don't quite understand the meaning of 'when in rome'

Back in the 50125 for my last two semesters. Had such an amazing Christmas break, blogging could not begin to do it justice. I know I have slacked over the past few months, but most of that is due to mild/acute depressive moods, too much vino rosso (these are most likely related) and being back in the States, but seeing as I have 5 months remaining in Italy, I will do my best to keep anyone and everyone who reads this abreast of my graduate school experiences. So, I'll start from where I am now.

Just went to Rome for a "day-trip" with my program on Wednesday. The reason I used quotation marks here is only to inform those who read this that Rome is not somewhere to do a day-trip. It is a city and a big one at that. Unfortunately I did not have the option and since we are traveling on the program's money and time, aka indirectly my money and time, we were forced to partake in a day with 6+ hours of meetings and 2 hours of free time, split between lunch and dinner.

Even with this terrible inconvenience, I did get to explore the city a little and see the most touristy of tourist sights. May I add that this was all done in my now aptly named 'Mad Men' suit (The same suit ensemble I wore to Brett's wedding and to this day have yet to wash). Even with this day-long experience, I am not sure how I am supposed to act 'when in Rome,' except to be rude, non-Italian and take pictures of anything that moves, does not move or looks remotely ancient. Which you may have guessed, is everything.


Here is me with the Coliseum and an Asian man on a bike.

Today I spent all of my time putting together a recently purchased IKEA bookshelf and cleaning my room/doing laundry. No matter how much school work or concrete productivity I can squeeze into a day, I will never feel as accomplished as I do after a day of cleaning and organizing (which usually has to occur once a week due to my ability to create an entirely new mess in the period of a day or less).

I can finally say with minimal conviction that after my 5th month in Florence, I finally feel comfortable with my house mates and living quarters. It is not home and will most likely never be, but comfortable as what I was aiming for and what seems to have been achieved as of late. This may be due to the stockpile of American food stuffs in my pantry, piles of leftover Christmas candy in my room and my latest trip to IKEA to purchase homey items (seeing as all IKEAs are the same, the one outside of Florence seems like a mini-trip to the US, even though they are all Swedish...), but I am comfortable nonetheless.

Currently, my favorite things in life are as follows:

my 2010 squirrel calendar, the memory of tito's handmade vodka, reading for pleasure rather than reading for class, fastpasstv.com, my new Skype phone # (757-238-5869 ahem.. call me), chicagopoly, my really easy to make alfredo pasta sauce, spending money and my new bookshelf.


(squirrel calendar)

My bad. This was a long post, but if you made it through the entire thing congrats, you get a gold star in my book (I do not have gold star stickers or a book to put them in, but luckily most lies do not make me feel much guilt).

Brain Tumors and Fiber

So I read recently that cell phones have officially been linked to brain tumors. One of the only reasons all of us in this program are currently glad to be cut off from technology. The computer is all we have. It really isn't that bad, but I miss laying in my bed all day every Sunday and watching whatever trash chick-flick is on TBS. I think someone is sending me Kraft FF Zesty Italian Dressing this week, so my nerves should be calmed.

One interesting fact, fiber supply is slim pickings over here, so I supplement my diet every day with "Kellogg's Nice Morning." Although I think the motto should be altered to, "Nice Morning, Horrible Afternoon." But it gets the job done.

I cannot WAIT for the month of December to get here! I get to return to the land of FREEDOM for a month and while enjoying the wonderful conveniences of Target, Starbucks and WaWa, I also get to travel to NYC, DC and TX to see all the cats I've missed. Oh and only the single most amazing event ever on January 8th, which is Brett and Baker's wedding in the 757. Wedded bless coupled with a tasteful open bar. CAN'T WAIT.

Oh also, I lock my bedroom door whenever the maid is around the palazzo. Everyone judges me for this. I think I am being logical.

Little Post-Communist Tour

Below are a few pics from fall break where a few of us went to Prague, Budapest and Bratislava. It was tight. I will spare you the tedious details, but basically Prague will probably always be my favorite city, Budapest is always beautiful and Bratislava.. well.. it was very Slovakian; or maybe not, almost seemed like a mini-easten block Disney World, but no rides and no crowds.

Since I've been to Prague and Budapest before I did all my favorite things again [aka 5 story clubs, thermal baths, meat and potatoes, Pilsner Urquell, all the good stuff] and some new stuff, but in short, it was awesome to be out of Italy and back to the part of Europe I love the most. And best of all, cheap as hell. If you wanna hear more you're going to have to ask.

Bratislava, Slovakia:

Budapest, Hungary:

Prague, Czech Republic:

A Random Assortment

Things in Italy I miss more than value menus or diet coke:

Cinque Terre Weekend

Soooo this weekend was full of incredibly fun activities, and needless to say, after the past two weeks that I have had, incredibly fun activities were desperately necessary for my life.

Thursday Night: I learned how to say "I don't associate with people like you" in Italian while walking/stumbling the streets of Florence at 3am. I am assuming you can guess my state by this description, but if I remember correctly, it is "Non vado con persone come te." That may be correct, it may not, but the important thing is that I learned this to shoo away the homeless people selling roses.

Friday: I am pretty sure I never left the palazzo. Maybe I did?

Saturday: I went hiking with Krisztina and Stephanie in Cinque Terre finally, and my God was it amazing. I would put it and hiking Old Rag as a 10 on the 1-10 life experience scale, but I would like to argue that this hike was maybe more beautiful. Okay.. it was far more beautiful. I would tell you about the hike but that is boring. If you want more info visit their wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinque_terre It basically involves hiking a seaside trail inbetween 5 fishing towns on the northwest coast of Italy.

Here is the rundown of the day, if you would like to suffer through it:

I roll out of bed at 4:30am in an extreme delusion about what time it is or where I am and then proceed to prepare myself and even shave. We then walk about 20 minutes in the pitch black of night to the train station where we board a train to La Spezia, Italy (the closest town to Cinque Terre).

After having an angry British man yell at us about where the train is going, at 7am a strange phenomena occurs; the entire train (which is more like a bus in the form of train) FILLS with young high schoolers. Reminder: this is a Saturday. Does Italy have school on Saturday? and why are all of these acne ridden, socially awkward children getting on a train to this strange weekend school? Dear Europe, I will never fully understand you.

After carefully observing a.k.a. blatantly staring at these children fight and make jokes (none of which I understand) I see one plump boy with gravity defying spiked hair, tell some story about another student sticking his hand in his pants and smelling the odor of his nasty bits. (I understood from his hand motions) Thankfully they all swiftly departed at the next station.

We finally arrive at the station in La Spezia, where we await our next train to Cinque Terre. Here is what happens: I avoid making friends with a solo American backpacker (he is clearly solo for a reason), I am greeted by the wonderful golden arches of McD's, but resist, I eat a packed turkey sandwich and semi-bbq chips for breakfast, I observe that an elderly, mildly-overweight lady is wearing a verrrrry see-thru shirt and platform heels, I apologize, but I did not take a picture, the scar that is left in my mind is enough.

When we finally get hiking, we see another elderly lady FACEPLANT into the trail/sidewalk. She is fine, but I hope she got back to her pensioner cruise in one piece. The rest of the hike is of course sheer beauty and enjoyment. I will spare you the rainbows and butterflies.

The train home is mostly sleep and random stops, but we are rudely awoken by a middle-aged Italian man yelling at the train attendant who is checking tickets. I still do not fully understand the entire situation, nor will i ever, but here is what went down: The angry Italian, obviously drunk, blocked in the train attendant and was trying to be overly nice, but at the same time managed to aggressively back him into a corner (I was entertained by said event until I noticed the look of terror on the attendant's face). After the drunk man did not achieve what he wanted and the attendant walked away, he proceeded to rip the curtain off of the window, pull a huge slab of meat?! out of his bag and wrap it in the curtain.

I will let you interpret this for yourself, but I am thinking he has murdered someone or something worse. At this point, he and his friend? partner? (a small foreign man with a rat tail) lit up and began smoking in the cabin. Not allowed. He proceeds to harass the hippie American next to us, who had earlier emphasized how much she loved hugging people, all people, and we hurriedly left the train cabin and escaped to another. I will never know what that slab of meat was, and I will never want to.

It was an eventful day, to say the least. The foccacia was unbelievable and the platter of octopus I ate was um, bearable. The Mediterranean air smelled amazing and the water was crystal clear blue, hence the "Azure Coast." Here are a few pics: