dylan the douchebag and other stories: part one.

since i last wrote, a lot has happened, namely that my program ended, i turned 21, missed one flight and was shut out of 5 more, and ended up in paris. some good, some not some not so much. but before i detail the actually ridiculous events of my 21st, where i ended up on a milan catwalk with two male models and a giant cobra on my shoulders, then drank champagne with christiano ronaldo, and then got an exclusive invite to george clooney's house in lake como, i must return way, way back, to the time where dylan the douchebag existed.

dylan the douchebag went to guifa, a bar near my house, the night of may 7th. it was clearly fate that i did too, as did four of my friends. the occasion: to celebrate both my 21st and the fact that our apartment was broken into. yes, we lauded those italian douchelords who took our stuff while we were sleeping with such intensity that i was drunk with happiness about cameras and wallets and computers being snatched long before i was drunk with rum and pears.

(really i was very angry about the stuff. duh. but anyway...)

dylan the douchebag was one of the only americans i ever met in siracusa. the others were two old couples from new york city who chose a table literally an inch from my shoulder blade at this restaurant i was at, and then proceeded to talk loudly about how my three friends and i were "four fearless females, away from the chains that males and parents set forth in society, and also what does pizza mean in italian?" after those four, i was certain that any other american i met could impress me simply by having even the most basic of social skillz.

dylan the douchebag did not. i was introduced to dylan the douchebag by my friend after he told her he was from columbus, ohio. since this is relatively close to wooster, i was immediately called upon to enter into the obligatory "where are you from" conversation full of more midwestern sap than a maple tree (do they grow maples in the midwest? dunno). it turns out that d-squared knows people who went to st. vincent high school in akron, where two of my close friends from school went to high school. COOL! a connection! i thought, dylan is not so bad.

then, he was still just dylan. however, his behavior in the immediate seconds (not minutes, people, but SECONDS) earned him the moniker that (i hoped) would haunt him for a lifetime (if one had 0.001 percent perception of people around one, they would give him this same label).
i said, "i go to school in ohio."
dylan the almost douchebag (i should mention he was wearing a white shirt with the collar popped. hence the almost): "really? that is T-I-T-S."
(disclaimer: i usually giggle when someone refers to something as "the tits". as in, this is not the bomb, but the tits. i mean, it can't be overused, and it certainly cannot be used in all situations. but i've been known to respond positively. however, dylan the definite douchebag had SPELLED the word "tits". this was a step no mortal had taken before. in fact, when he threw that down, it took me a second to register what he had said. what must have looked like my lack of spelling ability to him was in fact my lack of understanding that someone like this actually existed. and that someone like this, in all his popped-collar, tit-spelling glory, was from the state i like to call my home. so.)
me: (pause, like ARE YOU SERIOUS?)
dylan the incredibly evident douchebag: you can spell, right? HAHA! here, cheers with me!
i "cheersed" with him, wincing. then he said,
"why are you here?"
me: "it's my 21st birthday."
dylan the extraordinary douchebag: "HEH. it's like...cool man. it's like, cool, you can already drink here for three years, so like..yeah man, cool..."
me: (pondering...i think he was trying to attest to the fact that alcohol consumption is legal in italy when one turns 18. i mean, i think. this guy had the concentration of a toddler on speed. serious.)
when i didn't say anything, he said:
"let me take a picture of you and your friends!"
i thought this would be okay. lizzy handed him her camera.
he took the picture.
a second after he took the picture, literally a second, i heard him mumble something to his friend, who obediently stepped between us and the camera. i saw a flash, i thought, "this can't be..."
but it was.
dylan the actually incredibly creepy douchebag had taken the liberty of thrusting the camera down the front of his pants and displaying the extent of his douchebaggery to the general (and unwilling, i might add) public. thanks dylan! i always wanted a reminder of my 21st, and i think this is the picture that just really clenches it.
while we were busy trying to avoid being sought out and potentially molested by dylan the possible-sexual-offender douchebag, he put his arm around lizzy and demanded that she kiss his cheek while he took a picture of them, MySpace style, because dylan the douchebag, as most douchebags do, clearly has a MySpace. when lizzy refused, he began a wonderful little chant: "this girl sucks! this girl sucks!"
dylan the obnoxiously deafening douchebag was now desperate. of course nobody at the bar caught onto his chant. what was this, a fucking red sox game? dylan the disgrunted douchebag looked around suddenly as if the extent of his douchebaggery had suddenly hit him like a fist in the forehead (my fist? proverbially...) the only thing dylan the douchebag could think of to do next was to return to the bar and order another gin and tonic or whatever 25-year-old fake-tanned male douchebags drink. we left to go sit outside. and that was the end of dylan the douchebag.

stay tuned for "dylan the douchebag and other stories: part two: 21 actual things i did on my 21st birthday" (and the models were unfortunately all a lie).

running scared

on saturday, my volcanology class hiked mt. etna. it was about two hours straight up, but it was fine--luckily i've been doing an hour of calisthenics every morning, plus running 10 miles every other day.
wait, all of that is a lie.
the truth is, my running "career" has..how shall we put this..skidded out a bit. i mean, i'm still trying: every day i walk five minutes to school, walk up about 20 stairs, and am on a strict diet of 4,000 carby calories. (last part was kind of a joke...kind of).
i know that one day when this dreams ends (actually, in less than a month...whaaa), i kind of have to get serious about training. i haven't gotten too far outside the fitness orbit, but wanna have a successful senior season, blah blah blah.
so my roommate found this group of runners, and she asked if i wanted to try. this was a sink or swim situation. my first thought was, "i should do it once before i leave." my second thought was, "i will have to wake up at 5 am." one won out. my alarm went off at 5:08 am tuesday morning.
i was planning to hit snooze but was suddenly paralyzed with fear. maria had promised me that they go "slow" and only do "between 10k and 15k" at a time. okay, so...anywhere from 6 miles to 9ish. COOL. my weekly mileage has been..oh, i don't know, somewhere fluctuating between 0 and 2.5 for about three months.
but i went. and i was shaking. maria had told the group--anywhere from 5 to 20 tiny Italian marathoners, gym-owners, runner's world models, etc.--that i would be coming, and they were excited to meet me. walking from home to the bridge where they meet i just kept repeating this phrase over and over in my head, practicing: "mi dispiace, sono stanca, voglio fermata." i'm sorry, i'm tired. i want to stop.
on the way to the bridge we ran into skinny runner couple #1, who are 45 and 50 and both hovering around 100 pounds and 25 years old in looks. they kissed me on both cheeks. i thought, you might be the last people to kiss my cheeks. because, you know, i might die.
a little white car pulled up beside us, and pepe, wearing a large raincoat and spandex to my tank top and short shorts, leaned out the window and told us to hop in. the bridge was about ten feet away, but these people like to do a strange thing: every morning before they meet the others, they drive around the island for five or ten minutes blasting italian music. they sing. loudly. i relaxed a little, letting my ears swallow the sound, because, you know, it might be the last music i heard. it wasn't a bad last song, either. but let's not get too morbid.
so we started. three minutes in i realized that "slow" for these people is actually rather "fast" for me. well, "fast" now that i considered climbing the stairs to my apartment three times a day a great form of fitness. i looked at maria. she was boppin along. cute running couple looked like they were sleepwalking, and pepe was high stepping. i immediately regretted that maria and i hadn't set up some sort of secret signal so she would know when to call the ambulance. could i shout? if i said it in english, would it be less embarrassing?
this all sounds very dramatic. because it was. i half-expected the rocky theme song to be playing from every passing car. my legs seized up. my chest was tighter than lisa rinna's face (gotttttem!). we were six minutes in.
well, i didn't die. the wife of the cute couple, thank god, has some sort of heart condition that means she can only go fast for a short period of time before resuming human running pace. i hung with her. every few seconds her watch beeped to let her know her heart was still kickin in a good way, and i let that rhythm guide me for the next 45 minutes. i have never, ever, ever, ever, ever been so happy to see that white car. i am dead serious about that.
we slowed down a bit at the end, and carlo said, "jessica...10k piu? i...buy for you...grande gelato...con panne...if you come 10k with me..."
CARLO.
how did he know i was a sucker for whipped cream?
but no. i politely declined, because i am sure carlo wouldn't have much appetite for gelato after seeing me splayed on the street crying.
they said they want to take us out to pizza before we leave.
they are meeting again tomorrow. i am going.
because...you guys...pizza...duh.

apples and onions

if you are ever sitting in a floating sauna in the swedish countryside, sweating your head off in 90C heat, and you are playing the game apples and onions (also known as roses and thorns), where you pick the highlight and lowlight of a certain past period of time, it is always better to say the onion, or lowlight, first. even though i like onions. when i play this with my campers during the summer, i like to have them say their lowlights first, so that they can then be completely overshadowed and taken over by the highlight. so, looking back on the past week, here is a game of apples and onions. onions first.

i am an idiot. the morning of the sauna was, and i quote, the best day of my life. jokin, but not really. we went to stay at johan's country house and his parents made us this ridiculous swedish breakfast and then we went to the sauna, floating on a mostly frozen lake, and spent 20 minutes dying of heat exhaustion before plunging into the icy lake, which was cathartic and terrifying and amazing. the point is, the heat is supposed to open your pores and all the bad stuff (toxins but also, i like to think, stress and negativity) is supposed to leave you, and then the freezing water is supposed to be this shocking cleansing agent and you're supposed to feel all renewed and stuff. and i was, trust me. in that tiny sauna on that massive frozen lake outside of stockholm where there was a wood stove and a dog to play with and a head scratcher (one of those half-whisk things that massage your skull and OH MY GOD HEAVEN) i felt a kind of peace (don't laugh) that i haven't felt in awhile. it wasn't new or completely unfamiliar--but different.

so while all the stress of trying to straddle the atlantic ocean (i've given up, actually) disappeared, so apparently did my sense of logic and reasoning. because later that day, in the afternoon of the best day of my life, i realized i had left my passport on tucker's desk in copenhagen, a 5 hour train ride away. i realized this, of course, while trying to check into my flight from stockholm to milan monday afternoon. i called tucker and god i love him but his stoic response of "...did you need this...?" was the perfect start to a whirlwind 48 hours of operation get into denmark without a passport and take a metro two flights multiple buses and many tears home.

so that was kind of an onion. another onion was that i almost got arrested by a danish metro officer because i'm sorry that i cannot read danish (it's a character flaw, i know) and did not know that the piece of paper i had on my person was actually a receipt and not, in fact, a ticket and i have only been in copenhagen for 12 hours and most of this was spent wearing tucker's sweatband and watching family guy (to be fair, i'd already done the whirlwind copenhagen tour a few days earlier, after stockholm but before the country house, so i felt entitled to a night of quagmire and bitch stewie [get my episodic reference?]) and i was not actually trying to smuggle drugs into the metro just because i had a wallet full of kroners that i didn't have time to exchange back and NO I DO NOT HAVE A DANISH SOCIAL SECURITY CARD BECAUSE I AM NOT DANISH. I AM NOT DANISH. I AM SORRY, BUT I DON'T LIVE HERE. FOR THE NINTH TIME. AND AGAIN. FOR THE TENTH TIME.
that was another onion. nothing sets me off more than when short men who look like hitler think their dumpy metro uniform makes them TOUCHED BY A HIGHER POWER TO MAKE THE LITTLE PEOPLE BENEATH THEM MISERABLE.

but apples! there were so many.
1. suzanne was in stockholm. this was clearly fate, and meant that in a span of 5 days and two cities i was hanging out with a high school friend, a college friend, a camp friend, and italy friends, which was ridiculous. and we went to an ice bar, in which we put on these massive furry parka things and bumped into lots of other people wearing parkas and drank out of ice cups and just lived our icy lives.
2. johan made reindeer and we watched titanic. that there is no better man in this world than the character of jack dawson = apple. that he does not actually exist = onion.
3. the sauna, duh.
4. seeing my skinny friend tucker (he claims he eats alot but this is simply not true) in copenhagen, which i could tell was a wicked hipster, progessive and awesomely liberal city despite the freezing rain.
4b. christiania, the seventh smallest country in the world, which is a micronation inside copenhagen and has only three rules: no violence, no hard drugs, and no weapons. which means a lot of love, people. and hash. and love. and weed. so love.

and more. there were the two little girls posing like mannequins in the window of the hard rock cafe in copenhagen (something my sisters and i used to do ALL THE TIME); drinking coffee in a stockholm prison from 1300; the hilarious multi-story swedish club we went to where literally every girl was a legitimate supermodel (not joking) and we were in a corner in our jeans and cardigans laughing at this; the train back from copenhagen where we sat across from one (1) cat in a carrier and two (2) dogs. not sure if this was allowed.

so in conclusion, there are many apples in scandanavia. some onions, too, but onions are good. especially if you sautee them and eat them with ketchup. (call me giada, but that is my specialty.)

oh i forgot! my luggage is kickin around in rome still. but hey. just add ketchup...

primavera

on sunday at 6:30 my three friends and i left our hotel in nice for the bus station. 24 hours later we landed at our apartment. in the hours in between, when i wasn't on a bus, train, plane, floor of the rome airport, or sidewalk outside the palermo train station (so, like 2 minutes) i was frantically wondering how the hell i would take ten days, two continents, three countries, and countless babies in airports and assemble it into some sort of organized blog post. and even before i begin i have failed incredibly because there is simply no way. i did take roughly a thousand pictures (i...know), ride a camel, realize i want to spend a small part of my future in africa, sleep outside the Colosseum, ride a four-wheeled bike, sleep on a rock beach in nice, and meet at least a dozen people my age from all over the world--australia, new zealand, england, france, belgium, the us, denmark, russia, canada, and germany--who were living the life, having forgone university to backpack through europe, working at bars and hostels, playing guitar on the beach, solidifying my plan for at least a year out of college: buy a ticket to somewhere across the atlantic and live.

so i'm sitting here at school, exhausted and hungry and kind of tan (YES) and missing quick, the most incredible fast food place in france i'd say, and wondering what to write about. and all i can think about from the past ten days is the tiny girl i met on my flight from rome to nice. she was probably two and with her mother and her even tinier sister, and the mother was clearly stressed and i first saw them in line to check in, and the little girl wondered a little away from the mother and the mother grabbed her by the hood and smacked her across the shoulders, which made me almost want to cry but also kind of hate italians. because this girl was maybe the cutest little girl i had ever seen, and she had a bowl cut, and, you know, i sympathized, as anyone who looks at any baby pictures of my own can tell you. the little girl ended up across the aisle from me on the plane and we spent the better part of the 45-minute flight waving at each other over her stony-faced mother, who held the baby with one hand and used the other to methodically wrangle the little girl and prevent her from having any sort of fun. and then we ran into each other again at the baggage claim and she was toddling around near me so i bent down and asked her her name in my foolish accent: "come ti chiami?" or actually "cohhhmeee tee cheeeeeahhhmmmii?" and she got really closed to my ear and whispered, really slowly, "poppy..." and then an older man traveling with them grabbed her by the shoulder and steered her away. and that is all i can think of to write about. which is sad. and in no way sums up my spring break. but, i realize, my experience was full of little ones like that--little interactions, observances, etc., in no way all moving me to tears as that one had (except, okay, the 24-hour mega traveling frame which had be actually crying), in fact many of which made me fall in love even more with my surroundings, wherever i was: there was the little french girl in tunisia who wanted to take pictures with us; there was the time i was standing in an amphitheatre in the 4th holiest muslim city in the world and the call to prayer came on and i watched as masses of people stopped what they were doing and took their shoes off and entered the mosque; there were the two guys we met on the spanish steps who were dressed better than i ever will be; there was the mountain we climbed in nice and drank champagne at the top; there was the time i ran into a friend from school, my tiny school in northwest ohio that nobody has ever heard of, in the streets of old nice, even though she was studying in milan and i am studying in sicily and we just both happened to be in the same part of nice at the same time.
so really that is all i can offer...little glimpses into the past two weeks, and not much else, except to say that everything i did and ate and saw and everyone i talked to is somehow with me, if that doesn't sound too cliche and psuedo-romantic and stupid.

oh and, in nice i saw two dogs attached to each other by a long leash, walking each other, with no human in sight.

ketchup

as they say in italy, sweet lord, it has been a long time. i know my faithful readers have been sitting on the edge of their chairs biting their nails anxiously and wondering if i have gotten involved in some sort of mafia-related, um, incident and have been held hostage in a gutted car somewhere on the outskirts of palermo, scratching my initials into scrap metal and eating felled oranges and flicking a zippo open and shut over and over again. and the truth is, yes, that actually happened to me, and i have many stories to tell.
jokin. i just watched the godfather. which was sweet, but would have been even better if i could understand a single word that came out of al pacino's mouth. he was speaking english. come on dude.
but really, i have been "busy" being "academic" because there are a few "classes" for which i need to transfer "credit" to wooster, so i have been..."studying." but also lying on the beach at the base of mt. etna, eating pistachio gelato, drinking white russians (oops) and watching "sleepless in seattle" (and crying...oops again).
so quickly to catch up:

last thursday my six roommates and i did an around the world party at our apartment. we have 4 bedrooms plus a kitchen so each room was a different country (duh) and everyone from school came. while i was in venice my housemates decided it would be hilarious if my room was communist russia because it is sort of set apart from the others, and the day before went to great lengths to make it appear so: icicles (made from plastic water bottles) hanging from picture frames, sheets covering the pictures, and (my favorite, obviously), a dead plant we found in the hallway, our busted tv, a broken chair. i have to admit it was pretty convincing. here are my roommates and i in our various locales (japan, amuuuurica, the caribbean, and mother russia):
last weekend i went with jo, emily, meredith and cecily to taormina, a beach town about two hours away. the. most. beautiful. views. ever:

we went to this greek theatre, the public gardens and the beach. there's a gondola straight to the beach--brought me back to my stratton days :) mt. etna was everywhere you looked. she's a bit of a hoverer. after a while it was like, could you back off for a second?


and today my volcanology class went on a 6 hour hike at Pantalica, this ridiculous nature reserve. it was miles and miles of limestone cliffs, rivers, and caves. i went a little crazy with pictures but it was so awesome.

the fish

allow me to set the scene:
write about me! (that was alena's contribution. grazi)
but okay. back to the scene:
directly ahead of me there is a painting of a fish.
behind me a long banquet table littered with half-empty wine bottles and remnants of a not-so-childhood-game called drUNO.
out a window to my right is a cafe where cappucinos go for 3 euro, more for table service...
and to my left, outside, is my own private moat!
i am certainly in venice.

so okay. from above, venice looks like a fish. which is hilarious. because there is a lot of water here. alot. what i mean is, my boots still haven't dried from a rather uneventful romp in the canals 48 hours ago. but you know what they say: when in venice, accept the fact that there will be clowns on every corner, and also the fact that your feet won't be dry for your entire visit.
which is fine. because i'm in venice! and guess what. so is angelina jolie. and brad pitt. and shiloh and crew. the guy who runs my hostel claims to have seen them this morning. he is also a huge liar, so i do not feel bad about accidentally acquiring 7 sets of sheets instead of the allowed...1. but that's okay.
my friend joanna and i got here thursday after a solid ten hours of traveling. i brought the following things to venice: one t shirt (which was on my person), a sequin dress, patent leather heels, a cardigan. so fearful of the baggage restrictions on my little budget airline was i that i forwent anything other than the (duh) basic nessecities. and so used to the suddenly 75 degree weather in syracuse that i (duh) didn't bring a jacket. because i was going to venice. and so was angie!
my sister alena flew in from seville, her friends from school came in from nice and grenada, and my best friend from home came in from grenoble. which was insane in itself. now imagine this raucous crew being led all over the city at midnight by an afghani guide trying to get us to a bar and in turn leading us across several foot-deep flooded streets and you can begin to picture the experience thus far. which is truly strange, a little creepy, consistantly waterlogged and actually incredible.
i wish i could outline the exact details that i have been fervently keeping alive in my mind all day in order to record them at a later date (journal = extra weight = mad euros = rapid fire sensory overload) and i would recount them to you if i thought any of you would find them the slightest bit interesting (for example, i'm sure you don't want to know the intracacies of the difference between the sicilian cannoli and the venician cannoli, although i'll just go ahead and tell you sicily owns). so i will say simply the following:
being away from my little town has made it truly and miraculously materialize into home.

don't get me wrong, this place is insane. and it has nudged my senses just so, so that i feel constantly as if traversing the front of a postcard. and it has brought me together with my friends and sister with whom i am content to sit with a cappucino and talk for hours as water laps at my feet...(can you drink the tap water? do you have to tip? how hot, exactly, is this host brother of yours?)...
which has been a truly cathartic experience.

tomorrow we head to milan (big city slicker, i know) of which i only know what i saw on the way in, at night, which i would guess sums it up:
a girl, dressed to the nines, on a slick bike.
texting.
on the highway.
in a tunnel.
go milan.

and then it's back to this little island which for a while there, teetered dangerously on the edge of my comfort zone. but now has blossomed into this peculiar little habitat...close to...home.
something in the water?

yah!

well, i have done a pretty unforgivable thing, and that is completely overlook (in my blogosphere, at least) the visit of a dear friend which lifted my spirits to soaring point. yes, suzanne capehart graced my little island home with her fervent presence and i found myself on the familiar docks of not of a wooden ship, not of a gold ship, but of the most sturdy, unsinkable ship of all--friendship.

suz's bus was supposed to come into siracus circa 1 pm on sunday (last), but i left my house too late and by the time i walked to the bus station all that greeted me was an empty bus marked "palermo". i had found her bus not but her person. if this was anyone else, i would be a little worried that he or she was now wandering aimlessly along the little unfamilar streets of my town, wondering what the hell that sound was (it is almost always a stray cat, or else the horrific popping sound of a pigeon being run over by a vespa), looking for a mouth with lips not permanently turned down at the ends (many of these Italians can't help it, but their mouths at rest give them somewhat of a "bitch face"...stereotype? der. but my observances support this claim). but this was suzanne, who is a champ, and because she wasn't behind the wheel of a car (loveeee you) i was not too worried about her.

i took the back way home by chance and suddenly stumbled upon a very German-looking girl, pigtailed and wearing a luxurious blue parka, focused on a map, sporting very familiar Asics sneakers. this was like getting smacked in the face with a giant inflatable replica of the wooster campus dipped in a smattering of love. no but really, it was cathartic. later suz would recount that hearing her name echoing off the cobblestones was one of her most precious memories (sorry suz, not to quote you on this..) but little did she know it was also one of mine.

so we spent a glorious few days chilling. in italy. together. which never managed to not seem completely weird and strange and crazy to me. it was if our friendship had continued straight on from december 12th and picked right up a month later, no stress. which was amazing. suzanne loved the city, which made me so happy--i would boldly encourage her to, you know, move in, if i didn't think vienna was basically her in a city. even though she was felled for a day by the weird sickness that's hitting everyone here pretty methodically (oops) she was such an incredible force.

so much so, in fact, that at least four of my friends said watching us interact made them really, really, really want a friend to visit them. basically, this sounds very dramatic, but i appreciated the effort she made (bus to bratislava [SLOVAKIA], flight to milan, flight to palermo, 3-hour bus to siracusa) more than she/anyone knows.

so to wrap up this heartwarming post with the only photographic evidence that we were together (WHAT WERE WE THINKING) taken at a bar where the superbowl was put on for us (minus commercials, but still):
grazi mille girl! ti amo!