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!

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!

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!

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.

Picking up speed...

The semester is really starting to take off. In the last week I feel as if everything has started to settle more and get more exciting. I feel like I'm learning my way around the city, even though I might not actually. I bought a Rome map and I spend so much time looking at, following my steps of where I've been and where I still want to go.

I'm really starting to fall in love with this city. Everyone has said that Rome is very dirty and parts of it definitely are. However, the neighborhood we live in on via massimi, is really nice. The city can be very dirty, but it doesn't bother me that much. There is a lot of graffiti in the city as well. At first when I saw it, it kind of bothered me. All of these beautiful buildings covered in graffiti, but some of the graffiti is really beautiful. Now I'm seeing it as telling a story of that building, of that history, of the city. Not only does the art and architecture and Rome tell a story but so does the graffiti and the hardships the city has encountered. I think it all makes it more beautiful.

Classes are beginning to really start as well. I'm not in school mode at all. I should be reading for history right now, but I thought blogging was a better idea. :) However, I do like my classes, I think all of them should be really interesting. I'm the most excited about the Italian film class, of course.

I've also signed up to play calcio (soccer) with a bunch of other students. We will have games every Wednesday night for the rest of the semester. Basketball has always been my sport, but calcio is the game here and I am really excited about playing.

There are so many exciting things going on. I've planned two trips so far. This coming weekend I'm traveling to Barcelona with a group of girls. I am so excited! It's going to be a fantastic trip. I wasn't planning on going, but last minute plans are always fun. I've never been to Spain and just love the idea of moving country to country. I'm in awe that this is my life right now, it seems so surreal. I've also planned a trip to go to Florence in a couple of weeks with a few friends. Florence is supposed to be amazing. I can't wait to see it and go to all of the museums.

People are traveling everywhere all the time. I know people who are going to Poland, Germany, Spain, and Paris all this coming weekend. Flying in Europe is pretty cheap, but we will see what kind of fees Ryan Air throws at me. If anyone has any tips about flying in Europe they would be greatly appreciated.

The other really big news is that I am officially going to Tunisia for Spring Break. I wasn't sure if I was actually going to get it, because they didn't have enough spots for everyone and it turned into a lottery system, but I got chosen. I can't even begin to express how thrilled I am. The idea of traveling to Africa for my Spring Break overwhelms me with excitement. I will get to sleep under the stars in the Sahara desert. It's moments like these when I know that I am truly getting an amazing experience, one that will never come again.

This evening on the campus, we had an Italian/English speaking party, where Italians who are learning English at the school come to meet us. I met the sweetest woman, Giusy (spoken like Jucy). She is 28 years old. It was so much fun to talk with her. A mix between Italian and English, more English than Italian, but I was still proud of myself for remembering how to say things and understanding things she said. I talked to her for awhile and then she said, "I want to introduce you to my husband." So then we met her husband who was also at the party. His name is Fiore. I was so tickled to be talking to them and then when they told me they wanted to keep in touch with me and we exchanged emails I felt even more special. It made my day.

I'm starting to not feel "gone" anymore. I know this is my big adventure. But it's also times like this, when I feel so lucky to be where I am and doing what I'm doing, that I feel so awful for what is happening in Haiti. I'm not trying to feel sorry for myself, but I do need to keep things in perspective. It's such a tragedy. Maybe I've been thinking about this more because I'm outside of America, I'm not sure what it is, but I've been quietly thinking about it in my head.

Then again, every day different thoughts roll through my head. But I guess being abroad and studying in a different country is supposed to make you think differently and see the world differently. I know I'm not doing a good job at putting this into words at the moment. Maybe they will come to me in time.

As far as my Roman sites go, seeing the Vatican, was in short, amazing. I didn't even go inside, but I plan on returning many more times. I'm not even Catholic, but that place is out of this world. It was when I walked into St. Peter's Square that it hit me I was actually in Rome, well technically then I was in Vatican City, (but you know what I mean.) I still have much to see and I'm very happy to have so much time left in this city, because I feel like it's a big maze to explore.

Hope you all are well. Much love from Roma,
Katherine

Assisi and beyond

Ciao,

It seems like forever ago since I wrote and I don't even know where to begin on what to say about everything. Things are good. The trip to Assisi was a great time to bond with everybody more on the trip. It was such a small beautiful town and lots of fun to explore. People's names are starting to stick in my head more, but there are still a lot to learn.

It will be interesting how the next couple of weeks pan out with classes starting. My first day of classes is tomorrow. I have three, History, Italian, and Film. I'm also taking a Roman Art class, which I'm pretty excited about as well. I bought the majority of my books today. I also went to the Post Office to turn in all my paperwork to officially be legal in the country. And we might also have to go to the Police station in a couple of weeks to get fingerprinted. Lots to do.

I've been down in the neighborhood a bunch more now and slowly learning my way. I like going out in the city. It can become overwhelming at points, but it's fun to explore, get lost, and then realize where you are. I bought a map and have been looking at all the places I want to go and see. A few of us tried to find the Pantheon tonight, but were not successful. I'm thinking it will be good to go during the day though. I just need to dedicate a whole day to Rome.

The Rome Center is becoming a bit more like home. I like having Marriam as my roommate, I know I have a little place I can come back to at night and just breathe. Right now a ton of people are downstairs in one of the main hang out areas, Rinaldo's. It's where everyone gets WiFi. So I am successfully on my Mac, but I still haven't been able to upload any of my pictures to Facebook yet. I'm going to put a few in here as well, but I want them to go up so everyone can see them.

So I have officially almost been here a week and on the one hand it already feels like I have been here for a month, but on the other I can't believe it. I think there is still lots of adjusting going on for everyone, but Rome and Italy are so beautiful. I loved traveling from Rome to Assisi, listening to my music on the bus and looking at the countryside. Assisi was so beautiful! I would love to live there. We went on a 3 mile hike all uphill on Monday, it killed my legs, but the view from the top was spectacular.

At night, we found this great wine bar in one of the main piazza's, where a ton of students were. It was a lot of fun as well.

But going to start getting ready for my first day of classes tomorrow. Wish me luck! I will update and upload photos as soon as I can.

Love

Katherine

Piazza di Spagna

Ciao!
It's amazing the miracles sleep can do. Today was a lot of fun. We went and explored the neighborhood a lot more. There are so many cute places, I can't wait to go to all of them. When I woke up this morning I totally had forgotten I was in Rome. I was having some dream about being home and to wake up and see out the window that beautiful courtyard was awesome and really confusing all at the same time.

It doesn't feel like January here. I mean it gets cold in the evenings, but during the day when the sun is out you don't even need a jacket. I'm still amazed by how many kids are here and from other schools. There are a lot from SLU and Marquette, also a few from San Fransisco. I know I will eventually learn who everyone is, but it will take awhile.

So tonight we had a huge group of people go into the city. We found the bus stop and took it down. We weren't exactly sure where to get off, but we ended up getting off at the right spot. Then we kind of got lost, but there were so many of us, it was fun. Rome is strange with the fact that one minute you are walking down a really narrow street with nothing around you and the next thing you know you are standing in front of the Spanish steps! We also went to the Trevi fountain and other random places but I'm not sure exactly of the name. I can't wait to see more sites around Rome. Going to this famous places makes me believe I'm in Europe.

I got my first Italian gelato tonight too. Delicious. Nutella. The best thing ever! I'm using my Italian, I want to get better. I asked a random woman for directions and talked to the cab driver a little bit. It's all good practice. Everyone seems pretty friendly so far. Of course they know we are Americans, but I feel like as long as we are trying to speak the language they will talk to us.

Tomorrow morning we leave for Assisi. We will be there for 3ish days. I'm really excited to go. It's up in the mountains so it will be colder, but apparently there is a great hike we can go on and I think that will just be beautiful. So I won't be updating for a little while because I will be there.

It's also my plan to get my pictures up online as soon as possible. My mac is not online yet, so I've been using the computers in the lab. No one has figured out wireless it seems. Soon enough. But I do have photos!

Buona notte!