Fourteen

You have no idea how much it hurts me to have to write that in english.

So, I'm home. It's weird. It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be though, honestly. I mean, yeah, Italy is 1000 times better, but so far, I'm alright. And truthfully, I think my trip from hell home has a lot to do with me being able to adjust better. Not only did I pretty much cry myself out (seriously, I couldn't cry now if I wanted to) but after that mess, home wasn't so bad.

But first, lets adress the last moments of Roman glory. I discovered that standing on the porch and watching Italians going in and out of the gym below our building was one of my favorite things to do...so I did a lot of that the last couple of days. They are so funny! They drive up on their scooters (which are the best modes of transportation and I will be purchasing one as soon as I have some money), all decked out in their fabulous euro fashion. They lock up the scooter, go inside and spin (aka bike) for hours. I usually didn't see the same people come out, but they would come out fully dressed, only walking a little slower and chugging water. But then, they would stop chugging long enough to smoke a cigarette, make out, send a text message or do all three at the same time. It was so fabulous to watch. I got caught a couple of times, but I would just smile and wave. Oh, and then they would put back on their winter coat, even though it was about 80 degrees outside, possibly put on a scarf and then ride off on their scooters again.

Wednesday, Alison and I had our last visit to the soup kitchen. Nothing too exciting happened, other than our photo shoot with our favorite people. I am so so glad I was able to volunteer there. I felt like I got to see a real side of Rome, along with being able to meet some really cool people. All the other volunteers were so nice and I got to make real Italian friends. I mean, I met other random people along with way, but I can honestly say they were my friends. And, I'm not afraid of homeless people anymore. Good times at Ostello.

I also did a lot of last minute shopping and wandering the last couple of days. I bought most of my souvenirs that I needed to, and one bad ass pair of tennis shoes. I ate a lot of fabulous food (which would be any Italian food) and said ciao to the metro (which I was not sad about). Thursday night #51 had their last supper at the same restraunt where we had our first meal together in Rome. This time, I was showered, not feeling sick and actually knew what the menu said. It was a nice, looong meal and was fabulous, even though I got the wrong dessert. After dinner, my roommate and I headed over to a friends apartment to help celebrate her 21st. After much debate on where to go out, it was decided that it was too late to actually go anywhere, so four of us decided to get a late night snack and head to St. Peters. You can't actually go in the square at night, but we just sat in the street and enjoyed the view. UNTIL....my roommate swears she sees a sniper between the statue of Jesus and St. Peter (maybe, I don't know who the statues were actually of) and another friend decides to go ask the Polizia on duty what the black thing actually was. They didn't know, so they decided to shine their lights on and called for back up (meaning, the other polizia sitting on the other side of the square). No one knew what it was, so we just forgot about it and talked to the polizia about random nonsense. We tried to convince them we were nuns, but we couldn't fool them. However, one of them (the younger of the three) is like, you want to come in? Take photo at night? Yes, come in. SO-we got to go in ST. PETERS SQUARE at 2 in the morning...and have a photo shoot. It was amazing. It was seriously one of the coolest things I have done in Rome and definately an appropriate way to end the coolest semester of my life. And the polizia were soo nice. They offered to take our pictures all over the square and were concerned if they turend out blurry or anything. And they weren't skeezy at all! They didn't try to hit on us or anything sketch..I think they were just really bored. But it was fine with us, it was so soo cool.

Friday was the very last day, so I did some more wandering and had dinner at a friends apartment. At about one that night, a big group of us went for our last Old Bridge gelato. I went for the big due conna which meant I got A LOT of really amazing gelato/heaven on a cone. If I'm going to miss anything about Italy, I am going to miss Old Bridge. People that have tasted it know what I'm talking about. People that haven't tasted it, haven't lived. Anyways, since we had to leave for the airport at 4:30, we all just stayed up, packed and cleaned. The taxi came a good 25 minutes early, so we arrived at the airport around 5, before the desk was actually open. And then the saga of hell started. Since I don't really want to relive anything, I'll give you the abbreviated version, outlining how something went wrong every step of the way:
1. I had to switch flights, from the 11:55 to the 8:15 because I wouldn't get into JFK in time to catch my 7:00 flight home. All the arrangments had already been made, and I was told I only needed my confirmation number to be reissued a ticket. Turns out, I needed my old paper ticket, which I didn't have, so I couldn't get on the 8:15. Marco, the extremely nice man at the British Airways ticket counter in Rome worked some magic and pulled some strings to get me on the 11:55 flight, no thanks to the bitch at Gulliver Travel in the states, who yelled at me for losing my ticket and for bothering her so late at night.
2. I had about a 30 minute layover in London, so I didn't get to eat, or spend the last of my pounds and euros. And it was mainly coins, so I couldn't change it into US money.
3. I miss my flight in JFK because of a series of unfortunate circumstances involving a delayed take off and a snapped tow line. The customs man in New York said I would be fine and could easily make my 7:00 flight, even though it was 6:30 and I hadn't even gotten my luggage back. He lied. I missed it and got put on the next available flight, which was 6:15 the next morning.
4. I go to a hotel to check in. My card is denied because of insufficient funds. WHAT??? The day I left Rome, my online bank statement said I had $400. Turns out, purchases I had made 3 weeks prior were just now going through. So, I had been spending, thinking I had $400, when really I had $60. Through the miracle of fax, the room gets paid for and I get to sleep for 4 hours. Back to the airport at 4 am.
5. I somehow end up in baggage claim instead of gate 12, and have to through secruity twice, but I get on the first flight without major problems.
6. My connecting flight to Columia out of Washington/Dulles is delayed 2 1/2 hours. From a missing first captain, to maintence problems, I think I have covered just about every possible airport crisis.

Finally, I get to Columbia, where a lovely thunderstorm is there to welcome me home. But whatever, I got to eat, shower, and sleep so I was happy. And since you can add a good hour or so of intense crying to each of those steps, I was pretty much out of tears by this point. So I was actually happy to be home, instead of being miserable like I thought I was going to be. Don't get my wrong, I still really really miss Roma, but even Columbia is better than 40 hours of travel.

Anyways, I don't even know how to begin to conclude the best 4 months of my life, so I'm not even going to try. I will be returning someday. And a little piece of Italy comes in the form of Davide in August, so I'll be able to keep my amazing Italian skills fresh, haha. Sooo....ciao ciao :)

Tredici

You are on your own now...you can do it. Refer back to #3 and #10, and put the two together if you are having trouble.

So, wow, I leave Italy in 4 days. I can't believe it. However, it makes me very depressed to think about/discuss, so we are going to move right along.

A lot has happened since the great French adventure, but I have been super busy with this and that, so its been awhile since I updated. And right now, I currently need to clean the apartment, pack, and study, so I am going to just give a brief(ish) overview.

Katrina came to visit me in Rome the weekend after I was in France. We had soo much fun! We did all the touristy stuff...walked around, saw the Colosseum, Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain, all the Roman highlights. Being a tourist is tiring! But it was still a lot of fun and I was really really glad she got to come visit.

I took my Italian final last week, and it was ridiculously easy. Almost embarassingly easy. But oh well, its over and done and hopefully I did fine. I don't think my other exams are going to be that easy..but we'll see.

So..the highlight of the past couple of weeks...I got to visit Davide! No, Davide is not my Italian lover, he is the kid that is going to live with my family for the next school year. He is like Sven, only Italian! His family lives in Rovigo, which is 3 hours north (by train) of Rome. He had gotten in touch with Ray, who gave him my email and phone number, and one night he called me. I was pretty pumped about the phone call alone, but then he invited me to come and stay with his family for the night...which of course I agreed to. So I took the train up to Rovigo last Saturday afternoon and spent the night. It was soooo cool and so much fun. I am so so glad I got to do that, it was definately one of the coolest things I have gotten to do this entire Italian experience. His family was so so nice to me, even though we had some serious communication issues. Davide could speak english pretty well, about how I can speak Italian, so we did alright. But his family didn't really speak english at all...so it was a struggle. But they spoke to me really slowly and we always had a dictionary handy, so it worked out fine. And Davide is really cool and nice and I am really excited about him coming in August. He is 17, sings in a band, is a soccer ref, loves Jim Carrey, and likes to break dance. He is also really goofy, so I'm sure he and JC are going to get along very well. We had a big dinner when I got there...it was so Italian, I loved it. We ate at like, 9:30 and had the 3 courses, wine with dinner, cheese afterwards, everything. It was fabulous. I met the whole family, grandma, cousins, sister, nieces, in-laws, uncles, everyone. And everyone would say the one or two phrases they knew in english, which was usually "I don't speak english well," or ask if I had been to New York. And his sister has the cutest little girl and she gave me a little euro-kiss goodnight, it was so cute! Anyways, we went out on the town, walked around, and I met a bunch of his friends, more cousins, and his girlfriend. Then we came home and he let me drive his scooter. But, I ran it into the wall because I forgot that you had to let go of the gas and press the brake at the same time. I was going really slow, so it didn't cause any damage, but he drove after that. So I got a midnight scooter ride, which was awesome. Sunday, his dad, brother, cousin, and I watched Davide ref a soccer game. He was very professional and apparently the president of the ref association thinks he has a promising future in ref-ing, I was so proud. His dad was sooo funny. He would just talk and talk in Italian and I would only understand like, every other sentence, but he just kept talking. He gave me a driving tour of the town. I saw the famous church, Davide's school, the university, the river, the old towers, everything. I definately was making the most out of my Italian dictionary, haha. We had another huge, delicious lunch, and then we watched some Jim Carrey skits and played video games. It was, of course, a soccer game, and I was pretty terrible. I kept dribbling the ball out of bounds and trying to shoot on my own goal. But I didn't lose! His cousin, who I was playing with, took about 50 shots to my 3, but he didn't score! And, then, one of the highlights of my life, I got to DRIVE the scooter! I was much better this time, I promise. I remembered how to break properly and I didn't run into anything or anyone. We drove all through town, on real streets and everything. It was FREEZING, but awesome. They invited me to stay another night, but sadly, I had to get back to Rome to study and I didn't have any more clothes. So, Davide and his parents came to the train station to see me off...it was so nice! They were standing on the platform waving and blowing kisses. I was really sad to say goodbye, but I'll get to see Davide in August, so it'll be good. ooh, it was such good times, this blog does not even do it justice.

Anyways, in other news...yesterday was Italian labor day, so everyone had off work and school. And there was this HUGE music festival at San Giovanni (a very large church) and we went and it was craaazzzzzy. There were sooo many people. It was a lot of fun though. And I thought it was pretty funny because they have this huge stage, with everyone rocking out and then the huge crowd, with people crowd-surfing, drinking, dancing and who knows what else, and its all in front of this huge church with all these huge statues of saints and popes watching. We couldn't get very far into the crowd, so we danced on the outskirts, it was fun. Then we finally made it to Trastevere for some food and we were all dead tired, so we came home and watched Wedding Crashers.

Ok, well it is definatley time to study now. More to come as my trip wraps up [tear]. Ciao ciao!