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).
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
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...
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...
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, March 5, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
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?
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?
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
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!
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!
Saturday, February 13, 2010
i know what you are, but what am i?
the title of this post is stupid. for the purpose of full disclosure i'll just throw that out there. that's what somebody said to somebody else in my second grade classroom, and lots of gasps were exchanged and somebody else went and told the teacher, but i was clueless (i'm pretty sure this defined my childhood) because i didn't know what it means. and honestly, i still kind of don't, which i think says a lot about what i want to write about.
they say studying abroad changes you, you know, and when you come back home the place will be the same, but you will be different. but i think for this to work, you have to know yourself in a particular way. and i'll just admit that for someone who wants to do memoir for a living (that or the wnba, whichever's more feasible...) i don't know myself very well at all.
i do know this: before i came here i thought i didn't have a comfort zone.
i was down for anything. i was awkward and thus diffused awkward situations because i recognize the inherent awkwardness of them. i wanted danger and sometimes boundaries but always danger. i wanted the thrill of driving through a six-hour snowstorm to canada three months after getting my license. i wanted to challenge my body: to run faster, to drink more. i wanted to make Statements. i thought, the only thing holding me back is me.
when you live like this, you feel like anyone can throw anything at you, and you can take it. sometimes you need time and sometimes you need to vent because you're not perfect, never will be, but you always feel so...clutch. you creep dangerously close to deadlines but always make it in the end. that was what i knew about myself.
and then i came here. and this might play out like a dramedy, but so be it. here, every minute, every day, i feel a gleeful shirk of fear. sometimes, this fear manifests itself into manic excitement, happiness i can feel so deeply, pure awe at my surroundings. i am here and i am whole.
sometimes, not so much. sometimes i am crippled, sometimes i am floating in a rough haze. i do not speak the language, none of us really do, so we lean in, hard, on each other, waiting to be saved. when i tire of leaning in i reach out, to home, to what i knew before: my house at school, the faces of my friends as i remember them. sometimes i want to hug my mother, hold my cat, eat peanut butter. sometimes i want guido's tortilla chips and green mountain salsa. more than anything. there are times when, more than anything in the world, i want people from my old life. i want desperately to know how they are, what they are doing. because sometimes i feel like i need to be confirmed, my presence in this strange place needs to be externally recognized, because i sometimes don't believe it.
sometimes i can't imagine being here until may. sometimes i can't imagine leaving.
i think about the person i was, finding a routine 48 hours into college. i think about me now, curled up in my friend's bed, in the middle of an ocean, wondering if there is something inherently wrong with me. wondering why after three and a half weeks--that is almost a month, oh my god--i still feel so unanchored, so breezy. so different and lost but also found, in some way. so here, and so not. i exist but i don't. i mean, i don't know if i even exist here yet. how can i?
i know this is weird. i know people will read this and scratch their heads and wonder how the above could possibly align with the truth that i tell when i say i am having the time of my life. because i am.
i. am.
they say studying abroad changes you, you know, and when you come back home the place will be the same, but you will be different. but i think for this to work, you have to know yourself in a particular way. and i'll just admit that for someone who wants to do memoir for a living (that or the wnba, whichever's more feasible...) i don't know myself very well at all.
i do know this: before i came here i thought i didn't have a comfort zone.
i was down for anything. i was awkward and thus diffused awkward situations because i recognize the inherent awkwardness of them. i wanted danger and sometimes boundaries but always danger. i wanted the thrill of driving through a six-hour snowstorm to canada three months after getting my license. i wanted to challenge my body: to run faster, to drink more. i wanted to make Statements. i thought, the only thing holding me back is me.
when you live like this, you feel like anyone can throw anything at you, and you can take it. sometimes you need time and sometimes you need to vent because you're not perfect, never will be, but you always feel so...clutch. you creep dangerously close to deadlines but always make it in the end. that was what i knew about myself.
and then i came here. and this might play out like a dramedy, but so be it. here, every minute, every day, i feel a gleeful shirk of fear. sometimes, this fear manifests itself into manic excitement, happiness i can feel so deeply, pure awe at my surroundings. i am here and i am whole.
sometimes, not so much. sometimes i am crippled, sometimes i am floating in a rough haze. i do not speak the language, none of us really do, so we lean in, hard, on each other, waiting to be saved. when i tire of leaning in i reach out, to home, to what i knew before: my house at school, the faces of my friends as i remember them. sometimes i want to hug my mother, hold my cat, eat peanut butter. sometimes i want guido's tortilla chips and green mountain salsa. more than anything. there are times when, more than anything in the world, i want people from my old life. i want desperately to know how they are, what they are doing. because sometimes i feel like i need to be confirmed, my presence in this strange place needs to be externally recognized, because i sometimes don't believe it.
sometimes i can't imagine being here until may. sometimes i can't imagine leaving.
i think about the person i was, finding a routine 48 hours into college. i think about me now, curled up in my friend's bed, in the middle of an ocean, wondering if there is something inherently wrong with me. wondering why after three and a half weeks--that is almost a month, oh my god--i still feel so unanchored, so breezy. so different and lost but also found, in some way. so here, and so not. i exist but i don't. i mean, i don't know if i even exist here yet. how can i?
i know this is weird. i know people will read this and scratch their heads and wonder how the above could possibly align with the truth that i tell when i say i am having the time of my life. because i am.
i. am.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
la palestra mas fina
if you think i joined a gym because i would rather sweat it out in a dark little box of a room where lady gaga blares on repeat than on the shores of the mediterrenean, because i am a lazy, lazy, lazy and very unmotivated human being, then you are very, very right. and i applaud you, because you know me so well.
so i joined a gym. la palestra di ortigia, to be specific. this is a peculiar little place. besides offering up a variety of american pop music and lovely photos of the female owner in her bodybuilding days (holy shit) it offers a nice cross-section of italian/sicilian culture. for example:
there is always a massive group of italian male students huddled outside the door when my friend and i make our way there in the morning. they like to kiss each other on the cheek while typing furiously into blackberries and rubbing shiny parka-covered elbows and scuffing black and dark purple nikes into the cobblestone. (i truly have never seen more black and dark purple in my life.) these guys also like to engage in massive staredowns with us, which is rather embarssing considering we are usually in, you know, sweats, and they are usually in, you know, d&g tuxedos. its some sort of teenage cultural thing, i guess.
the women adorn their tiny waists with only velour sweatsuits. i dont think they ever sweat. and depite the fact that they are obviously in shape, their workout of choice consists of lifting a kilogram weight 5 times overhead and then standing for five minutes on an extremely awkward vibrating platform (tried it. died laughing. wish wooster had one).
rarely are there men working out when i am, although i did see a lithe middle-aged man supporting his entire body weight on his elbows. theres a picture on the wall of a champion gymnast on the rings. i think its him.
well, i would get into more detail about this amazing little window in italian culture, but i have to go to class. because sometimes i have to pretend im here to be slightly academic. such is life.
miss you all!
so i joined a gym. la palestra di ortigia, to be specific. this is a peculiar little place. besides offering up a variety of american pop music and lovely photos of the female owner in her bodybuilding days (holy shit) it offers a nice cross-section of italian/sicilian culture. for example:
there is always a massive group of italian male students huddled outside the door when my friend and i make our way there in the morning. they like to kiss each other on the cheek while typing furiously into blackberries and rubbing shiny parka-covered elbows and scuffing black and dark purple nikes into the cobblestone. (i truly have never seen more black and dark purple in my life.) these guys also like to engage in massive staredowns with us, which is rather embarssing considering we are usually in, you know, sweats, and they are usually in, you know, d&g tuxedos. its some sort of teenage cultural thing, i guess.
the women adorn their tiny waists with only velour sweatsuits. i dont think they ever sweat. and depite the fact that they are obviously in shape, their workout of choice consists of lifting a kilogram weight 5 times overhead and then standing for five minutes on an extremely awkward vibrating platform (tried it. died laughing. wish wooster had one).
rarely are there men working out when i am, although i did see a lithe middle-aged man supporting his entire body weight on his elbows. theres a picture on the wall of a champion gymnast on the rings. i think its him.
well, i would get into more detail about this amazing little window in italian culture, but i have to go to class. because sometimes i have to pretend im here to be slightly academic. such is life.
miss you all!
Saturday, February 6, 2010
doing as the roman catholics do.
i'm jewish, but besides the seemingly all-night party that was my bat mitzvah, the extent of my religious devotion as a child was jealously eyeing the burger king milkshakes kids brought into hebrew school on tuesday afternoons and devouring the stacks of yellowing equine affair magazines that sandra, my hebrew tutor, kept in her living room.
even though my apartment is in the ancient jewish quarter of the city, there are pretty much zero jews here today. instead, it's catholic fever all the time. which i can live with.
because secretly, i've always been fascinated by catholicism. when i was younger it reminded me of gold and silk and the smell of candles burning. while i was content with the progressive, tolerant sect of my own reform judaism, catholicism had something that we didn't, and that was a little cookie you were allowed to eat during the service. i was sold.
as you can probably imagine, italians take their cookies, and their faith, pretty seriously. yesterday was the last day of the festival of st. agatha in catania, so a few friends and i took the bus up in the morning. last time in catania was two weeks ago. i feel like i've changed so much: i mean, it was only a mere two weeks ago that i was under the impression that wearing a money belt (and thus sticking your hands down the front of your pants every time you get hungry..what..) was necessary/cool. and the city had changed too: what was almost desolate now had the appearance that it had been thrown up on by a maroon-swathed elephant with an affinity for nutella (agatha's color is maroon, and for some reason catania is full of pictures of elephants. oh, and lots of nutella crepe stands. hell. yes.). it was crazy.
we spent much of the morning weaving in and out of children dressed as clowns and fairies and priests (the most popular choice), ducking in and out of amazing churches, eating candy apples, you know, regular catholic stuff. right? hundreds of vendors in the streets were selling candy, sugared peanuts, gelato, and these huge yellow candles. the point was that during the procession of st. agatha, everyone lights yellow candles, of varying sizes. if you're praying for someone who weighs 80 kilo, you carry a candle that weighs 80 kilo. and yes, they exist. which is ridiculous.
anyone can buy and light a candle, but the people in the procession were a bunch of guys (and some girls) who looked my age or younger, dressed in white robe-like things and black hats, and wearing agatha pins. i couldn't really figure out where these guys came from, but they were so interesting to kind of...how shall i put this...stare at. as it got closer to 5, when the procession was supposed to start (though we ended up kind of chilling till 6) a guy would yell out a prayer in italian every few seconds. it was kind of intense, because they were screaming so loud their voices were hoarse. so.
anyway, i got the smallest-sized candle available, which was still about 4 feet tall, and lit it for my friend spencer, who passed away three years ago this month. even though i wasn't in the procession and even though spencer definitely weighed more than half a kilo, i don't think agatha would have minded. it was so amazing to stand in a street with thousands of candles, just as the sun was setting, and realize where exactly i was, how lucky i was to be there.
besides guys carrying huge candles on their shoulders and waving around fire and dripping wax on spectators and screaming in italian, the rest of the procession was made up of five or six massive floats. these were carried from the church of st. agatha by six massive men apiece, lined up in the road, and promptly returned to the church at the end of the procession. which...didn't really make sense. but all in the name of sainthood, si?
anyway, the guys who were carrying the floats were really struggling. they wore these cap-like things which were attached to beams, which essentially meant that much of the weight was on their heads. also it should be noted that these guys allegedly pay the mafia x amount of money in order to keep their jobs as float-bearers from one year to the next. ......yeah.
so the procession started off with a massive fireworks show which made tanglewood look kind of sad (oops) and then...very....very....very...slowly, the procession began. damn, italians take their time. i was standing near the end of the procession, and it took a full 20 minutes before the candle-bearers around me started inching forward. we had a bus to catch at 7:30, and even though the parade allegedly started at 5, we ended up barely making it. so this was a long procession, you might say.
but it was amazing. i watched these people and their intense devotion to something--anything, really--and i felt a faint pull in my chest that might have been the arm of god that i imagined there when i was little, and my cantor told me a piece of god was in everyone. okay, that was weird and probably unnecessary but that's what i thought. anyway, lesson learned: catholics are intensely devoted but also wicked fascinating, and they always dress/decorate well. and they like nutella.
even though my apartment is in the ancient jewish quarter of the city, there are pretty much zero jews here today. instead, it's catholic fever all the time. which i can live with.
because secretly, i've always been fascinated by catholicism. when i was younger it reminded me of gold and silk and the smell of candles burning. while i was content with the progressive, tolerant sect of my own reform judaism, catholicism had something that we didn't, and that was a little cookie you were allowed to eat during the service. i was sold.
as you can probably imagine, italians take their cookies, and their faith, pretty seriously. yesterday was the last day of the festival of st. agatha in catania, so a few friends and i took the bus up in the morning. last time in catania was two weeks ago. i feel like i've changed so much: i mean, it was only a mere two weeks ago that i was under the impression that wearing a money belt (and thus sticking your hands down the front of your pants every time you get hungry..what..) was necessary/cool. and the city had changed too: what was almost desolate now had the appearance that it had been thrown up on by a maroon-swathed elephant with an affinity for nutella (agatha's color is maroon, and for some reason catania is full of pictures of elephants. oh, and lots of nutella crepe stands. hell. yes.). it was crazy.
we spent much of the morning weaving in and out of children dressed as clowns and fairies and priests (the most popular choice), ducking in and out of amazing churches, eating candy apples, you know, regular catholic stuff. right? hundreds of vendors in the streets were selling candy, sugared peanuts, gelato, and these huge yellow candles. the point was that during the procession of st. agatha, everyone lights yellow candles, of varying sizes. if you're praying for someone who weighs 80 kilo, you carry a candle that weighs 80 kilo. and yes, they exist. which is ridiculous.
anyone can buy and light a candle, but the people in the procession were a bunch of guys (and some girls) who looked my age or younger, dressed in white robe-like things and black hats, and wearing agatha pins. i couldn't really figure out where these guys came from, but they were so interesting to kind of...how shall i put this...stare at. as it got closer to 5, when the procession was supposed to start (though we ended up kind of chilling till 6) a guy would yell out a prayer in italian every few seconds. it was kind of intense, because they were screaming so loud their voices were hoarse. so.
anyway, i got the smallest-sized candle available, which was still about 4 feet tall, and lit it for my friend spencer, who passed away three years ago this month. even though i wasn't in the procession and even though spencer definitely weighed more than half a kilo, i don't think agatha would have minded. it was so amazing to stand in a street with thousands of candles, just as the sun was setting, and realize where exactly i was, how lucky i was to be there.
besides guys carrying huge candles on their shoulders and waving around fire and dripping wax on spectators and screaming in italian, the rest of the procession was made up of five or six massive floats. these were carried from the church of st. agatha by six massive men apiece, lined up in the road, and promptly returned to the church at the end of the procession. which...didn't really make sense. but all in the name of sainthood, si?
anyway, the guys who were carrying the floats were really struggling. they wore these cap-like things which were attached to beams, which essentially meant that much of the weight was on their heads. also it should be noted that these guys allegedly pay the mafia x amount of money in order to keep their jobs as float-bearers from one year to the next. ......yeah.
so the procession started off with a massive fireworks show which made tanglewood look kind of sad (oops) and then...very....very....very...slowly, the procession began. damn, italians take their time. i was standing near the end of the procession, and it took a full 20 minutes before the candle-bearers around me started inching forward. we had a bus to catch at 7:30, and even though the parade allegedly started at 5, we ended up barely making it. so this was a long procession, you might say.
but it was amazing. i watched these people and their intense devotion to something--anything, really--and i felt a faint pull in my chest that might have been the arm of god that i imagined there when i was little, and my cantor told me a piece of god was in everyone. okay, that was weird and probably unnecessary but that's what i thought. anyway, lesson learned: catholics are intensely devoted but also wicked fascinating, and they always dress/decorate well. and they like nutella.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
what i learned last night:
come si dice "shot"?
eh...shot.
definite articles--
sing: il shot
plur: i shot
indefinate articles--
sing: un shot
plur: un shot
i am very advanced in italiano, as you can see. last night was my friend's 21st birthday and ramzi, bless his cotton socks, got a bar to open for us and play all sorts of guilty-pleasure-music-americano, and even though the bartender didn't know how to search for "the lonely island--i'm on a boat" he did offer plenty of...i shot. fo free!
i feel entitled to an occasional night of reckless americanness, though i try hard to really melt wholeheartedly into this culture. and even though my next-door neighbor gives me dirty looks when laundry falls off my balcony, and even though getting a gym membership yesterday was like playing charades, i think i'm doing an alright job.
eh...shot.
definite articles--
sing: il shot
plur: i shot
indefinate articles--
sing: un shot
plur: un shot
i am very advanced in italiano, as you can see. last night was my friend's 21st birthday and ramzi, bless his cotton socks, got a bar to open for us and play all sorts of guilty-pleasure-music-americano, and even though the bartender didn't know how to search for "the lonely island--i'm on a boat" he did offer plenty of...i shot. fo free!
i feel entitled to an occasional night of reckless americanness, though i try hard to really melt wholeheartedly into this culture. and even though my next-door neighbor gives me dirty looks when laundry falls off my balcony, and even though getting a gym membership yesterday was like playing charades, i think i'm doing an alright job.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
OH. MY GOD CAN WE PUHHHHLEEEEEZE PLAY MAFIA?!
(note: everyone should go check out my sister alena's blog [siseville.blogspot.com] because even though she often falsely claims that i am the true writer of the family she has consistantly proved herself wrong as you can see in her hilarious and actually super witty writing. here's your plug landers, love you!)
so, okay. i would like you for a moment to imagine a chorus of 27 middle-school girls, whining in a way only middle-school girls can, the title of this blog. because that is what my summer job consists of. mafia, if you aren't in the know camp counselor-style, is a game involving, yes, "killing" your cabinmates but also involving very little spoken word, making it the game of choice for timestretched, exhausted fivestar counselors such as myself. mafia was actually banned from camp for a while because of the fact that it doesnt teach the kids anything except how to hate on other kids, but because i am counselor of the year i often ignore this rule. and i also get a break. as miley would say, it is truly the best of both worlds.
but here i am talking about camp while i am gallavanting around a mediterreanean island. the point of this post is this: next summer (and, let's be real, probably the summer after that) when i hear those famous whines, i will always immediatly think of the door on my street that is riddled with bulletholes.
dun dun dunnnnn.
no, i'm kidding. i mean, there IS a door riddled with bulletholes, but i'm not that dramatic. the point is as follows: besides gaining from this experience a better sense of self, you know, a better sense of my life decisions, appreciation of this (actually crazy) culture, all the things you intrinsically get from throwing yourself abroad, etc., something i will definately take from this place is the intense, incredibly interesting fiasco that is the mafia.
lots of people, myself included, are under the impression that the mafia is an old-fashioned, antiquated fact of a bygone era. lots of people, myself included, are under the impression that the mafia is a ramshackle gang of rather disorganized young men (okay, you may think this is stupid, but i've never seen the godfather nor any other hollywood glamificatin of mafia, so this was my thinking).
the truth is, i am completely misguided. i know this sounds like a research paper, but this is just so goddamn interesting: the mafia is still a force to this day, and the reason it keeps existing is because it is so. fucking. organized. these people are geniuses. for example:
in palermo, on the northwest coast of Sicily (and where, i might add, we're fieldtrippin to in a few weeks), EIGHTY PERCENT of business still pay taxes to the mafia. EIGHTY PERCENT. that's crazy! in fact, these businesses do not simply pay under the table. each month they actually write it into their budgets. paying the mafia tax means protection against random car torching, house robbing, relative killing, etc. IN TWO THOUSAND TEN. i just can't get over that.
when i walk along the water i always cringe when i see a particular wall. three years ago this wall didn't exist, and there was straight access to the beautiful harbor. you could stand on the street and see out onto the water where all the yachts were anchored. there's a huge picture of this view in one of the theatres here, and it's gorgeous.
BUT now there is this huge, ugly, gargantuan wall covered in graffiti and topped with barbed wire. i hesitate to call it that because everything here is so fucking beautiful, but this is...not. the wall is the result of a political scandal involving the mafia, in which the city was essentially forced to erect the wall as a "yacht lot." that was three years ago. to this day the wall remains in its earliest building stages and, most importantly, yachtless.
sometimes the mafia is seemingly out in the open, like for 90 minutes every tuesday and thursday when we discuss it in class.
but other times it's so hush-hush; i feel like i can never mention it outside of school, and everytime i see those bullet holes i walk a little faster.
so, okay. i would like you for a moment to imagine a chorus of 27 middle-school girls, whining in a way only middle-school girls can, the title of this blog. because that is what my summer job consists of. mafia, if you aren't in the know camp counselor-style, is a game involving, yes, "killing" your cabinmates but also involving very little spoken word, making it the game of choice for timestretched, exhausted fivestar counselors such as myself. mafia was actually banned from camp for a while because of the fact that it doesnt teach the kids anything except how to hate on other kids, but because i am counselor of the year i often ignore this rule. and i also get a break. as miley would say, it is truly the best of both worlds.
but here i am talking about camp while i am gallavanting around a mediterreanean island. the point of this post is this: next summer (and, let's be real, probably the summer after that) when i hear those famous whines, i will always immediatly think of the door on my street that is riddled with bulletholes.
dun dun dunnnnn.
no, i'm kidding. i mean, there IS a door riddled with bulletholes, but i'm not that dramatic. the point is as follows: besides gaining from this experience a better sense of self, you know, a better sense of my life decisions, appreciation of this (actually crazy) culture, all the things you intrinsically get from throwing yourself abroad, etc., something i will definately take from this place is the intense, incredibly interesting fiasco that is the mafia.
lots of people, myself included, are under the impression that the mafia is an old-fashioned, antiquated fact of a bygone era. lots of people, myself included, are under the impression that the mafia is a ramshackle gang of rather disorganized young men (okay, you may think this is stupid, but i've never seen the godfather nor any other hollywood glamificatin of mafia, so this was my thinking).
the truth is, i am completely misguided. i know this sounds like a research paper, but this is just so goddamn interesting: the mafia is still a force to this day, and the reason it keeps existing is because it is so. fucking. organized. these people are geniuses. for example:
in palermo, on the northwest coast of Sicily (and where, i might add, we're fieldtrippin to in a few weeks), EIGHTY PERCENT of business still pay taxes to the mafia. EIGHTY PERCENT. that's crazy! in fact, these businesses do not simply pay under the table. each month they actually write it into their budgets. paying the mafia tax means protection against random car torching, house robbing, relative killing, etc. IN TWO THOUSAND TEN. i just can't get over that.
when i walk along the water i always cringe when i see a particular wall. three years ago this wall didn't exist, and there was straight access to the beautiful harbor. you could stand on the street and see out onto the water where all the yachts were anchored. there's a huge picture of this view in one of the theatres here, and it's gorgeous.
BUT now there is this huge, ugly, gargantuan wall covered in graffiti and topped with barbed wire. i hesitate to call it that because everything here is so fucking beautiful, but this is...not. the wall is the result of a political scandal involving the mafia, in which the city was essentially forced to erect the wall as a "yacht lot." that was three years ago. to this day the wall remains in its earliest building stages and, most importantly, yachtless.
sometimes the mafia is seemingly out in the open, like for 90 minutes every tuesday and thursday when we discuss it in class.
but other times it's so hush-hush; i feel like i can never mention it outside of school, and everytime i see those bullet holes i walk a little faster.
Monday, February 1, 2010
(i've been having mad trouble uploading pictures but i have so many so i'll try soon!)
this weekend was bomb. friday we walked around the mainland city with ramzi. basically this involved him dragging us behind him as he chatted with EVERYONE. we ended up at a bar at 11 am where he bought us beer. i love ramzi.
we saw a guy who had been growing his dreadlocks for 30+ years and who kept them in the pocket of his cargo pants. we saw lots of dogs. we saw a man selling fresh ricotta out of the trunk of his station wagon.
on saturday there was a wine tasting at a vineyard about 15 minutes outside the city. you could pick your own oranges and grapefruit and avacado, and there was SO MUCH CHEESE. first glass of wine: 2 pm. shots of grappa: 2:30 pm. last glass of wine: 2 am sunday morning. what happened in between: delirious enjoyment.
today, monday, my three-hour class was canceled so we went and laid out on some hot rocks by the water. even though every italian man on the island between the ages of sixteen and nineteen set up their umbrellas and lawn chairs to view us from above (this is becoming a slight issue), it was amazing.
i feel like i can't write well anymore, haha. everything feels so soft and hazy and not quite real. my friend suzanne is coming down from vienna on sunday, though, which is so exciting. and my friend katie is coming to italy at some point in the next two weeks too. i feel like seeing them will be like coming down from an intense high (not that i've had much experience, parents) and really grounding. i can't wait.
i've been eating strange combinations of things: oranges and vinegar, tomatoes and mustard, chickpeas and ketchup. yesterday i imagined getting an orange from lowry and pouring vinegar on it and i wondered if i'll feel any different when i do finally return. i can't imagine how i'll be tomorrow or the next day. i definitely can't imagine how i'll be in june or august. (hopefully more motivated to run than i am now!)
this weekend was bomb. friday we walked around the mainland city with ramzi. basically this involved him dragging us behind him as he chatted with EVERYONE. we ended up at a bar at 11 am where he bought us beer. i love ramzi.
we saw a guy who had been growing his dreadlocks for 30+ years and who kept them in the pocket of his cargo pants. we saw lots of dogs. we saw a man selling fresh ricotta out of the trunk of his station wagon.
on saturday there was a wine tasting at a vineyard about 15 minutes outside the city. you could pick your own oranges and grapefruit and avacado, and there was SO MUCH CHEESE. first glass of wine: 2 pm. shots of grappa: 2:30 pm. last glass of wine: 2 am sunday morning. what happened in between: delirious enjoyment.
today, monday, my three-hour class was canceled so we went and laid out on some hot rocks by the water. even though every italian man on the island between the ages of sixteen and nineteen set up their umbrellas and lawn chairs to view us from above (this is becoming a slight issue), it was amazing.
i feel like i can't write well anymore, haha. everything feels so soft and hazy and not quite real. my friend suzanne is coming down from vienna on sunday, though, which is so exciting. and my friend katie is coming to italy at some point in the next two weeks too. i feel like seeing them will be like coming down from an intense high (not that i've had much experience, parents) and really grounding. i can't wait.
i've been eating strange combinations of things: oranges and vinegar, tomatoes and mustard, chickpeas and ketchup. yesterday i imagined getting an orange from lowry and pouring vinegar on it and i wondered if i'll feel any different when i do finally return. i can't imagine how i'll be tomorrow or the next day. i definitely can't imagine how i'll be in june or august. (hopefully more motivated to run than i am now!)
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
routinez
well hello there! i would just like to say that right now i am pretty sure a hurricane is descending. it is pouring sheets of rain and the wind is ridiculous. today i longingly stared at my bikini where it lay idle in a drawer. sad, sad.
so even though i don't have much to report from this end, i feel like i should do it now, when i'm at the school where there is wireless, because i don't know when the wireless at our apartment will be restored (sadly i have become increasingly dependent on our neighbor, flavio i think?, for my wireless entertainment. and i just discovered why none of my friends are ever on facebook when i am...because they are sleeping. duh. but now it looks like i can't even wake up at say, 3 am, to video chat, BECAUSE WIRELESS IS GONE).
i think i will go eat a kiwi and read my mafia book.
but anyway. i just had a three hour class in volcanology. the prof's name is boris and he's from germany. he has an affinity for 70's rock and headbanging, and of course showing us incredible videos of eruptions captured from approximately 9 feet away. i...love him.
for my comp lit and mafia classes i have the same teacher, an italian woman who i'm pretty sure is a model on the side. she's adorable. and even though my italian teacher knows everyone's name except for mine ("uh...hey...you...") i like her too. so all is well on the school front, especially because i got notebooks with snowboarding dogs on them, because you know, italians. you know what i mean?
i'm settling into a routine which is, while important, a little frightening. for example, the days go by so fast here--i think it's because i think about what time it is in the US far too often. or else because i wake up at 10. but i've changed the clock on my computer and set my alarm to eight, so i can go to the market and run before my first class at 10:30. we'll see.
a typical day might look something like this:
3 am: my roommate wakes me up to debrief on night's activities, having happened only hours before, usually involving a bar.
4 am: my other roommate crawls into my bed because she is homesick. second roommate perches on end of bed and we continue debriefing. children scream and dogs bark outside (for some reason)
9:30 am: the alarm on my ghetto, school-provided mobile phone goes off: "IT IS TIME TO WAKE UP. IT IS 9:30 AM. IT IS TIME TO WAKE UP." i set it for ten ASAP.
10 am: wake up, struggle around the apartment, keeping comforter around shoulders because of heating issues.
10:30: italian. repeat tongue twisters. think of ben affleck/JLO movie "gigli" for help with pronuncition.
12: sometimes class, sometimes not. class: prepare to overcome 25-second attention span by occasionally rubbing peppermint chapstick under each eye. not: walk around, go to market, win bananagrams, etc.
12:30: stop in to see giovanni and his son, santo, at cafe next to school. there are adorable and always give us discounts.
3: contemplate running. check weather. contemplate some more.
3:30: trot around the island, by the water. it's beautiful.
6 pm: beg roommate to cook me dinner. she obliges most of the time.
7 pm: buy wine.
8 pm: buy more wine, or else decide to cease drinking wine. i suppose now would be a good time to do some work.
9pm-12am: visit other apartments and compare various heating woes. eat whatever they cook for me. drink whatever they have. discuss deep life issues. play cards.roo
midnight: crawl in front of space heater. tie black sock around my eyes because that's what my roommate said to do for jetlag. fall asleep and have weird dreams about everyone from home...
so even though i don't have much to report from this end, i feel like i should do it now, when i'm at the school where there is wireless, because i don't know when the wireless at our apartment will be restored (sadly i have become increasingly dependent on our neighbor, flavio i think?, for my wireless entertainment. and i just discovered why none of my friends are ever on facebook when i am...because they are sleeping. duh. but now it looks like i can't even wake up at say, 3 am, to video chat, BECAUSE WIRELESS IS GONE).
i think i will go eat a kiwi and read my mafia book.
but anyway. i just had a three hour class in volcanology. the prof's name is boris and he's from germany. he has an affinity for 70's rock and headbanging, and of course showing us incredible videos of eruptions captured from approximately 9 feet away. i...love him.
for my comp lit and mafia classes i have the same teacher, an italian woman who i'm pretty sure is a model on the side. she's adorable. and even though my italian teacher knows everyone's name except for mine ("uh...hey...you...") i like her too. so all is well on the school front, especially because i got notebooks with snowboarding dogs on them, because you know, italians. you know what i mean?
i'm settling into a routine which is, while important, a little frightening. for example, the days go by so fast here--i think it's because i think about what time it is in the US far too often. or else because i wake up at 10. but i've changed the clock on my computer and set my alarm to eight, so i can go to the market and run before my first class at 10:30. we'll see.
a typical day might look something like this:
3 am: my roommate wakes me up to debrief on night's activities, having happened only hours before, usually involving a bar.
4 am: my other roommate crawls into my bed because she is homesick. second roommate perches on end of bed and we continue debriefing. children scream and dogs bark outside (for some reason)
9:30 am: the alarm on my ghetto, school-provided mobile phone goes off: "IT IS TIME TO WAKE UP. IT IS 9:30 AM. IT IS TIME TO WAKE UP." i set it for ten ASAP.
10 am: wake up, struggle around the apartment, keeping comforter around shoulders because of heating issues.
10:30: italian. repeat tongue twisters. think of ben affleck/JLO movie "gigli" for help with pronuncition.
12: sometimes class, sometimes not. class: prepare to overcome 25-second attention span by occasionally rubbing peppermint chapstick under each eye. not: walk around, go to market, win bananagrams, etc.
12:30: stop in to see giovanni and his son, santo, at cafe next to school. there are adorable and always give us discounts.
3: contemplate running. check weather. contemplate some more.
3:30: trot around the island, by the water. it's beautiful.
6 pm: beg roommate to cook me dinner. she obliges most of the time.
7 pm: buy wine.
8 pm: buy more wine, or else decide to cease drinking wine. i suppose now would be a good time to do some work.
9pm-12am: visit other apartments and compare various heating woes. eat whatever they cook for me. drink whatever they have. discuss deep life issues. play cards.roo
midnight: crawl in front of space heater. tie black sock around my eyes because that's what my roommate said to do for jetlag. fall asleep and have weird dreams about everyone from home...
Monday, January 25, 2010
hungry
this is what i have learned:
"culture shock" manifests itself in different ways.
sometimes i get overwhelmed in large groups.
sometimes i sleep for ten hours and still have dark circles under my eyes.
sometimes i feel extremely obvious and obnoxious and clumsy.
but always, always, ALWAYS, i am hungry
i mean consistantly, 24/7, i-haven't-eaten-in-days FAMISHED. i might as well be eating my way through my italy guidebooks, for all the nourishment i feel i'm getting from the food here. but i would rather be eating the following: mozerella and tomato sandwiches, kiwis, big oranges, oreos and nutella, bruschetta, hunks of random cheeses, pears. i would rather be eating an entire foccacia dipped in olive oil (which is what i just did).
and yet i am still STARVING.
my body is like, what the fuck's up? for one, i started running. i sort of promised my legs months of rest, only to wrest them from their peaceful slumber for the past few days and pound them on cobblestones. and secondly, i've honestly consumed more gluten in the last week than in my entire life.
it's amazing.
thirty percent of sicilians have celiac disease, as opposed to one percent of americans (or less). every kid gets tested when they turn 7. sooooooo there is a gluten-free restaurant right in ortigia (the island we're on) and today i found gluten-free pasta at the supermarket. problem: it costs 5 euros. fuck that. i would rather spend .50 on hunks of fresh bread (FUCK I'VE MISSED BREAD) and just tell my body to suck it up.
it's around 6 pm right now, which means i will be getting into my bed in front of my space heater in approximately two minutes, getting up in a few hours, eating again (duh), chilling, eating, chilling, eating. my plan is NOT to gain 200 pounds, so we'll see...
"culture shock" manifests itself in different ways.
sometimes i get overwhelmed in large groups.
sometimes i sleep for ten hours and still have dark circles under my eyes.
sometimes i feel extremely obvious and obnoxious and clumsy.
but always, always, ALWAYS, i am hungry
i mean consistantly, 24/7, i-haven't-eaten-in-days FAMISHED. i might as well be eating my way through my italy guidebooks, for all the nourishment i feel i'm getting from the food here. but i would rather be eating the following: mozerella and tomato sandwiches, kiwis, big oranges, oreos and nutella, bruschetta, hunks of random cheeses, pears. i would rather be eating an entire foccacia dipped in olive oil (which is what i just did).
and yet i am still STARVING.
my body is like, what the fuck's up? for one, i started running. i sort of promised my legs months of rest, only to wrest them from their peaceful slumber for the past few days and pound them on cobblestones. and secondly, i've honestly consumed more gluten in the last week than in my entire life.
it's amazing.
thirty percent of sicilians have celiac disease, as opposed to one percent of americans (or less). every kid gets tested when they turn 7. sooooooo there is a gluten-free restaurant right in ortigia (the island we're on) and today i found gluten-free pasta at the supermarket. problem: it costs 5 euros. fuck that. i would rather spend .50 on hunks of fresh bread (FUCK I'VE MISSED BREAD) and just tell my body to suck it up.
it's around 6 pm right now, which means i will be getting into my bed in front of my space heater in approximately two minutes, getting up in a few hours, eating again (duh), chilling, eating, chilling, eating. my plan is NOT to gain 200 pounds, so we'll see...
Sunday, January 24, 2010
...
so, sorry if these next couple posts are a little dull. at this point, pulling wit and charm from my brain and injecting into my writing might actually require a syringe. it's not that i'm uninspired, it's just that my brain cells are currently occupied registering my surroundings on a second-to-second basis.
everything here is chill. i mean, seriously chill. it's as if the entire city of siracusa smoked a ton of really, really good weed, but instead of watching the best of ren and stimpy and eating pringles topped with cheez whiz, it simply channels its high into being really fucking gorgeous. and admit it, that's the best kind of chill to be.
it warmed up a bit today. i no longer feel the need to sleep in a full-body spandex suit, ala scuba diver. and this morning my friend and i shopped like crazy at zara. all the stores have mad sales, like 50 to 70% off, because of the changing season. it's sickkkkkkk.
miss and love you guys. thanks for reading :) i swear i'll conjure up some creativity in the very near future...
everything here is chill. i mean, seriously chill. it's as if the entire city of siracusa smoked a ton of really, really good weed, but instead of watching the best of ren and stimpy and eating pringles topped with cheez whiz, it simply channels its high into being really fucking gorgeous. and admit it, that's the best kind of chill to be.
it warmed up a bit today. i no longer feel the need to sleep in a full-body spandex suit, ala scuba diver. and this morning my friend and i shopped like crazy at zara. all the stores have mad sales, like 50 to 70% off, because of the changing season. it's sickkkkkkk.
miss and love you guys. thanks for reading :) i swear i'll conjure up some creativity in the very near future...
Saturday, January 23, 2010
saturn's day
ah, my first dumpy day in italia. it was bound to happen right? i wore what i like to call my flared, fitted yoga pants, but are really just sweatpants. i'm pretty sure i was the only person in the entire country wearing sweatpants. i am dead serious.
last night was just a little, how you say, fuckin crazy? (sorry i curse so much. if that bothers anyone..uh...sorry?..) we went to several bars and ended up at a disco where ramzi had put us on the VIP list. (RAMZI IS CRAZY). it was mostly middle-aged people doing tango, so we kind of pasted ourselves to the bar. so the rest of the night is self-explanatory ya? (there was this 45 year old man from south carolina there hitting on all the girls. um, no. i just...no.)
today i woke up remarkably early in my new bed. oh i should mention! i moved. one of the guys in the program realllllly wanted a single room, so i was like for sure dude, bring your snowpants ya? but it's cool. i live in a SICK apartment now with 6 other girls. it used to be a b&b so everyone has their own bathroom AND we totally mooch off our neighbor's free wireless. AND RAMZI BROUGHT ME A SPACE HEATER. thank you baby jesus (i accidentally said that the other night to people i had just met. uhh..).
so i woke up early and went to the market with two friends. purchase: pears, chocolate, cheese, broccoli, oranges. receive free from elderly cheese man with adorable, adorable round face: warm foccacia.
go to post office to sign immigration form. was told to report at 11. half the program went at 9 and by 11 most are still waiting. being the only "Y" in the group i am told it will be another 2 hours at least. some people and i duck out for a cafe.
drink a cappacino, the closet thing they have here to actual coffee. receive free piece of cake-like thing. these italians like to give you lots of free shit. si si!
return to post office. it has closed for siesta. knock on door and am told by woman to leave. "studente! studente!" i shout through the glass, as instructed. i am grudgingly let in. these peple take their siesta seriously.
trot over to friend's adorable apartment, complete with terrace and lofts where they sleep, for cannoli. i should mention eating here is a pretty constant thing. since this has been my lifelong dream, i pretty much love it. find copy of augusten burrough's running with scissors in english. day made.
come back to apartment. realize mt. etna field trip is same weekend as half marathon. bummer. decide there is no way i am missing getting up close to an active volcano to, you know, exert myself physically.
talk to alena on the phone. compare the quantities of ham in our respective countries. hint: it is everywhere.
DO NOT SLEEP DURING SIESTA. WHAT HAVE I BECOME? (i tell you. someone who functions on very little sleep. so weird.)
go to grocery store. attempt to buy a box of cream thinking it is a box of bread crumbs. i am a child.
my roommate cooks a massive dinner for 35. everyone from school, from all programs, comes over. i plant myself far away from the wine. fun!
now: most people are at a bar. i have confiscated my roommate's snuggie and will be rooting myself to the couch. definition of dump, si? i love it.
PS-ramzi and i took a taxi to my new apartment yesterday when i moved. the taxi driver pops in a CD. IT IS RAMZI SINGING. THIS MAN OWNS THIS ENTIRE ISLAND. I SWEAR.
last night was just a little, how you say, fuckin crazy? (sorry i curse so much. if that bothers anyone..uh...sorry?..) we went to several bars and ended up at a disco where ramzi had put us on the VIP list. (RAMZI IS CRAZY). it was mostly middle-aged people doing tango, so we kind of pasted ourselves to the bar. so the rest of the night is self-explanatory ya? (there was this 45 year old man from south carolina there hitting on all the girls. um, no. i just...no.)
today i woke up remarkably early in my new bed. oh i should mention! i moved. one of the guys in the program realllllly wanted a single room, so i was like for sure dude, bring your snowpants ya? but it's cool. i live in a SICK apartment now with 6 other girls. it used to be a b&b so everyone has their own bathroom AND we totally mooch off our neighbor's free wireless. AND RAMZI BROUGHT ME A SPACE HEATER. thank you baby jesus (i accidentally said that the other night to people i had just met. uhh..).
so i woke up early and went to the market with two friends. purchase: pears, chocolate, cheese, broccoli, oranges. receive free from elderly cheese man with adorable, adorable round face: warm foccacia.
go to post office to sign immigration form. was told to report at 11. half the program went at 9 and by 11 most are still waiting. being the only "Y" in the group i am told it will be another 2 hours at least. some people and i duck out for a cafe.
drink a cappacino, the closet thing they have here to actual coffee. receive free piece of cake-like thing. these italians like to give you lots of free shit. si si!
return to post office. it has closed for siesta. knock on door and am told by woman to leave. "studente! studente!" i shout through the glass, as instructed. i am grudgingly let in. these peple take their siesta seriously.
trot over to friend's adorable apartment, complete with terrace and lofts where they sleep, for cannoli. i should mention eating here is a pretty constant thing. since this has been my lifelong dream, i pretty much love it. find copy of augusten burrough's running with scissors in english. day made.
come back to apartment. realize mt. etna field trip is same weekend as half marathon. bummer. decide there is no way i am missing getting up close to an active volcano to, you know, exert myself physically.
talk to alena on the phone. compare the quantities of ham in our respective countries. hint: it is everywhere.
DO NOT SLEEP DURING SIESTA. WHAT HAVE I BECOME? (i tell you. someone who functions on very little sleep. so weird.)
go to grocery store. attempt to buy a box of cream thinking it is a box of bread crumbs. i am a child.
my roommate cooks a massive dinner for 35. everyone from school, from all programs, comes over. i plant myself far away from the wine. fun!
now: most people are at a bar. i have confiscated my roommate's snuggie and will be rooting myself to the couch. definition of dump, si? i love it.
PS-ramzi and i took a taxi to my new apartment yesterday when i moved. the taxi driver pops in a CD. IT IS RAMZI SINGING. THIS MAN OWNS THIS ENTIRE ISLAND. I SWEAR.
Friday, January 22, 2010
heat heat heat
my heat is broken. OHNO OHNO OHNO OHNO. oh no. take my money. take my laptop. but please, please, please don't take my heat.
i'll admit it, it was my fault. i'm a fiddler. i fiddled with it, the thermostat, and then the screen went blank. as i lunged, slow-motion, nooooooooooooo, a single tear ran down my cheek. or it would have, but it froze halfway down.
since i do not like frozen tears, i shed a few liquid ones for good measure. because if i had to take one more "shower" with the fucking tea kettle i was going to die.
i reason with myself. i think, "okay, your apartment is a tundra, but YOU'RE IN PARADISE."
like:
"so maybe the only sleeping position that renders you only mildly cold rather than arctic fucking freezing is knees to chin which happens to constrict your breathing. but you walk ten minutes to school every day ALONG THE SPARKLING MEDITERRANEAN.
or:
"so what if you have to wear a ski hat, ski socks and mittens to enter the kitchen? a sweet italian man let you feed ice cream to his fat dog today!"
or:
"yeah, the thirty seconds it takes for your hair to 'dry' (relative term) between your freezing tea kettle shower and your icy bed is the equivalent of having each eye slowly gorged out with plastic spatulas. BUT THE CANNOLI..."
you get the idea.
i love this place. i really do. but getting out of bed at any point in the day is mindfuckingly excrutiating. it's not that it's not warm outside; in the sun, it's actually hot. but considering my apartment is like most italians--kind of dark, bellowing and tucked away from direct sunlight--it's really just an icebox.
i was supposed to meet some friends at the school at 4 pm yesterday, so i set my alarm for 3:30 after siesta (which, i should mention, might be my favorite thing so far about italy...) but then I COULD NOT GET OUT OF BED. as in, NO WAY IN HELL AM I LOSING ONE CUBIC CENTIMETER OF BODY HEAT BY SHIFTING IN ANY CARDINAL DIRECTION. so i didn't go.
because sometimes, whether you're in italy or the bahamas or on the moon, you just have to watch greys anatomy (season one, before meredith started crying all the time for no reason, you know, the good season) in bed, with your knees curled up to your chin, breathing into your hands. sometimes you have to focus on merely functioning. sometimes, before you can appreciate the mindblowing beauty of your surroundings, before you can stand in a patch of sunlight and watch the waves crash against the rocks, wondering how you got so lucky, you have to learn to appreciate how you got there.
i'll admit it, it was my fault. i'm a fiddler. i fiddled with it, the thermostat, and then the screen went blank. as i lunged, slow-motion, nooooooooooooo, a single tear ran down my cheek. or it would have, but it froze halfway down.
since i do not like frozen tears, i shed a few liquid ones for good measure. because if i had to take one more "shower" with the fucking tea kettle i was going to die.
i reason with myself. i think, "okay, your apartment is a tundra, but YOU'RE IN PARADISE."
like:
"so maybe the only sleeping position that renders you only mildly cold rather than arctic fucking freezing is knees to chin which happens to constrict your breathing. but you walk ten minutes to school every day ALONG THE SPARKLING MEDITERRANEAN.
or:
"so what if you have to wear a ski hat, ski socks and mittens to enter the kitchen? a sweet italian man let you feed ice cream to his fat dog today!"
or:
"yeah, the thirty seconds it takes for your hair to 'dry' (relative term) between your freezing tea kettle shower and your icy bed is the equivalent of having each eye slowly gorged out with plastic spatulas. BUT THE CANNOLI..."
you get the idea.
i love this place. i really do. but getting out of bed at any point in the day is mindfuckingly excrutiating. it's not that it's not warm outside; in the sun, it's actually hot. but considering my apartment is like most italians--kind of dark, bellowing and tucked away from direct sunlight--it's really just an icebox.
i was supposed to meet some friends at the school at 4 pm yesterday, so i set my alarm for 3:30 after siesta (which, i should mention, might be my favorite thing so far about italy...) but then I COULD NOT GET OUT OF BED. as in, NO WAY IN HELL AM I LOSING ONE CUBIC CENTIMETER OF BODY HEAT BY SHIFTING IN ANY CARDINAL DIRECTION. so i didn't go.
because sometimes, whether you're in italy or the bahamas or on the moon, you just have to watch greys anatomy (season one, before meredith started crying all the time for no reason, you know, the good season) in bed, with your knees curled up to your chin, breathing into your hands. sometimes you have to focus on merely functioning. sometimes, before you can appreciate the mindblowing beauty of your surroundings, before you can stand in a patch of sunlight and watch the waves crash against the rocks, wondering how you got so lucky, you have to learn to appreciate how you got there.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
so.
i arrived in sircusa yesterday. i can't breathe half the time because it is just. so. god. damn. beautiful. white lights strung in the streets, plazas so clean you can eat off then, the ocean everywhere you look, ancient architecture, lots of stray puppies to play with. the only words i can attempt to describe this place is fucking incredible.
i met some people at the airport and we took a taxi van to the city, and then to the school. upon getting out of the taxi and being introduced to ramzi, the actually crazy resident director who seems to know everyone on the island, i am told that everyone else can get their stuff out of the taxi but i have to leave mine in. everyone looks at me concerned, like i am being deported. i then squeeze into the front middle seat of the taxi between colermo, the driver, and ramzi, shouting over me in italian. and then this happened next:
ramzi: (huge grin, to me): you know we get you your own flat, ya?
me: SHUT UP.
(realizing i just told my resident director to shut up, and this is the first conversation i'm having with him, i try again)
me: um...what?
ramzi (still thrilled): si, si! zat was what you wanted, ya?
me:
.....
ramzi: you put on form you want single, no?
(note: i did, in fact, put that i preferred a single room on the housing form. but not, you know, a SINGLE APARTMENT.)
me:.........sssssssssi.....?
ramzi: so i get you what you want! zis is nice, you know, when you get drunk, nobody has to see you! you by yourself!
(yes, ramzi, that was my first thought, too! i am really glad that i will be drunk and ALONE in the very near future. grazi mille!)
me:
.....si.
ramzi: your form, i could tell you were most mature.
(um...no.)
ramzi: i give you single room, because i know you are like me. sometimes we don't like people, no?
me (instantly horrified): i...like...people...
ramzi (undeterred):...so...maybe i read your request wrong?
me (god, i am sometimes so accomodating): no, no! i mean, si. it's fine.
and it was. well, is. the apartment is the farthest from the school (like 8 minutes walking, nbd), but about 10 feet from the water. once i did some rearranging (for instance, moving the bed from the foyer) it actually is really nice. the only thing i still don't know how to work is the hot water heater, which i can see causing some problems down the road (by which i mean, in about ten minutes when i walk back to take a shower) but you know, de puta madre. it's all good.
and besides, there are plenty of things keeping me out of the apartment. the kids on my program are awesome. honestly, it's cliche, but we were all talking about how we lucked out. there's 8 kids from bates, and then the rest are from all over the country. i really like all of them. seriously.
and there's so many connections. a girl i partied with a few new years ago in connecticut is now in my program, and another girl went to camp jewell for a long time. another girl's cousin goes to wooster, a guy has a summer house in a girl's hometown and they know the same people, etc. while a group of americans with all these connections might sound stifling, it's the opposite--watching all of us explore and (try to) interact with the locals is awesome.
i don't even know how to describe this place. i guess it is like a seaside town, and right now is the off-season, so its pretty much just us and the locals. the buildings are old and white and stone and fucking beautiful, everything is so clean and charming, there are balconies, wrought-iron that have been around for centuries, there's an open-air market. the market is the shit. there are no preservatives in sicily, so, unlike in america, organic, local, fresh food is the norm. and it's cheap! (a kilo of oranges for a euro). so for breakfast i had these huge grapes and a slice of just-made mozzerella and orange juice that was squeezed right in front of me. the entire thing is like one big dream sequence.
i don't get wireless in my apartment, so uploading pictures is gonna be a little difficult, but i'll get on that. oh and, they have these sick old-fashioned bikes with big baskets you can rent, um, to ride one of these has been a long-term goal of mine and will soon come to fruition. and i wasn't sure about the running community, but BAM within five seconds of arrival on the island i see three different groups of runners along the shore. which means i should maybe start thinking about maybe being motivated to start jogging for this half marathon in april..but we'll see. for now it's just amazing food and cool people in a ridiculously beautiful place.
ciao!
miss you all and love you
i met some people at the airport and we took a taxi van to the city, and then to the school. upon getting out of the taxi and being introduced to ramzi, the actually crazy resident director who seems to know everyone on the island, i am told that everyone else can get their stuff out of the taxi but i have to leave mine in. everyone looks at me concerned, like i am being deported. i then squeeze into the front middle seat of the taxi between colermo, the driver, and ramzi, shouting over me in italian. and then this happened next:
ramzi: (huge grin, to me): you know we get you your own flat, ya?
me: SHUT UP.
(realizing i just told my resident director to shut up, and this is the first conversation i'm having with him, i try again)
me: um...what?
ramzi (still thrilled): si, si! zat was what you wanted, ya?
me:
.....
ramzi: you put on form you want single, no?
(note: i did, in fact, put that i preferred a single room on the housing form. but not, you know, a SINGLE APARTMENT.)
me:.........sssssssssi.....?
ramzi: so i get you what you want! zis is nice, you know, when you get drunk, nobody has to see you! you by yourself!
(yes, ramzi, that was my first thought, too! i am really glad that i will be drunk and ALONE in the very near future. grazi mille!)
me:
.....si.
ramzi: your form, i could tell you were most mature.
(um...no.)
ramzi: i give you single room, because i know you are like me. sometimes we don't like people, no?
me (instantly horrified): i...like...people...
ramzi (undeterred):...so...maybe i read your request wrong?
me (god, i am sometimes so accomodating): no, no! i mean, si. it's fine.
and it was. well, is. the apartment is the farthest from the school (like 8 minutes walking, nbd), but about 10 feet from the water. once i did some rearranging (for instance, moving the bed from the foyer) it actually is really nice. the only thing i still don't know how to work is the hot water heater, which i can see causing some problems down the road (by which i mean, in about ten minutes when i walk back to take a shower) but you know, de puta madre. it's all good.
and besides, there are plenty of things keeping me out of the apartment. the kids on my program are awesome. honestly, it's cliche, but we were all talking about how we lucked out. there's 8 kids from bates, and then the rest are from all over the country. i really like all of them. seriously.
and there's so many connections. a girl i partied with a few new years ago in connecticut is now in my program, and another girl went to camp jewell for a long time. another girl's cousin goes to wooster, a guy has a summer house in a girl's hometown and they know the same people, etc. while a group of americans with all these connections might sound stifling, it's the opposite--watching all of us explore and (try to) interact with the locals is awesome.
i don't even know how to describe this place. i guess it is like a seaside town, and right now is the off-season, so its pretty much just us and the locals. the buildings are old and white and stone and fucking beautiful, everything is so clean and charming, there are balconies, wrought-iron that have been around for centuries, there's an open-air market. the market is the shit. there are no preservatives in sicily, so, unlike in america, organic, local, fresh food is the norm. and it's cheap! (a kilo of oranges for a euro). so for breakfast i had these huge grapes and a slice of just-made mozzerella and orange juice that was squeezed right in front of me. the entire thing is like one big dream sequence.
i don't get wireless in my apartment, so uploading pictures is gonna be a little difficult, but i'll get on that. oh and, they have these sick old-fashioned bikes with big baskets you can rent, um, to ride one of these has been a long-term goal of mine and will soon come to fruition. and i wasn't sure about the running community, but BAM within five seconds of arrival on the island i see three different groups of runners along the shore. which means i should maybe start thinking about maybe being motivated to start jogging for this half marathon in april..but we'll see. for now it's just amazing food and cool people in a ridiculously beautiful place.
ciao!
miss you all and love you
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
connected!
(sorry these photos are kind of small. i'll try to make them bigger in the future.)
piazza duomo (that's an elephant on top)
piazza duomo (that's an elephant on top)
the fish market. man, these people take their fish seriously. i purposely didn't photograph the sign for "carne de caballo" and half a dead horse. that was a bit much:
view of the water from the top of via antonino. how sick is this? if you look closely you can see the water:
headless statue:
this is the ash i was talking about:
the door to my hostel. how sick is this? it takes about 30 seconds to open:
um, loved this:
more ash:
i read in this park for a bit:
i'm no expert, but the architecture here is incredible:
if i understood/could read italian, i would translate, but i can't. but i thought this was cool nonetheless:
view from the balcony of the hostel:
my room at the hostel. haha:
layers, from rebuilding after the volcanic eruptions:
who has two thumbs and is clearly at the center of sicily's religious spectrum? this guy. it's no where near the intensity of rome, though:
another church, plaza duomo. i should mention that this is the main tourist spot in catania, but it was almost empty every time i went:
another stereotype: italian graffiti is bomb:
but this was my personal favorite :)
circle dog
ciao! still no charger, so no photos, so no evidence that im actually here in sicily, and not writing this from the basement of say, weber house in wooster, ohio, where i thought it would be funny to hide and pretend im actually going abroad, and then pop out at various theme parties to surprise people. of course, we all know that if that were the case, i would have taken distinct advantage of the jersey shore party, so i guess that is all the evidence we need.
augusten borroughs has this story about the worst date he went on, where the guy brought him back to his apartment and all the sudden puts on this dress-type thing and starts spinning around in circles, and claims he is training to be a whirling dervish. all augusten can think of to say is, "you remind me of Circle Dog" (FOUND THE QUOTATION MARKS!), who is this dog he used to own who would only run in circles. the reason i am relating this to you is so that you have some idea of what i looked like romping around catania today. circle dog.
at ten i went out and ended up walking around the city for two hours, which was awesome. catania is beautiful and shabby, a duality that can only exist when the city sits at the base of an active volcano, as catania does, rendering most things covered in a thin layer of ash. its cool to see how they built up the city after the two instances a long time ago in which mt. etna erupted and covered everything with molten lava. joking, sort of. but lots of buildings have parts that are sort of peeling away, and you can see all the different bricks underneath, which i assume is an archeologists dream, although my archeology friends can correct me as necessary.
i walked up this massive hill of a street, via antonio, and from the top caught my first glimpse of the mediterrenean (lord, i am going to have to learn to spell that word soon enough...) which was amazing. i then walked all the way back down to the wharf, checked out some boats, some churches, and statues. i ended up looping around a rather lot, not realizing that i was doing so until i ended up in the same place multiple times, but it was cool, because i just could not believe where i was.
so while i was playing circle dog, i wondered if maybe i was running into the same people, and not realizing it. because i was wearing a bright red cardigan over black and white plaid, and according to my careful observances of the outfits around me, italians dont wear plaid (stereotype #1,002). but then i thought, no, thats ridiculous, these people have their own stuff to do, why would they be looking at me? and then, tonight, lo and behold, i ran into a nice older gentlemen who asked me if i was from the states. startled, because it was the first english ive heard yet outside the hostel, i said i was, and he responded that he had seen me walking around yesterday (i was wearing the red last night, too). we talked about syracuse a bit, and i said goodbye and we parted ways, and in normal circumstances i think this might be a little creepy, that this guy knew i existed. but it wasnt, not at all, because he was not creepy at all, and i was hungry for english, however broken, and i thought it was nice that he cared. and so my circle dog game seemed to pay off.
after the two hours of adventure, i returned to my hostel and found the two owners, this really nice, young, couple, in the middle of a huge fight. which was awkward. once i got to my room, i wasnt sure when it was appropiate to leave again, because in order to leave the hostel i would have had to walk right through their altercation, which would have been embarassing for all of us. so i chilled in my room for a bit, watching scrubs dubbed in italian, and every so often clearing my throat to make it clear that i was in fact in the room, so that when i eventually did leave it wasnt a surprise that i had been in my room this whole time. later i trotted around the city again, feeling better about it in the dark than last night, and going to some stores, where all the graphic t-shirts were in english. which was a letdown. how else can i prove im in italy without italian scribbled across the chest? duh. (im joking. sort of.)
tomorrow morning im leaving to go back to the airport where i meet my group (ah) and drive to syracuse. i found out the island were staying off of, still part of syracuse but off the mainland, is only 1km long and .5km wide, which is sweet. and tiny. but cool, because i am the only one from my program living in this particular apartment, and i dont want to be isolated. which works.
i should also mention that today i saw a headless statue, a stray dalmatian, and an abundance of yankee caps. mafia what? jokin!
love you all
ciao
augusten borroughs has this story about the worst date he went on, where the guy brought him back to his apartment and all the sudden puts on this dress-type thing and starts spinning around in circles, and claims he is training to be a whirling dervish. all augusten can think of to say is, "you remind me of Circle Dog" (FOUND THE QUOTATION MARKS!), who is this dog he used to own who would only run in circles. the reason i am relating this to you is so that you have some idea of what i looked like romping around catania today. circle dog.
at ten i went out and ended up walking around the city for two hours, which was awesome. catania is beautiful and shabby, a duality that can only exist when the city sits at the base of an active volcano, as catania does, rendering most things covered in a thin layer of ash. its cool to see how they built up the city after the two instances a long time ago in which mt. etna erupted and covered everything with molten lava. joking, sort of. but lots of buildings have parts that are sort of peeling away, and you can see all the different bricks underneath, which i assume is an archeologists dream, although my archeology friends can correct me as necessary.
i walked up this massive hill of a street, via antonio, and from the top caught my first glimpse of the mediterrenean (lord, i am going to have to learn to spell that word soon enough...) which was amazing. i then walked all the way back down to the wharf, checked out some boats, some churches, and statues. i ended up looping around a rather lot, not realizing that i was doing so until i ended up in the same place multiple times, but it was cool, because i just could not believe where i was.
so while i was playing circle dog, i wondered if maybe i was running into the same people, and not realizing it. because i was wearing a bright red cardigan over black and white plaid, and according to my careful observances of the outfits around me, italians dont wear plaid (stereotype #1,002). but then i thought, no, thats ridiculous, these people have their own stuff to do, why would they be looking at me? and then, tonight, lo and behold, i ran into a nice older gentlemen who asked me if i was from the states. startled, because it was the first english ive heard yet outside the hostel, i said i was, and he responded that he had seen me walking around yesterday (i was wearing the red last night, too). we talked about syracuse a bit, and i said goodbye and we parted ways, and in normal circumstances i think this might be a little creepy, that this guy knew i existed. but it wasnt, not at all, because he was not creepy at all, and i was hungry for english, however broken, and i thought it was nice that he cared. and so my circle dog game seemed to pay off.
after the two hours of adventure, i returned to my hostel and found the two owners, this really nice, young, couple, in the middle of a huge fight. which was awkward. once i got to my room, i wasnt sure when it was appropiate to leave again, because in order to leave the hostel i would have had to walk right through their altercation, which would have been embarassing for all of us. so i chilled in my room for a bit, watching scrubs dubbed in italian, and every so often clearing my throat to make it clear that i was in fact in the room, so that when i eventually did leave it wasnt a surprise that i had been in my room this whole time. later i trotted around the city again, feeling better about it in the dark than last night, and going to some stores, where all the graphic t-shirts were in english. which was a letdown. how else can i prove im in italy without italian scribbled across the chest? duh. (im joking. sort of.)
tomorrow morning im leaving to go back to the airport where i meet my group (ah) and drive to syracuse. i found out the island were staying off of, still part of syracuse but off the mainland, is only 1km long and .5km wide, which is sweet. and tiny. but cool, because i am the only one from my program living in this particular apartment, and i dont want to be isolated. which works.
i should also mention that today i saw a headless statue, a stray dalmatian, and an abundance of yankee caps. mafia what? jokin!
love you all
ciao
Monday, January 18, 2010
rambing
so even though i am an english major, i will readily admit to being a less than ideal reader--long ago i perfected the art of skimming whilst still retaining some sort of grip on content, and sort of ran with that. so reading long chunks of prose unnerves me a bit, as i am sure it does you, whoever may be reading this thing, because you are probably expecting pictures of me meeting the pope, skiing the Alps, suntanning on the Italian Riveria, and, you know, i get that. and have all of these events photographically documented, so don not even worry about it. however, my computer charger is of the american variety, rendering me unable to post any pictures (and jesus i take a lot..because i am a supertourist..i will explain in a bit) and thus forcing me to submit to rambling. but really, if you arent interested (and thats cool, you know what else is cool, not using apotsrophes because i cannot find them on this italian keyboard, so sad) feel free to...skim.
so i would like to say something about traveling. the physical act of traveling is difficult particularly if you are, like i am, hyperaware of some surroundings whilst being extremely unware of others. what i mean is, i trip a lot in airports, or run over peoples feet with my gargantuan suitcases, and then i immediatly look around and construct an imaginary conversation which always either involves me apologizing or me brushing my hair back and talking about french films like, damn, i am so well-traveled, if not a bit clumsy.
but my journey from new york, to heathrow, to gatwick, to catania, has rendered me a complete, as the brits would say, clusterfuck. this is because i packed two massive suitcases, and they do not match like every European ive seen thus far, so sorry bout it, but it is kind of embarassing. so ive been doing downright American things, like dropping my suitcases in front of buses and struggling Roloff-style to recover, or telling the coach driver that i was going to terminal n, i mean north, i mean n, i mean north...before realizing that terminal n and terminal north are (duh) the same thing. im not angry or anything, i just find it amusing that in the presence of such..what? why are these people special? because theyre not american, i guess, i suddenly lose it and regress back to toddler-style coordination. in fact, all the way to heathrow this morning, as my suitcases flew around the floor of the bus and i pretended they werent mine, i kept having to remind myself that i had a right to, you know, exist, in this entity, i had the same right to exist in this entity as the business guy with the leather shoes and the slicked-back hair and the tiny microsuitcase (WHAT THE HELL FITS IN THOSE TINY SUITCASES? NOTHING. THAT IS THE ANSWER.). i have this right because i paid, you know, i laid down my euros for this bus, and this flight, you get the idea, but also because i am a rather decent human being, for example i made sure the hotel room was clean before i left it this morning, and i always say sorry when i amputate someones pinky toe with the wheels of my 70 pound suitcase. so you know.
i took the coach from heathrow to gatwick (terminal north, thanks) this morning, and discovered upon arrival in gatwick that they like to play games with you. for instance, they dont tell you your gate number until a designated time before your flight takes off, or when they feel like it. in fact i looked down at my boarding pass and the little spot next to gate was empty. so theres this one huge lounge-type area, and everyone who is going on any flight is crammed into it, rubbing elbows, wondering what the hell is going on. every so often an annoucement comes on like all passengers on flight so-and-so to some exotic locale, lets say nice, we have important information for you, yes you heard that right, we are going to unveil your GATE NUMBER. I REPEAT, SURPRISE! YOURE LUCKY WE WERE HERE TO REPORT YOUR GATE NUMBER TO YOU, SO THAT YOU MAY FIND IT AND BOARD THE FLIGHT YOU LAID DOWN MAD MONEY FOR. now be advised that the gate you want, the gate youve been waiting for, the gate youve been forgoing food and water for so that you dont miss the little flash on the departure screen, the gate that was cruelly witheld from you for the sake of our fun, is a 15 minutes walk from here, and your flight leaves in seven. CHEERIO!
okay, it wasnt really like that, but close. and i ended up missing my own surprise announcement, because i just could not believe how clean the bathrooms in this place were. they were like palaces, and i felt like i shouldve paid admission. seriously. but anyway, i eventually made it to my gate, and thats when all english waned, replaced by rapid, loud Italian. i am going to stereotype right now, and these are two of many Probably Untrue But Still Obvious Stereotypes to come.
PUBSOS #1- all Italians have beautiful hair, skin, and nails.
PUBSOS #2- no Italians wear backpacks.
a little unnerved by the foreignness of of it all (if i didnt mention it before, i dont speak a word of italian..oops), i focused my energy on these four boys about my age, wondering if they were quadruplets (they werent. duh). which seemed to take the edge off. the flight was fine, but the sickest part was waking up and looking out the window to find were right above the alps, truly one of the most beautiful sights ive seen, ever. the second sickest part was customs--im telling you, these people are chill. this guy lokoed at my passport and waved me through. and after all that work for a visa..
so now im at my hostel in catania, which literally looks like that 70s show threw up on a national historic building, you know, which is sweet. i just went out and walked around a bit, it was dark because its 10 or so here, and many mental notes were taken: cars dont stop for you, street signs arent always present, restaurants dont open until something like 23:00, and middle aged men stare are you. all. the. time. PUBSOS? yes. i cant help it.
welp, thats it from this end of the atlantic. ill post some pictures when i can procure one of those adaptor things, and till then, take care and ciao (okay, i know one word, which is actually nice because it means both hello and goodbye. aloha!)
so i would like to say something about traveling. the physical act of traveling is difficult particularly if you are, like i am, hyperaware of some surroundings whilst being extremely unware of others. what i mean is, i trip a lot in airports, or run over peoples feet with my gargantuan suitcases, and then i immediatly look around and construct an imaginary conversation which always either involves me apologizing or me brushing my hair back and talking about french films like, damn, i am so well-traveled, if not a bit clumsy.
but my journey from new york, to heathrow, to gatwick, to catania, has rendered me a complete, as the brits would say, clusterfuck. this is because i packed two massive suitcases, and they do not match like every European ive seen thus far, so sorry bout it, but it is kind of embarassing. so ive been doing downright American things, like dropping my suitcases in front of buses and struggling Roloff-style to recover, or telling the coach driver that i was going to terminal n, i mean north, i mean n, i mean north...before realizing that terminal n and terminal north are (duh) the same thing. im not angry or anything, i just find it amusing that in the presence of such..what? why are these people special? because theyre not american, i guess, i suddenly lose it and regress back to toddler-style coordination. in fact, all the way to heathrow this morning, as my suitcases flew around the floor of the bus and i pretended they werent mine, i kept having to remind myself that i had a right to, you know, exist, in this entity, i had the same right to exist in this entity as the business guy with the leather shoes and the slicked-back hair and the tiny microsuitcase (WHAT THE HELL FITS IN THOSE TINY SUITCASES? NOTHING. THAT IS THE ANSWER.). i have this right because i paid, you know, i laid down my euros for this bus, and this flight, you get the idea, but also because i am a rather decent human being, for example i made sure the hotel room was clean before i left it this morning, and i always say sorry when i amputate someones pinky toe with the wheels of my 70 pound suitcase. so you know.
i took the coach from heathrow to gatwick (terminal north, thanks) this morning, and discovered upon arrival in gatwick that they like to play games with you. for instance, they dont tell you your gate number until a designated time before your flight takes off, or when they feel like it. in fact i looked down at my boarding pass and the little spot next to gate was empty. so theres this one huge lounge-type area, and everyone who is going on any flight is crammed into it, rubbing elbows, wondering what the hell is going on. every so often an annoucement comes on like all passengers on flight so-and-so to some exotic locale, lets say nice, we have important information for you, yes you heard that right, we are going to unveil your GATE NUMBER. I REPEAT, SURPRISE! YOURE LUCKY WE WERE HERE TO REPORT YOUR GATE NUMBER TO YOU, SO THAT YOU MAY FIND IT AND BOARD THE FLIGHT YOU LAID DOWN MAD MONEY FOR. now be advised that the gate you want, the gate youve been waiting for, the gate youve been forgoing food and water for so that you dont miss the little flash on the departure screen, the gate that was cruelly witheld from you for the sake of our fun, is a 15 minutes walk from here, and your flight leaves in seven. CHEERIO!
okay, it wasnt really like that, but close. and i ended up missing my own surprise announcement, because i just could not believe how clean the bathrooms in this place were. they were like palaces, and i felt like i shouldve paid admission. seriously. but anyway, i eventually made it to my gate, and thats when all english waned, replaced by rapid, loud Italian. i am going to stereotype right now, and these are two of many Probably Untrue But Still Obvious Stereotypes to come.
PUBSOS #1- all Italians have beautiful hair, skin, and nails.
PUBSOS #2- no Italians wear backpacks.
a little unnerved by the foreignness of of it all (if i didnt mention it before, i dont speak a word of italian..oops), i focused my energy on these four boys about my age, wondering if they were quadruplets (they werent. duh). which seemed to take the edge off. the flight was fine, but the sickest part was waking up and looking out the window to find were right above the alps, truly one of the most beautiful sights ive seen, ever. the second sickest part was customs--im telling you, these people are chill. this guy lokoed at my passport and waved me through. and after all that work for a visa..
so now im at my hostel in catania, which literally looks like that 70s show threw up on a national historic building, you know, which is sweet. i just went out and walked around a bit, it was dark because its 10 or so here, and many mental notes were taken: cars dont stop for you, street signs arent always present, restaurants dont open until something like 23:00, and middle aged men stare are you. all. the. time. PUBSOS? yes. i cant help it.
welp, thats it from this end of the atlantic. ill post some pictures when i can procure one of those adaptor things, and till then, take care and ciao (okay, i know one word, which is actually nice because it means both hello and goodbye. aloha!)
Monday, January 11, 2010
be more chill.
i have not yet figured out whether or not this is a good thing, but i happen to display an intense dichotomy between being extremely high-strung--
"i want jessica to relax at school."
-mrs. hartford, fourth-grade report card, 1998
--and extremely chill--
"i took a xanax, and you should've seen me, jess, i was just like you."
-alena yarmosky, post-flight to peru, summer 2009
--...which is weird.
at the age of 11, i was diagnoesd with general anxiety disorder, which is basically saying i lacked this chillness, like i lacked vitamin D, and could simply pop a pill to get my daily fix. i couldn't, obviously, but somehow i managed--
"you are the chillest person i know."
-actual words spoken by college friends, no doubt long before finals.
--and sometimes i didn't--
"you, and i'm saying this because i care about you, realllllly need to get laid."
-a friend this summer, drunk, as i was fretting about work
--as you can see. (and i can't believe i'm posting the above quote for the entire cyberworld to see [i mean, if anyone's out there] because at the time i was insulted beyond reason, no matter how "friendly" this comment was intended to be. which, i am told, it was; and which just goes to show that my sense of humor clearly was not aligned with that of this particular speaker).
so anyway.
when i left for college in the fall of 2007, people wondered aloud if i was on some sort of tranquilizer; i kid you not--
"how the fuck are you so chill right now?"
-alena yarmosky, august 2007
--which i wasn't, obviously. but the thought of going to college was less anixety-inducing and more hazy, adventurous, soft. i couldn't explain it.
and now, four days before i leave for europe--
--"you need to calm the fuck down."
-alex yarmosky, january 2010
--i find myself, embarassingly, crippled with fear. i'm terrified.
i don't even know why.
it's not a palpable, controllable fear. it's not the anxiety i experienced in the fall of 2008 when i couldn't run cross-country and my roommate was psychotic and everything was kind of crazy. it's this dreadful, unspeakable feeling that i'm leaving behind so many things. so many people, so many experiences.
and honestly, i've never been the type of girl who turns down adventure--
"let's hike all the way to the top! our parents won't care."
-me at age 8, midway to the summit of lenox mountain with elyse and conor, also aged 8, sans supervision
--and i know for a fact that this adventure, or whatever it will become, will be incredible. indescribable, if i may be so dramatic. in fact--
"you are being stupid if you worry about all the things you're missing."
-my inner conscience
--so i know that upon arrival, i'll cut the lashes, breathe in everything, feel the cobblestones (cobblestones? black sand? whatever...) beneath my heavy feet, in the sea air, you know, all that stuff that comes with being somewhere new and beautiful and life-changing.
but for now i can only wait, anxiously, for whatever will happen to happen.
Friday, January 8, 2010
It's Fine 09
Inspired by my friend Erin's wicked cool blog, I thought I should do a 2009 Year in Review. It doesn't have much to do with Sicily, but...das fine. So...
JAN
-Rang in the new year at my friend Sandy's house. Attempted to eat 12 grapes in 12 seconds as per Spanish tradition. Unsuccessful.
-Back to Woo...
FEB
-Hmm..What ever happens in February?
MARCH
-Saw Ani in DC with Elyse and Alena
-Spring break trip to Myrtle Beach, SC. And my first running race since September 08 :)
-IS Monday!
APRIL
-Performed in "Letting Go" with the theatre department.
MAY
-Got my 1500 PR down to 5:06 at conference.
-Turned 20..whoa.
JUNE-JULY-AUGUST
-Camp Jewell = Best way to spend the summer, no doubt.
AUGUST
-Stopped in Dayton to see family..
-Moved into Weber!
-XC season begins
SEPTEMBER
-More XC...
-Blink 182!!!
OCTOBER
-Epic Halloween
-5th at NCACs!
NOVEMBER
-12th at Regionals!
-Thanksgiving
DECEMBER
-Semester ends :(
-DR with the family on Christmas
-Rang in the New Year in Logan airport baggage claim after a delay..but still..
It was a sickkkkk year :)
Here's to '10!
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