primavera

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

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

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

ketchup

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

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

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


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