Sunday, February 28, 2010

Chapter 3: Napoli (Pizza, Sunshine and Neopolitan ice cream)

While here, I keep feeling very clear shifts of time. Chapter three of the journey has definitely occured. It's no longer the beginning, it's no longer the first exploration, life here has become normal, natural. I awake and I feel that everything is in its place. I look forward to my days, I look forward to seeing my friends and the adventures that we will have. Overall, Rome, Italy, has become home. The idea of life in America feels so far away, mentally and physically.

This weekend, after taking a break from studying for midterms and applying for internships we went to Naples. Our friend Joe had already been there and kept raving about how wonderful it was. I had heard very mixed things about Naples. "It's so dirty!" "You'll get all your stuff stolen." "The pizza is incredible." Obviously, I had to go find out for myself. And my stance on Naples, is that it is wonderful. It's a real city. It feels alive, so much so, I thought the cars were going to run me over. It's very different from Rome, which I wasn't expecting. I suppose Napoli is just a bit rougher. But it's charming and I really enjoyed myself.

I did have the best pizza of my entire life. It was called the Carmela - sausage, mozzarella, and spinach. But what makes the pizza is the dough. It's incredibly fluffy, but extremely thin, with amazing flavor. You can just tear the pizza, it's so delicate using a knife just seems wrong. I want to go back to Naples just so I can have more pizza. We got to Gino's just as it was opening and by the time we left there were probably 75 people standing down the street waiting to get in and eat.

Of course I also had to get neopolitan ice cream in Naples too. "Voglio cono piccolo con chocolato, fragola, e crema." Delicious. Megan and I had it melting all over us, but it was so worth it.

Then we found these rocks right by the sea. We were there for over an hour, just relaxing, taking in the breeze, the sun, the sounds of the sea. It made me so happy. That moment will for sure go down as one of my favorites of the whole semester. It was just pure happiness. We each climbed down the rocks to stick our feet in the water. Megan was the first to go and a huge wave hit her, she was drenched for the rest of the day until we went to Zara and bought her new clothes.

Laying in the sun, listening to the waves made me that much more excited for Greece and Malta. My weekends for the semester are now booked. This is helpful because I have everything else planned out and can just go with the flow.

I really cannot believe it is March. I leave for Africa in just over four days. Amazing. I can't even wrap my mind around it, but it is for sure to be an incredible experience. Time here is a funny thing, I feel like my days fly. I think time overall moves so fast. But it's so hard to describe my life to people at home. I try my best to put it into words, but I don't think it will ever make sense. It wouldn't make sense to me if I wasn't living it. I'm just so happy to be able to have this experience. I know this is what my parents have always wanted for me and thanks to them it is possible that it has happened. Every day I am more and more grateful to have these experiences. They are once in a lifetime. Thank you for letting it be possible!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Florence, Pisa, good friends, and the tin man

Well calcio got canceled tonight. I know I can't complain about the weather here, especially compared to Chicago. (I'm thinking of all of you over there.) But it loves to rain here, all the time, I feel like it's monsoon season. The SLA's decided there was too much rain to play calcio. We didn't need more injuries than usual. This is probably good because I need to keep working on my Italian homework, the amount seems to grow larger every day. But of course I needed to distract myself and write a blog before I begin.

I'm not sure if my Italian is getting better, but my English is definitely getting worse. Sometimes it takes me a good minute to say sentences, because I get all the words out of order. Even typing my blogs and emails I forget letters and forget basic sentence structuring. But I figure it's good. My brain is learning in new ways.

Time is continuing to move fast here. I can't believe it is almost March. I have exactly 15 days until I go to Africa. Just saying the words Africa boggles my mind. Marriam and I like to insert the word whenever we can. "When we go to Africa..." "When we get back from Africa..." "When we are in Africa . . ." It gets me even more excited, if that's possible.

As far as planning my other trips, it is a slow process, but one that will hopefully get figured out soon. I'm trying to stick to my budget I've made myself, because I have a long way to go still...I don't want to be broke in a month. So far so good.

This past weekend I went to Florence. The best way to describe Florence, for me, was calm. It's a great little city. We learned our way around really fast and I was really happy to just be there with three others. Traveling in smaller groups is definitely much less hectic. Me, Marriam, Adri, and Josh saw all the great sights. My favorite - Michelangelo's David. Spectacular. Everyone has said "You just can't believe it." But I figured it's just a statue, I'm sure it's cool, but not out of this world. It's out of this world. I stared at it and stared at it and stared at it. Everything about it just put me in awe. I can't wait to go back when my parents come to Florence. I know my dad will love it. Julie has already seen it and I know she is really excited to see it again. 

The hostel we stayed at in Florence was also super cute, it was called Leonardo's House. And Leonardo was our guide to Florence. He was rather goofy, but very helpful. And even told us to change our train tickets from Florence to Rome to Pisa to Rome. We did this because on Sunday we went to Pisa for the day and then just came home from there.

There is really nothing to do in Pisa though. I mean we went to the Leaning Tower, that was cool. We ate lunch by it and I laughed really hard at Adri because she was terrified of the pigeons. But other than that Pisa was dead. We were going to go see a movie, but the theater wasn't open. The only thing they were showing was Avatar. Not going to lie, I would have really liked to have seen that in Italian. But instead we sat at a cafe and ended up paying way too much for overpriced sandwiches.

So the top things that happened in Florence:
 - Josh cut his hair . . . a random decision he made so he could look good in a hat he wanted.
 - I bought a very cute leather purse that I bargained down from 45 to 28 euro!
 - We ate amazing waffles, pizza, and fantastic Mexican food.
 - Josh and I kept everyone up snoring. And Adri smacked me in the face in my sleep.
 - We took lots of pictures of the tin man, but I forgot to bring Dorthy to Florence. It was really sad.

All in all a fantastic trip. I am really looking forward to making it a Rome weekend though. There is still so much to do and see here. Also it is exhausting to travel. Everyone needs a break and to save some money.

Ciao for now!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Calcio e Cappuccino

Two things that I've learned to love in Italy that I would have never experienced in the States. . . Calcio (soccer) and cappuccinos. I told myself that when I got to Italy I would make myself like cappuccinos. Turned out it wasn't as hard as I was expecting. Now when I go to sleep at night I think, "I can't wait to get up so I can have another cappuccino." The cafe downstairs is the best, Rinaldo and his wife Nella are so precious and make us great food. With my cappuccino I love getting nutella filled cornettos. They are delicious!

Calcio has never been my sport. I have always loved and played basketball. But I'm really excited to be playing, it's a lot of fun. I am the Navy team, we are awesome. Tonight was our second game and we won again! 2 - 0. Lots of people are getting hurt though, I pulled a muscle, the least of the injuries. Some people are getting smacked down. But it's all fun. We move from court to court and watch everyone's  games. It gets really intense.

We have games every week on Wednesdays and then there are the playoffs. I'm pretty sure it will just get more intense as we go along, but it's a blast. Love my team and love the sport. I also got my favorite number, 11! I should also be going to a Roma game in a couple weeks, so excited!

Monday, February 8, 2010

Chapter Two

Chapter one of this journey has closed. The routine has definitely set in and I'm on to the next portion of this grand adventure! Haven't updated in quite awhile, sorry about that. But I suppose it's good, better to have too much to say and not enough time to say it than the other way around.

So, let me backup. The last weekend in January I went to Barcelona. I was thinking I was going to go to Madrid, not Barcelona, but a bunch of people were going so I jumped on it. I can imagine that the cities are completely opposite, as I've heard from Adri and Jessie. But I did love Barcelona. I fell in love with all the art. We went to the Picasso museum which was fantastic! I also loved seeing all of the Gaudi work around the city. The Sagrada Familia was only one of the many wonderful sites we saw. We went to a Flamanco show one night, which was really remarkable. I had the best tappas in the world and had fantastic sangria as well.

Barcelona was also my first hostel experience. Overall, it was a good/fine experience. Except the first night when we arrived really late we thought we could try and sleep with our coats because we didn't want to pay for blankets. (I didn't think I would have to pay for blankets, that surprised me.) But around 4 a.m. when we all woke up because we were freezing we ended up getting them. Very good decision! But the hostel was in a great are of the city, with lots of shopping, and we felt really safe at night.

I think Barcelona is a lot more like America though, at some points I thought I was walking down Michigan Avenue. This, bothered me. It made me more homesick, because at points my mind thought I was home. But besides that I loved the city! Such a beautiful place!

This past week I've been sick, but have finally recovered. I hate being sick and what ever I have likes to keep appearing, since I've been dealing with it November. I did get to a farmacia though and bought some vitamin c, so that should help.

One of my best friends came to visit Rome this past weekend to see me and Josh. His name is Woj (Mike) we had a great time running around Rome and we went up to the top of the Vatican. I'm learning my way around the city more and more. I even went downtown by myself for the first time a few days ago. The adventure started out well, but then I couldn't find the correct bus to take for my transfer, wandered around for about 40 minutes, then it started to rain, and I eventually gave up and got a cab. It was still a good experience though.

Classes are good for the most part. Italian is really hard. My future self tells me this is a good thing so I can get a lot better, but my present self feels overwhelmed and frustrated. I literally have to sit with the dictionary when I do my homework. I just wish languages came easier to me. I'm still speaking more though, my broken Italian can get me a long way.

Last night watching the Superbowl was such an odd experience, it actually made me homesick. One, it was the first TV I've seen since I've gotten here. Two, it's the most English I've heard in a long time. It felt like I was watching America watching the Superbowl, it was very surreal. I've never been able to "see" America like that before. I did miss it, it's really hard to explain why, but I think something clicked while I was watching it and it really did set in that I'm in a different world over here. I love it though, but it's just an odd thing to realize.

I adore Rome, I love it more every day. I love it's bad parts and good parts. There is always something to do here and something to explore. Florence this coming weekend is going to be so wonderful! And I am counting down the days till Africa. I can't believe all of this is happening to me.