to Marrakech where we spent most of our time recovering from the various ailments that we'd picked up on the way to Marrakech (including but not limited to sunburns, bug bites, skin rashes, muscle aches, stomach problems). Got sand in my point-and-shoot digital camera which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because since then I've started using my SLR full-time. Marrakech was incredible, gorgeous but overwhelming, filled with palaces and snake charmers and vendors selling everything you can imagine. After a few days in Marrakech and 6 total days in Morocco, we went to Barcelona. It was my third visit and absolutely amazing. Highlights included more Gaudi, a street festival involving fire-breathing demons (somewhat reminiscent of Italy's Krampus), and breathtaking views from a castle above the city. We decided that Barcelona just wasn't beautiful enough for us, though, so we went to Sardegna. AKA, beautiful Italian island in the Mediterranean. Not bad! I evened out my existing Moroccan sunburn on one of the most beautiful and secluded beaches I've ever seen, and Kat and I had a great time wandering the city of Cagliari.

After 12 days of traveling, we came back to Bologna on May 21. Got home just in time to meet two friends of mine from high school who came to visit. Actually, that's not even true, I wasn't on time - I got home about 6 hours after they got to my apartment! Anyway, had a great time hanging out with them while trying to study for my sociolinguistics exam on May 27 and pack for my next trip (also on May 27). Immediately after the exam, ran to the train station, caught a train and then a bus and then a flight to Berlin!

Thus began trip number 2 which has (so far) been quite the whirlwind. In Berlin, I stayed with a friend of Ryan's - Sonya, a wonderful girl from California who showed me all the best places in the city, and fed me all the best food. (Be prepared for many, many food stories when I write the detailed story about Berlin.) On my second day in Berlin, I was reunited with one of my very best friends from Berkeley - Joy! We spent 6 beautiful, art and music and food-filled days in Berlin before catching a ride to Gottigen with yet another Berkeley friend. Patricia is actually German but studied in Berkeley last year so we count her as part-Californian. We met up with even more Berkeley friends in Gottingen and then somewhat sadly took off for Munich. By "took off" I mean caught a ride with a crazy girl who was a little too excited by the German Autobahn's "no speed limit" policy - more to come on that later. This is when things got a little crazy. Explored the city, stayed with German twins Tom and Jerry, slept in a hammock, drank too much (or maybe just the right amount of) German beer. To be more specific, the pope's favorite German beer. Munich was too big and too metropolitan for me. Next stop was Heidelberg, small university town reached by early-morning train. 5 hour train ride, 5 transfers, 1 hangover. Heidelberg is definitely worth the trouble. Ate delicious indian food, watched fireworks, waited around at the train station McDonald's for our 2 AM bus to the airport. Slept a little in McDonalds, about as well as you'd expect to sleep in a McDonalds. Bus to the airport - arrive at 4, flight doesn't leave until 10:30. Slept a little in the busy airport terminal, about as well as you'd expect to sleep in a busy airport terminal. Flight to Osijek, (or what Ryanair likes to call "Osijek", actually about a 30 minutes drive from Osijek), 30 minute shuttle ride to Osijek, 5 hour bus to Zagreb. Are you tired yet? Spent the rest of the day wandering around Zagreb, got lost on the trams, ate great Croatian pizza which was weird but delicious, almost got lost again on the trams, made it back to the bus station, wrote hurried blog to appease whiny friends and family members, and now we're back to the present. In an hour, I'll be spending my second night in a row on a bus. I am so, so exhausted, unshowered, sore, and I've been wearing the same pair of jeans since May 27th because it was too cold in Germany to wear any of the other clothes I packed! I'm still in good spirits though, and tomorrow morning we'll get into Split around 6AM and take another bus to a nearby town where we found a cheap, sea-side hostel. The plan is to spend at least 6 uninterrupted days island-hopping and lying on the beach.

I'll be back in Bologna on the 15th and I would promise to be a better blogger but that just might not happen. I'm hoping to move out of my apartment and start WWOOFing on July 1 (and somewhere in there I have to find time for my last exam) so there won't be a lot of down time. Hopefully this messy, hurried blog post is enough for now. Love you guys!

La Pictureless Puglia

2009-05-06T17:34:00.005+01:00

I unfortunately have to begin this blog on a somewhat tragic note: I accidentally deleted all of the pictures from my trip to Puglia. I've never been a "fan," per se, of digital photography... but now I've just had it. This is the universe's way of telling me that I need to go back to film.

On a lighter note, I had an amazing time this week! For those of you who don't know, Puglia is one of most southern regions of Italy. If you think of Italy as a boot, it would be the heel.

On Saturday morning, Kat, her brother and I caught a flight into Bari which is the biggest city in Puglia - but since we had trouble finding couchsurfing there, we headed straight to the more southern city of Lecce and met up with our host Luigi. He actually goes by Gigi, which is a pretty good indicator of his personality. We had a great time hanging out with him and he was an amazing host. On our first night there, he took us to a beautiful medieval town called Otranto for dinner. It was an amazing city, surrounded by huge stone walls which made it seem like we were walking into a castle. I think there was some sort of festival going on because there were actually men dressed as knights standing at the gates to the city!

Dinner was amazing, delicious seafood which had probably been caught just that morning. Puglia is almost completely surrounded by the sea so it's known for its incredibly fresh seafood. Mmm. We also got to meet Gigi's friends, whom we ended up spending quite a bit of time with.

On our second day in Lecce, we spent the day on the beach at Porto Cesareo, where Gigi's family has a beach house. Just like the house where I stayed in Sicily, this beach house was only about a 20 minute drive from the regular house. I think it really says something about Southern Italians - they can't stand to be 20 minutes from the beach. No wonder they're all so relaxed.

Porto Cesareo is arguably the most beautiful beach in all of Italy. The water is so clear that when even at waist-level I was able to make out individual grains of white sand on the sea floor. There were also teeny little crabs scuttling around, which Gigi's girlfriend informed me are actually a specialty.

We spent the evening wandering around downtown Lecce, which is also a very beautiful city with beautiful Baroque architecture and wide cobblestone streets. We happened to run into two of Gigi's friends and they took us to the bar with the "best mojitos in Puglia". While talking over our amazing mojitos, I couldn't remember the word for octopus (polipo) which had come up in conversation for whatever reason. I tried to explain and said "you know, that animal with 8 legs that lives in the ocean." I didn't know the word for tentacles and the Italians started making fun of me. So, I jokingly made up an excuse for my error... which led to the following ridiculous conversation (all in Italian). For simplicity's sake, I'll clump my two Italian friends into one Italian entity known as "Them."

Them: Silly American, polipi don't have legs, they have tentacles!
Me: Yeah, I know (a little embarassed)... but you know why I said "legs" instead of "tentacles" don't you?
Them: No, why?
Me: (completely joking) Well, see, in America there's this disease which some people have... it causes them to have tentacles instead of legs...
*Italians grow wide-eyed*
Me: ...and since we don't want to offend anyone, it's more polite to say "legs" instead of "tentacles." I mean, we don't want to rub it in their face, do we? It's important to be politically correct.
Them: Yeah, I guess that makes sense, but... what is this disease? I've never heard of it! There are actually people with tentacles in the United States?
(The Italians didn't actually believe me - they just thought that I didn't understand what I was saying, being a stupid American and all. It never occurred to them that I might be pulling their tentacles. Ha, ha, ha...)
Me: Yeah but we don't really talk about it, that's why I said legs. By now it's just habit.
Them: Um, okay, but is this disease pretty common? What are the other symptoms? (Trying to figure out what I'm actually talking about without making it obvious that I'm talking nonsense - a face I was quite aware of)
Me: It's not too common, I mean about 1 in 20 people have it. Most of them stay at home though, or travel in packs, they don't really like to be singled out for their tentacles. That's really the only symptom but I've heard of some of them having some pretty severe social disorders. I'm sure you can imagine.
Them: Yeah, yeah we can imagine... (Still wondering what I think I'm saying) Well... does it run in families? Do your parents have it? Do you have it?
Me: Ummm... don't you think you'd see them?
Them: *nervous laughter, realizing I might actually be talking about tentacles after all* Yeah, yeah I guess we would. What about your parents?
Me: Well my dad doesn't have them - my mom does but it's actually sort different because she's a hybrid. She only has 4 tentacles and then one normal leg.
Them: WHAT?
Me: Yeah, it's not too bad but sometimes she has some balance issues.

Eventually the Italians realized that I was kidding... but for a while they were unsure. They thought that either there were octopus-people roaming the streets of San Francisco or that I had no idea what I was talking about. For some reason they trusted that I would never lie to them, which actually made me feel kind of bad about the whole thing... or at least it would have, if it hadn't been so damn funny.

We hung out a few more times over the course of the trip, but our conversations were never quite as interesting...

My favorite city that we went to in Puglia was probably Gallipoli. It's a beautiful city which is almost completely surrounded by water - there's just a narrow strip of land connecting it to the rest of Puglia. We arrived there during the afternoon when everyone was taking their nap (mid-afternoon nap is an extremely important ritual to Italians) so we just wandered around the silent town for a few hours. As we were standing in front of the town's cathedral, Kat said "hey guys, listen to that." Her brother and I stopped talking and realized that everything was completely silent - we could just barely hear the waves off in the distance but it seemed like the entire town was deserted. Silence is a very rare thing to find in the center of an Italian city. Even in the smaller villages, there's usually at least one grumpy old man shouting at pigeons or some teenager attempting a wheelie on his vespa and cheering if he succeeds or cursing if he fails... Anyway, it was nice to have a quiet moment.

We stopped for lunch at a tiny little restaurant right above the beach and shared a delicious seafood platter, sat for a while and enjoyed the view - I think at this point the sleepiness of the town caught on and after lunch, I actually fell asleep on a bench in a nearby piazza. It was funny because I woke up to a group of old ladies watching me curiously. One of them said "what is she doing, is she sleeping?" Another responded "I think she's just getting some sun" at which point I looked over at them and they realized I could hear and understand them. They weren't too phased by it and sat down at the bench next to me where they continued gossiping. (Gossiping - another important Italian ritual, especially among older individuals).

After Gallipoli we went to another interesting town called "Alberobello" which translates literally as "pretty tree." I was expecting to see a pretty tree, but was disappointed to find that the town is actually known best for its architecture, which for some reason reminded me of an Ewok village (maybe after they evolved a few centuries and moved a few galaxies, yes I'm an enormous nerd). The buildings have cone-shaped brick roofs, some of which have symbols painted on them. Here's a picture, courtesy of Google:

The town is actually a World Heritage site, which basically means that a committee decided that it's especially culturally significant. It's kind of a funny concept in Italy because just about everything is culturally significant...

We spent our last night in Bari where we couch-surfed with a great guy named Simone. He took us on a nighttime tour of the city and we grabbed a quick dinner before going to sleep. We were actually only in Bari for 10 hours so I don't have too much to say about it... I guess I'll just have to go back and get a better idea of what it's like!

Well, that's about all there is to say about Puglia. It's too bad about the pictures but hopefully I'll be able to steal some from Kat one of these days.

Next stop: in approximately 35 minutes I'll be leaving for Morocco!

Tuscan Ghosts and Strawberry Pasta

2009-04-20T21:45:00.010+01:00

My sister left two whole weeks ago and I still haven't written a blog about the rest of her time here. Worst. Blogger. Ever.

As far as traveling goes, we didn't do much. We were planning on doing a lot of traveling but had some bad luck. First, Avery twisted her ankle playing soccer in the park. Her ankle actually looked more like a knee. A really gross and swollen knee. Since visiting any city in Italy requires a lot of walking, we just stayed in Bologna for the weekend which happened to be Easter Sunday.

Since all of my roommates were out of town for the holidays, Ave and I threw an Easter brunch at my house with several of my American friends and a few Italians. We had great food and great music - here's Avery and I rocked out to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" Ohhhh yeah!

To further prove my point that Italians don't really understand "brunch", this was the conversation that I had with my Italian friend Benedetto the day before.

Bene: So, should I bring a first course or a second course?
Me: Anything you want, really. We already have banana pancakes and eggs.
Bene: What are pancakes?
Me: They're a traditional American breakfast food, kind of like crepes. We eat them with maple syrup so they're pretty sweet.
Bene: Well then why do you eat eggs with them? (The infamous "salad and sweet" problem.)
Me: Because that's what people eat for brunch! Pancakes and eggs!
Bene: Oh, that's a second course then? Should I bring a first course then? Some pasta? Baked pasta maybe?
Me: Sure, I mean I'm not sure how well that will go with the banana pancakes, but whatever you want!
Bene: Oh. I guess you're right. Well... what about broccoli, do you guys like broccoli?
Me: (trying not to laugh) Yeah, broccoli sounds great! Maybe we can make some broccoli pancakes!
Bene: Yeah, maybe!

Gotta love it. He showed up the next day with a baked broccoli pasta (best of both worlds, I guess) which was delicious until it got all mixed together with the strawberry pancake topping that we'd made...(Yes, those are banana slices with peanut butter on tooth picks. We're so clever...)

For the next few days, until Avery's foot felt better, we stayed in Bologna and relaxed at the park. We had a few beautiful sunny days, until the rain came back on the same day that Avery could walk again. Go figure.

Of course, we took advantage of the bad weather - how, you ask? Godfather marathon, baby! Three days. Three movies. Three incredible actors who were just meant to play mob bosses. Seriously - Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro? It was almost too much badass to handle. They speak Italian (and, more specifically, Sicilian) which was cool since I can understand what they're saying now.

I may have mentioned before that we extended Ave's stay in Italy by 10 days so that she could come with my friends and I on a road trip through Switzerland. We were all really looking forward to it, until about 3 days before the trip when I came down with what appeared to be a flesh-eating stomach virus. I actually thought I had made a full recovery and even spent an afternoon at the beach with Avery - but then on the morning that we were supposed to leave, I woke up with flesh-eating stomach virus: the sequel. We were all really disappointed, especially me since it was technically my fault. I ended up being sick for a total of about a week. On day 5 a doctor came to check me out (house-calls still exist in Italy) and said that if it lasted more than 48 hours longer, I would have to go to the hospital - then, almost exactly 48 hours later, my symptoms disappeared. Turns out it was just your standard 7-day plague, no biggie.

Since we weren't able to go to Switzerland, we were able to go to a choir concert in a tiny village in Tuscany - directed by my roommate, Andrea! The concert was great and they even performed a piece that I sang in high school, Morten Lauriden's "O Magnum Mysterium."

After the concert we went to a party, hung out with Andrea and his friends, then headed back to Andrea's place for the night. Or at least, I thought we were headed back to Andrea's place for the night. Instead, we went to an abandoned Tuscan villa in the middle of the countryside! I should probably specify that by "abandoned" I mean that the owners got "too old" (Andrea's words, not mine) to live there and just left, leaving the house to a historical organization which has been maintaining the property ever since. Since Andrea's grandfather is a part of that organization, Andrea has been watching the house. Once again, I should probably specify that by "watching" I mean letting all of his friends and roommates sleep there! :)

It was really incredible. Andrea told me that the house was originally built in the 1500's, although it's undergone a lot of reconstruction since then. It was still completely furnished, with photos and paintings hung on the walls, books on the shelves, papers on the desk, even a grand piano. Everything was completely covered in dust, but I think that just added to the mystery of it. The house felt like something out of a ghost story - since everything was still there and so perfectly preserved, it still felt like a home... a very old, very lonely home. Even the beds were still made! I slept in my sleeping bag - I was afraid the ghosts might be angry with me if I slept in their sheets. In a place like that, there have to be ghosts, right?

The house was huge, with stone staircases and so many bedrooms that I actually lost count as I was exploring. At one point I opened a door expecting to find bedroom #12 or bathroom #5 or something, but was amazed to find myself in a tiny chapel complete with a bell-tower. I'm assuming a priest lived there or something - all Andrea told me was that the guy was somehow affiliated with the Vatican. It was beautiful, but also incredibly eerie. Like the rest of the house, the chapel was filled with dust and there was an a bible still lying on the podium.

We were only in the house for a few hours, since we got there so late at night and had to go back to Bologna in the morning, but hey, not many people can say that they spent the night in an abandoned (and most likely haunted) Tuscan villa!

On the train ride home, as we passed through dozens of teeny little Tuscan villages nestled away in the hills, I daydreamed about living in my own Tuscan villa someday. No ghosts, though. Sort of like "Under the Tuscan Sun" but not as mind-numbingly cheesy.

My sister and I had a great time during her last two weeks here even without doing a lot of traveling, and I was sad to see her go. I miss her attempts at speaking Italian with my roommates, and especially their attempts at speaking English with her. Hopefully we'll both have a chance to come back again and see the cities that we missed this time!

Sisilies in Sicily

2009-04-10T03:20:00.016+01:00

That joke will never get old. :)

My sister and I flew straight from Rome to Palermo, where we met up with our couchsurfing host, Alessio. He picked us up at the train station and took us back to his four story beach house, where he cooked us a pasta with his mother's homemade tomato sauce. I really thought I was dreaming.
Normally, when couchsurfing, I take what I can get. I've slept on the floor, on air mattresses, sometimes I'm lucky enough to get a bed - but never in a million years would I expect to be offered a room in a four story beach house, right on the Mediterranean. It's Alessio's family's summer home, which I find pretty amusing... why on earth would a family living in Palermo need a summer home? They live in a coastal city on an island in the Mediterranean... their summer home is only a 15 minute drive from their winter home! It's a hard life, but somehow they manage.

Almost immediately after our delicious home cooked meal, we went out for a delicious restaurant meal. That's just how they do things in Sicily. We went to a cafe known for its traditional Sicilian dish, pane con la milza. It consists of a large bun, cut open and spread with lard, filled with lots of milza (mystery meat, at the time) and a strong, somewhat stinky cheese called caciocavallo. It actually looked delicious, so I was excited to try it. I tried a bite and was disgusted at the flavor of the meat - it not taste like anything I'd consider edible. As it turns out, milza is spleen. That explains a lot.

*** GROSS-OUT ALERT: Don't read this unless you really, really want to be grossed out. My sister was especially disgusted by the smell of the milza... she said that the only thing she could compare it to was the way the room smelled after her friend's dog had puppies. Basically, we were eating something that smelled like canine afterbirth. Awesome. She also told me this while I was chewing. Really awesome. ***

If you read that and are absolutely repulsed, don't blame me. I warned you.

Luckily, I was able to get rid of the spleeny aftertaste by eating a delicious Sicilian dessert called cannoli. It's a flaky pastry shell stuffed with a sweet ricotta filling - mmm. Delicious, and does not contain a single organ!

We met a lot of Alessio's friends, including Davide (a fellow couch-surfer who also organizes parties and events for foreign students in Palermo) and Katherine (an American who moved to Palermo the same day that we arrived, vegetarian, did not partake of the spleen). We spent pretty much the entire week with them, and didn't sleep nearly as much as we should have. One night we returned home at after 6:00AM, just in time to watch the sun rise over the sea. Sicilians definitely know how to party.

On Thursday, we visited the Capuchin catacombs in Palermo. I had read about them in my guidebook and they seemed like an interesting sight... I didn't realize that it would feel like we were walking straight into a horror movie. In the 16th century, the friars of the Capuchin order in Palermo decided that when they died, they wanted to be embalmed rather than buried. So, they created the catacombs in order to store the corpses. Then, since all the friars were doing it, other people decided that they wanted to be embalmed, too. Being embalmed and placed in the catacombs became a symbol of wealth, so many people wrote specifically in their wills that this is what they wanted done with their remains. This was a popular request from the end of the 16th century all the way through until the 1920's. Now, these catacombs are filled with 8000 corpses, all remarkably preserved. Some are lying in coffins and others are hanging from the walls. It's absolutely terrifying.

I felt strange about the idea of taking photos in the catacombs but here's a picture I found on Google to give you an idea of what it's like. It was definitely an interesting experience, and not like anything I've ever seen before... but I'm never, ever going back there.

On Friday, we had a slight less intense day. Alessio and Davide took us to a nearby fishing village called Cefalù. It was a beautiful sunny day, so we spent the first few hours lying around on the beach, playing guitar and singing. It was nice to relax after a crazy night trying to keep up with the Sicilians...

We got a delicious pizza (can't get enough) and then walked around the village. It was a gorgeous town, filled with tiny, winding streets which all somehow led to the beach. The people were incredibly friendly, too - my sister and I went into a bar to get a few bottles of water and after a long conversation with the owners, they gave us each a glass of dessert wine made with almonds.... mmmm!

We explored for a little while and then climbed up a hill where we watched the sunset over the incredible views of Sicily and the Mediterranean. We also took artsy pictures, because what else would we do on a hilltop overlooking the Mediterranean?

On Saturday, we stayed in Palermo and explored the city. No corpses this time, just beautiful cathedrals, theaters, beaches and parks. It's a gorgeous city - here's a picture of the view from Katherine's apartment.

For dinner, Alessio suggested a fancy trattoria in Vucciria (Palermo's fish market district) but there was a one hour wait, so we hungrily vetoed and found the next best thing. Located in a dirty back alley of Vucciria, overlooking a crowded piazza where street vendors argued loudly with customers, we found what was possibly the shadiest restaurant that I have ever seen. Since you probably wouldn't believe me if I described it to you, I'll show pictures.

Aren't the cardboard signs classy? The restaurant is called Shanghai, but not because it serves any type of Asian food. The name is strangely fitting though, because sitting on the balcony overlooking the dirty back alleys of Vucciria feels like being in some movie set in the Far East. As we walked into the restaurant, I thought for a split second that we'd wandered into somebody's home, until I saw the trays of antipasti set out on a side table. The mother, daughter and grandmother were working in the kitchen while the rest of the family gathered around a small television watching Home Alone. Nope, not kidding.

As we were looking at the menu, the waitress (the mother, I believe) came out to take our orders. She first proceeded to tell us what they actually had that evening, and when Alessio asked why they didn't have shrimp, she angrily explained that they can't be expected to have every fresh seafood item on the menu every day. She said that if he wanted shrimp, he could come back on Monday and they might have it.

I love this place.

We ordered every appetizer that they had, including Eggplant Parmigiana (nothing like the kind I'm used to), white anchovies, sardines, mixed seafood platters, grilled peppers, olives, bread, salami and cheese. Mmm. Then, we each got a first course of pasta and a second course of fish. I especially liked the swordfish but the squid was amazing - it rivaled the squid that I (or rather, Susan's dad) paid a ridiculous amount of money for in Barcelona. Top that off with all the wine we could drink, and we were up to a whopping 15 euro per person. Not a single item cost more than 4 euro, not even the incredible squid.

People definitely don't go to Shanghai for the environment! I personally loved it but only because it added to the experience of a great meal. If the food had tasted bad, it would just be a dirty restaurant in the back streets of Palermo. Since the food was incredible, it was more of a "cultural experience."

That night, we went out dancing at a club for foreign students (Erasmus kids are always the most fun) and then went to an outdoor reggae concert in Vucciria. Near the piazza where everyone was dancing, there was a street vendor selling some sort of grilled meat, and dozens people lined up waiting for their portion. I asked what it was and our Sicilians companions insisted that I try this "delicious" traditional Sicilian specialty that they called Stigghiole. Basically (to my horror) they take the membrane from the small intestine of an animal, usually lamb but sometimes pork or chicken, and they wrap it around strips of skewered heart and scallions. The heart is also "preferably" lamb, but I'm not sure these Vucciria street vendors were really playing by the rules. My Italian friend explained excitedly that there were probably several different organs of several different animals wrapped up in the intestine. Oh, delicious. Why exactly is there a line down the street for this stuff?

I told myself that this year, I promised myself that I'd try everything... but at the sight of the Stigghiole, I seriously considered going back on that promise. After saying a quick prayer to the Gods of food poisoning, asking them to spare me, I closed my eyes and took a bite. The taste actually wasn't bad. It definitely wasn't as bad as spleen, and was actually quite flavorful. The texture, though... oh, the texture was awful. How did this food manage to be crunchy, grainy, slimy, chewy and rubbery all at the same time? I don't want to know, actually.

On Sunday, we threw a barbeque at Alessio's house and invited the friends that we had met over the past few days. It was possibly the best barbeque I've ever been to - all kinds of grilled meats and veggies, salad, macedonia (fruit salad), lots of wine, followed by an attempt by the Americans at teaching the Italians how to play "spoons".

This American card game has always been one of my favorites, and my sister and I have been playing it since we were little. The rules are fairly simple and involve quickly passing cards from player to player, each person trying to collect four cards of the same value - when a person succeeds at this, they take a spoon from the middle of the table. As soon as one spoon is taken, the rest of the spoons are fair game and the other players can take one as well. There is always one less spoon than the amount of people playing so at the end of the game, one person is left without a spoon. When Ave and I were younger, this person was simply the loser, but now that we're older, the loser has to finish their drink.

Needless to say, it got a little crazy. Alessio seemed to be losing every round and, as a result, was becoming more and more intoxicated - after about a half an hour of him losing every single round, we finally realized that he didn't understand the rules. At this realization, he experienced what I like to call a "spoons breakdown" and started yelling in Italian and what he thought was English, telling us all to "go to the ass" for letting him lose for so long.

In another round, my sister and Davide fought over the last spoon and my sister ended up accidentally hitting Davide in the face with it. He said "Oh no! You gave me a punch!" and realized that his lip was actually bleeding. This is the only time that I have ever seen blood shed in a game of spoons, but I guess Sicilians are just more competitive than Americans. It was just a small cut, but it was so funny that Davide didn't seem to mind.

It was a great night, but we went to bed pretty early because we were planning a trip to Agrigento in the morning. Agrigento is a city on the southern coast of Sicily, famous for the "Valley of the Temples." It's not actually a valley as its name may suggest, but a ridge, containing seven Greek temples built in the 5th and 6th centuries B.C. Second only to the temples in Athens, they're the best-preserved Greek temples in the world. I felt like I had walked right out of Italy into ancient Greece.

Sicily actually has a lot of locations with this transporting effect, because throughout history, it has been taken over and controlled by the Greeks, Normans, Arabs, Spanish, and finally Italians. All of these cultures have left their traces on the island, which creates a very unique Sicilian culture of its own. I'm not sure which of the armies brought Stigghiole... I suppose I can forgive them, just because they brought so many other things. I think beautiful temples make up for the intestine-wrapped organs - or at the very least, it's a start.

It was very surreal walking along the ridge (with an incredible panoramic view of the sea, city and countryside) through these ancient temples. You may remember my crazy princess fantasies inspired by Granada's Al Hambra - these were quickly replaced by toga fantasties, eating grapes on a chaise lounge and riding in chariots. What else would I do? My sister tried to be as greek as possible in front of the Temple of Juno, while I just tried to be as tall as possible next to my two travel companions.

On our last night in Sicily, we had the best pizza I've ever had in my life. It was huge, first of all, unreasonably large for one person. Of course, this didn't stop me and I finished every bite - tomato, mozzarella di bufala, pesto, sundried tomatoes and tasty grilled mushrooms. It was perfect. It was at a relatively famous pizzeria so we paid more than we usually would for pizza, but it was so worth it. We barely said two words to each other at the table, everyone was too busy eating!

The next morning we decided to take one last day trip before our evening flight. We decided to go to Monreale, which is a small town south of Palermo famous for its mosaics. I was amazed at the inside of the cathedral - all of the walls were covered in mosaics depicting bible stories. Everything was there, the story of creation, Noah's arc, the crucifixion - all illustrated through colorful mosaics.

We saw a very young girl in a stroller looking at the mosaics and she understood what was going on! She was pointing at the pictures of Noah's arc and telling the story to her parents. The whole point of creating these beautiful mosaics was to find a universal way of telling these stories, and it obviously worked.

Michele, the Italian who was showing us around Monreale, said that he still remembers the first time he went into the cathedral when he was younger. He said he was almost moved to tears - almost but not quite because he's a big tough Italian man! Since he appreciated it so much, he was the perfect tour guide and we spent hours wandering around the cathedral and its beautiful courtyard.

By the time we got to the airport that evening, we were exhausted and absolutely ready to come home to Bologna, but I can't wait to go back to Sicily. We didn't make it to the east coast of the island at all and I've heard that the cities on that coast are incredible.

Oh, one last note about food (because I'm obsessed, it's a disease): Of all the foods that we ate in Sicily, my favorite was a 1 euro lunch called arancine. I have a friend here in Bologna who made them for me once, but the one I ate in Sicily was amazing. It's a traditional "fast food" consisting of a deep-fried rice ball stuffed with delicious filling, sometimes ragu (meat sauce), sometimes tomato and mozzarella, and sometimes ham and cheese. They're usually about the size of a softball and sooo filling. I'm actually addicted - my sister and I wanted to eat them for our last meal in Sicily but we were running late and almost missed our flight, sothere was no extra time for arancine. If not for the beautiful eastern cities, I absolutely have to return for more of that deep-fried ricey goodness.

What do the Romans do???

2009-04-01T17:46:00.011+01:00

My sister and I arrived in Bella Roma on Monday evening, and met up with my friend Jarek who has a flat here. I met him a few months ago when he contacted me via couchsurfing and asked if I could show him around Bologna. We hung out for the few days that he was visiting and got along great, so in return for my tour-guide services, he let Avery and I stay at his place while we were in Rome.

We had great timing because Jarek just finished his study program in Rome and was getting ready to return home to Poland, so the night we arrived was also the night of his going-away party! The tiny flat was filled with people from all over the world (all studying in Rome), and we had a great time hanging out with everyone. Everyone especially loved Avery, and helped to teach her their favorite words and phrases in Italian (most are a bit inappropriate to post here). We were actually only planning on staying there one night but we got along with Jarek's roommates so well that we stayed an extra night! It was also great seeing Jarek again before he went back to Poland.

We spent our second day in Rome wandering around the city seeing the sights. We started at the Trevi Fountain because that's what Avery wanted to see the most. Like good little tourists, we threw coins into the fountain - rumor has it that if you throw a coin over your shoulder into the Trevi Fountain, you'll return to Rome. Hey, it worked last time!

Interesting side note: I read that over 3000 euro are thrown into the fountain every day, and the money is used to feed the homeless. Che bella!

We also sat on the Spanish Steps, lingered in Piazza Venezia and Piazza del Popolo, saw the Pantheon and the Colosseum just before sunset, and walked through the ancient Roman ruins. It's amazing how much history can be contained in one city, and how powerful the city still feels.

As we were exploring the city, we stumbled across this interesting art exhibit which illustrates the spread of the Roman Empire. I never really realized how powerful it became. At one point around 115 AD, Rome controlled over 2.3 million square miles of land, stretching from Scotland to Egypt and from Morocco to Turkey.

Oh, funny story. I borrowed a few different guidebooks from my study center before our trip. Along with the standards, Rick Steve and Lonely Planet, one of the books was "MTV's guide to Italy." Not kidding. Anyway, the guidebook mentioned that it's possible to sneak into the Colosseum after dark! It said that there is a spot on the gate where the bars don't quite reach the ground, and that a "reasonably-sized person" should have no trouble getting through. Um, midnight tour of the Colosseum? Yes, please!

We circled the Colosseum until we found the spot that the guidebook was talking about. Unfortunately the book is a few years old and new bars had been installed which cover the hole. I like to think that when that book came out, hundreds of American teenagers attempted to sneak into the Colosseum. I'm sure eventually one of them got caught and fessed up.

We were pretty disappointed but comforted ourselves by taking goofy pictures in front of important monuments like the Arch of Constantine.
On our third and final day in the city, we visited the Vatican. I had already been there, but it was still an incredible experience. The museums are incredible, and the Sistine chapel was just as breathtaking the second time around. My favorite parts of the museums included the Egyptian exhibit, a collection of ancient tapestries, and the modern religious art exhibit.

I've also always been fascinated by this sculpture fragment, known as the Belvedere Torso. It's signed by a sculptor named Apollonius, but nobody really knows anything about him. The sculpture may have been of Hercules, and is considered to be a masterpiece. It has influenced many other artists, including Michelangelo and Rodin. If you look at the shape of the body and muscles, you can definitely see the similarities to Michelangelo's male figures (including David) and also Rodin's "The Thinker."

I find it fascinating that a broken fragment of sculpture can be so intriguing and influential, especially when virtually nothing is known about the artist who created it. It's very mysterious.

After the museums and the Sistine chapel, we went straight to St. Peter's basilica which remains one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. It's amazing how much work went into creating that place. Every pillar is covered with tiny marble carvings of angels and cherubs, every wall is painting with amazing biblical scenes. I don't consider myself a religious person but walking into a place like that is always incredibly moving, because you can see how much work people put into building this basilica, just to honor something that they truly believe in. It took 120 years to complete, so the architects who designed it and the people who spent their lives building it never even got to see it finished. They literally devoted their entire lives to something they never got to see. Amazing.

The basilica is a piece of art in itself, but inside we also saw one of my favorite sculptures - Michelangelo's Pietà. I remember seeing this sculpture for the first time 2 years ago and being moved to tears. The piece carries such incredible emotion, and has such personal significance for me. Unfortunately it's hard to get close to the statue because in the 1970's, some crazy Australian guy knocked off the Virgin Mary's arm with a hammer. Now, the sculpture is behind bulletproof glass and can only be viewed from a distance. Silly Aussies!

It rained most of the time when we were in Rome, but we just used that as an excuse to duck inside for cappuccinos or pizza more often. In spite of the dreary weather, our three days in Bella Rome were wonderful and we can't wait to go back. After all, we threw coins into the Trevi Fountain so it's a sure thing that we'll return one day!

We also learned what the Romans actually do. After many creative responses, Jarek's was the one which we appreciated the most. When my sister asked him, he answered "they eat, drink, and scopa." After an angry glare from me, he told my sister the literal definition of "scopa" which is "sweep", instead of telling her the more scandalous definition. So, next time you go to Roma, be sure to bring a broom...

Brunch Americano

2009-03-29T16:28:00.005+01:00

Last night, my sister and went to my favorite local trattoria and had a delicious, very Italian meal - bruschetta and stuffed olives as an appetizer, two pasta dishes, and tiramisu for dessert. We went out for drinks first, didn't even get to the restaurant until after 11:00 PM and left at around 1:00 AM, which is considered relatively normal here - maybe a little on the late side but still perfectly acceptable. Always the good influence on my little sister, I made sure we finished every drop of our 1 liter carafe of wine. Waste not, want not!

We were still full when we woke up this morning, so we decided to skip breakfast and fix an afternoon American brunch for all of my housemates. I left a note telling everyone not to eat because we were planning a "Brunch Americano" and we left to go shopping for supplies - when we came back, Andrea had written his replies all over it:

"Turn off the lights, cover the fires! Look out!"
"No! What is it, are they dropping bombs?"
"Indians, look out!!"
"Close the doors and windows!"

Yeah, he's very fond of Americans. :)

In spite of Andrea's comments, we started cooking and went all out - fresh squeezed orange juice for mimosas, french toast and pancakes with two different homemade toppings (strawberry or caramelized banana), hash browns, scrambled eggs and bacon.

Have you ever seen Italians eat brunch? Somehow I doubt it, so I'll go over the highlights.

As soon as we put everything on the table, Andrea picked up a piece of french toast, tore it in half and made a bacon sandwich. I explained in Italian "no, no, Andrea - you put either the strawberries or the bananas on the french toast" and he said "you want me to put strawberries on the panino?!"

I said "there IS no panino" and poured some strawberries on his french toast for him - at which point he started yelling that I was ruining everything, that the sweet food was too close to the salty food. He tried to say this in English for the benefit of my sister, and since "salty" in Italian is "salata," he said something like "The salad! It is too close to the sweet!"

Pier, on the other hand, was confused because there was no bread. I said that we didn't really need bread because we were already eating pancakes and french toast, and he picked up a piece of bacon and said "well how are we supposed to eat this, then??" I said "ummm by itself?" and he started shouting in Italian, saying things like "you crazy Americans, don't know how to eat!!"

Neither Italian liked the mimosas very much so they just drank the orange juice and champagne separately, and I think they were pretty disgusted by my attempt at hash browns. To be fair, they looked like greasy potato mush but I thought they tasted pretty good...

The whole meal was hilarious, with the Italians yelling that Americans are crazy, and my sister and I responding by saying that Italians are crazy... Marta (Portuguese) just sat by and laughed - her people were not involved in this American-Italian Brunch War.

Sisters in Bologna!

2009-03-28T20:58:00.004Z

After almost 8 months, I finally get to be ridiculous with my little sister again.

It had been wayyyy too long.

We have lots of plans for traveling, eating, drinking and especially taking goofy pictures. I'll keep everyone posted. :) Yay!

Giardini Margherita

2009-03-17T18:41:00.020Z

It's spring in Bologna, and I have nothing to do! I decided not to take classes fourth quarter in order to leave myself more time for traveling, reading, yoga, all the things that I wish I could do but don't when I spend all day in class.

This week, for example, I spent every single day at the park. It's only about a 5 minute walk from my house and when it's sunny outside, it just seems like it would be silly not to go. I take my guitar, a book, a blanket and some snacks, and meet anyone who feels like joining me.

The park (called Giardini Margherita) is really an amazing place. On the weekends it's completely packed with people, all doing something. In Berkeley there are always a few people doing yoga, a few others playing music of some kinda, but in Italy they really go crazy. The park is always crowded with jugglers, tight-rope walkers, drum circles, acrobats, capoeira, tai chi, people playing football of the American or European variety, volleyball, frisbee, unicycles, bicycles, tricycles and training wheels, dog walking, accordians, guitars, trombones, saxophones. Then there are the quiet ones, the studiers and readers and nappers. I usually fall into the category of people-watcher, daisy chain-maker or 1/2 of Kat and Kalen's street-singing duo.

On one particularly sunny day, Leslie came to the park armed with henna dye and proceeded to decorate all of us while we munched on fruit and cookies and played music. Beautiful!

Sometimes, when the sun is just too beautiful and the grass is just too cool, it's actually impossible to stay standing.

This leads to creative uses of the guitar, as demonstrated by James :)

Kat and I almost always bring our guitars to practice for our future street-singing adventures. I think we're pretty close to ready but we're still perfecting our harmonies on a few songs. Also, my guitar never seems to want to stay in tune... but I got it for free so I can't really complain!

Some days the hippie vibe really takes over, and there's just nothing that can be done except give over to it completely. No use resisting the peace and love!

The best part of being at the park on a sunny day is that I get to see all my friends, completely recovered from the Bologna winter slump that had us all feeling pretty dreary for the past few months. Everyone is smiling again, relaxed and happy. Of course I always love my friends, they're always amazing and beautiful, but the sun brings out the best in all of us!

And, finally, finally, FINALLY. I can juggle!

It only took me several months of practicing, but I can now "successfully" juggle - that is, for about 10 seconds until I get too excited that I'm actually juggling, and lose control. A little boy saw me the other day, though, and said to his friends "look at the juggler!" So at the very least, I'm a juggler by a 6-year-old's standards... which is good enough for me!

The wonder that is RyanAir

2009-03-11T18:21:00.003Z

My amazing friend Kat (singing partner and travel guru) and I booked our next vacation today...

May 9 - flight from Milan to Fez (Morocco): 20 euro

May 15 - flight from Marrakesh (Morocco) to Barcelona: 42.10 euro

May 18 - flight from Barcelona to Cagliari (Sardegna): 20 euro

May 21 - flight from Cagliari to Pisa: 21.90 euro

2 friends, 4 flights, 12 days of adventure spanning across 3 countries? Priceless.

Or ya know, 100 euro.

How is this even possible??

Staying in Bologna...

2009-03-09T11:18:00.002Z

So... when I said "I'm going to Stockholm" and "Woo!! Sweden, here I come!!"

Yeah that might not have been entirely accurate. Last night as I was finishing my blog, Marta got home from a party and said "so on a scale of 1-6, how much do you want to go to Stockholm in 4 hours?" and after some thought, I answered "2."

She didn't want to go either, so we called l'altra Marta and asked how much she wanted to go. L'altra Marta said she wanted to go, so my Marta and I decided that we would go too, and have a wonderful time.

I got about 2 hours of sleep and, in what was very possibly the most difficult feat of my life, got up at 4:00 AM to take a shower. After my shower, my Marta came to my room with the telephone and said "L'altra Marta is one the phone - she doesn't want to go."

So, long story short, we didn't go. The weather is perfect, warm and sunny in Bologna and below freezing and cloudy in Stockholm. I still have no ATM card which means I'd have to borrow money from one of the Martas. I am still recovering from a plague/fever/flu which I had last weekend. Yes, my first celsius fever knocked me out for 3 days - I was at 38,5 gradi which really doesn't seem high enough to do any harm... silly celsius.

Anyway, forget Stockholm.

I'm going to the park!

Carnevale in Venice

2009-03-06T10:44:00.007Z

Carnevale.

That word has been on the tip of everybody's tongue since I arrived in Italy in August. All the best stories involve past trips to Venice for Carnevale, and it seemed like every party was just a preparation for the party, which lasts for almost the entire month of February.

After all the build-up, I obviously couldn't miss it, so I donned my mask (*ahem* bragging time - handmade mask, using only materials from the local dollar store...) and headed to Venice with a group of friends. My beautiful mask needed to make its glorious debut at Carnevale!

The minute we got off the train, I knew it was going to be an amazing day. There were people everywhere, almost all of them dressed up. People dancing and singing in the streets, artists painting peoples' faces, hundreds of vendors selling hats and masks, confetti covering everything, music and food and wine and concerts and Venice! Beautiful, beautiful Venice. It looked much different this time than when I visited last summer...

Finances allowed only a day trip to Venice, as couch-surfing was impossible to find and hostels in Venice cost about as much as a 5-star hotel in Bologna. I could have spent a week there and still not seen everything that Carnevale has to offer, but the time limit just added an incentive to see as much as I could! When we got off the train, our first task was finding vino. No, scratch that. Panino, then vino. No, scratch that again. Goofy hats and masks, then panino, then vino. No, okay: final answer. Bancomat (ATM), then goofy hats and masks, then panino, then vino. When you're traveling in a group of 15, that's kind of how decisions are made.

When we approached the bancomat, it looked like your average ATM. During the transaction, though, it showed its true colors and devoured my ATM card! Monster!! To add to my distress, (and I'm convinced that this was a part of the bancomat's evil scheme), it was Sunday and the banks were closed. There was nothing we could do, so I borrowed money from some friends and had my mom cancel the card.

Once we had successfully taken care of the next two items on our to-do list, (panino, vino) I was feeling much better - good enough to really enjoy the rest of our day. There were a lot of different events to see, but I think the best part was just wandering around and seeing all the amazing costumes. Venice was absolutely packed with people and everyone looked awesome - there were people walking around on stilts, dressed in full-body animal suits, and of course there were millions of different masks. My friend James got a lot of attention for his costume, a foam horse which he seemed to be riding. People were constantly asking to take pictures with him!

Venice is the perfect place for a giant festival like carnevale. The narrow, winding streets add an element of mystery - you never know what you're going to see around the next corner.

It's also hard to tell how crowded the city actually is, until you walk out into a huge open space like Piazza San Marco and see that it's completely filled with people, elbow to elbow. There were literally thousands of people crammed into Piazza San Marco for an evening show. The show featured a woman "dancing" in the air while hanging from a giant balloon. She was spinning and twirling to carnival music during a rainbow-colored light show. Amazing!

Most people complained that the show lasted too long (because yeah, how much can you do while hanging from a giant balloon) but I was so fascinated by it. I kept imagining how amazing the woman must have felt, spinning and dancing in the air like that - it must have felt like she was flying. I need to figure out how to get that job...

Every piazza had a different show or event going on. It's hard to choose a favorite, but I loved the open tango dancing (tried and failed - miserably) and one piazza with a really goofy band:

They were dancing with their instruments and it looked so much fun that we all joined in and danced with them. Perhaps, perhaps the wine had something to do with it, but they loved us! I think they were especially impressed with my rendition of the macarena.

Later on, I shared another dance with a tiny boy in a duck suit who was quite fond of my mask. I think it was true love.

I let him play with my mask for a little while but his mom made him give it back...

Even after the vicious attack of the bancomat, I had an amazing time in Venice. We stayed until the last train left for the night, and it was so crowded that we sat (and slept) on the floor for the 3 hour trip. I was exhausted, but it was one of the most interesting experiences that I've had since I arrived in Italy.

Tomorrow (in 4 hours, actually - technically today since it's after midnight), I'm leaving for Stockholm. I don't think wild horses could keep me in one place, but I have the entire world to see and just one lifetime to do it. Woo! Sweden, here I come!!

***All the photos in this blog were "borrowed" from friends - I unfortunately do not currently have a working camera. :(

Niadsfkljljgds... and Amsterdam

2009-02-17T14:14:00.011Z

Marta and I left for the Netherlands (I'd been calling it Holland and that's actually not technically correct) just a few hours after I got back from Spain... I had just enough time to write a blog, repack and get 4 hours of sleep before we left for Milan to catch our flight. On our way to the airport we missed exactly one bus, one train and one shuttle to the airport, and yet still managed to make our flight. Miraculous!

We flew into Eindhoven and took the train to Nijmegen, where we met up with Marta's two friends, Teresa and Margarida. Nijmegen is a cute little country town which I never once managed to pronounce correctly. Honestly, even now I have no idea how to say it. Teresa told me about a thousand times but I always just referred to it as Ni-something or Niblahblahblah. Silly dutch.

Even though it's impossible to pronounce, I love Dutch, mostly because it sometimes sounds like a very funny version of English. Kid's bookstore? Keender booken! 5 minutes? Fiven meenooten! (Spelled phonetically, of course). There's something about the way the language sounds that's just so... endearing, I guess. It has a very energetic rhythm to it which makes me smile, regardless of what the person is saying. For example, when a waitress started yelling at us about not moving tables in the restaurant, I couldn't stop thinking about how cute she sounded.

Sadly, Keender Booken was closed (I think it's actually spelled Kinder Boeken but that's just not as funny) but I did manage to find a copy of "De Kleine Prins" in another bookstore later in the trip. The woman at the counter informed me not-so-politely that "lots of people collect copies of The Little Prince from around the world." Pshh. Stronza.

We spent a few days in Niblahblahblah, and then took a day trip to Amsterdam. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it would be like - after all, Amsterdam has quite the reputation. As it turns out, I was completely wrong. I mean yes, there are "coffee shops" on every corner, and by "coffee shops" they mean "pot shops"... but the city itself is gorgeous, surprisingly tranquil and not at all the messy, chaotic, constant party town that I had in mind. I was very relieved.

Instead, the city is filled with tiny canals and quirky dutch architecture. At first, I couldn't figure out what made the buildings look so odd, and then Teresa explained to me that it's because they're all slightly tilted to one side or the other. They almost look like they're dancing, which is where their unofficial title comes from - "the dancing houses of Amsterdam." Ahhh, it all makes sense now!

*** EDIT: Jose's comment proves that I'm the worst blogger ever. Geez, man. How could I throw out a juicy little tidbit like "Dancing Houses of Amsterdam" without any kind of explanation? I should be ashamed. So, to clarify, the houses are slanted slightly to one side because the ground in Amsterdam is so unstable. Almost all of the houses are built along canals, where the soil is very soft. For this reason, they're built on underground wooden platforms which tend to shift and sink over time, which in turn makes the houses tilt. That's actually also why the houses are so tall and narrow. They're built in such a way that they are supported by the houses surrounding them - each one kind of leans on the one next to it. Kind of like dominoes, but potentially much more disastrous.

I had a thought when I was looking at a group of particularly smushed-together houses along one of the canals... I think those houses must be really creaky. My apartment here in Bologna is pretty stable and still makes creepy noises at night when I'm home alone. I imagine that if the houses are leaning up against each other, there must be a great deal of pressure which would create some awfully creepy noises... I don't think I'll ever go to a sleepover in Amsterdam.

Ok, there you go! You all learned something, and I feel like a better blogger. What a deal. Here's an extra picture which shows the tiltiness:

Yet another quirky aspect of Amsterdam - there are clogs everywhere. How cool is that? I was tempted to buy a pair of clog slippers but settled for this photo instead.

The two tourist attractions that I found most interesting were the Anne Frank house and the Van Gogh museum. I remember reading The Diary of Anne Frank when I was much younger, and it was the first time that I really understood what had happened during the holocaust. At the time, I was just a little younger than Anne Frank was when her family went into hiding, and I also wrote in my diary constantly. I could really relate to her, which made her story even more moving for me. It was amazing standing in her room, looking at the posters that she'd described, and at the desk where she sat and wrote.

The Van Gogh museum was amazing, too. It was a different experience than the Picasso museum in Barcelona (obviously) but again, it was interesting to see one museum devoted to just one artist. We were able to see the progression of his work as he started to become more and more impressionistic, and we could see how well his paintings reflect what was going on in his life at the time of each painting. Each painting's style, colors, brush strokes reflect what Van Gogh was feeling at the time. It's so interesting to see. During periods of his life when he was relatively content, his paintings were light and optimistic. His painting of the almond blossoms, which is one of my favorites, was painted at the birth of his first nephew. As his mental health deteriorated, his paintings became increasingly dark and erratic (Starry night, anyone?). The museum also had excerpts of several letters from Van Gogh to his friends and family, in which he discussed his paintings, theories, ideas and inspirations. It was interesting reading the artist's own words about his work.

We happened to be in Amsterdam on Valentine's Day, which may have also contributed to the peaceful feeling in the city. There were hearts and flowers everywhere, but I think my favorite part was this crazy little man, playing songs for love in his little boat. I couldn't stop laughing - he would play his musicbox with one hand and a trumpet with the other, while his boat spun in circles in the canal. Then he'd stand up and wave flowers in the air, shouting to his audience in Dutch. Again, very quirky.

The best part of the trip was getting to know Teresa and Margarida. I'd met them both before but this was the first time we really got to know eachother and we had a great time, especially when taking goofy pictures...

I returned home in time for my classes on Monday - I missed over a week already so it's probably about time that I started learning something. Personally, I think I've learned quite a bit in these past 2 weeks of traveling, but my Psycholinguistics professor might disagree and I doubt that I could impress her with my newfound knowledge about Van Gogh.

I might try, anyway...

6 Days in Spain

2009-02-12T01:26:00.012Z

I am absolutely head over heels in love with Spain. I'll just do a day-by-day account of my trip because I'm too overwhelmed and wouldn't know where to start otherwise!

Day 1
Susan and I arrived in Granada in the evening and met up with our couchsurfing hosts, Unai and Merchi. They are a beautiful Spanish couple living in a tiny little apartment right beneath the Alhambra. After we got settled in, Unai took us out for tapas which changed my life. Seriously, if you haven't had tapas, you're missing out. For next to nothing (usually around 1.50), you get a drink and a small appetizer. With each round, the tapa gets better... so we were faced with the irresistible temptation to keep eating and drinking in pursuit what I like to think of as the ultimate tapa, the holy grail of tapas, the best tapa in existence. Unfortunately Susan and I did not reach this goal, because we got too full and too drunk to continue and went home to get some sleep. Next time, my friends. Next time.

Granada, by the way, is beautiful. It's so beautiful, it's a little absurd. I spent most of my time there wandering around in a constant state of amazement at how pretty everything is. Beautiful architecture, amazing murals on the sides of buildings, fountains, open piazzas, street musicians and flamenco dancers, ancient cathedrals, sunshine, blue sky, surrounded by mountains... and then all of this is made even more beautiful by hundreds of orange trees which line every street and fill every garden. I heard that in the spring and summer when it gets warmer and the oranges ripen, the entire city smells like fresh, sweet oranges. Mmm. See what I mean when I say that it's just absurd? How can one place be so perfect?

Day 2
We wandered around Granada in the morning and ran into an American named Eric. It was a really strange coincidence, actually. When I was searching for couchsurfing, I made a request to sleep on Eric's couch and he e-mailed me back saying he was sorry but he already had a bunch of friends staying with him. Then I happened to see him on the street in Granada and recognized him from his photo online! He recognized me as well, greeted Susan and I with a big American bear hug and took us on an impromptu tour of the city. He's lived in Granada for the past several months and works as a tour guide, although you can hardly call it work! He made fliers advertising free walking tours and put them in all the hostels and hotels in the city. Every day, he leads a group of tourists around the city and shows them all his favorite places... basically walking around a beautiful city for 2 hours a day, and making more than enough money to live in Granada. He also eats for free at several awesome places in the city because he advertises on his tours. Pretty incredible life. He said it's a really easy thing to set up, so I might try it out in Bologna when the weather is a little nicer!

After hanging out with Eric for the day, we met back up with Unai and Merchi in the evening. We all went to a free showing of "Nosferatu" - a 1922 silent film based on "Dracula." It was really awesome, with live musical accompaniment. The musicians did all the sound effects with just a group of 5 stringed instruments - doors opening and closing, screams, wind, rats... everything!

I think the best part of the film was Dracula's striking resemblance to everybody's favorite zombie rock star:

Later on (after a few drinks, and inspired by Dracula and/or Michael Jackson), Merchi delivered her best rendition of "Thriller" on the streets of Granada! I know she'd kill me if she saw this... Here she is, our beautiful hostess in all of her glory:

Day 3
We got up early and headed to Spain's number one tourist attraction, the Alhambra - a moorish palace and fortress built in the 1300's. I thought that Lisbon's castle inspired my princess fantasies but this place was almost too much for me to handle. We spent hours wandering around the dozens of rooms, gardens, pools - there was even a labyrinth. Each room was more beautiful than the last and I couldn't stop thinking things like "this is my bedchambers" or "this is where my maids live" or "this is where I keep my pet tiger...." Yes, I know. I'm sick. Okay, brace yourselves: photo attack of Alhambra!!

At the top of the Alhambra, Susan and I took what may be the most epic polaroid in history. It was a little embarassing, striking this pose in front of the tourist who was nice enough to take our photo... and of course, the hundreds of other tourists at the top of Alhambra... but hey, it came out great. We gave it to Merchi as a gift, something to remember us by.

Of course, before I gave it to her I wrote a note at the bottom: "THRILLED to meet you"... because I'm cheesy like that.

We spent the rest of the day with Eric and his visiting American friends. We planned on going to a flamenco show, but since it was sold out, we went out for a night of tapas instead. I think we came significantly closer to the Grail this time, but just barely missed it. We were planning on leaving on an overnight bus to Madrid but Eric convinced us to stay for one more night. It didn't take too much convincing, actually, he just promised that the next day would be sunny and gorgeous, a beautiful day in Granada.

Day 4
Eric was right and it was one of the most beautiful days I've ever seen. We went on his official walking tour in the morning, which was amazing. He was hilarious, knew all kinds of historical facts, and even recited poetry that was written about Granada, in Granada and by the Sultan of Granada. He showed us places we'd seen but never really noticed, like this really cool house, for example. The old lady who owns it wins the porch-decorated contest every year! :)

The tour ended at El Mirador, with incredible views of Granada and Alhambra, and with an impromptu photo shoot with our gracious host/guide.

After the tour, we spent the rest of the day lounging around on Eric's terrace with all of our new friends, enjoying the Spanish sun, blowing bubbles, playing with a toy dinosaur named spot, musing and playing guitar.

It was hard to say goodbye to our new friends but we left in the afternoon and caught a bus to Madrid. Since we got a pretty late start, we decided to just stay in Madrid for dinner and then head to Barcelona.

We hit a slight snag when there were no seats available on the last bus from Madrid to Barcelona. So, we did what any true travelers would have done, and slept at the Madrid bus station. It smelled like urine and the man sleeping on the next bench was suffering from a cough that sounded very, very contagious but I slept pretty well, all things considered...

Day 5
We got to Barcelona in the afternoon and since we hadn't found couchsurfing, we decided to check into a hostel rather than spending another night in Spain's four-star bus stations. Ten euros per night isn't too bad, and we found a great hostel not far from La Sagrada Familia - Gaudi's famous cathedral.

I'm no expert, but I'm fairly certain that Gaudi must have been taking some kind of psychadelic drug when he designed some of his famous buildings in Barcelona. There was one building called Casa Milà (also called La Pedrera) which resembled something out of a sci-fi movie. The name means "the stone quarry" which I could see, but it also reminded me of vertebrae... As I was admiring it, I had an incredibly vivid daydream of myself as a kind of half-lizard person, climbing up the side of the building. I know it's weird, but that's just the kind of thought that Gaudi inspires. (Also, I've been reading a book about an iguana-woman which might have something to do with it.)

Oh, I left my camera charger in Granada, so all the pictures from Barcelona are either google images or were taken on Susan's camera. Bummer, I know, but I lose things a lot so I'm used to it by now... Merchi is mailing me the charger so I should have it pretty soon.

I also loved Casa Batllo, which looks a lot like a mermaid palace. Yes, of course I imagined myself as a mermaid swimming in and out of the windows. Why wouldn't I?

You should look at the full-sized version of this photo - the amount of detail is pretty amazing.

Aside from Gaudi's incredible, crazy architecture, my favorite part of Barcelona is probably La Rambla. It's a long, wide street built for pedestrians, lined with shops and cafes, as well as a really awesome fruit and vegetable market. There are hundreds of street performers, living statues and people selling everything from cans of beer to live chickens. It leads to the Marina, where we had a great dinner of paella and sangria before returning to our hostel for the night.

Interesting story: I've actually been to Barcelona before! I went when I was 16 with my choir, it was the last stop on our tour of Spain. Our hotel was right on La Rambla - an amazing location. However (and this is so tragic), before I got the chance to see the city, I drank with some friends, got busted and was banished to my hotel room for the rest of the trip. I think it was the second time I drank in my life, haha - what luck. All I saw of Barcelona was the alley outside my window, passing tourists and a McDonald's on the corner. Luckily, this time, drinking was allowed. :)

Day 6
We spent most of our last day in Barcelona on the beach, since the weather was amazing. The It was obviously too cold to swim, but we spent hours collecting seashells, taking photos and playing tug-of-war with a crazy puppy who had a taste for Susan's scarf. It was a perfect, relaxing day and just what we both needed.

After the beach, we went to the Picasso museum which was a really cool experience as well. I know Picasso for what most people know him for - crazy surrealist pieces, cubism, maybe a couple of blue period pieces. This museum showed his work from the beginning of his career (13 and 14 years old) to the end, and there was such an incredible amount of variety that we may as well have been seeing the work of 50 artists instead of just 1. I'd never seen his early works, which are all extremely formal - it was amazing watching it evolve into the Picasso that I'm familiar with. It was also great seeing the museum with Susan who is an Art History major, who needs a tour guide when you have your very own walking encyclopedia of all things artistic?

Since Susan's 21st birthday is later this month, her dad gave her an early birthday present and told us to treat ourselves to a fancy dinner on our last night in Spain. Muahaha... excellent....

So, we did. We went to a beautiful seafood restaurant right on the beach in Barcelona and ordered starters, a paella course, and entrees. The server looked at us like we were insane and said "No no, es mucha comida para dos personas. Mucha mucha comida..." She clearly didn't know who she was dealing with - we went to a five day food festival for crying out loud, we know how to eat! So, after some argument we convinced her to bring us our meals and as a matter of principle, polished off every last bite (including every piece of bread and every single olive). It was an amazing meal. A huge plate of fresh squid rings as a starter, shellfish paella (which was so delicious that it was practically a religious experience), bakalau with clams and garlic sauce, and some of the best shrimp I have ever eaten (like butter, delicious shrimpy butter) - accompanied by two bottles of wine and two desserts. I think we showed the waitress what we're capable of, and went home proud, full, drunk and happy. Of course, we made a detour and ran around on the beach for a while - it was a full moon and beautiful outside so we couldn't resist.

I had never really eaten much seafood before this trip, but tried a little bit of everything. My favorite thing was by far the squid (something I had never tried in my entire life) and Susan had to explain to me how to eat mussels:

Me: So... what are mussels like?
Susan (mouth full of mussels): Delicious!
Me: How do I do it?
Susan (mouth still full of mussels): You just scoop out the middle part and eat it.
Me: ... but do I chew it?
Susan (impatient, wanting to eat her mussels): Yes, Kalen. It's like, a food.

Barcelona was amazing, and I loved it but I think I've been enchanted by the "good vibes" (Eric's words) of Granada. Even with the beach and seafood and incredible food, Barcelona couldn't compare to the amazing few days I spend in Granada. There's something special about that place, and I can't wait to spend more time there. I think I might follow Eric's lead and try the life of a tour guide for a little while. Also, bonus points: I think I understood about 80% of the Spanish that I heard. It's similar enough to Italian that I can understand just about everything, but can hardly speak at all. I think I'll pick it up pretty quickly.

Once again, I have chosen blogging over sleeping and I'm leaving in 4 hours for Holland. I have a feeling it'll be another awesome adventure.

¡Viva España!

A Sunny Day in Bologna

2009-02-04T17:52:00.004Z

Finally. Finally.

Last month was too long. It was too cold, too dark, too sad. It was too much of a lot of things, actually, and I was so relieved when that blessed day finally arrived... February 1. Goodbye January, ya big jerk!

It's a little ironic that I was so happy about that day, because Feb 1 is my brother's birthday. He would have been thirty years old, and I would have given him so much crap for it (lots of gray hair jokes, and the phrase "old fart" definitely would have been frequently used I wanted to bake his favorite cake, black forest, but since I couldn't find cherry pie filling (a key ingredient), I settled for brownies. I burned them, and they actually tasted more like burned chocolate cake then burned brownies, but it's the thought that counts, right? Brownies don't really exist here so I think the spirits of Italy burned my brownies to prove a point or something - it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that I'm a terrible baker. Actually, I managed to salvage them by scraping off the burned parts and covering them with sugar in order to hide the damage.
Yes, more pictures of food. As always...

Anyway, even with the start of a fresh month and a fresh semester, I was still feeling a little down. I've been doing yoga, getting lots of sleep, taking care of myself, but the dreary weather must be contagious. When I woke up this morning though, I was shocked, shocked to see sunlight coming through the cracks in my window... I didn't believe it at first but when I opened the window I saw something that I haven't seen in weeks. A blue sky. So blue, brilliantly, perfectly, happily blue.

It was just what I needed. Such a simple thing, sunshine, and I missed it so much.

Walking around Bologna was so different today than it has been in the past few weeks. People weren't hurrying to get out of the rain, they weren't cold and wet or grumpy. Piazza Maggiore was filled with people and I ran into a lot of my friends on the street. People were riding their bikes again, and going for walks just because they felt like it. Here's the one picture I managed to snap before my camera battery died!
I walked more today than I've walked in the past month... of course that could also be because I had 3 classes on opposite sides of the city, with a 2 hour break in between each class.

Ah yes, classes started on Monday. So far I'm taking Psycholinguistics, Sociolinguistics, and History of the Italian Language. I may or may not take another class, it depends on how I feel. A few interesting classes start in March, including Italian Dialectology and History of Italian Cinema... but I think I'd rather travel the world. Again, we'll see.

Speaking of traveling the world, I'm leaving for Spain in the morning. A few weeks ago, my friend Susan (of the infamous food festival weekend) said "ya know, I think we should travel more"... so 10 seconds later, we booked tickets to Granada. We're flying in tomorrow morning and coming back from Barcelona on the 11th, so we have 6 days to make our way across Spain. We found couch-surfing in Granada but after that we're going wherever we feel like going. Should be wonderful. I get back to Bologna on the 11th and will have about 18 hours here before I leave again for Holland on the 12th... it'll be quite an adventure.

I have so many travel plans on the horizon... after Spain and Holland, the next trip is on March
9 - to Stockholm. I literally paid 5 euro (round-trip) for the ticket. Europe is amaaazing. My sister is coming on March 26 and staying for 17 whole days... I plan on showing her everything in Italy. Everything. She leaves on the April 12th and then Harry's spring break begins - we're planning a trip to Morocco. It makes my head spin, in a good way! Other places I'd love to go include Berlin and Moscow but I'm already dizzy so I'll give it a while before I start planning those trips...

Well friends, loyal readers (Melissa), I love you all very very much but my train leaves early in the morning and I'm stanca morta. Goodnight, all!

Find a stinky, pick it up...

2009-01-27T19:04:00.004Z

When I told my friends I was going to Bulgaria for the weekend, the reaction was usually the same - laughter. I guess it's not the most traditional choice for a winter vacation spot...

I went anyway. My dear friend Harry McPhee Winters is attending med school in Sofia, which if you didn't know (and you probably didn't) is the capital of Bulgaria. It's a pretty cool city, but I'm not sure I'd live there for 6 years. When I asked what Harry and his friends do to entertain themselves, they said that they drink until they forget that they're in Bulgaria. They were mostly kidding... it's hard to forget that you're in Bulgaria. Ha!

Although Bulgaria became a part of the European Union in 2007, they are still transitioning in many ways. For example, they still haven't switched to the Euro from the Bulgarian Lev. The Bulgarian cent is called a "statinki" which, needless to say, was incredibly entertaining. (The Americans call it a "stinky" for short.) I just wanted to say "statinki" all day long...

"Do you have any statinkis on you?"
"I certainly hope not."

"Find a statinki, pick it up, all day long you'll have... a statinki."

When I recovered from the fit of statinki-inspired laughter, I managed to find some time to explore Sofia. My favorite sight was the Alexander Nevsky cathedral. Alexander Nevsky was the Grand Prince of Vladimir and ruled over all of Russia in the 1200's. The cathedral is definitely a testament to his importance - it's one of the most impressive churches I've seen. It was built in the early 1900's which makes it a baby compared to most of the other European churches I've seen - construction of Bologna's San Petronio began in 1390 - but I was still awestruck by the beauty of it. The design is different than the design of any church I've seen, a "cross dome" design consisting of several domes and half domes which give it a really interesting shape.

Here's a photo, because I know I couldn't do it justice with words. I mean, I guess I could say "bulbous" or something, but it seems like an insult... (Courtesy of Google Images - my photos of the church came out neon green for some reason.)

As I was walking past the cathedral with Harry's roommate Richard (who was kind enough to show me around while Harry was studying), I heard singing coming from inside. We went in to check it out, and walked into an evening mass. The priest was wearing ornate robes, chanting and holding up a huge golden bible. Everyone was bowing before him, there was a choir singing the mass, and the entire cathedral was illuminated by candles. It was beautiful. One of those moments where taking a photo would have been completely unacceptable, so I'll just have to rely on the memory.

My other favorite sight in Sofia was the National Theater, which is the oldest theater in Bulgaria. We happened to walk by during the intermission of a play, so we decided to follow the crowd and sneak into the second half of the show. We found balcony seats and watched the second half of what appeared to be a play about a group of people trapped on some kind of crazy demon bus. Only in Bulgaria.

As it turns out, the play was actually a political satire. Not sure what a demon bus is supposed to satirize, but whatever, I'm sure the Bulgarians understand.

Of the many, many oddities of Bulgarian culture, the food is by far the most strange. Harry and I ordered a salad during my first evening in Sofia, and this is what we were presented with:
Potatoes, eggs, pickles, and a yogurt sauce. I forgot that Bulgarian salads don't include lettuce, or for that matter, vegetables. No, pickles don't count. This actually leads me to another interesting fact about Bulgarian cuisine: Bulgarians love pickles. Pickles on pizza, pickles stuffed in pastries, pickles in "salad", pickles pickles pickles. I would often catch a whiff of pickles as I was walking down the street. Only in Bulgaria.

On my last day In Sofia, I went to a bookstore and spent my few remaining statinkis on a very worthwhile souvenier: Малкият принц in cyrillic, "Malkiyat Prints" in the latin alphabet, or "The Little Prince" in English. Along with the copy of "El Principito" that Ryan brought me from Chile, my little travel companion now speaks 5 languages. I've decided that if I can't learn every language in the world, which sounds awfully time-consuming, maybe he can.... Next on the list is Dutch - I'm off to Holland in a few weeks!

As Meninas em Portugal or, "Better late than never - part 3"

2009-01-10T16:46:00.012Z

To make up for my lack of blogging, I wrote three blogs in one day. I don't care if that's cheating...

This week, I went to visit Marta in Portugal! I was feeling a little heartbroken due to Ryan's early departure (he needed to be at home) but when I arrived in Portugal I realized that it's actually impossible to be unhappy there.

I left my house on the evening of the 4th and spent the night in Pisa with two friends. We didn't actually sleep at all - since I had to leave for the airport at 4:30AM, I didn't really see the point. I arrived in Porto, a beautiful city in Northern Portugal, at around 9:30AM. I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, but excited to be there. Marta and her friend Manel met me in the city center and we ate a traditional Portuguese lunch which, since I can't remember the name in Portuguese right now, I'll call "meat-stuffed meat, covered in meat sauce with a side of meat."

Actually, I could describe all of my meals in Portugal with this same description. My poor little body went into a kind of meat-coma which it's still struggling to recover from. It was worth it though - everything I tried was delicious, with the exception of that first lunch. It slightly resembled a sandwich, in that there was bread involved. Between the slices of bread, there were about 6 or 7 types of meat, including a few kinds of sausage, various sliced meats and steak. This meaty sandwich of death was covered with slices of cheese, and doused in some kind of salty meaty broth. I managed to eat about half of it but then I was sure that my arteries couldn't take any more abuse. I think the waitress was offended...

Despite its questionable cuisine, Porto was an incredible city and I enjoyed our day there. It has a beautiful river, with a bridge designed by the same architect who designed the Eiffel Tower. Many of the town's buildings were old and crumbling, but still beautiful.That night we stayed with Ana, a friend who studies in Bologna with us. Her family lives in Braga, which is another northern city about 45 minutes from Porto. They fed us an amazing dinner of you-know-what and I got a much-needed good night's sleep.

In the morning we went to visit another friend, Marta (I call her l'altra Marta, the other Marta) in a town called Viana do Castelho. We didn't see much of the town itself, but we did see its church, Santa Luzia which is on a hill overlooking the city and the Atlantic ocean. It was beautiful.
Portuguese cities (at least, the few that I've seen) have a remarkable ability to seem tranquil and relaxed even in the midst of big-city chaos. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the people, who are incredibly friendly, but I think the architecture also has something to do with it. It's a lot different than the architecture in Italy. For example, the churches here in Bologna are huge and imposing. There's a sense of power, of strength, of trying to be the best. Bologna's cathedral would have been the biggest in the world if its construction had been completed! The churches that I saw in Portugal were smaller and more delicate, as if the architects focused on beauty rather than size. I found myself imagining what it would have been like to live there when the churches were first constructed, wandering through the gardens without the noise of passing traffic.
We went to two more churches in Braga, called Bom Jesus and Sameiro. Like the church in Viana, they overlook the city and I think I could have stayed there for days, relaxing and enjoying the view.
I had an amazing time visiting Ana and Marta in their hometowns. We've been friends in Bologna for a while but have never gotten to know each other really well. They welcomed us into their homes, introduced us to their families and showed us around their cities. It was such a good chance to get to know them better.

From left to right: La mia Marta, Manel, Me, L'altra Marta, and Ana.

After our perfect few days in the North, we left Braga and headed to Lisbon. It was about a 3 hour drive - almost the full length of Portugal. We got there just in time for a late lunch at (drumroll please)... Chili's! That's right, one and the same - the first in Europe. I was so excited that I called my friend Andrew (a renowned Chili's expert) in San Diego to ask for ordering advice. I'm not sure how much he appreciated my call at 7AM Pacific time....

That night, we stayed with Marta's family and ate a slightly more traditional Portuguese meal of bakalau, which is codfish. It's no Chili's but I enjoyed it anyway.

For our final day in Portugal, Marta showed me around Lisbon. We went to the main shopping roads, visited the top of a huge outdoor elevator and looked over the city and Lisbon's river, which I'm convinced is actually the ocean. Look at this, it's massive:
It's actually amazing how similar Lisbon is to San Francisco. There is a bridge that looks almost exactly like the Golden Gate Bridge, the river looks just like the SF bay - they even have old cable cars just like we have in San Francisco. They're practically identical. Walking around the city gave me a strange sense of deja vu.
Marta, Manel and I decided to take one of the cable cars up to Lisbon's castle. As we were running to catch it, I felt something tugging on my purse and looked down to see someone's hand grabbing my hat. I turned and saw my hat on the ground behind me and, thinking that I had been pickpocketed, started to check my purse to see what was missing. The woman who'd had her hand in my bag was still standing there, so I said something like "excuse me!" and she said something indignant in Portuguese. (Marta told me later that she had said "let me by".) I was confused and knew something had happened, but the woman stepped in front of me, blocking my view of her friend who was holding my wallet! Luckily, Marta saw my wallet in the friend's hand and grabbed it back because, well, she's a badass. Both the women ran off, and we got on the cable car.

Everyone on the cable car had seen what happened, and the bus driver even jokingly said that Marta should have punched the woman. (And, go figure, there was a big sign on the street car that said "Beware of Pickpockets"). It was a close call - I don't know what I would have done if I'd lost my wallet. Ryan had just paid me in case for his share of the travel expenses, so I had close to 400 euro in my wallet, along with my credit and debit cards. Thank goodness Marta noticed the second woman who had my wallet...

Relieved that I hadn't experienced every traveler's worst nightmare, Marta and I relaxed for a while, wandering around in the city's castle. It was beautiful, and I couldn't help but pretend that I was a princess... yeah, I know it's cheesy but I sat in a window sill, gazing out at the view of the city and pretending that the big stone room was my "bedchambers". To be honest, I don't think I'll ever grow out of the princess fantasties.

Then we went to a tiny little restaurant and had a great lunch with great sangria. It was delicious! Later, after a nap, we had a wonderful dinner with her family, and traditional Portuguese sweets for dessert. They're called Pastéis de Belém, and they're glorious. Warm custard in a flaky pastry shell, crispy brûléed top, sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon. Oh my goodness, I could create a religion dedicated to these little goodies. I'm seriously considering living in Portugal just so I can eat them every day. I'd get a little apartment above the bakery...

I'm not sure if you've noticed this trend in my blogs - I like food. I like to eat it, and I like to write about eating it. This may have something to do with the fact that I've gained a few kilos since arriving in Italy. Some of my friends are trying the whole dieting thing but I think my method of eating as much as I can, as often as I can, is much more fun.

Ok, snapping out of the euphoric daze induced by too much food talk!!

I had planned to head to Barcelona after Lisbon (I still had the plane tickets leftover from my travel plans with Ryan) but the idea of going by myself didn't sound too appealing. I love traveling alone, I enjoy the independence and adventure of it, but now isn't the right time. Also, the weather predicted lots of cold and lots of rain in Barcelona. Dreary weather doesn't usually help a dreary mood, so I booked a ticket back to Bologna instead and returned home this morning. Even though I was only gone a few days, I was so happy to see my bed that I plopped into it and didn't move for an embarassingly long period of time. But hey, it gave me time to catch up on my blog!

That's it for now, and I'll try not to fall into the habit of binge-blogging. Love to all of you, Happy New Year :)

New Years 2009 or, "Better late than never - part 2"

2009-01-10T16:16:00.006Z

Ryan arrived in Bologna on the 29th, and we decided that instead of traveling for New Year's Eve, we'd stay here in Bologna for an annual celebration in Piazza Maggiore. I wasn't really sure what to expect and looking back on it, I'm not really sure what happened.

I'll let you see for yourselves:

Yes, that is a giant rat statue. Yes, it's on fire. Yes, it's in the middle of a crowd of people. The idea is that the rat represents all of the bad things that happened in 2008, and burning it is the perfect way to start 2009 with a clean slate. It's a nice idea, and a really creepy ritual. It was especially festive when flaming pieces of that rat started flying into the crowd, or when it finally collapsed... and no, I'm not kidding. How could I make this up?

Bologna on New Year's Eve was completely different from the city I've grown used to. While it can be bustling and rowdy at times, I've never seen it like this. Drunken, rowdy crowds, pushing and shoving, teenagers setting off firecrackers in the streets and sidewalks- not to mention the giant, fiery rat monster. It was insane. On several occasions I was actually lifted off the ground by the mob of people in the piazza. My friend Molly joked that judging by the amount of times she was groped in the crowd, she "must have about 100 new Italian boyfriends".

While it was an amazing and certainly one-of-a-kind experience, I think Bologna's NYE party is a little intense for my tastes. I've always preferred a slightly more peaceful setting, and I felt quite nostalgic looking back on my favorite New Year's Eve celebrations: three years ago in Cabo San Lucas with my family or two years ago in Sacramento with Melissa. Regardless of what I was doing, where I was or who I was with, one thing that all of my past New Year's Eve celebrations have in common is that there were no flaming giant rats involved. That was definitely a first!

Merry Christmas #2 (and beyond) or, "Better late than never - part 1"

2009-01-10T14:25:00.009Z

For my second Christmas in Bologna (does anyone else think I might be a little bit spoiled?), about 12 Bolognese-Americans grouped together for a Christmas Eve dinner at my place, AKA the house with the biggest kitchen. I decorated the kitchen with lights and other decorations which my study center loaned me, and everyone admired my adorable little Christmas tree. The dinner was incredible - for the main dish, my friend Johnny made coconut chicken which is probably one of the best things I've ever tasted. I made rice, beans and guacamole and Johnny made two different kinds of salsa. Everyone brought side dishes as well, and there was enough wine to get a small town reasonably drunk. We celebrated until 5AM when half the guests went home and the other half fell asleep on my various couches. When we woke up the next morning (afternoon), there were no presents from Santa under my tiny little tree, but we all went out for lunch and met up later for an evening of ice-skating... and I didn't fall once! Of course I missed my family a lot, since this is my first Christmas away from home... I think all my friends felt that way too, though, so we stuck together and had an amazing time.

After the Christmas festivities had completely died down, I found myself with an empty house, a case of the holiday blues, and absolutely no responsibilities whatsoever. So, my friend Susan came over for a cocktail party. Of course, by cocktail party I mean dressing up, listening to jazz music and drinking White Russians and fruity cocktails - just the two of us. It was a perfect (and admittedly, strange) cure for our holiday homesickness.
I spent the next few days with Kelly and her two visiting American friends, Bayard and Jake. We played cards, watched James Bond, and then took a day trip to Modena. Modena is most well-known for its balsamic vinegar, which as I should have guessed, means that there's not very much going on in Modena. It was a really fun trip, though, and I got to see lots and lots of vinegar in bottles of all shapes and sizes!

This is probably the most "happening" piazza in Modena:When we got back to Bologna, we went out to dinner at my favorite local trattoria, and had Bologna's specialty - pasta al ragu, also known as meatymeatymeat sauce. This is just one of the reasons I prefer Bologna to Modena. (Of course, since coming to Italy I've gotten into the habit of judging a city based solely on its food!)

Christmas comes to a close here, with a full belly and good company. It's incredible what good friends and a little hearty meat sauce can do to lift a girl's spirits.

Merry Christmas #1

2008-12-19T21:07:00.010Z

Since all of my roommates are leaving for their hometowns in the next few days, we decided to celebrate Christmas early.

Can you guess whether this is a photo of:
a) very large presents, or
b) an itty bitty Christmas tree?

I suppose the fact that it's sitting on the kitchen counter is probably a pretty big hint, or the fact that the Santa Claus tree-topper is almost as big as the tree itself...

Gift summaries:

Andrea, our household musician, got an oh-so-stylish music note hat and a music note espresso cup. Pier, our household chef, got an ethnic foods cookbook so he can expand his current repertoire of "all italian, all the time."

Added bonus: a photo of the guys looking goofy. :)

Marta and I went in together on Giada's gift - a three piece "tea mug" as I have chosen to call it, which is a large mug with a lid and uh, steeper? Is that even a word? Giada gave scarves to both me and Marta and somehow managed to find the perfect scarf for each of us. I suppose it must be in her blood, she has such a fine-tuned sense of fashion that she can instantly judge other people's fashion tastes as well... I gave Marta a tutu skirt because she's cool enough to pull off a tutu, and Marta gave me a copy of "O Principezinho."

There are two amazing things about this photo:

1. My little prince is now tri-lingual.
2. My new scarf also doubles as a beautiful backdrop. Brilliant. :)

Our mini-Christmas wasn't exactly traditional, but it was wonderful. I'll be sure to let you all know how things go on the 24th, but it has quite a lot to live up to!

As Meninas Estão Comendo uma Maçã

2008-12-17T11:11:00.006Z

My lovely roommate Marta wrote a blog (here) that explains it all in three languages, bless her polyglottal soul... but I'm not quite that impressive so I'll just explain it in one.

I'm going to visit Marta in Portugal! Bought my tickets yesterday and on January 5th, Ryan and I will be flying with the appropriately-named Ryanair to Porto, Portugal where we'll fare un giro with Marta for a few days, making our way down to Lisbon!

This is wonderful. It's also very convenient because I recently acquired (don't ask how - I'll plead the 5th) a copy of Rosetta Stone. That's right, I'm learning Portuguese, as you can see by the fancy Portuguese title of this blog: The girls are eating an apple. Why did I choose this phrase instead of something more relevant to the situation? For two important reasons:

1. It gets stuck in Marta's head when she overhears me repeating it 200 times a day.
2. It's the longest sentence I know in Portuguese.
(and one of the very few complete sentences...)

So, I'm off to visit my beautiful roomie and who knows, maybe I'll get the chance to practice my new language... let's just hope that there are lots of girls eating an apple in Portugal!

Bologna by Night

2008-12-15T00:33:00.006Z

I've had a lot of free time lately. I only have one class which meets 6 hours a week. I babysit for another 6 hours a week, which leaves about 156 hours for doing whatever I feel like doing. Of course, since the weather's been pretty dreary lately, what I feel like doing usually consists of sitting in my bed sipping hot tea while reading or watching a movie. As great as this sounds, I've been feeling really lazy and unproductive. Tonight, after dinner, I was overcome by the need to get out. I didn't leave the house all day so I decided that a little fresh air would be good for me. I bundled up in more layers than would ever be necessary in California, and went for a long walk around Bologna.

There was hardly anyone out tonight, probably because it was 11pm and freezing, but I appreciated the quiet (very, very rare in this city). It gave me a chance to think, take a few pictures and just enjoy being alone for a little while.

I figured I'd use this as an opportunity to show everyone around a little... so, here's a very brief photo tour of Bologna at 11pm on a Sunday night. Enjoy :)

This is Piazza Santo Stefano. It's usually filled with students, but not tonight. During the day it's a great place to meet up with friends and have lunch, and at night it's often filled with people drinking/smoking/dancing/singing.

* * * * *

This is the piazza and fountain of Neptune, which is one of my favorite places to people-watch. It's right at the edge of Piazza Maggiore, so there's almost always something interesting going on. It was a great spot to rest during the summer because there was always a cool mist from the fountain. Now, as you can see, there's a huge Christmas tree in the piazza!

* * * * *

Via Rizzoli is one of the major streets in the city center - at the end you can see Torre Asinelli, one of the two main towers of Bologna. Torre Garisenda is the other, which can't be seen in the photo. Asinelli is open to the public, and I'm sure the view is amazing - but legend has it that climbing the tower before graduating brings extremely bad luck. Italians are very superstitious and I think it's rubbed off because I certainly won't be going up there...

* * * * *

Some of Bologna's Christmas decorations! Just about the entire city is decorated with Christmas lights right now. It's really beautiful but I can't help but wonder how much energy that take... or how much it costs! They do shut all the lights off at 1 or 2am though, so that's something.

The last photo is of my street! I actually took it while standing on the doorstep of my apartment building. Home sweet home. :)

Krampus

2008-12-08T00:26:00.010Z

This weekend was weird. Strange. Bizarre. Odd. Freaky.

There really just aren't any words that adequately sum up what happened this weekend, so I guess I'll just start from the beginning and let everyone decide for themselves.

A few months ago, Giada told me about an annual Christmas festival which takes place in her hometown on the first weekend of December, and invited me and Marta to come with her. So on Thursday, we all packed up our bags and headed to Giada's city, Tolmezzo. It's a beautiful and tiny town surrounded by mountains, so far north that it's practically in Austria. It felt like an entirely different world, even though it was only 4 hours from Bologna by train!
Giada's boyfriend Massi picked us up at the train station and we all went to dinner at a local place called "Bef'ed." This restaurant was completely crazy, not like anything I've ever seen in Italy or in the United States. First of all, they don't believe in silverware - see, it's part of the fun! We were served shelled peanuts as an appetizer, and by "served" I mean that there was a giant pile of them on the table. The floor of the restaurant was completely covered in peanut shells, because this too is part of the fun. I'm not sure what it was about this place, but it felt awfully.... American. Anyway, Massi and Giada ordered for Marta and I, because apparently there's only one "right" choice when eating at Bef'ed: the polletto - practically an entire chicken.
Call me crazy, but I've never really considered an entire roasted chicken "finger food". I've also been a vegetarian for a pretty decent-sized chunk of my life, so this was a little bit... intense. To the incredible delight/disbelief of my carnivorous friends, I proclaimed "grazie pollo, per avermi dato la tua vita!" (thank you chicken, for giving me your life - yeah okay, a little weird but give me a break, I was about to eat an entire bird), and then I overcame my vegetarian doubts and devoured that thing like a good little carnivore. As proof, here's a picture of me that I doubt any of you ever expected to see:

Yes, I believe I am using my teeth and hands to rip a small animal's wing away from its torso. Definitely a new experience for me... and a tasty one!

As if this restaurant weren't strange enough, on the way out I saw what I thought was a gumball machine. I quickly realized, though, that these were no gumballs. No no, my friends, these were sexy panties.
That's right. Located above Winnie the Pooh and directly to the left of Hello Kitty, a beautiful (and tasteful) selection of thongs! I mean I guess it's not that much different than a gumball machine. Multi-colored, probably edible....

As you can see, my first impression of Tolmezzo was an interesting one. Trust me though, when I went to bed that night I had no idea what was still to come.

The next morning, I woke up to Marta's excited announcement: SNOW! I haven't seen that much snow since I lived in Michigan. The trees and houses were covered, cars were buried, everything was sparkling white and beautiful and cold. Luckily, Giada made sure I was equipped with heavy-duty, rainbow-colored mittens.

Armed with our mittens, we went to Giada's grandparents' house where they served us a huge lunch. I realize that most of my blogs so far have had to do with food, so I'll skip the details and just say that I was, once again, amazed at how much food my relatively small body can consume. When we had all recovered from the food coma, we set out for the festival. This is where things got really, really weird.

The Krampus festival is a traditional Austrian celebration in which the men of the town dress up as horrible demons and chase small children through the streets, beating them with whips.

No, no I'm not kidding.
It started with a "parade", although I hate to call it that because I like parades. They're usually pretty fun, you know - floats, beauty queens in convertibles, high school marching bands. This, on the other hand, was terrifying. The demons entered the town, waving torches and rattling their chains (yeah, some of the scary demons were chained to a giant wagon which was being driven by another scary demon). They were all screaming, growling and making all kinds of other demonic noises as they marched past, whipping anyone (me) who happened to be standing too close. This was not a joke or a friendly tap, people. I still have a bruise from the demon's whip, which is a sentence I hoped I'd never have to say.

When the demons reached the center of the town, they gathered in what was essentially a satanic ritual in which they were "set free" by San Nicolo. Yeah, Santa. Santa Claus unleashed hordes of demons on this town, giving them permission to run free and whip innocent young children and Americans. It was unbelievable. At one point, I watched a large hairy demon chase after a small girl, dive through the air, tackling the girl to the ground where he ripped off her hat and started rubbing her face in the snow. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of this, as I was too busy dealing with my own evil demon attack.

Here's a description of a Krampus festival, taken directly from wikipedia:

"Today, Schladming, a town in Styria, over 1200 "Krampus" gather from all over Austria wearing goat-hair costumes and carved masks, carrying bundles of sticks used as switches, and swinging cowbells to warn of their approach. They are typically young men in their teens and early twenties and are generally intoxicated. They roam the streets of this typically quiet town and hit people with their switches. It is not considered wise for young women to go out on this night, as they are popular targets."

Mm hmm. Interesting. I especially like that last part.

The second portion of the festival took place at the bottom of a forested hill. The demons came down through the trees, clanking their cowbells as usual, shooting off flares, hissing and screaming. The forest was illuminated with red lanterns and several small fires, and there was an eerie amount of fog which I told myself came from fog machines. There was also terrifying music playing. It was one of the scariest experiences of my life, watching the demons slowly descending towards me through the fog... When they reached the bottom of the hill they engaged in yet another satanic ritual and then (of course) they started whipping children again.
The funny thing is, people bring their children to this festival every single year! They want their children to be whipped by demons! I actually saw parents laughing hysterically as they tried to get the perfect photo of their child, being held upside-down and shaken by an evil demon. The whole town goes nuts for this festival, and people spend months preparing their masks and costumes. There were even tiny models of Krampus monsters:

(In case you're confused, the small child is kneeling in prayer as he is being surrounded by Krampus demons.)

Hopefully now you all understand why the word "weird" just doesn't cover it!

Luckily, we all escaped relatively unharmed. One of the demons actually posed for a photo with me before whipping me in the legs (never trust a demon, especially if he has Santa's permission to whip you!)...

The rest of the weekend was much less demon-infested and I had a great time with Marta and Giada, playing in the snow and hanging out with Giada's family. I'm so lucky to have such wonderful roommates... I honestly can't think of anyone I'd rather be chased by demons with.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-28T00:03:00.008Z

Sometimes writing these blogs is easy, I just start writing and then after a while I realize that I've probably written enough to bore my readers into a state of numb confusion... and voila!

Other times, it's harder... I don't know, the words just don't come to me as easily as they sometimes do. That's what happened when I was trying to write my "Happy Thanksgiving" blog on Thursday. Maybe it was hard because the holiday left me in such a daze that I wasn't sure how to describe how I was feeling about everything. Maybe it was because I'd had an exam that day and had used up all of my brainpower. Maybe it was because I'd eaten too much and my brain couldn't function because my body was focusing all of its energy on digestion. Or maybe, and this is a very definite possibility, it was because I was trying to think and write coherently at 3:00AM after a very, very long day.

Whatever the reason, I didn't manage to write a blog on Thanksgiving. Sorry about that. Let's just pretend that I was confused by the time change. Hey, it's plausible - you try switching continents!

I woke up on Thursday feeling surprisingly content, even though I couldn't escape the burden of the knowledge that I was away from my family on Thanksgiving - my favorite holiday precisely because it brings us all together. I lay in bed for a while thinking about my situation and the more I thought about it, the more I realized just how much I am thankful for.

Of course, I'm thankful for the opportunity that I've been given - to live in this beautiful country for a year, meet incredible people and have amazing experiences that I'll remember for the rest of my life. I'm thankful for my family and friends back home who will always be there for me, even if I do live on the other side of the world. I'm thankful for my cozy apartment and my roommates, for the shoes on my feet and my incredibly warm scarf. I'm thankful for the snow here and for the tasty roasted chestnuts that I can buy from the street vendors on my way to class.

It's so much more than just than being thankful for what I have, though. I'm thankful for every experience I've had, for the lessons that I've learned and from the trials I've overcome. On days like Thanksgiving I miss my brother so much that it hurts, but I think of my family and of how strong they are, and I'm incredibly thankful for how close we have become. Being here, so far away from them has made me realize just how strong our ties are - that I can feel so close to them even though I haven't seen them in months.

I'm thankful for my friends here in Bologna, and for the study center which organized the incredible Thanksgiving feast in Padova. As it turns out, Italians suck at cooking Thanksgiving food... but hey, it was hilarious trying to guess what was actually in the strange dish they called "stuffing" or which body parts of the turkey we were being served. Was it even turkey? We'll never know.
The dinner, although perhaps not as satisfying as my mom's collection of traditional recipes back home, brought all of us Americans together to celebrate what we have to be thankful for here in Italy... which, among other things, is a group of wonderful friends that we can feel at home with during the holidays. Also, it's a group of friends who makes incredible desserts which make up for the Italians' lack of Thanksgiving savvy. The potluck portion of the dinner was amazing, with dozens of desserts. Chocolate cake, apple pie, banana bread, cookies, mmmmmmmm it was delicious. Yes, I'm definitely thankful for dessert.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving back home - I would really love to hear about it so leave me a comment or write me an e-mail! Tell me what you're thankful for :)

2 Degrees in Bologna...

2008-11-21T23:02:00.006Z

It is officially freezing. Actually, it's 2 degrees celsius which is still technically above freezing. However, the windows in my house are frozen, which leads me to believe otherwise.

Brrrrr.

The weather here has definitely taken a turn for the worst, which is one of the reasons that I haven't blogged in a while. I just haven't really done anything. I've been curled up inside studying for exams, so I haven't been taking many pictures or traveling much at all. Maybe I'll be able to scrounge up a few interesting experiences to fill a blog, let's see...

First of all, I am officially a nanny. (Or as Italians say, a dada.) I have two very small new friends, Carlo (3) and Giorgia (7). I meet with them 2-3 times a week to "teach English" which usually consists of playing with Carlo's toy cars or watching "High School Musical 3" with Giorgia. It's not a fun job, but somebody's got to do it! An added bonus is the fact that the family has a winter vacation home in Cortina. Where's Cortina? Here's a picture, courtesy of Google:
Simona, the kids' mother, told me that if I come with them for a weekend and speak English with the family, she'll pay me 60 euro per day and "of course" pay for all my food and activities (for example, skiing and excessive cocoa-drinking). As I said, definitely not a fun job.

On a less cocoa-filled note, I took my first exam last week in Applied Linguistics. The first part was written - the prova scritta. It consisted of 5 questions which were painfully broad... one of the questions was literally "Write about something that you find important." I was tempted to write about mexican food (I miss it, alright? My diet here is severely lacking spiciness!) but I figured my professor might not find it as amusing as I would. After 30 minutes of writing she said that we only had 30 minutes remaining on the exam. I found this a bit surprising... see, I was expecting two hours because our professor had said "you will have two hours." Go figure. I only managed to finish 3 of the 5 essay questions by the time she took my paper. I'm not sure why she cut us off early - I think she probably had a meeting or something, most likely with the devil. (Okay, maybe not, but it was still a rude thing to do.)

A week after the written portion of the exam, I went back for the oral portion. Luckily, my professor allowed me to orally discuss the questions that I'd left blank on the written test. It was pretty terrifying, discussing linguistic theories in Italian... especially because there were other Italian students in the hall, just watching me! At first I was extremely nervous and the professor said that I could explain in English if I wanted, but I said no. I felt a little more confident after that, and at the end I received a 28 on the exam. The maximum score is 30, so I'm not complaining!

In addition to doing well on my exam, I had another wonderful surprise last week! Someone rang the buzzer at our building about 10 days ago and I answered "chi è?" like I always do.... but instead of hearing garbled Italian on the other end of the line, I heard "ummmmm.... hi, is Pierluca there?" and my heart lept for joy - Americans!!!!

Kevin and Jeff, to be precise. Pierluca met them when he was visiting a friend in California, and they stayd with us for over a week. A few days after they arrived, my friend Allison (the girl I stayed with in Dublin) came to stay with us as well and for the first time in the history of my apartment, the Americans outnumbered the Italians! Yesss! It was nice living with people who don't find me completely bizarre, and it actually really helped with my homesickness. It was almost like being back home! On one of their first nights here, we ordered pizza, drank beer and watched James Bond. I'm just not sure there's any better combination in the world.

We also made mexican food... not once, but twice.

It really was a beautiful week.

Si, possiamo!

2008-11-06T22:54:00.000Z

I was riding my bike home yesterday morning, crossing Piazza Maggiore at 7:00 along with the first rays of sunlight, and it hit me - President Barack Obama. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry, so I did both. I probably looked like a crazy person, racing through the piazza, letting out a whoop of joy as tears streamed down my face. (This is a picture that Leslie took of me before Obama took the election - so imagine me looking more or less like this, but much more disheveled after having stayed up all night.)
As much as I would have loved to be in the United States for this election, it was incredible to see the amount of support that Italians have for Obama. We were all crowded into the public library, hundreds of us, watching CNN on big screens, cheering and shouting "Si, possiamo! Yes we can!" I don't think there was a single person in the room who didn't support Obama. Most of the people there were Italian, and the few Americans were easily identified by our facepaint, which attracted a lot of attention.

When I say that we attracted attention, I mean it - I was interviewed on the local tv station Rai 3, and we were photographed several times. This photo of my friend Molly and I was printed in the Bologna-based newspaper Il Resto del Carlino! You can tell by our concerned expressions that it was still early in the evening...
Unfortunately I wasn't able to post the clip of me that was shown on television, but it was extremely short so you're not missing out too much.

At 3:30AM, when the library closed, I went to a friend's house and curled up on the couch with three of my friends to watch the rest of the election unfold. We were all exhausted - that is, until CNN projected Obama as the winner of the election, at which point we were no longer tired. At first we were ecstatic, and then speechless as we watched it all... watched McCain's extremely graceful concession speech, watched thousands and thousands of people in Chicago screaming "Yes, we can!" in celebration of Obama's victory, watched Martin Luther King's gospel church singing their hearts out, watched Rev. Jesse Jackson weeping in the crowd, watched Obama accept his victory in one of the most touching and humble speeches that I have ever seen delivered by a politician... it was beautiful. (It was also hilarious, because we were watching the speech live on CNN.com, but also dubbed in Italian on TV...)

I have never been so proud to be an American, so inspired by a president or so hopeful for the future. Yes we can! Si, possiamo!

Ahh, so exciting. Still hasn't sunk in completely, I think...

Salone del Gusto 2008

2008-10-28T08:33:00.005Z

On Thursday morning at approximately 5:00AM, I should have been sleeping. Instead, I was groggily dragging myself to the train station to catch an early morning train to Torino or as we english-speakers like to call it, Turin. Now, my body doesn't entirely function at this hour, so the journey to the train station was definitely an interesting one. Dragging my duffel bag and sleeping bag, I think I bore an uncanny resemblance to Quasimodo.

Why on earth would I wreak such havoc on my sleep-loving body? Two words - food festival.

A few months ago in Berkeley, my Italian teacher told me that I had to choose just one thing to do while in Italy, it should be to attend the Salone del Gusto, an international Slow Food festival which takes place every two years in Torino.

Now, I'm not sure I've ever heard two words which combined to form such a beautiful idea - food festival. Food festival. With this in mind, my friend Susan and I bought 5-day passes. Yes, five days of food. Am I making myself clear as to how amazing this is? We arrived in Torino late Thursday morning, and got to the festival in early afternoon. Neither of us knew what to expect exactly, and neither of us could have anticipated the glorious journey on which we were about to embark... haha, seriously though - we walked in the building (a gigantic convention center - the same one which hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics) and our mouths dropped. There was just so much food. Food everywhere. Food in piles, food hanging from the ceiling, hundreds and hundreds (maybe even thousands of stalls) offering samples of cheese, meat, fish, bread, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, cookies, crackers, gelato, honey, cake, chocolate (soooo much chocolate), fruit and vegetables.... literally, every food I could think of.
(This is a photo of one of the "piles" I mentioned, a delicious chicken with gravy and stuffing. Basically everyone just crowds around and stabs at it with toothpicks.)

There was one huge pavilion dedicated to international foods, another dedicated to the various regions of Italy and two more which we couldn't exactly figure out but it seemed to be something along the lines of "all the best foods you've ever tried ever." Hopefully this photo will give you some idea of how massive this place was - this is about one third of one pavilion. No mirrors, no tricks, it really is as big as it looks. Also, there was a section devoted to wine... as we entered, we were given a wine glass, which came in a pouch that we carried around our necks. The idea is to be able to enjoy the wine without ever having to stop eating.

This place was heaven, I'm telling you.

I'd make a list of everything I ate but that would just be gross. Keep in mind that I walked into this place with the full intention of trying everything. I figure, this is some of the best food in the world. If I can't trust the Slow Foodies, I can't trust anyone. So I ate things that I never really planning on eating, including raw beef sausage, beer cheese, honey wine, chicken fat (although they tricked me by calling it shmaltz), and rabbit. That's right folks, I ate bunny.

I decided to weigh myself before and after this weekend and discovered that I'd gained 3 kilos. I told myself that this was perfectly acceptable because there are 2.2 kilos in a pound, so I'd only gained like a pound and a half. Of course, deep down I knew that there are actually 2.2 pounds in a kilo....

Aside from having the most wonderful eating experience of my life, I really enjoyed Torino for other reasons as well. The city is beautiful, with tons of palaces, portici, parks and a river running through the city. It has really interesting history, mostly because of a king (Re Umberto, I think) who had the entire city designed for his convenience. For example, the city is lined with portici so that he could walk around in the rain without an umbrella. There is a beautiful palace which he had built for the queen, just so he didn't have to live with her. The church is attached to the king's palace just so he didn't have to leave home for mass. I think I'd built a food festival attached to my house!!

There was also a really amazing museum of cinema and a beautiful outdoor photography exhibit (the theme was Siddhartha the Buddha). I hope I get the chance to go back to Torino, though... I've heard it's really beautiful in the winter and there's still a lot that I haven't seen. Our trip to Torino was also my very first time couch-surfing, which if you don't know, is a world-wide collective of people who are willing to provide free beds for weary travelers. It's a really amazing way to meet people from all over the world, and it's also just a really nice thing to do.

For the first two nights of the festival, we stayed with an Italian couple - Davide and Laura. Not only did they welcome us into their home, but they also gave us slippers.

Even more importantly, they fed us more than I considered reasonable. On Friday night we returned exhausted and full from the Salone to discover that Davide and Laura were throwing a dinner party in our honor. There were 8 of us altogether, and enough food to feed 20. There were two types of antipasti, a pizza, two types of pasta, a "savory cake" (spinach and pancetta quiche), a regular cake with ice cream, and wine wine wine. All of this, after 6 hours of non-stop eating at the Salone.

Then, to top things off, they took on a night-time walking tour of Torino and then to an amazing pseudo-disco club where we danced all night. I've never been so full, so happy or so ill.

Here's a photo of all of us: Davide, Laura, Bagigia (their adorable kitty), Susan and me! I'll never forget them, and hopefully I'll have the chance to offer them my couch when I get back to the United States!Our second hosts were a Brazilian couple, Carem and Joao. They were also amazing, and actually accompanied us to the Salone on our last day in Torino. Of course, this was not until after they'd fed us an enormous breakfast and taken us to their friend's house for lunch where he'd prepared an enormous traditional Brazilian lunch of feijoada which is basically lots of beans and meat over rice - so good. SO good.

My weekend was incredible! I'm so glad that I got to meet Davide, Laura, Carem and Joao (and of course, Bagigia). I think I'll try couch-surfing every time I travel from now on - it's really an incredible concept.

One more thing before I head off to class - guess who popped in to say hello from Davide and Laura's fridge:

Un Gran Presidente?!

2008-10-21T19:35:00.007+01:00

This past weekend, I went Parma to visit my friend Nicola and to attend an art exhibition featuring the famous Renaissance painter Antonio Allegri (better known as Correggio). The show was divided into four separate exhibits scattered all over the city. I think the idea was to go in a certain order, which I didn't - however I'll write about them in the order in which I was supposed to see them. (It's better this way, trust me.)

The first was a gallery featuring many of Correggio's paintings, as well as many works by artists who inspired him. For example, I saw a drawing by Da Vinci which has always been one of my favorites. I think that it's normally referred to in English as "Head of a Woman" or "Woman's head" or something, but in Italian, it's called La Scapigliata which means "uncombed woman." I like the Italian title more!It's really interesting to see the influence of this drawing on some of Correggio's paintings, especially those of the Virgin Mary:The second exhibit was in a convent, where I saw the "Camera di San Paolo." Correggio painted the entire room with a fresco of tiny cherubs. It used to be the private dining room of the mother-superior of the convent. I can't imagine having a room like that all to myself... I'd probably be too distracted to eat anything!Finally, the third and fourth exhibits were by far the most incredible. Correggio frescoed the domes (le cupole) of two churches in the city of Parma - the Cathedral of Parma, and the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista. The dome in the cathedral is painted with a fresco of the Assumption of Mary...
...and the dome in the church of San Giovanni is painted with a fresco of St. John at Patmos.
Now, let me tell you - I've seen a whole lot of frescoed domes in my day. (Ha!) This was a little different, though. For this exhibition, there were staircases set up which allowed us to actually climb up inside the domes and walk around, just inches from the painting itself. Completely surrounded by the painting, I could see each brush stroke, each tiny little detail and each toe of each apostle. There is so much detail that can't be seen from the ground. I was stunned - it was so beautiful. Photos were strictly forbidden, but I will never forget it.

If any of you get the chance to climb into a frescoed dome any time soon, I highly recommend it.

The rest of my free time lately has been taken over by studying, although I did take a break on Saturday night to enjoy a massive Italian dinner: American style with two friends from my program. What does "american style" mean, you ask? Garlic bread, my friends - Garlic bread, pasta from a box and sauce from a jar. It was magnificent, unless you ask my roommates, in which case it was absolutely repulsive. (That's why I don't ask them anything...) Did you know garlic bread doesn't exist here? Neither did I, which is why I agreed to study here for a year....

One last treat before I go to bed... Nicola decided to make a video while we were eating lunch and this is by far the best clip. In the beginning of the clip, he says "Era un gran presidente, George W. Bush." (George W. Bush was a great president.) Nicola is a nice guy and all, but we don't exactly see eye to eye when it comes to American politics... as you can probably see by my reaction. Anyway, this clip made me laugh a lot and hopefully it'll make you laugh, too!

I love and miss you all.... I look forward to hearing wonderful news from home. (In other words: e-mail me, you punks!)

My Days

2008-10-14T23:27:00.005+01:00

Oh, what days they've been.

Let's start with Sunday. I woke up early and went to Padova with a group of friends. I was the only American, the rest were Portuguese, Spanish and Chilean. We tried to speak mainly in Italian but sometimes it was easier to speak in English. I'm constantly amazed at how many English-speaking people I've met - especially young people - from all over the world! It's a shame that it's not the same when my Portuguese friends go to the United States. Odds are they won't meet many Americans who speak Portuguese...

I have, however, officially added Portuguese to my list of languages to learn. It's so beautiful, and the more I hear it spoken, the more I want to learn it. Hopefully Marta will teach me something!

Anyway, I spent all day in Padova with my worldly group of friends. It's a really beautiful city, very quiet and peaceful. In a lot of ways, it's similar to Nice (which makes sense because Nice was an Italian city for about 500 years). The architecture is very similar, as is the layout of the city. There are wide, open piazzas filled with flower and fruit merchants, and the narrow streets are lined with beautiful pastel-colored buildings. There was no beach in Padova (like the beautiful pebble beach in Nice, where I think I could have stayed forever) but there were small canals running through the city.When I chose to study in Italy for a year, I had to choose between Bologna and Padova. I didn't know much about either city, so I chose Bologna based solely on its central location and larger student population. While visiting Padova, though, I realized how completely different my experience would have been if I'd decided to study there instead of here in Bologna.

I'm not saying that I made the wrong choice or that I wish I'd chosen Padova. I don't, at all. In fact, it's impossible to say that I'd have a better experience in either city, because they're so different. Literally everything that could be different is different. I could see myself living in Padova just as easily as I see myself living here, but for entirely different reasons. Luckily, my lovely and wonderful friend Heather ("Etter") will be studying in Padova next spring so I can spend as much time there as I want... assuming she doesn't get sick of me.This was my favorite place in Padova, a giant circular park with a view of the basilica. It's hard to tell in the photos, but the weather was very strange while we were there. There was a very thin layer of clouds but it was still very bright outside. This created a kind of surreal glow which just added to the charm of this already-beautiful city. I'm really glad that I had the chance to spend a day there!

Yesterday, I had 6 hours of class and returned home exhausted - just in time to watch "Taxi Driver" with my housemates. I've wanted to see that movie for years, and just never got around to it until last night. It was definitely a strange movie, made even stranger by the fact that it was dubbed in Italian. I was so confused. In fact, I'm still confused! There was relatively little dialogue in the film, which makes me think that those few lines were pretty important. I might watch it again in English but I'm honestly not sure if would be any easier to understand! :)

I'm not a big fan of dubbed films, and not just because they're more difficult for me to understand. I just feel like an actor's voice is so important - the tiny subtleties in the way an actor delivers his lines is part of what distinguishes a good actor from a terrible one. To me, taking away the actor's voice is taking away an incredibly important part of his or her performance! I just don't think it's fair to watch a De Niro movie without De Niro's voice... .and what about Sean Connery?! I can't imagine watching a Sean Connery movie without that incredibly awesome accent. It just seems... wrong. Oddly enough, the entire population of Italy disagrees with me. All of the movies here are dubbed, as well as television shows. I guess I'll just have to get used to it! (Amusing side note: I've heard that Keanu Reeves is actually considered a great actor here, probably due to the performance of the Italian voice-actor!!)

Well, there is more I could write about but I had 8.5 hours of class today... so I think I'll call it a night. I love and miss you all, very much. Write me, tell me things about home!

The 406-word sentence

2008-10-11T16:46:00.006+01:00

I thought it would be neat to share a little bit of my reading with my family and friends, so everyone could see what I'm learning about in Italy!!

The following sentence/passage/deathtrap, written in Italian of course, took me about an hour to decipher. (By "decipher", I mean look up all the words I didn't recognize.) After having finished this long and tedious process, I realized I still had no idea what the sentence/passage/deathtrap meant, so I decided to type it into "www.freetranslation.com" and see what would happen. Frankly, I'm surprised my computer didn't explode. Everyone, meet my nemesis:

Also in its to say itself "communist" (and in the route that for designation of its party, he completed in this damp dawn like a sponge) it not it is distinguished outcome where arrived a duty handed down of generation in generation (between the walls of those ecclesiastical buildings Amerigo is seen - a little one ironically and a little one on the serious one - in the part of a last anonymous heir of the eighteenth-century razionalismo - I stay of that inheritance ever known to make to yield - in the town that held Giannone in stumps) and outcome where the outlet in another story, old just of a century but already bristly of you obstruct and steps obliged, the advance of the socialist proletariat (then was across them "contradictions it of the bourgeoisie" or "the autocoscienza of the class in crisis" that the struggle of class had arrived to move also of about forty years only - embodiment of that struggle of class, since the communism had become international power and the revolution is made discipline, preparation to direct, negotiation from power to power also where it is not had the power (therefore also Amerigo this game of whom a lot regulates seemed fixed and inscutable and dark but a lot it is had the sense of to participate to establish them), or, communism, was a touch of reserve on the general matters, that pushed Amerigo to choose the most limited tasks of party and modest how recognizing in you are the most surely useful, and also in these going always gotten ready to the worst, wanting to keep itself serene simply in its (other generic limit) pessimism (in part hereditary also that, the plaintive air of family that contradict the Italians of the minority it wins it is noticed to have loser), but always in line subordinated to an as much optimism and stronger, the optimism without which would not have been communist (then was necessary to say, first: a hereditary optimism, of the minority italians that believes to have won every time that loses; that is to say the optimism and the pessimism were, if not the same thing, the two faces of the same leaf of artichoke), and, in the Italian, the sense of the relevant one, the faculty of adaptation and awaited (that is to say the age-old enemy of that minority: and then all the cards returned to confuse itself because who leaves in war against the skepticism cannot resign lose itself, otherwise it is identified with the its enemy), and above to all have understood it finally what did not want us then a lot understand: that this is alone an angle they decide themselves, we do not say elsewhere because elsewhere it is everywhere, but on a more immense staircase (and also in this there they were reasons of pessimism and reasons of optimism, but the first came to the most spontaneous mind).

I'm sure you didn't actually read all of that (can't even read one sentence, you slackers!), but if you had, you'd know that it doesn't make any sense and that my brain is about to self-combust. I'm happy to say that I've managed to read 8 pages of this stuff today... but I'm not so happy to say that it took me over 3 hours and 2 shots of espresso to do so.

My dear, wonderful, much-too-helpful friend Ryan was kind enough to inform me that at this rate, it will only take me 20 full days (reading 24 hours each day, of course) to read the 1000 pages of required text for my literature class. Since there are about 80 days in the semester, this leaves me 60 days of freedom.

Luckily I think Calvino will be the heaviest of the reading, and this book is only 80 pages long which means it should only take me about 30 hours to read. In other words, I love you all but I'm wasting precious reading-time by writing this. Goodbye :)

Non si fa?

2008-10-09T22:21:00.005+01:00

This weekend, Marta and I decided to cook dinner for several of our friends. We're not exactly culinary experts, but we decided on something that sounded pretty dang good to us - our own invention: Pasta Caprese!! This consists (or more accurately, would have consisted) of pasta with pesto, tomatoes, and mozzarella. We ran into a snag when our three Italian roommates informed us that this is just not acceptable. Non si fa were their exact words, the rough translation of which is "one doesn't do that."

These are three words that I've grown quite accustomed to hearing, actually. For example, I learned that "one does not" order a panino with a cappuccino. Non si fa. I asked my roommates to further explain, because I happen to like drinking a cappuccino with my panino. They explained that "one does not" mix breakfast items (cappuccino) with lunch items (panino).

Well, "one" may not not mix meals, but Kalen certainly does. Haven't Italians ever heard of brunch? Or, even better, brinner?! (I'm going to wait awhile before suggesting that we have weekly pancake dinners...)

Anyway, back to our could-have-been magnificent Pasta Caprese. Andrea, Pierluca and Giada insisted that we at least leave out the mozzarella. Tomatoes were acceptable as long as we promised to sauté them, not just toss in diced tomatoes at the end... which is what we were planning to do - once again, non si fa. So, the recipe was agreed upon - but we got off to a disastrous start when we accidentally bought two different types of pasta. One required a cooking time of 11 minutes, and the other required a cooking time of 12 minutes! I thought Andrea was going to have a heart-attack, especially when I explained to him my normal U.S. pasta recipe:

1. Buy pasta
2. Buy sauce
3. Cook pasta for somewhere between 10-20 minutes
(yeah, that one really got him...)
4. Combine pasta and sauce
5. Enjoy, usually with a glass of milk, sometimes directly from the pan. Haha!

After much ado about everything, and much help from our roommates, our pasta was finally complete. If you ask me, it was perfect. If you ask Andrea, Pierluca or Giada... you know what, just don't ask them! :) Marta and I are extremely proud of our very first Italian culinary masterpiece!

Oh, speaking of firsts: on Monday, I attended my first courses at the University of Bologna!

Beginning Latin Grammer: first, I went to the wrong building and waited in an empty hall for... well, probably longer than most people would have. Then I went to the right building but the wrong hall. Then I went to the right hall in the right building and after a very confusing hour, realized that Beginning Latin Grammer is not, in fact, a beginning course in Latin as I had been led to believe. It is actually a beginning course in literature and translation. This obviously requires some knowledge of the latin language, of which I have none. Note to self: Drop latin class.

Contemporary Italian Literature: right building, right hall! Yesssss! I was so excited about this that I wasn't even phased by the fact that I'm expected to read over 1000 pages of Contemporary Italian Literature by December. Okay, I was a little phased. In fact, I was terrified and am still terrified and would prefer not to talk about it any more. Note to self: learn speed-reading.

In all honesty, I'm excited about the class. The theme is "confines of humanity" which seems interesting, the professor seems really passionate and the books are long. I mean, the books are fascinating.

History of Photography: Finally, a class which doesn't scare the crap out of me. The professor is engaging and seems to know just about everything there is to know about photography. He's really easy to understand. We have two books, one about photography in the 1800's and one about photography in the 1900's. They seem a little dense but I think that I'll be alright if I study a lot and get on Professor Marra's good side. Note to self: bake cookies for prof.

Since I'm only taking two courses right now, I decided to take a photography course at a nearby community center. It's a 36-week long course, during which I'll have unlimited access to two different darkrooms and also to a professional studio equipped with lighting, backdrops, etc. This is incredible, because it can cost hundreds of dollars per day to use a studio like that and I'll have unlimited access to it for the entire time I'm here.

Well, that's about it for now but I want to leave you with one more thing!

An American photographer living here in Bologna organized a photo shoot today in Piazza Maggiore, for all the people who want to show their international support for Barack Obama. Here we are, in all our glory:
Can you find me? Hint: I am (unintentionally) doing the "rock on" symbol... not sure how that happened. Ah well... rock on, Obama!

:)

La Nostra Prima Festa!

2008-10-04T23:02:00.004+01:00

Our first house party was a huge success... and I mean really huge. I couldn't believe how many people were crammed into our apartment. I was a little terrified when everyone started showing up... but after a little bit of time and a little bit of wine I loosened up and was able to mingle pretty successfully. It was quite the challenge, mingling in Italian (especially because mingling has always been difficult for me, even in English)! I met a lot of really cool people, though, and we all had an amazing time. No one is entirely sure how many people came last night, but Pierluca estimates around 100! There were about 60 in the apartment at any given time, but people were coming and going all night between 8:00PM and 3:00AM so it's pretty hard to say.

(I was the only one who realized this photo was being taken...)

Mmm, I forgot to mention the best part of our party - the food. Sadly, I don't have a photo but Pierluca and Giada made tons of food - several different kinds of pasta, bruschetta, pastry things filled with prosciutto, all kinds of snacks... and I made guacamole which was actually a big hit. I was amazed at how many people had never tried guacamole! I'm honestly not sure how they've lived this long without it.

Perhaps the best part of the night (other than the food of course) - we managed to take our very first family photo!
From left to right: Pierluca, me, Giada, Marta and Andrea. We took three of these and Andrea managed to look goofy in all three, haha!

We're a pretty mellow bunch so I'm not sure how many more giant parties we'll have... but this was a great opportunity to meet people. I'm making a lot of friends here, which makes me feel more and more at home.

Speaking of which, I met my penpal Nicola a few days ago! He studies at the University of Emilia-Romagna, not too far from here. We've been writing to each other for about a year so it was interesting meeting him in person. There's only so much you can learn about a person through e-mails, after all. He's very nice, though, and I'm glad I had the chance to meet him.

I know this feeling will go away as I get to know people a little better, but sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by strangers here... it was really nice spending time with someone who knows me a little better.
Even though I'm starting to make friends here, I still miss everyone at home a lot. Sometimes it's hard for me to really be here, to let myself sink in... but I think I'm getting there. It'll just take time, and patience. I'm starting from scratch, you know? I came here with just me, just the basics, and now comes the tricky part - building the rest. I get to build an entire life for myself here, la mia vita italiana. Let's hope I don't screw it up too much! :)

Living in Bologna

2008-10-01T11:29:00.006+01:00

Introducing.... (drumroll please!).... my new favorite place in Bologna:

That's right - this is my bed. It is located in my room, in my apartment, in Bologna, in Italy. It's so amazing to finally have a place that's mine, a place where I can lay my weary head or sometimes hide it under my pillow...

I love my apartment. I mean, I really love my apartment. Until yesterday, I didn't have any internet, which is why I haven't posted in so long. In fact, we still don't have legitimate internet... I won't go into details but let's just say we're not exactly paying for it.

The best thing about my apartment is the group of people in it. Andrea and Pierluca are the two men of the house, both italian and both extremely busy - Pierluca is currently studying for the TOEFL and Andrea is a musician. He plays piano and guitar, and sings, and directs a local choir! Right now he's in Florence at a recording studio. I don't have any pictures of them yet but we're throwing a house party on Friday so I'm sure I'll have some next week.

The women of the house are proudly represented by myself, Giada and Marta. Last night we all attended an event held for international students:

Giada (far left) is my roommate, a 20-year old italian student. She speaks a little english and actually spent a summer in California a few years ago. She talks insanely fast, so sometimes I have to pull a good ol' smile-and-nod, but for the most part we communicate very well! She also reallllly likes MTV and it's almost always on in our room, so by the time I get back to California, well... actually, I don't want to think about what could happen to my brain in the next year!

Marta is absolutely wonderful and I'm not just saying that because I know she'll read this (hehe). She's from Portugal and is studying in Bologna for a year, just like me! She's fluent in english and is learning Italian - it's nice to have somebody struggling with me sometimes.

It's actually pretty amazing how quickly I'm picking up italian. After just a few weeks here, I find myself saying "eh" instead of "um" and "cazzo" instead of "(insert english swear word here)". I understand almost everything, and have no trouble holding a conversation about anything from food to international politics! The only time I have serious trouble understanding is when my 3 italian housemates are all talking at once, which seems to happen multiple times a day. When this happens, Marta and I just look at each other and laugh, knowing that neither of us knows what's going on.

I finally finished my required italian course last Friday - I had to do a presentation on the topic of my choice (I chose controversial photographer Oliviero Toscani) and an oral exam. For the oral exam, I had to randomly choose topics out of a hat and speak in Italian for 5 minutes about each topic - I chose Bologna in WWII, the Italian university system, and the stereotypical perceptions of Italy versus reality. I was pretty well prepared, so it wasn't too bad. I think I mentioned before that once I start courses at Unibo, my entire grade will be decided by one final oral exam with the professor. It was nice to get a little practice, but I have a feeling that the real thing will be a little more difficult!

Speaking of Unibo courses, they start on Monday! I'll be taking Contemporary Italian Literature, History of Photography, and Beginning Latin Grammar. Each of those classes will last for about 6 weeks, and then I'll start a few more courses in November - History of Contemporary Italy, and Linguistics of Body Language. I didn't plan it this way, but I only have class on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday! Che fortuna! This means that I'll be able to work or travel or sleep or study or party as much as I want for the rest of the week. It will definitely be an exercise in self-discipline, I think...

The exams for all 5 courses are in December, which will probably be a pretty stressful month for me! Before that though, there are no tests, no quizzes, no assignments - just lectures (which aren't mandatory) and lots and lots of reading... all in italian. Wish me luck!

Until courses start on Monday, I have a bit of vacation time... I was hoping to travel, but I seem to have contracted the plague. Okay, maybe it's just a cold. Regardless, I am running pretty low on energy so I decided to stay in Bologna and the surrounding area for a week. I found a beautiful park next to my house, and I'm really excited to spend more time there and go running with Marta!

Last Sunday my friend Leslie and I went to Florence for a day to hang out with some friends who were visiting from the US. (Paul, Annie and Jed have been traveling Europe for the past month and managed to find time to visit me in Italy!) It was really nice seeing them, speaking english and seeing Florence again. It was interesting seeing how the city has changed since I studied there last summer. I even saw a few familiar faces, including those of the infamous Florence nutria - giant river rats! They're actually cousins of the otter, but their long skinny tails and affinity for garbage-eating make them seem extremely rat-like. I didn't particularly miss them but seeing their creepy little rat faces gave me a strange sense of nostalgia... haha!

My friends and I encountered quite the adventure when we tried to enter the Uffizi gallery, an amazing art museum in Florence. Paul had purchased a 7-inch knife in Spain and failed to realize that the museum guards probably wouldn't appreciate seeing it pop up on their x-ray screen when he put his bag through security. After a few minutes of yelling, the guards told Paul that he had to check the knife and could pick it up when he left the museum. What they didn't tell him is that there would be a police officer waiting for him when he got out.

Paul's girlfriend Annie and I were waiting for the others outside of the museum when my friend Leslie called me and said "The carabinieri are taking us to the station - run and meet us there!"

Even with Leslie there to translate, the police officers couldn't seem to understand why Paul had purchased a 7-inch knife, why he thought it was a good idea to carry it concealed in his backpack throughout Europe, or why he thought he could get away with bringing it into the Uffizi. Honestly though, I don't understand any of those things either so I don't think it was the language barrier which kept them from understanding. Finally they got frustrated and let him go - they even let him keep the knife. Essentially they said "we're going to pretend this never happened but please, please get out of our country."

Needless to say, I was very happy to fall into my bed that night.

It's a beautiful day here in Bologna so I'm going for a walk... but now that I have internet (stolen internet, bad bad bad internet!) at my house, I will write more often. I promise.

I love you all, ciao!

Choosing a home

2008-09-18T21:32:00.006+01:00

In my last entry, I referred to myself as homeless. I was a little bit worried when I realized I had four days to move out of my dorm and still hadn't found an apartment. I was really hoping to hear from the guys I sang with, because their apartment seemed perfect. It had been almost a week, and I hadn't heard from them... so I decided to keep searching.

On Wednesday night, I went and saw two more apartments. Both were amazing, in very different ways. The best part of it is, I was offered both places! So, I found myself having to choose between those two or wait and hear from the one I loved so much. Mamma mia!

Let's recap:

Apartment #1: Pep and Giuseppe
This place was amazing. Pep is an artist, and all the walls were covered with sketches and paintings. He also plays guitar and sings. Pet snakes! Pet turtles! I would be rooming with an Italian girl who I didn't get the chance to meet but who is very nice, according to the guys. I ran into Pep on the street though, while waiting to hear back from him - he was really rude! He asked if I found a place, and I said no... so he said "well maybe we'll give you a call" and then turned his back on me to make a phone call. Just like that! Not the same friendly vibe that I'd witnessed the first time we met.

Apartment #2: Valentina
I walked in and was greeted boisterously by my six potential roommates. Everyone was laughing, cracking jokes and telling stories, and making fun of President Bush. There was so much energy in this place! I could hardly move, it was so crowded... but I could tell that all of these people were amazing friends. I called and canceled my next house-viewing appointment so that I could hang out with them for a little while longer. I'm not sure I could handle the constant chaos of that tiny apartment, though! Valentina called me the next morning and offered me the apartment, saying that I made a great impression on them and that they're all excited to live with a goofy American girl! Ha!

Apartment #3: Pier Luca
This apartment is beautiful. BEAUTIFUL. Pier Luca and his best friend remodeled it themselves, and it's on the top floor of an amazing building. He plays guitar and loves the Beatles, and my roommate would be a 20 year old Italian girl, also a student at Unibo. (University of Bologna!) There would be 6 of us altogether - me, 4 Italians and a Portuguese girl who is studying here for the year. The apartment isn't as central as the other two, but the walk is a pleasant one, down a beautiful and safe street. The other two are in the center of everything, in the middle of the noisiest, most fun and probably most dangerous neighborhood in the city.

So while still waiting to hear from Pep and Giuseppe, I saw Pier Luca's place and was offered the room immediately. Ten minutes after that, I saw Valentina's apartment and she called me in the morning to say that they chose me as well! Still hoping to live with Pep and Giuseppe, I called them one last time and they told me that they had chosen someone else. So, I was down to two choices. Valentina's party house or Pier Luca's serene getaway.

Oh, what a dilemma. I called both of them and talked to them a little more, I made a list of pro's and con's, I pictured myself in both houses. I tried everything, but both places were great. Finally, while chatting on the phone with Pier Luca, my gut told me that his apartment was the right choice for me. I just had a feeling. So, I went for it and promised him that I'll stop by in the next few days with the deposit money.

What a relief! I found a beautiful apartment, and I felt wonderful about my choice. Listening to my gut instinct was a good call. Valentina was disappointed but made me promise that I'll come back and visit them in their crazy bohemian flat. I'm not sure I could have handled living there but it'll be a great place to visit.

Then, this morning I got a very unexpected phone call from Pep, offering me the apartment. I was really confused, and asked him if I misunderstood when he told me "no" the day before. He said they'd changed their minds. I explained to him that I'd found another place, and he responded by asking me if I'd already paid. I said no, and he said "well, think about it and let me know" and then hung up! Again, just like that!

Half of me was tempted to bail on Pier Luca and live in my dream apartment with my turtles and snakes and singing friends. Their apartment is on Via Zamboni, right in the middle of everything. It's above a coffee shop! It's perfect! Yeah, half of me was absolutely pining to live there. The other half, however, was wondering how cool of a person Pep actually is - after making me wait over a week before hearing from him, blowing me off when I ran into him on the street, and asking me to bail on someone that I've already made an agreement with. That half of me was also in love with the beautiful apartment that I had already accepted.

Then both halves of me simultaneously realized - I'll be happy wherever I end up. Both apartments are beautiful, this city is beautiful, I'm here for a year and I can make the most of it regardless of where I live. I don't have to worry, and I don't have to break an agreement that I already made - something that would make me feel terrible. So, I told mister Pep to take his apartment and stick it where the sun don't shine - I'm living with Pier Luca! Ok, ok, you caught me, I didn't say it that way.

I love love love my place. I will post pictures when I move in on Sunday. My birthday also happens to be this Saturday, so I'm thinking of this as a birthday gift to myself. My first day as a
20 year old will also my first day in my new home in Bologna.

Americana senza tetto!

2008-09-16T01:02:00.008+01:00

I am the worst blogger ever.

Maybe not, but I apologize sincerely to my few loyal readers (Mom and Melissa) for not having posted in over a week. A lot has been happening; in fact, too much to recount in one blog entry. So in the interest of saving you all a lot of boredom, I'll just cover the main points!

Sylvia texted me a few days ago to say that she gave the apartment to another girl (the one with my piccolo principe). It wasn't meant to be, I guess, but it was awfully nice of il piccolo principe to come all the way to Bologna to say hello! Hehe :) So, the hunt for an apartment continues. Finally I got sick of searching through advertisments and calling strangers who speak at light speed, and decided to make an annuncio of my own which I posted on the student bulletin boards. Here it is... I'm really quite proud of it:

The top says HOMELESS AMERICAN! and then it goes on to describe what I'm looking for. I got several calls, and one of the places is really great. I spent over an hour talking with the roommates, and actually sang with them. It was awesome. They also have two snakes and two turtles, and since I've never been allowed to own a reptile due to my mom's snake phobia, I'm very excited! Hopefully it will work out, and if not, the search will continue!

I also got some less appealing responses. For example, one guy had a single room available, but explained to me that it would just be me and him living in his house. I told him I wasn't interested, but later received the following text message. (Translated for your convenience, of course): "I have your room, you will pay 250 euro and I will not ask you for sex." Needless to say, I didn't respond and haven't heard from him since.

I have exactly 6 days to find a house before I actually become "Americana senza tetto"... So, please send happy thoughts my way. Preferably, happy thoughts with a washing machine and wireless internet!

In addition to searching for an apartment, I've been participating in (mandatory) activities organized by my program. Our most recent excursion was to the nearby city of Monte Sole, which was the site of a major Nazi invasion during World War II. On September 29, 1944, the Nazi soldiers destroyed the town, killing nearly all of its inhabitants in an effort to stop the efforts of Resistance fighters. We heard the story of one of the only survivors, a man named Francesco Pirini. He was 17 years old when it happened and only survived the attack because his mother had sent him into the hills that morning to pick herbs. He witnessed the invasion from the hillside, and couldn't do anything to stop it... he lost 13 members of his family that day.

Pirini's story was incredibly sad, but I was amazed at his resilience. He has obviously led a beautiful and happy life, despite the trauma that he went through at such a young age. He has an amazing laugh, which we heard over and over again as he told us about his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I was so happy to hear him laugh, to see that he sees life as a beautiful and magical thing. I'm very glad that I was fortunate enough to meet him, to hear his story and shake his hand.

My not-so-abundant free time this week has been spent mostly at a local month-long festival called Feste de L'Unita. It's really incredible - there were hundreds of booths and cultural events from all over the world. There was salsa dancing, live jazz, indian food, brazilian food, (I can't actually list all the different types of food, there were too many!) mojitos, and even ice skating. That's right, we were "Americans on Ice" in the middle of the Italian summer. I'm proud to say
that I didn't fall, although there was much flailing involved. As you can see here, I remained standing due to the valiant efforts of Leslie and Mike.

Tonight, Leslie (above) and I went to dinner with our friend Anna, an Italian girl who works at our study center. After dinner we walked her back to her apartment and chatted for a bit. As she was saying goodbye, though, her door closed behind her and she was locked out of her apartment! After many failed attempts at lock-picking, and even more failed attempts at scaling the side of the building, Anna called the fire department and asked them to send someone over to open the door.

... They sent an entire fire truck! When the huge truck first pulled up, I was stunned. When the eight Italian firemen in full uniform jumped though, though, I couldn't help myself. It was so ridiculous that I was overcome with a fit of giggles and couldn't stop laughing - Anna explained to them that it was because I was American and didn't know what was going on. They made a big show of opening the door, (trying to impress us, I guess) and one fireman gave me his phone number! I think that's just the Italian way, but regardless - Luigi the firefighter will be the first person I call next time I lock myself out of the house.

Well, that just about sums up the most memorable moments of my week. I'll end with a photo that Leslie took of me walking through a meadow at Monte Sole. It sort of looks like I'm walking into the sky, at the start of a grand adventure! Fitting, don't you think?

Getting used to it...

2008-09-07T18:19:00.003+01:00

There are some aspects of the Italian lifestyle which come quite naturally to me. For example, the food. I eat fresh tomatoes every single day, along with cheese and bread and basil and pizza and gelato... yesterday I had two gelati, one at lunchtime and another at dinner! Oh, and let's not forget the wine. I have grown quite fond of vino frizzante during the hot afternoons, and of course a glass of red wine with dinner is apparently a must.

The nightlife is another thing that I've quickly gotten used to. I've never been the clubbing type, and noisy bars aren't really my scene either. So I love the italian habit of mingling outside in Piazza Maggiore, chatting around the fountains and enjoying the warm night air. Last night was pretty chilly, I'd guess around 85 degrees at midnight. The weather is another thing I'm getting used to - I wasn't sure how to deal with it at first, but I've quickly adopted the strategy used by most Italians: the mid-afternoon nap. By sleeping from approximately 2:00-4:00, I miss the hottest part of the afternoon and get extra rest which makes it easier to stay up late in the piazza.

Yeah, these are things that I've learned pretty quickly. There are some things, though, that I don't think I'll ever get used to.

For example, the double-kiss. Sometimes they go left first, sometimes they go right first, sometimes there's just one kiss, sometimes there are two, sometimes there is one and then a break and then the other. I swear, it makes me dizzy and bumping noses with a stranger is definitely one of the more awkward moments that I've experienced. Also, although this has thankfully never happened to me, I've witnesssed many drunken attempts (and failures) at the double-kiss. Not something I'd like to experience.

Another thing, and this is probably the most difficult for me to accept: no tipping. Literally, people just don't tip here. The waiters don't expect it, and most of the time don't appreciate it. Now, anyone who has ever gone out to eat with me knows that I am an exorbitant tipper. Part of this comes from being a waitress, and part of it comes from being a sap. Ha! Anyway, the idea of not leaving anything is just unbearable for me. So far, I haven't been able to do it. We'll be all set to leave, and the bill will be taken care of, and suddenly I find myself throwing an extra euro on the table. I don't even consciously do it, it's like my hand has a mind of its own!

Other than the excessive double-kissing and the complete lack of tipping, I've been getting along fine. I've even found a circle of friends here in Bologna!

While searching for an apartment, my friend Molly and I became friends with a guy named Savio. Savio had a room for rent but when he was explaining the details to me over the phone, I missed the part where he said it won't be available until January. (Language barrier strikes again!) When we met and realized that there had been a misunderstanding, he was really nice about it and ended up inviting me and Molly to a dinner party that he was throwing the next night.

We accepted, of course, and had a great time getting to know Savio, his roommates, and all of their friends. There were about 15 people crammed around his tiny dining room table, and we enjoyed a feast of pasta bolognese, tomatoes, bread, cheese, mortadella, salami, potato chips and popcorn. Yes, potato chips and popcorn. We also had red wine with dinner and margaritas with dessert. Then, several people started samba dancing. By the end of the evening, I wasn't even sure which country I was in.

The next morning, I woke up to realize that the mixture of wine and margaritas had created a not-so-pleasant feeling in my tummy. After discovering that Molly was experiencing a similar unpleasant rumbling, we decided that there was only one cure to our ailment: chow mein.

So, we found a tiny Chinese food restaurant in a smelly back alley of Bologna. It was incredible. Walking into that restaurant was like walking right back into the bay area, a feeling which stuck with us until we read the menu. Wonton soup was called "soup with ravioli". Chow mein? "Spaghetti with mixed vegetables" (and it was actually spaghetti - fried, greasy, delicious spaghetti). The biggest shock, though, was when I eagerly ordered "tau fu in tre varietà", essentially "tofu three ways". Imagine my surprise when the food arrived and I discovered that the "three varieties" of tofu were actually tofu, steak, and chicken! As I mentioned before, I have decided to renounce my vegetarianism in the interest of experiencing the culinary aspect of italian culture. However, I don't think this counts! So I gobbled up one of my three varieties of tofu and enjoyed my spaghetti chow mein, and next time I think I'll order something less misleading - maybe the "tofu that is actually tofu" or the "vegetarian dish with no meat whatsoever." :)

Il Piccolo Principe

2008-09-05T13:43:00.004+01:00

Gather 'round, children... It's storytime!

Once upon a time, I left my cozy northern California home and flew alllll the way to Ireland, to the city of Dublin. My first day in Dublin was a dreadful day indeed. I found myself alone in this dark and dreary city, in the middle of a terrible thunderstorm. My backpack was heavy, but not quite as heavy as my spirits. I was tired and sore, and not a soul in the city knew my name.

I checked into a hostel, thinking that I had found a safe and warm place to rest my weary head, but I was attacked by an army of bedbugs! I tried my best to fight them off, but they outnumbered me 10,000 to one and I was quickly defeated. This left me feeling quite sad, not to mention itchy. I decided that I would retreat into the world of couchsurfing, hoping to find an ally who might come to my rescue in further attacks.

While on a long and dangerous journey through the world of www.couchsurfing.com, I came across the profile of a wise and mysterious mage. This mage, who goes by the name of "PJ" did not offer me a couch, but I discovered a secret message written on his profile: "Everything essential is invisible to the eye."

I couldn't get these beautiful words out of my mind! Who spoke them, what did they mean? Even as I found solace in the home of the beautiful Princess Allison of Dublin, I couldn't forget the words of the wise mage, PJ. So, I sought the advice of the most wise and knowing Oracle in the land... The glorious and all-knowing Google.

Google informed me that the words were written by a saint, Antoine de Saint Exupéry. I knew that I had to read the rest of his words - I just had to. This was too important of a quest to be ignored. Luckily, I found a copy of his story, entitled The Little Prince in the kingdom's local used bookstore. I read it immediately. In the story, the saint tells of a tiny prince who leaves his tiny planet and travels the universe having grand adventures! This magical story renewed my strength and lifted my spirits. With a skip in my step, I left the kingdom of Dublin and continued my journey. My destination: a hostel in Nice, France - the cheapest hostel in the land, costing only a few gold coins a night!

When I arrived (on my steed, of course) at the doorstep, I was shocked to discover the name of the hostel. Hostel de Saint Exupèry. There was a beautiful portrait hanging on the entrance, of none other than Le Petit Prince himself. I was stunned to discover that the saint had walked through those very halls, had written his story within the walls of the hostel. My stay there was filled with adventures, and I befriended many lords and ladies from kingdoms all over the world. I was sad to leave, but knew that I would see my little prince again, though I knew not when not where.

Now, many days have passed. I have been living in the kingdom of Bologna, exploring the many castles and battling evil hair-dragons. I have been on a tiring quest - the quest for an apartment. I was beginning to feel like my quest was futile, that I would never find a place to live. I have seen many rooms and dialed many numbers, but have not found my ideal abode.

Today, I received a call from Silvia, a princess at a nearby castle. She informed me that the lords and ladies of the court are looking for one more person to join them in the castle, in a double room overlooking the piazza. I went to see the room, expecting yet another failure, another disappointment, another wasted quest. The moment the doors opened, though, I was struck by a brilliant ray of light. I knew in an instant that I'd found it. The rooms were huge and filled with light. The kitchen was beautiful and the bathroom was clean! The walls were covered with photos by some of my favorite photographers. The lords and ladies were friendly and funny, and offered me sweets and sparkling water.

I knew that this was the perfect apartment, my ideal home, the perfect place. I closed my eyes and asked for a sign. I asked Google and PJ alike, and when I opened my eyes I was stunned at the poster on the way in front of me. There on the wall, looking down on me with kind eyes and an adventurous smile, was Il Piccolo Principe. My little prince, right here in Bologna! There it was - the sign, il segno.

The princess Silvia promised to send a messenger by next week to let me know if I have been chosen. I left the castle feeling exhilarated, excited about the possibility of living here with my prince.

So, children, the end of our story remains a mystery. Il Piccolo Principe waits for me to join him in my perfect house, but my fate lies in the hands of one princess! Will I join him, or will he smile down on the life of another lucky adventurer? Only time will tell!

Straniera...

2008-09-04T14:05:00.002+01:00

So, I live in Bologna now. I gave someone directions, I sent a letter at the post office, I've had multiple phone conversations in italian and I bought a quart of milk at my local grocery store. Mamma mia, sono italiana!

Well, not quite.

Wherever I go, I still stick out like a sore thumb. Maybe it's my pale skin, freckles, light brown hair, jeans, flip-flops, map or a combination of all the above... but at a glance, any Italian can tell you that I am straniera. Foreigner.

Two days ago, I was walking across the street looking (in my opinion) like I absolutely belonged in Bologna. Groceries and keys in hand, no map visible, shoes that weren't flip-flops... Ah yes, I was the epitome of a Bologna native. I passed a man in the street and gave him a polite smile, and he turned to his friend and said in italian "Lei è straniera." He emphasized it just like that, SHE is a foreigner, as if he were proving a point.

Oh, I just couldn't believe it. I had groceries! I had keys! Yet I was still straniera. As you can imagine, this was quite an emotional blow. I managed to maintain composure though, and with a bruised ego and a heavy heart, I headed to my hair appointment (how can I be straniera if I have a hair appointment?!). As the sylist was cutting my hair, she made some comment about my hair and Madonna (???) which I didn't entirely understand, so I figured that nodding politely would be a safe bet. She laughed and turned to her friend, another stylist, and said in italian something like "these foreigners don't understand anything" to which he replied "it's because they eat too much fish."

...

Too much FISH? TOO MUCH FISH? First of all, I haven't eaten fish in 7 years. Second of all, that statement doesn't even make any sense. THIRD of all, well... it's just rude. He went on to say "they just want to come to Italy and get their exotic haircuts and then go back home to show their friends."

Of course, everyone knows that I'm not the most assertive person in the world, so I just sat there listening to them making fun of me - also, the woman was holding scissors about an inch from my head so it wasn't a particularly good time to get in an argument. When it was finally over, I left feeling defeated, with less hair and less dignity. I needed to clear my head so I decided to go to my favorite spot in the city so far. There's one room in the museum with forests painted on all four walls. Since there's not much nature in Bologna, this room is the greenest place in the city! When I got to the museum, I couldn't get up to the door because there was a show going on in the piazza near the entrance, and a crowd of people was blocking my way. There were huge speakers set up, loud trance music playing, and literally hundreds of people, so I knew it must be something interesting.

I made my way through the crowd to see what was going on, and when I finally got to the front I wasn't even sure what I was witnessing. I guess it could be called "interpretive dance" but I personally think that would be an insult to interpretive dancers everywhere.

There was a man, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, writhing on the ground as if he were in terrible, agonizing pain. He was (more or less) moving along with the music and every once in a while he would freeze in some strange pose or another. He wasn't doing anything difficult, or anything graceful, or... anything at all, really. Yet there were hundreds of people crowded around, looking extremely interested.

This was the last straw. I just didn't get it, and I obviously didn't get it because I was straniera. I thought to myself "How am I going to survive here for a year? I don't speak the language, my hair stylist hates me and apparently writhing on the ground is considered art." I missed home, I missed being a local, I missed people who speak English, I missed trees and I missed dancing that is actually dancing.

I don't know when I started feeling better, but I did. When I got back to my dorm, we all went out to a tiny trattoria for my friend Molly's birthday. The people at the restaurant were amazing, the food was amazing and the wine was especially amazing. The next day, I looked at several really nice apartments and talked to my mom on the phone. I bought comfortable pajamas and found my way across the city without a map, and did yoga in the evening. This place, this incredible city full of adventures and treasures and evil hair stylists which must be defeated at all costs... yes, this place is my home now. I am a pale-skinned, freckled, flip-flop wearing straniera but I'm exactly where I belong.

When actually in Bologna...

2008-09-01T12:47:00.005+01:00

Yeah, I haven't figured out what to do, now that I'm actually here.

I look back on the journey leading up to my arrival in Bologna, and I realize that it never really sunk in that I'd actually get here! I spent so much time preparing, almost a year filling out forms and getting my visa and making travel arrangements, then I was travelling in Ireland and in France, drinking Guinness and swimming in the Mediterranean... then all of a sudden, before I knew it, I was here! I live here, this is home sweet home. I'm still walking around this vast city in a daze, wondering how on earth I'm going to get used to it all.

I have pictures to post, I have stories to tell, but first I have an entrance exam to take (they have to make sure I can actually speak italian before they send me off to the university!)

One quick thing, though: It occurred to me that I don't have many of your e-mail addresses, so personal correspondence is kind of impossible at this point! I'd very much like to send and receive e-mails, so please please please send me an e-mail at kalensmiles@gmail.com letting me know your e-mail address (kalensmiles is also my skype username, for anyone who has it). This way, I'll not only be able to e-mail people personally but I'll be able to compile a mass e-mail list and remind everyone when I post. I'll also send out an e-mail letting everyone know my new address and cell phone number! I'm guessing my posts will be less frequent for a while, because I have a lot to accomplish in the next few weeks before classes begin at Unibo (University of Bologna).

*EDIT* Ok, I completed my entrance exam and it was a piece of cake... un pezzo di torta? Well, anyway, now for the fun part.

For the next three weeks or until I find an apartment, I am staying in a dorm with 9 other American students, all from various universities in California. So far, we're having a great time getting to know eachother and exploring this enormous city which is now our home. So far I've been too overwhelmed to take many photos, but I did manage to snap this one at a local cafe.

That's right, my very first Italian cappuccino. I could definitely see myself getting addicted to these things! The guy who made it thought it was hilarious that I took a picture - he leaned over the counter and whispered "Americana?" Apparently a smiley face cappuccino is nothing special here, but I loved it!

Anyone who knows me knows that I don't like coffee, but this was a damn good cappuccino. I've always wanted to enjoy a cappuccino - I love the smell, I love the foam, I love the way it looks... but normally I can't stand the taste. It's different here, it's so rich and smooth... mmmmmmmm.

If you're surprised by my new affinity for coffee, you will be especially surprised by the fact that I have given up my vegetarianism. My first night in Bologna, all of the American exchange students were treated to a very fancy meal at a famous Bolognese restaurant called Cantina Bentivoglio where I had my first bite of meat in almost 7 years... a delicious house-made mortadella. I also tried prosciutto crudo and a delicious salami - tiny bites of each, of course, to avoid getting sick. My favorite was by far the mortadella, which made me a little homesick for Berkeley and Adagia, where we often served a mortadella sandwich as a lunch special. I'm a little disappointed now that I never tried it!

Other than trying new foods and discovering my love for the cappuccino, I've been busily searching for an apartment. I've seen a few promising places so far - one looks especially nice, with a huge terrace overlooking the city! I'll post pictures when I find the perfect place, casa di Kalen, but it might take a while. Making phone calls about apartments has been difficult - I think I understand and speak italian pretty well in person, but it's a different story over the phone when I can't see the person and they're talking at light-speed.

I discovered my favorite place in Bologna today, Mercato delle erbe, a huge indoor farmer's market with all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables, bread, cheese, fish, meat, etc etc etc. It's open every day, so I'm sure I'll be a regular! I also bought a yoga mat today and am looking forward to morning yoga on the balcony at my dorm. All in all, things are going splendidly but I miss everyone terribly! Please, please write me e-mails. I crave news from home.

Ciao, a presto!

Kalen

Nice is Nice!

2008-08-26T09:44:00.011+01:00

Ok, I'm sure every American who's ever been here has made that joke, but it's true. It's been a busy couple of days, so I have some catching up to do! Let's see, where was I?

I left Dublin on Monday morning after a very relaxing last day there. I did some shopping in the morning and cooked dinner again with Allison (I'll spare you the photos this time but rest assured, it was delicious.) I asked her what she'd do if it were her last night in Dublin, and she said she'd go on a long walk. So, that's what we did. We got gelato in Temple Bar and watched some crazy street performers doing acrobatics and flaming limbo, which was pretty intense/ridiculous. I got a cool video of it, maybe I'll post it later when I have the chance. Anyway, it was nice to just see the city one last time and say goodbye to everything. The gelato didn't suck, either... Oh my goodness, I'm so excited to see how many gelati I'll be able to eat in a year!

When we got back to the flat, Julien and Mattheu managed to suck us into a game of "Rock Band" on their Xbox. With Mattheu on the drums, Julien on guitar and Allison and myself on vocals, we delivered an incredible performance of "Dani California." We stayed up playing the game until midnight, at which point figured I might as well just stay awake until it was time to leave for the airport at 3:00AM. Ack, it seemed like a good idea at the time...

Of course, by the time I arrived in Nice at 11:00AM, I was regretting my earlier decision. I checked into my hostel and groggily spent the day in town and at the beach. The water here is the bluest I've ever seen, it almost doesn't look real. The beach isn't sandy, either - it's made up of millions and millions of smooth rocks and pebbles, most small enough that you can sink into them. There were thousands of people there, but it was still one of the most beautiful beaches I've seen. I was exhausted so I just sat on the rocks taking it all in, and reading a book.

That night I ended up meeting a group of really cool people at the hostel. There was a group of guys from England, two guys from Australia and two girls from Scotland. It was so crazy hearing all of our different versions of the same language - let's just say that I learned some *ahem* interesting new slang, and leave it at that!

I hung out with that group all day yesterday, and we went to Monaco, home of the famous Monte Carlo casino! All in all, I didn't really like the town - it's really expensive, filled with Ferraris and Louis Vuitton. Blech. I'm actually not going to say much else about Monaco but I'll share this cool picture that I took outside of the casino.

Today, today was amazing. I teamed up with another lone traveler - Daniel from Ecuador. First, we made a trip to the Nice fruit and flower market. Oh, it was amazing. Blocks and blocks of fresh fruit, vegetables, olives, cheese, bread, flowers, honey, pastries, mmmmm. I wanted to buy everything, but I settled for peaches, some enormous figs, a baguette, and a tiny little pot of Miel de Lavande, lavender honey. Then we decided to get lost for a little while, exploring the tiny crowded streets of Nice and all of their hidden treasures. There's something about this place - I'm definitely coming back.

We left Nice (with some hesitation) and went to the port town of Villefranche, which I immediately fell in love with.

We spent most of the day on the beach, swimming and soaking up the sun (by soaking up, I mean deflecting with about ten pounds of spf 50) then went to explore the Fort of Mont Alban. I guess Villefranche used to be an important military and naval base pre-18th century. Now, the fort is just a tourist attraction, although we were literally the only two people in there. There was an amazing hidden garden and a lot of really interesting art. It was a really cool place, made even cooler by the fact that it was completely deserted. There was also an outdoor stage - I guess they have concerts there now! Most recently, there was a breath-taking performance of "Crazy American Attempts Ballet."

It got rave reviews... :)

We got back to Nice about an hour before sunset and still had some time to kill before Daniel needed to leave. He's about to return home to Ecuador after studying in Wales for a year - he had a lot of advice to give me and it was really cool to see how excited he is about going home, knowing that I'll feel that way too! Anyway, we spent his last few hours here at the beach in Nice (the pebbly one) and swam in the perfect blue water. It was so beautiful, I was really tempted to extend my stay here. I think I could have stayed on that beach forever.

I've been feeling a little bit guilty being in a country where I don't speak the language at all. After my adventures today, though, I'm determined to come back here to live for a while. I find myself speaking combining the 10 words of french that I know into ridiculous sentences, just because I love the way the words roll off my tongue. "Merci, bonjour, je suis le baguette s'il vous plait, je ne sais pas et je ne sais qua? Soixante euro et bonsoir madmoiselle!!" I can't wait until I can actually speak french. It's ridiculous, I'm a hopeless language fanatic. I guess it's a good thing I'm a linguistics major and world traveler!

Bonsoir!

Temple Bar bar

2008-08-23T23:54:00.008+01:00

I returned to Allison's flat in Dublin last night after my Galway adventures came to a close. She took me out for a night on the town in the neighborhood called Temple Bar, which I mentioned in my previous post. If anyone back home isn't sure whether or not the drunken Irish stereotypes are true, let me assure you: in this neighborhood, they are. The streets were crowded with groups of drunk people singing traditional drinking songs and less traditional drinking songs, i.e. Oasis' "Wonderwall."

Oasis is big here. Really, really big. Almost scary big.

*Allison, Italian friend Edoardo, Irish friend Dara, and me in front of Temple Bar bar in Temple Bar neighborhood. Yeah, people actually say "Temple Bar bar." Allison and I were sober - Edoardo and Dara were definitely not. I have a great video of them singing a very drunken duet (Oasis, of course).

This morning, we went to Dun Laoghaire ("Dun Leery"), which is a town not too far from Dublin. The "Festival of World Cultures" is going on there this weekend, which turned out to be really awesome. The highlight for me was a bagpipe group which played alongside a rambunctious Spanish percussion group and an Irish punk band. The result was a musical blend unlike anything I'd ever heard before. I really don't know how to describe it!

The worst (and by worst I mean most traumatizing) part of the festival was an event in People's Park. It was a kid's event, and a giant man on stilts and his tiny ghoulish comrade practically assaulted me, screeching and grabbing at my sweater like a couple of screeching, sweater-grabbing demons. I cried out "I don't like you at ALL!" and they continued their attack shouting "why you no like, why you no like" until I managed to escape. I took this photo of the giant later, without getting too close. I don't know why they think small children would enjoy that kind of terror.

I guess he doesn't look too bad here, but remember that he was screeching. Absolutely terrifying. Also, I may have been a little jittery... Irish tea is apparently quite caffeinated - something I didn't realize until I had finished an entire pot.

Since it was pouring rain, we returned to Dublin before the festival ended. We decided to cook dinner, which turned out to be the best meal I've had since arriving in Ireland. Vegetables with curry and rice. Mmmm. I literally haven't eaten a single vegetable since arriving here, (unless you count potato?) so my poor tummy was begging for some rabbit food. There isn't a lot of produce on most restaurant menus here. In fact, there's no produce on most restaurant menus.

Oh, which reminds me. Mini rant time: all of the produce in Irish grocery stores is individually wrapped. Plastic-wrapped tomatoes on styrofoam trays, plastic-wrapped zucchini. Each eggplant comes in its own individual plastic bag. I can't believe the amount of waste that this creates! The grocery stores encourage the use of reusable bags, but wrap each eggplant in loads of plastic. I can't believe it. Also, there are no recycling bins which actually caused me physical pain. Berkeley should teach Ireland a thing or two about being eco-friendly!

Rant over, back to the point: the meal. Words can't do it justice, but how about this:

Can you taste the curry goodness? I didn't realize how much I missed my veggies until the post-meal food coma ensued. What a beautiful feeling.

Galway Hooker

2008-08-22T16:42:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, I took a train all the way across Ireland! It took 2 hours! Ha, I arrived in Galway in the afternoon, a smallish town on the west coast of Ireland. I can't post pictures from this computer but they'll come eventually. Galway is really beautiful, right on the Atlantic Ocean. When I first arrived, I was pretty tired so I dropped off my things at a hostel and went for a walk through the town. The main street was filled with cool sights - street musicians, people selling art and jewelry, shops and pubs. So many pubs (I'm thinking that most of the streets in Ireland are pub-filled)! I came to a river which was crowded with people, all drinking, eating, playing music - just having a good time. I was taking pictures of the scene when an older gentleman named Daithi (Gaelic equivalent of David) offered to take a picture with me in it. David, a Galway local, was showing his friend Lee around, who was visiting him from England. I joined the two of them for a walk down the coast - it was absolutely beautiful. They joked that I must have brought the sun with me from California! I guess it's been raining so much this summer that there have been flash floods all over Ireland.

After I parted ways with David and Lee, I went back to the hostel to eat dinner and tried to mingle. For some reason though, my fellow hostellers weren't interested in mingling. Maybe I had something in my teeth. Finally I managed to strike up a conversation with an American named Kane, who has spent practically his entire life traveling the world. He's been all over Europe, is currently living in Ireland and will soon be going to college in Australia. He's traveled so much, in fact, that he has this crazy pseudo-Irish/Australian accent. Since he's lived here for quite a while, he showed me around to his favorite pubs, told me which beers to get (I highly recommend the Galway Hooker) and told me one of his favorite games to play while traveling - getting drunk tourists to believe outlandish stories. By the end of the night, most of Galway's tourist population knew us as Kalen and Kane, siamese twins from Arkansas. We were joined at the shoulder at birth, but are finally enjoying our independence from one another after a very extensive surgery. Ha! Needless to say, it was a very fun night.

Today, however, things got a little tricky. I had been planning to go to the Aran Islands, which are known for being incredibly beautiful. There are ruins and cathedrals and all that - I figured it would be a great photo op. Unfortunately, the only option for visiting the islands required returning to Galway at 7PM, and I had already booked a train ticket at 6PM. I decided to roll with the punches, and caught a bus heading toward the Cliffs of Moher instead (huge cliffs towering 277 meters over the ocean). Here's where the going got tough. Or, more accurately, the going got nauseating.

First of all, the bus driver was a lunatic. Second, we were driving down narrow, bumpy, winding roads through the hills of the Irish countryside. Third, the speed limit on these narrow, bumpy, winding roads through the hills of the Irish countryside was 100 km/hr. Now, maybe something gets lost in the conversion there, but I'm pretty sure that's just a ridiculous speed for roads like these. Oh, and did I mention the round-a-bouts? Irish people love their round-a-bouts! This trip was like tilt-o-whirl meets roller coaster meets tumble cycle on my dryer. Anyone who knows me knows that most the kiddie rides at the fair will make me puke, so they'll understand that I couldn't deal with this situation. It was awful. Ok, granted, the couple of pints of I drank last night definitely weren't helping the situation.

I thought it would be really cool to vomit off the Cliffs of Moher, so I really tried to make it through the insanity of the ride. I ended up feeling too nauseous to continue, though, and decided to get off the bus in a town called Burren to take a breather and wait for the next bus, which was scheduled to arrive an hour later. What I didn't know is that apparently "schedule" is a very loose term here. I waited for three hours, but the bus never came. It was actually fun- the weather was beautiful and I met a bunch of really interesting people at the bus stop. I met one man who drives a bank! There are all these tiny little towns that don't have banks, so he drives a mobile bank from town to town. He also has relatives all over the world, in the U.S., in France, England, South America; he even has a nephew who's a general in the army of India!

Anyway, just when I was on the verge of almost not enjoying myself any more (due to the worries about missing my train), I saw a group of french students around my age that I recognized from my hostel! We started talking and they told me that they'd just come from the Cliffs. When I told them I wouldn't be able to make it, they gave me a souvenir keychain that they'd bought there! They ended up giving me a ride back to the hostel, with plenty of time to spare before my train leaves. (Just enough time to write this entry, isn't that perfect?)

So I didn't really get to see anything that I planned on seeing, and I didn't get to puke off of 277 meter high cliffs (that's honestly what I'm most disappointed about, haha) but I had a lot of great conversations and got to be a siamese twin for a night. Totally worth the trip.

Don't let the bedbugs bite!

2008-08-21T11:19:00.001+01:00

Ha! To all those who doubted me, I'd like to say "I told you so!" Hehe, everything is working out perfectly here. Allison (the aforementioned friend I'm staying with) is fantastic, she took me around the city yesterday and bought me my first pint of Guinness. Her flat is gorgeous, with amazing views of Dublin from all sides and an awesome rooftop patio area. Her roommates Julien and Mattheu are awesome too. I'm parting ways with them for the next few days, to travel over to the west coast of Ireland but hopefully we'll meet up again this weekend.

Before meeting up with her, I took a day trip to a nearby town called Howth. I was planning on doing all that other stuff I mentioned, but I made a last minute change of plans. (I think from now on I'll only write about stuff after I do it, considering I have a tendency to change my mind.)

Back to the point - Howth is a tiny little fishing town at the end of the DART line (Dublin Area Rapid Transit! I kept accidentely calling it "BART" which resulted in lots of funny looks....) Haha, I spent the morning walking around the piers, laughing at the cooky sea lions while enjoying the smell of the salty air and the sight of the fishing boats (and of course the crazy irishmen driving them).

I stumbled into a small cafe which turned out to be owned by two italian guys, and frequented by dozens of italian regulars. They all thought I was pretty cool - an American girl, traveling alone in Ireland, speaking Italian. Anyway, I stayed there for several hours and made a lot of friends. They bought me lunch and a glass of wine, and gave me tons of advice about what to do/see/eat once I arrive in Italy. I felt really comfortable talking with everyone, which makes me feel less nervous about the next year.

One particularly crazy old italian man named Daniele offered to give me a ride back to Dublin in his unmarked white van and didn't seem to understand why I thought that was a bad idea. He finally gave in and settled for walking me back to the DART station, haha. Crazy italians. I'm sure he was nice enough but if he didn't kill me, my mom would for accepting a ride from him, so I decided to play it safe!

Oh, the craziest part of my trip so far, not to mention the grossest: I stayed in the cheapest hostel I could find on my first night in Dublin, and it wasn't exactly a picture of cleanliness. The next day I had all these little bug bites all over my feet and legs, and I couldn't figure out for the life of me how I'd gotten them, since I was under the covers. I figured they were just mosquito bites (but smaller and itchier) until Allison informed me that she knows several people who have been attacked by bedbugs in Dublin hostels.

Bedbugs. I didn't even think they existed! Warn your children! It's not just a myth!

Anyway, I bought some anti-itch cream and I'll be sleeping in my sleeping bag from now on. Lesson learned.

When in Dublin

2008-08-20T09:19:00.000+01:00

First things first: this is my blog! Welcome, please show yourselves around, get comfortable and what not.

So, I'm not in Bologna. Is it considered cheating to write a "when in Bologna" blog when not in Bologna? I hope not... I'm actually in Dublin, which to the great surprise of my sister, is the capital of Ireland. (Actual email excerpt: "Why does everyone in Dublin speak in an Irish accent? I thought you were in Italy!") Hehe, sorry Ave.

I spent yesterday wandering around in a daze, not really knowing where I was most of the time. (Jet-lag will do that to a girl...) I saw Trinity College and Library, lots of monuments and bridges, and a cool bohemian neighborhood called Temple Bar. Temple Bar is probably my favorite part of the city so far, probably because it reminds me a little of Berkeley. It was pretty cool, filled with hippie shops and thrift stores and what I consider to be an excessive amount of tattoo parlors, not to mention dozens of coffee shops and cafes.

A small miracle: yesterday I received an e-mail from a friend of a friend, who'd seen on Facebook that I'd arrived in Dublin. She said that she recently moved here, and that I'm welcome to stay at her flat for a couple of days. I'm meeting up with her this afternoon, and will stay with her and her roommates until I decide to leave Dublin for another town. I can't imagine staying here too much longer though, it's not really my kind of scene. While I can appreciate the bustling city atmosphere, the double-decker busses, the millions of tourists and the all-around craziness, I'm finding myself completely overwhelmed by it all and am excited to see the more rural parts of Ireland where the pace is a little slower.

Today I'm headed to the outskirts of the city, first to check out a cool lighthouse that I read about, then (time-permitting) a historic cemetary and the botanical gardens. Pictures to follow. Yesterday I took exactly one photo, and that was of the fruit stand where I bought lunch. I guess I didn't have much energy for picture-taking, and I was really hungry, which made the fruit stand the most exciting thing I'd seen all day. I'd post the picture, but I'm sure you can all imagine what a fruit stand looks like!

Ah! Well, it's about time to check out of my hostel, so I'll finish up for today. So far though, I'm alive and happy, and (almost) over my jet-lag already! I was wide awake at 5AM this morning, but I'm feeling awake and refreshed now, and ready to go exploring.

I love and miss you all!

Kalen