Well I'm in between finals-- I just finished my Tourism one, and in another two and a half hours I've got my Snobbism one, and then I'll be finished with Spanish Guy forever. Then it'll be time to get back to work on this Venice paper. I'm at over 5,000 characters so far, but I've got a while to go since it has to be 20,000. The good thing is, when you count in characters you advance rapidly so it makes you feel like you're actually accomplishing something other than writing one sentence (100 characters if it's a long one!) and then checking facebook for an hour. Anyway, my Tourism final was easy; I finished it half an hour early. I think I was the first one to hand it in, because Professor Quintana grilled me as to the difficulty of the question and how I liked the course. I actually really did enjoy his courses, mainly because he was very enthusiastic about the topics. That's really important in a teacher: if they don't even like it, how can they expect you to be excited about it?!
Now that the semester is coming to a close, I've been thinking about the past few years. I've come to the conclusion that I'm doomed to never be satisfied with where I am. I noticed that when I was living at home, I wanted to leave Boca. I didn't care where I went, just as long as it was out. Then I went to Williams, and found myself missing home. Then I went home, and wanted to go back. That flopped around another year, and then I went to Australia. It'd be a lie to say I missed anywhere when I was there, because I really didn't at all, surprisingly. But then I went home again, and missed Australia. Then I came here and missed home, Australia, and even Williams. And now that I'm about to leave Venice, I'm afraid I'll miss it too. But then again, I can't really tell if I'm getting sad because the semester's over and I'm leaving yet another group of friends forever, or if I'll really miss living in Venice. I think if I wasn't on this horrible island, this would've been a really cool semester, but really there were too many things here that pushed my patience to the limit and beyond. I guess the only way to know if I'll miss it is to leave here and find out. I think this year has gone by too fast, and that's both weird and bad. Weird because I've never had the experience of wanting a school term to be longer, and bad because all of a sudden I'm a SENIOR!!! The thought of being a "real person" with a job, a house, and bills of my own seems foreign and unpleasant. Then again, it could be fun to make my own decisions. I don't know. I think lack of sleep is making me delirious and contradictory. Anyway, it's lunchtime, and the past few days have actually had decent food for lunch (sadly the same cannot be said for dinner). Yesterday I had a piece of salmon, salad, fries, and an asparagus risotto that didn't taste like asparagus so it was good. Hopefully whatever conference is making them make good food will stay until Saturday when I meet up with Lelo and can finally treat my tummy the way it deserves!
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Monday, May 28, 2007
Where did the semester go?!?!
I can't believe that there's only five days left til this semester ends! It really has flown by so quickly. I finished my Italian final earlier (1001 words...one more than the minimum!). I ended up doing the whole thing by myself, and turning it in with just my name on it. Caitlin was supposed to work with me, but we mutually decided last night that it would be best if I turned in my work and she turned in her work. I'm just glad I finished it before lunch. Now the only big thing I have left is my paper for Representing Renaissance Venice. No one can really agree on how many pages it has to be-- the professor just said it has to be 20,000 characters long. From my calculations, that's about 10 pages single-spaced. This will probably be the longest paper I've ever written. I'm not sure about my abilities to complete it from start to finish in just the night before it's due, so I'm going to spend tonight organizing what I want to say, and then I'll most likely spend tomorrow writing most of it. Hopefully, anyway. Realistically, I may end up taking my two Spanish Guy finals on Wednesday and then sitting at this computer until 6pm on Thursday when I have to e-mail my paper in. Either way, by 6:30pm on Thursday the semester'll be over for me! And then I'll officially be a senior. Wow I feel old.
Surprisingly, the past few days have been much cooler (and stormier) than the past few weeks. I'm really thankful for the cool weather, but I can't say I'm that much of a fan of the rain and wind every afternoon. Actually, let me refrase that--I hate it because it's such a soothing sound that it forces me to take a nap everyday. It also coincides with the period of the day when I'm least productive, making it extremely difficult to pass on the temptation to nap. Speaking of sleeping...
The other day I found myself craving zucchini like it's my job, and I couldn't figure out why. I mean, having meat cravings is normal for me, or even salty-food cravings...but vegetables?! Can't say I've ever had cravings for those before. I spent almost all day in the library, just sitting there wondering where on earth I suddenly got the urge to inhale the world's supply of zucchini, when it dawned on me: I had a dream the night before about the zucchini appetizer at Maggiano's. I find this absolutely hilarious because the only time I've ever eaten that was when Lisa and her family were at our house, the night before I left for Italy. And now since that day, I've been thinking non-stop about those zucchini. I think I'm going to have to add that to my constantly-growing list of "foods I need to eat before dieting when I get home." At least it's something healthy?
Okay I think I'll go give in to the urge to take a nap (it's raining outside, and the sound of the rain falling on the lagoon and the waves hitting the side of the building just makes my bed beg for me to go snuggle). And then I'll maybe watch Just My Luck, and if it's stopped raining by then I'll go start some laundry....and after checking facebook I'll get a start on this paper of doom. Unless I find something more fun do to....like play in the acqua alta in Piazza San Marco!
Surprisingly, the past few days have been much cooler (and stormier) than the past few weeks. I'm really thankful for the cool weather, but I can't say I'm that much of a fan of the rain and wind every afternoon. Actually, let me refrase that--I hate it because it's such a soothing sound that it forces me to take a nap everyday. It also coincides with the period of the day when I'm least productive, making it extremely difficult to pass on the temptation to nap. Speaking of sleeping...
The other day I found myself craving zucchini like it's my job, and I couldn't figure out why. I mean, having meat cravings is normal for me, or even salty-food cravings...but vegetables?! Can't say I've ever had cravings for those before. I spent almost all day in the library, just sitting there wondering where on earth I suddenly got the urge to inhale the world's supply of zucchini, when it dawned on me: I had a dream the night before about the zucchini appetizer at Maggiano's. I find this absolutely hilarious because the only time I've ever eaten that was when Lisa and her family were at our house, the night before I left for Italy. And now since that day, I've been thinking non-stop about those zucchini. I think I'm going to have to add that to my constantly-growing list of "foods I need to eat before dieting when I get home." At least it's something healthy?
Okay I think I'll go give in to the urge to take a nap (it's raining outside, and the sound of the rain falling on the lagoon and the waves hitting the side of the building just makes my bed beg for me to go snuggle). And then I'll maybe watch Just My Luck, and if it's stopped raining by then I'll go start some laundry....and after checking facebook I'll get a start on this paper of doom. Unless I find something more fun do to....like play in the acqua alta in Piazza San Marco!
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Pictures! Fun!
These are the pictures from the lagoon trip, the regatta, and also Amy's 21st birthday which was last night.
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016531&l=fad44&id=3901306
I just had my last Tourism class, and in two hours it'll be my last Snobbism class, and I don't think it's possible to be more excited to get finished with classes. I really did enjoy Professor Quintana, he's a very nice man and he's obviously so excited about literature, which I think is very important in a professor, but having him for three hours a day twice a week was getting very tedious.
I did manage to get some research done yesterday for my Representing Renaissance Venice class, but I didn't get the chance to do anything for my Italian presentation, and I didn't make it to the Ca'Foscari library either. I'll be going into Venice later today though, for....MILANESAS!!!!! I'm really excited. So I'll stop some gondoliers along the way and badger them. I figure it doesn't hurt to give them a taste of their own medicine. I had two fried eggs for lunch today in preparation of the milanesa feast tonight (along with half of a salad and an orange). The milanesas at Taverna are huge (this really good restaurant where everyone on this program goes. I took Tia there when she was here and she even liked it, so you know it's good!). They're not quite up to par with Lelo's milanesas, or Mom's, but hey, at least there's no doubt as to which animal they came from. And I've succeeded in making Chen really jealous when I told her about the "milanesa feast" I eat at Lelo's house every time I go home. I think she's the first person who, after hearing about milanesas with fried eggs, french fries, fried onions, and salad, actually said it sounds good. Most people probably count up the calories and say, "well...uh....that's....interesting..." I say, calories, schmalories. I want my milanesas!!!
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016531&l=fad44&id=3901306
I just had my last Tourism class, and in two hours it'll be my last Snobbism class, and I don't think it's possible to be more excited to get finished with classes. I really did enjoy Professor Quintana, he's a very nice man and he's obviously so excited about literature, which I think is very important in a professor, but having him for three hours a day twice a week was getting very tedious.
I did manage to get some research done yesterday for my Representing Renaissance Venice class, but I didn't get the chance to do anything for my Italian presentation, and I didn't make it to the Ca'Foscari library either. I'll be going into Venice later today though, for....MILANESAS!!!!! I'm really excited. So I'll stop some gondoliers along the way and badger them. I figure it doesn't hurt to give them a taste of their own medicine. I had two fried eggs for lunch today in preparation of the milanesa feast tonight (along with half of a salad and an orange). The milanesas at Taverna are huge (this really good restaurant where everyone on this program goes. I took Tia there when she was here and she even liked it, so you know it's good!). They're not quite up to par with Lelo's milanesas, or Mom's, but hey, at least there's no doubt as to which animal they came from. And I've succeeded in making Chen really jealous when I told her about the "milanesa feast" I eat at Lelo's house every time I go home. I think she's the first person who, after hearing about milanesas with fried eggs, french fries, fried onions, and salad, actually said it sounds good. Most people probably count up the calories and say, "well...uh....that's....interesting..." I say, calories, schmalories. I want my milanesas!!!
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
11 Days Left
I figured I should update since I haven't in a long time, although nothing much has been going on lately. Massimo's classes ended a week and a half ago, which was probably the best part of that class. Ummm...yeah that's really all that's been going on. I went on a lagoon trip on Friday, which was a covered boat that took us to Torcello, Burano, and San Francesco del Deserto (not exactly sure of the spelling of that...). I'll put the pictures up from that whenever I get un-lazy. I mean....whenever I finish all this work I'm doing....yeah. On Saturday Caitlin and I went to the beach, and I got "tan", AKA red. By now it's a nice tan though. Sunday was the annual "wedding with the sea" ceremony, where the Doge used to throw a gold ring into the lagoon to "marry the sea." I think we should drain the lagoon. I'll be rich! Anyway, I didn't see the actual ceremony because it was far away, but I did go over to Venice to watch the regatta afterwards. It was so cool! It was a 4-man Venetian-style rowing regatta....in brightly colored gondolas! Then I got myself a gelato and went with Chen to the bookstore where she works (because it has free wireless internet, so she can connect to her office at home from there). I picked out two books in Italian to help me over the summer. One is Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and the other is by Jules Verne. I think I may have been a bit too ambitious with these choices. At least I'll have plenty to keep myself busy with this summer!
In case you're out of the loop, Lelo's foot is better so we got the go-ahead with the trip. I'm REALLY excited for it. I'm trying to force myself to give up eating croissants in the mornings in the hopes of maybe losing a bit of belly flab. It worked earlier in the semester, but lately I've been on a chocolate crave, which hasn't been doing anything for me except make my love handles easier to hang on to. Not exactly my goal in life. I have been trying to spend as little time in the room as possible though, so I've been pretty good about going over to Venice and walking around. Today I was going to go early this morning and find the Ca'Foscari library (the only "real" university in Venice...because VIU doesn't count). I need to check out books for my research paper for my Representing Renaissance Venice class. I'm writing on Jewish women, as a continuation of my earlier presentation on women in general. My group had talked about married women, nuns, and prostitutes, and the only group left out completely was Jewish women, so I figured it would make a great research paper topic. If the library cooperates with me, I'd like to find books and articles that would allow me to compare how Jewish Venetian women see themselves and Venice with how Christian women see their own roles and the city they live in, and also against how Jewish men see them. Professor Bassi thinks I'm being too ambitious with that though, so I'd be content just writing a high school-level paper about Jewish women in Venice during the Renaissance if I have to. I'd rather actually use my brain though. It's been dormant for a while, and needs a challenge. I'm finding myself actually excited to get back to Williams and the crazy amount of work. Maybe graduate school work will suit me better than I had thought (given my level of laziness and expertise in procrastinating in even the most boring circumstances, you'd think I'd want to be done with school asap). Well, that's the main assignment I want to get done this week. The other one is for Italian (yeah I know, Massimo has to ruin the end of the semester by making a re-appearance). We're supposed to work in groups of two and go out and ask Venetians what their thoughts on tourism are. I'm working with Caitlin, who surprised me the other day by saying she already did the whole thing by making up the interviews. Yeah that's not going to work with me. This is my final grade, and I want no part in cheating, so I did some research and came up with questions to ask people. Hopefully I'll be able to bother five Venetians today so I can write the paper tonight and tomorrow, because I'd rather focus on my Renaissance Venice paper.
Okay, well that's about all that's been going on in my life lately. Fascinating, I know. You're probably all snoring by now. This is random, but I'm considering auditing German next year. For some reason, this semester I've started wanting to learn languages well. My goals for this summer are to read both Italian books and understand them, and also to improve my Spanish. I realized that it doesn't really help much for the job market to be able to speak Spanglish. I want to learn German because I really liked Salzburg a lot and I'd like to go back to Austria and Germany someday. I don't need to be fluent, I just want to know enough to get myself around. Plus it's cool to speak lots of languages. Or is that a dorky thing to say? Well I think it's cool. Anyway, I'm done babbling now. I'll update again whenever something exciting happens. Like edible meat in the mensa (which, by the way, I'm back to being vegetarian again, much to my dismay).
In case you're out of the loop, Lelo's foot is better so we got the go-ahead with the trip. I'm REALLY excited for it. I'm trying to force myself to give up eating croissants in the mornings in the hopes of maybe losing a bit of belly flab. It worked earlier in the semester, but lately I've been on a chocolate crave, which hasn't been doing anything for me except make my love handles easier to hang on to. Not exactly my goal in life. I have been trying to spend as little time in the room as possible though, so I've been pretty good about going over to Venice and walking around. Today I was going to go early this morning and find the Ca'Foscari library (the only "real" university in Venice...because VIU doesn't count). I need to check out books for my research paper for my Representing Renaissance Venice class. I'm writing on Jewish women, as a continuation of my earlier presentation on women in general. My group had talked about married women, nuns, and prostitutes, and the only group left out completely was Jewish women, so I figured it would make a great research paper topic. If the library cooperates with me, I'd like to find books and articles that would allow me to compare how Jewish Venetian women see themselves and Venice with how Christian women see their own roles and the city they live in, and also against how Jewish men see them. Professor Bassi thinks I'm being too ambitious with that though, so I'd be content just writing a high school-level paper about Jewish women in Venice during the Renaissance if I have to. I'd rather actually use my brain though. It's been dormant for a while, and needs a challenge. I'm finding myself actually excited to get back to Williams and the crazy amount of work. Maybe graduate school work will suit me better than I had thought (given my level of laziness and expertise in procrastinating in even the most boring circumstances, you'd think I'd want to be done with school asap). Well, that's the main assignment I want to get done this week. The other one is for Italian (yeah I know, Massimo has to ruin the end of the semester by making a re-appearance). We're supposed to work in groups of two and go out and ask Venetians what their thoughts on tourism are. I'm working with Caitlin, who surprised me the other day by saying she already did the whole thing by making up the interviews. Yeah that's not going to work with me. This is my final grade, and I want no part in cheating, so I did some research and came up with questions to ask people. Hopefully I'll be able to bother five Venetians today so I can write the paper tonight and tomorrow, because I'd rather focus on my Renaissance Venice paper.
Okay, well that's about all that's been going on in my life lately. Fascinating, I know. You're probably all snoring by now. This is random, but I'm considering auditing German next year. For some reason, this semester I've started wanting to learn languages well. My goals for this summer are to read both Italian books and understand them, and also to improve my Spanish. I realized that it doesn't really help much for the job market to be able to speak Spanglish. I want to learn German because I really liked Salzburg a lot and I'd like to go back to Austria and Germany someday. I don't need to be fluent, I just want to know enough to get myself around. Plus it's cool to speak lots of languages. Or is that a dorky thing to say? Well I think it's cool. Anyway, I'm done babbling now. I'll update again whenever something exciting happens. Like edible meat in the mensa (which, by the way, I'm back to being vegetarian again, much to my dismay).
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Party in room 240
When I said that spring had arrived, a very important feature of my living conditions escaped my memory: the fact that I'm situated in the middle of a very large body of stagnant water. We all know what that means. Malaria. West Nile. Dengue fever. MOSQUITOS. ::cue doomsday music here::
Seriously though, last night I had every mosquito and its grandmother from here to Tokyo in my bedroom feasting on Saki and me. Well, okay, feasting on me. Saki is cold-blooded, so she was sleeping with the blankets completely over her head. I, on the other hand, was extremely hot, so I spent my night in an epic battle between sleeping under the sheet and sleeping with no sheet. I lost to the mosquitos by about 1000 to zilch. Clearly I am just not meant to taste the joys of being itch-free in Venice, because my bruises from my previous mosquito bites were just starting to finally heal (although the one that was on my wristbone is still larger than the bone on the other hand....that may be a bad thing). I went on a massacre spree this morning, and now there are bloody mosquito guts (fat on my blood, how dare they!) splattered on all the walls, but the rest of them have gotten smart and are hanging out on the ceiling. I'm thinking about buying a mosquito net, but I don't know where to get one. I was awake all night going crazy with the stupid buzzing. I'm pretty sure I started hearing it even when it wasn't there. I swear, creatures just can't get enough of me here. Yesterday a bird flew in my window. I wish I could say it landed on my shoulder and started singing like in Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, but actually it just sort of floundered around squalking ungracefully until it discovered the window through which it entered. The cats here hiss at each other to try to get to me first. The black one barely waits til I sit down on the bench before jumping into my lap. Somehow I don't mind the crazy bird or the cats though; the mosquitos are quite a different story.
DEET, anyone?
Seriously though, last night I had every mosquito and its grandmother from here to Tokyo in my bedroom feasting on Saki and me. Well, okay, feasting on me. Saki is cold-blooded, so she was sleeping with the blankets completely over her head. I, on the other hand, was extremely hot, so I spent my night in an epic battle between sleeping under the sheet and sleeping with no sheet. I lost to the mosquitos by about 1000 to zilch. Clearly I am just not meant to taste the joys of being itch-free in Venice, because my bruises from my previous mosquito bites were just starting to finally heal (although the one that was on my wristbone is still larger than the bone on the other hand....that may be a bad thing). I went on a massacre spree this morning, and now there are bloody mosquito guts (fat on my blood, how dare they!) splattered on all the walls, but the rest of them have gotten smart and are hanging out on the ceiling. I'm thinking about buying a mosquito net, but I don't know where to get one. I was awake all night going crazy with the stupid buzzing. I'm pretty sure I started hearing it even when it wasn't there. I swear, creatures just can't get enough of me here. Yesterday a bird flew in my window. I wish I could say it landed on my shoulder and started singing like in Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, but actually it just sort of floundered around squalking ungracefully until it discovered the window through which it entered. The cats here hiss at each other to try to get to me first. The black one barely waits til I sit down on the bench before jumping into my lap. Somehow I don't mind the crazy bird or the cats though; the mosquitos are quite a different story.
DEET, anyone?
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Spring has arrived
It's finally warm out, the island is covered in mini daisies, the trees are all in bloom, it smells lovely, the pigeons are molting so badly that it looks like its snowing....yup, spring has finally come to Venice.
This is the promised update on my trip(s) with Tia. But first, I must share my news! My last day of class with Massimo is this Thursday! When I found out this morning I rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And then I did a little dance and ate a cookie. (I was at the coffee break). It was a wonderful morning. Actually all day has been pretty good-- other than class, where I sat daydreaming for three hours, I managed to "borrow" some paper from the printer and came back to my room, where I've been drawing for the past few hours. It's quite a masterpiece if I do say so myself. Well, it will be once I finish it.
Anyway, the whole week with Tia was fantastic. Two Fridays ago I met Tia at the airport and we flew Austrian Airways to Vienna. I liked that airline-- they gave us a snack, complete with dessert and a candy. We stayed at the Grand Hotel Wien, which was very nice and high-tech. Mom would've had a problem if she had stayed with us- everything was operated through the phone; even the lights were turned on and off by the telephone. We ate dinner that night at El Gusto, which was a Spanish restaurant which was very good. The tapas were especially yummy. On Saturday we saw St. Stephen's Cathedral, which was pretty, but they were having mass so we couldn't really look around much. Then we headed over to the Hofburg Palace complex, where we saw the National Library (lots of very old books; very pretty), Church of the Augustines, Imperial Treasury (baby linens, jewelery, and literally tons of dishes and kitchenware), the Imperial Apartments and the Sissi Museum (about Empress Elisabeth, who was a depressed anorexic woman who never wanted to be Queen in the first place....we even got to see her personal 18th century "gym", which was cool). The whole palace was very pretty, and extremely huge. On our way out we walked past the Spanish Riding School, but we didn't go watch because my guidebook said the tickets aren't worth it except for a trick where "the horse bounds around on its hindlegs like a demented kangaroo." That night I had wiener schnitzel for dinner. On Sunday we woke up early and saw the Vienna Boys Choir, which was very good. In the afternoon we went to Schonbrunn Palace, which was the summer residence of the Habsburgs. The palace was very cool because they kept all the original furniture, including beds, toilets, and exercise equipment. It was huge-- 1440 rooms! The gardens include the world's first zoo, where supposedly Marie Antoinette played with the koala before she was shipped off to France to be beheaded. On Monday we went to the Haus der Musik, which was very cool. It's an interactive museum about music. One of the "exhibits" was to roll dice and create your own waltz, which was then printed out for you (for a small fee of course). My favorite was a screen where you could conduct the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. They don't listen to the baton though, because they definitely weren't following my tempo. Anyway, then Tia and I went shopping. I got new jeans to replace my ripped ones! Good thing, because my second pair of good jeans are on their way out too; they're even older than the ones that ripped. The next day we flew back to Venice, and I had class for two days but stayed with Tia at night. Glorious air conditioning! And real food! The Londra Palace is quite a nice place to stay, although it's not as high-tech as the one in Vienna.
On Friday we took the train to Lake Como, where it was cold and rainy almost the whole time we were there. The lake area was very beautiful anyway, though. After we lugged our bags up and down the stairs at the train station, we arrived at the Palace Hotel, which was right across the street from the lake. We walked around for a bit, saw the Duomo, and by 6:30 we were starving, and I ate a rather yummy seafood pasta and fried calamari. The next morning we took the funicular up the mountain to get some pretty scenery pictures, and then we went to an open-air market, where I got a cute cheap day dress. Then we went back to the Duomo and then we took an hour long cruise on the lake. The cruise would've been really fun except for a whole bunch of rowdy Italian teenagers who were sitting with us...and it was cold. It was pretty though. I think Como would be a great place to spend summers. For dinner we ate at a small restaurant called Lo Storico, where we ate the most delicious shrimp appetizer thing EVER. Tia has to write to her cooking magazine and make them get this recipe. Dessert was cool too-- gelati in weird flavors, like walnut and chestnut, stuck into the shells of the respective flavor. On Sunday we took the train back, and Tia got off at Mestre (the stop before Venice). I helped her get the bags to a taxi, and then we said goodbye and I went back to my bleak reality of perverted Italian professors and mystery meat. But not for long! Massimo is DONE on Thursday, and I don't think I could be happier. I kept trying to wipe the smile off my face during class...I'm hoping Massimo just thought I was obsurdly obsessed with Italian opera music, because I was finding it hard to sit still.
Here are the pictures from Lake Como:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016080&l=ea9f1&id=3901306
Okay well I'm off to sample the mystery meat for the night...tomorrow night I'm cooking dessert for a dinner at Professor Chafe's house (the professor from Duke). That should be fun. Let's hope my creations don't come alive like they did last time I was home!
This is the promised update on my trip(s) with Tia. But first, I must share my news! My last day of class with Massimo is this Thursday! When I found out this morning I rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And then I did a little dance and ate a cookie. (I was at the coffee break). It was a wonderful morning. Actually all day has been pretty good-- other than class, where I sat daydreaming for three hours, I managed to "borrow" some paper from the printer and came back to my room, where I've been drawing for the past few hours. It's quite a masterpiece if I do say so myself. Well, it will be once I finish it.
Anyway, the whole week with Tia was fantastic. Two Fridays ago I met Tia at the airport and we flew Austrian Airways to Vienna. I liked that airline-- they gave us a snack, complete with dessert and a candy. We stayed at the Grand Hotel Wien, which was very nice and high-tech. Mom would've had a problem if she had stayed with us- everything was operated through the phone; even the lights were turned on and off by the telephone. We ate dinner that night at El Gusto, which was a Spanish restaurant which was very good. The tapas were especially yummy. On Saturday we saw St. Stephen's Cathedral, which was pretty, but they were having mass so we couldn't really look around much. Then we headed over to the Hofburg Palace complex, where we saw the National Library (lots of very old books; very pretty), Church of the Augustines, Imperial Treasury (baby linens, jewelery, and literally tons of dishes and kitchenware), the Imperial Apartments and the Sissi Museum (about Empress Elisabeth, who was a depressed anorexic woman who never wanted to be Queen in the first place....we even got to see her personal 18th century "gym", which was cool). The whole palace was very pretty, and extremely huge. On our way out we walked past the Spanish Riding School, but we didn't go watch because my guidebook said the tickets aren't worth it except for a trick where "the horse bounds around on its hindlegs like a demented kangaroo." That night I had wiener schnitzel for dinner. On Sunday we woke up early and saw the Vienna Boys Choir, which was very good. In the afternoon we went to Schonbrunn Palace, which was the summer residence of the Habsburgs. The palace was very cool because they kept all the original furniture, including beds, toilets, and exercise equipment. It was huge-- 1440 rooms! The gardens include the world's first zoo, where supposedly Marie Antoinette played with the koala before she was shipped off to France to be beheaded. On Monday we went to the Haus der Musik, which was very cool. It's an interactive museum about music. One of the "exhibits" was to roll dice and create your own waltz, which was then printed out for you (for a small fee of course). My favorite was a screen where you could conduct the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. They don't listen to the baton though, because they definitely weren't following my tempo. Anyway, then Tia and I went shopping. I got new jeans to replace my ripped ones! Good thing, because my second pair of good jeans are on their way out too; they're even older than the ones that ripped. The next day we flew back to Venice, and I had class for two days but stayed with Tia at night. Glorious air conditioning! And real food! The Londra Palace is quite a nice place to stay, although it's not as high-tech as the one in Vienna.
On Friday we took the train to Lake Como, where it was cold and rainy almost the whole time we were there. The lake area was very beautiful anyway, though. After we lugged our bags up and down the stairs at the train station, we arrived at the Palace Hotel, which was right across the street from the lake. We walked around for a bit, saw the Duomo, and by 6:30 we were starving, and I ate a rather yummy seafood pasta and fried calamari. The next morning we took the funicular up the mountain to get some pretty scenery pictures, and then we went to an open-air market, where I got a cute cheap day dress. Then we went back to the Duomo and then we took an hour long cruise on the lake. The cruise would've been really fun except for a whole bunch of rowdy Italian teenagers who were sitting with us...and it was cold. It was pretty though. I think Como would be a great place to spend summers. For dinner we ate at a small restaurant called Lo Storico, where we ate the most delicious shrimp appetizer thing EVER. Tia has to write to her cooking magazine and make them get this recipe. Dessert was cool too-- gelati in weird flavors, like walnut and chestnut, stuck into the shells of the respective flavor. On Sunday we took the train back, and Tia got off at Mestre (the stop before Venice). I helped her get the bags to a taxi, and then we said goodbye and I went back to my bleak reality of perverted Italian professors and mystery meat. But not for long! Massimo is DONE on Thursday, and I don't think I could be happier. I kept trying to wipe the smile off my face during class...I'm hoping Massimo just thought I was obsurdly obsessed with Italian opera music, because I was finding it hard to sit still.
Here are the pictures from Lake Como:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016080&l=ea9f1&id=3901306
Okay well I'm off to sample the mystery meat for the night...tomorrow night I'm cooking dessert for a dinner at Professor Chafe's house (the professor from Duke). That should be fun. Let's hope my creations don't come alive like they did last time I was home!
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Note about the pictures
For some reason the link isn't coming up as being highlighted on the screen, so you can't just click on it. Hopefully this is only on my computer and it still works for you, but in case it doesn't, all you have to do is drag your mouse over the link to highlight it, press Ctrl and C at the same time, then click in the address box at the top of the screen, and press Ctrl and V at the same time. Then press Enter. Hopefully that'll work for you. If not, ask Dad or Veronica for help (since this post is mainly for Mom and Lelo).
Strudel and Sachertorte
I will post all about Vienna sometime soon, but in the meantime, here are the pictures:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015885&l=6680e&id=3901306
I also have two short videos, one from the zoo and one of Tia dissecting her sushi, and I'll try to get them up on YouTube soon and put the links on here.
Tia and I have been busy this week! But I must say, sleeping in her room at the Londra Palace has been so much better than sleeping here at San Servolo. Too bad it poured and thundered and lightninged (that looks funnier spelled out than it sounds...) all day yesterday, but at least today promises to be dry, even if it's cloudy and chilly. Tomorrow morning we're leaving for Lake Como, and then sometime next week I'll have a "chorizo" of a post describing all the fun we've had while she's been here.
In the meantime though, I've got classes, homework, and summer jobs to search for. I applied to work part-time at the Williams College Childcare Center next year, so hopefully I'll get that. Williams pays their students a whole lot better than anywhere else does.
Okay well, I've got to run off to lunch, then my last class, and then I'm off for the weekend with Tia. I'll be reachable again on Monday. Ciao!
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015885&l=6680e&id=3901306
I also have two short videos, one from the zoo and one of Tia dissecting her sushi, and I'll try to get them up on YouTube soon and put the links on here.
Tia and I have been busy this week! But I must say, sleeping in her room at the Londra Palace has been so much better than sleeping here at San Servolo. Too bad it poured and thundered and lightninged (that looks funnier spelled out than it sounds...) all day yesterday, but at least today promises to be dry, even if it's cloudy and chilly. Tomorrow morning we're leaving for Lake Como, and then sometime next week I'll have a "chorizo" of a post describing all the fun we've had while she's been here.
In the meantime though, I've got classes, homework, and summer jobs to search for. I applied to work part-time at the Williams College Childcare Center next year, so hopefully I'll get that. Williams pays their students a whole lot better than anywhere else does.
Okay well, I've got to run off to lunch, then my last class, and then I'm off for the weekend with Tia. I'll be reachable again on Monday. Ciao!
Thursday, April 26, 2007
6PM.
No joke, that's when Saki woke up. 6PM. I'm gonna kill her if she keeps the lights on all night again tonight.
Dinner these past few days has taught me something very valuable: if you gripe about the food being the worst ever, you will be proven wrong sometime in the future. Example: I complained about Williams food, and got Whitley food. I complained about that, and got San Servolo food. I'm kinda scared to find out what's worse than San Servolo food, because my main dish for the past two nights has been cheese. I kid you not-- tonight my dinner consisted of a salad, an orange, some potatoes, and a hunk of cheese with a slice of zucchini on the top. Clearly I will be starving in an hour or so, so I wisely saved my orange from lunch and a pastry-type thing from breakfast. You know your life is sad when you start hoarding food. I feel like a squirrel. One that's very good at procrastinating. I finished one paper and am about a third of the way through my second one, but I really have no motivation. I don't think I've ever finished a paper a whole week before they were due. Ever. And now I'm expected to have two of them done a week early? That's a tough one. I also have yet to pack for my trip with Tia tomorrow. I did plan out which vaporetto and bus to take to get to the airport on time, so I know I've got until 11:20 to get myself together. Well, okay until 9 because the cleaning ladies are supposed to come tomorrow. That'll be interesting. Currently I have stuff all over my bed-- stuff to pack for the trip, and stuff to pack to go home with Tia. I'm trying to get rid of anything I don't absolutely need. It's rather difficult.
Okay fine I'll stop babbling about nonsense and go finish this stupid paper. I'm sure I'll be back to update about my superexciting life in a bit, because my attention span is that of a goldfish right now. Speaking of goldfish, in my procrastinating last night I happened upon the youtube video of the regurgitator. This is entertainment that Williams has brought back to campus many times, and I've never gone to see him because, well, the thought of someone regurgitating stuff doesn't really appeal to me as entertainment. But this video was somewhat amusing in my half-crazed, half-bored state. In case you're as bored as I am, or as good at procrastinating, here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwqk7qd4HCk
And just now I found this video that's a feature on youtube, and I really like the song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NeigcgYYic
Okay and this one's the last one (it's the really cute sea otters holding hands at the aquarium):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epUk3T2Kfno
And now Saki's gone, so I'll call mom. And then I swear I'll finish this paper. I promise.
Dinner these past few days has taught me something very valuable: if you gripe about the food being the worst ever, you will be proven wrong sometime in the future. Example: I complained about Williams food, and got Whitley food. I complained about that, and got San Servolo food. I'm kinda scared to find out what's worse than San Servolo food, because my main dish for the past two nights has been cheese. I kid you not-- tonight my dinner consisted of a salad, an orange, some potatoes, and a hunk of cheese with a slice of zucchini on the top. Clearly I will be starving in an hour or so, so I wisely saved my orange from lunch and a pastry-type thing from breakfast. You know your life is sad when you start hoarding food. I feel like a squirrel. One that's very good at procrastinating. I finished one paper and am about a third of the way through my second one, but I really have no motivation. I don't think I've ever finished a paper a whole week before they were due. Ever. And now I'm expected to have two of them done a week early? That's a tough one. I also have yet to pack for my trip with Tia tomorrow. I did plan out which vaporetto and bus to take to get to the airport on time, so I know I've got until 11:20 to get myself together. Well, okay until 9 because the cleaning ladies are supposed to come tomorrow. That'll be interesting. Currently I have stuff all over my bed-- stuff to pack for the trip, and stuff to pack to go home with Tia. I'm trying to get rid of anything I don't absolutely need. It's rather difficult.
Okay fine I'll stop babbling about nonsense and go finish this stupid paper. I'm sure I'll be back to update about my superexciting life in a bit, because my attention span is that of a goldfish right now. Speaking of goldfish, in my procrastinating last night I happened upon the youtube video of the regurgitator. This is entertainment that Williams has brought back to campus many times, and I've never gone to see him because, well, the thought of someone regurgitating stuff doesn't really appeal to me as entertainment. But this video was somewhat amusing in my half-crazed, half-bored state. In case you're as bored as I am, or as good at procrastinating, here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwqk7qd4HCk
And just now I found this video that's a feature on youtube, and I really like the song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NeigcgYYic
Okay and this one's the last one (it's the really cute sea otters holding hands at the aquarium):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epUk3T2Kfno
And now Saki's gone, so I'll call mom. And then I swear I'll finish this paper. I promise.
Grrrrrr.
I am not a happy camper today. I was so excited on Tuesday when Saki left, and promised she wouldn't return until Saturday. I enjoyed every minute of having the room to myself yesterday-- I got changed in the room instead of the bathroom, I blasted my music and sang along, I had the window open all day and most of the night as well....and I even went to bed early last night, with the lights completely off, smiling at the prospect of one night of completely uninterrupted sleep.
Until midnight, when I woke up startled at the sound of the door opening. It was Saki. I must've given her some sort of death stare (which I admit, I am rather good at giving when someone disrupts my sleep), because she looked a bit frightened and said "sorry!" But then once I half-heartedly told her it was okay and laid back down to sleep, she turned on the lights. I laid there with my eyes open for a while, and then reached into my bedside table and grabbed my eye mask. Attempt number 2 to get some sleep. As soon as I just started drifting off, I heard some sort of crinkling and crunching noises. Needless to say, I was livid when she finally stopped annoying me. I have no idea what time she actually went to sleep, but it's now 1:40pm and she's still in bed. I got up around 9, showered, went to breakfast, sat outside trying to start my papers, went to lunch, and now I'm back in my room because I need my computer to type up the papers. But she's still in bed, so I'm roasting in here in a tank top and a skirt, because in the past whenever I open the window she gets back up and closes it.
Conclusion: I can't live with someone I don't get along with. She drives me crazy and I never get a moment alone in the room. I'm always tip-toeing around the room in the morning because she sleeps all day, and then I'm annoyed all night because she doesn't show the same courtesy when I'm trying to sleep. I can't make phone calls because I don't like other people listening in on my calls. Not to mention the heat. It's Venice, and it's definitely summer. There is no air conditioning in these rooms. We get the afternoon sun straight in our window starting soon after noon, and this room turns into a sauna by 5pm if the window stays closed. She sits here all day long in sweatpants and a jacket and the window closed. I'm almost tempted to sleep outside on the patio on the other side of the island, except the bugs are unbearable. I've got some sort of bite the size of a quarter in my elbow crook, another one taking up my entire left earlobe, another on my right wristbone, and a fourth on the side of my face. Plus if I slept on the patio I'm sure I'd get woken up around 7 by the gross Italian workmen who catcall all the VIU girls in the mensa. I guess being woken up at 4am, 7, 7:15, 7:30, and 7:45 by an alarm phone (with 5 different Japanese songs on it), and then a final time around 8:15 by a hair dryer beats being stared at by gross old men. It's close though. Why doesn't this girl have normal sleep/waking habits?? Or at least common courtesy? All I can say is I hope she hates the smell of vinegar first thing when she wakes up, because I just brought my salad back to the room (not knowing she would still be in bed) so I could work on my papers and get to the beach today too. Vinegar still beats cooked asparagus/vomit though.
I cannot wait for this semester to be over.
Until midnight, when I woke up startled at the sound of the door opening. It was Saki. I must've given her some sort of death stare (which I admit, I am rather good at giving when someone disrupts my sleep), because she looked a bit frightened and said "sorry!" But then once I half-heartedly told her it was okay and laid back down to sleep, she turned on the lights. I laid there with my eyes open for a while, and then reached into my bedside table and grabbed my eye mask. Attempt number 2 to get some sleep. As soon as I just started drifting off, I heard some sort of crinkling and crunching noises. Needless to say, I was livid when she finally stopped annoying me. I have no idea what time she actually went to sleep, but it's now 1:40pm and she's still in bed. I got up around 9, showered, went to breakfast, sat outside trying to start my papers, went to lunch, and now I'm back in my room because I need my computer to type up the papers. But she's still in bed, so I'm roasting in here in a tank top and a skirt, because in the past whenever I open the window she gets back up and closes it.
Conclusion: I can't live with someone I don't get along with. She drives me crazy and I never get a moment alone in the room. I'm always tip-toeing around the room in the morning because she sleeps all day, and then I'm annoyed all night because she doesn't show the same courtesy when I'm trying to sleep. I can't make phone calls because I don't like other people listening in on my calls. Not to mention the heat. It's Venice, and it's definitely summer. There is no air conditioning in these rooms. We get the afternoon sun straight in our window starting soon after noon, and this room turns into a sauna by 5pm if the window stays closed. She sits here all day long in sweatpants and a jacket and the window closed. I'm almost tempted to sleep outside on the patio on the other side of the island, except the bugs are unbearable. I've got some sort of bite the size of a quarter in my elbow crook, another one taking up my entire left earlobe, another on my right wristbone, and a fourth on the side of my face. Plus if I slept on the patio I'm sure I'd get woken up around 7 by the gross Italian workmen who catcall all the VIU girls in the mensa. I guess being woken up at 4am, 7, 7:15, 7:30, and 7:45 by an alarm phone (with 5 different Japanese songs on it), and then a final time around 8:15 by a hair dryer beats being stared at by gross old men. It's close though. Why doesn't this girl have normal sleep/waking habits?? Or at least common courtesy? All I can say is I hope she hates the smell of vinegar first thing when she wakes up, because I just brought my salad back to the room (not knowing she would still be in bed) so I could work on my papers and get to the beach today too. Vinegar still beats cooked asparagus/vomit though.
I cannot wait for this semester to be over.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
"So....where did they hide the castle?!"
Schizophrenic castles, Turkish baths, crazy girls, goulash, Roman ruins, 1000 year old hands....yeah, Budapest is cool.
On Thursday night, Chen, Caitlin, Keshia, and I set out for our favorite train station (well, at least, the one place in Venice that we spend the most time at) after scarfing down half a dinner at the mensa and running straight across San Servolo to catch the vaporetto as it was pulling away. That's when I realized I very intelligently forgot to pack socks. Good thing I brought my Reefs with me. On the plus side, when we got to the train station we had enough time to walk around a bit outside before the train left. Luckily, Chen, Keshia, and I had our own compartment, and Caitlin was a few compartments down from us in the same car. We finally settled down around 11pm, and I was just getting to sleep when we heard a knock on the door, followed by, "PASSPORT CONTROL!" The three of us fish through our stuff, find our passports, and I'm the first one to hand mine to the border patrolman. He looked, stamped, and grabbed Keshia's, where he did the same thing. Then Chen's turn came. And he looked. And looked. And asked for a secondary ID. And consulted his book. Finally he told us that Israeli passports are easily forged, stamped it anyway, handed it back, and left us in peace. We slept until at 3:15 we again heard "PASSPORT CONTROL!" Same situation. Fumble through the bags, American passports first, problem with the Israeli one. Again at 4, 6, 6:30, and the last time was at 7:30. By the time they finally left us alone, I was livid, but snuggled back up under the blanket for a catnap since we weren't scheduled to arrive in Budapest until 11. No such luck. An hour later, our compartment was opened yet again, this time by the conductor, who said in a rather cheerful voice "dormire e finito!" And with that, he took away our sheets and pillows, and left behind three sleepy, rather confused girls. Then Caitlin came in and started singing, which is never a good thing to do to me when I'm angry and sleep-deprived. I take no responsibility for my actions when I am in such a state. When we finally got to our hostel in Budapest, I was exhausted and would've liked nothing more than to take a nice long shower and a nap, but we couldn't sleep away our first day, so we met up with Caitlin (who was staying somewhere else) and went to Castle Hill. Our first stop was of course for food, because by this time we had been up for countless hours and hadn't had anything to eat since the half of dinner we ate in 5 minutes the night before. Chen, Keshia, and I all tried goulash, which I quickly discovered is my new favorite kind of soup. It's probably very fattening, but it's delicious (the two could be related). When we reached the top of Castle Hill, the first thing we saw was a big church, and it took us a while to discover that it was Matthias Church, started in the 12th century and finished in the 19th. Then we stumbled upon a fortress wall with pretty views, which we found out later was the Fishermen's Bastion (all these places were in my Lonely Planet guidebook, but they weren't actually labelled so it was hard to know what we were looking at). When we finally discovered that the "castle" was an unimpressive building now housing a modern art exhibit, we wandered down to the Danube and walked back over to the Pest side of Budapest. We ate dinner at a place called Menza, which was amazing. I had a steak with two eggs and french fries, and it made my belly smile.
The next morning Chen, Keshia, and I met up with Caitlin at St. Stephen's Basilica, which is enormous. My favorite thing about this church by far was the fact that they had St. Stephen's 1000 year old hand enshrined there. Then we walked to Varosliget (the city park), and on the way, Chen and Keshia decided to climb all over some statue. It was pretty funny because the base was taller than Chen is. I'm still not sure how she made it up there. In the park, the first thing we saw was Vajdahunyad Var-- the schizophrenic castle. It's called that because it was built in four or five different vastly different architectural styles (Tudor and Gothic are two of them). It's a gorgeous castle, complete with a moat and its own lake where people go sailing in the summertime. On the far side of the park was the Budapest zoo, so the four of us amused ourselves for several hours with that. Next door was Szechenyi Furdo-- some of the Turkish baths. Keshia, Caitlin, and I spent a too-short hour in the thermal spa while Chen walked around outside. When we came out, we were wrinkled and rather relaxed. We found a little restaurant for dinner, where I ate a milanesa (it wasn't quite up to Lelo's or mom's standards, but it was still a milanesa), and then we walked around outside. We came across the city's Jewish quarter and the rather imposing synagogue in the process. After reaching the Danube, we turned around and went back to the hostel for the night.
On Sunday morning, the four of us took the suburban railway to Aquincumi, which is the most complete ruins of a second century Roman civilian town left in Hungary. It was pretty cool- basically, it was a playground for big kids. Who can resist climbing all over ruins and taking awesome pictures? We spent a good portion of the morning there, and after lunch, Chen, Keshia and I went to Vaci utca, the main shopping street, in the hopes of finding something cool to bring home (but unfortunately I didn't have much luck with that). I did see an apron with the goulash recipe on it, but it wasn't very well made, and it wasn't cheap either. Our train left Budapest at 5pm, and the trip back was rather similar to the trip there-- we got our own compartment again, and were also woken up 6 times for passport control. So now I have 12 useless stamps in a passport that already has stamps on top of old ones. We arrived in Venice at 7:15 in the morning, exhausted, hungry, and grimy, and had to shower quickly and get to class by 11. That was fun. Here are the pictures from the weekend:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015590&l=2989a&id=3901306
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015591&l=774db&id=3901306
I got back my two midterms (from Italian and Representing Renaissance Venice), and I did pretty well so I'm happy. I've got two papers to write before I leave with Tia on Friday for Spanish Guy, a response paper to write for Massimo, and I have to pick a topic for my final paper (8-10 pages) for Representing Renaissance Venice. I don't think that these professors really understand what "midterm break" means. Clearly, in their vocabularies, "break" means "assign more work." At least I've got these first two days to get it all done, and hopefully to find a summer job too.
In other random news that I feel is important to share, there was a bomb at Williams last weekend. Apparently it was three Williams students, who, according to the e-mail, "were curious as to such a device." They lit it and fortunately it failed, so no one was hurt. They're going to court sometime over the summer for delinquence and making a weapon, but my favorite part was that they "may or may not be suspended from the college." So basically you can set a bomb off at Williams and still only get a slap on the wrist from administration. That amazes me. That school is absolutely rediculous. I'm so glad my time there is almost over.
Speaking of Williams, I enrolled in classes for next semester. I'm currently in Psychology 401 Senior Seminar, Psychology 332 Cognitive Development, Psychology 352 Clinical and Community Psychology (my personal favorite), and History 225 The Middle Ages (because Professor Goldberg is my favorite teacher ever and I would take any class taught by him because he can make absolutely anything fascinating).
Well, spring break has officially started, and I've got tons of work/packing/laundry to do. So of course I'm going to enjoy the fact that I am roommate-less for tonight, and I'm going to have a gloriously long and uninterrupted sleep. Good night!
On Thursday night, Chen, Caitlin, Keshia, and I set out for our favorite train station (well, at least, the one place in Venice that we spend the most time at) after scarfing down half a dinner at the mensa and running straight across San Servolo to catch the vaporetto as it was pulling away. That's when I realized I very intelligently forgot to pack socks. Good thing I brought my Reefs with me. On the plus side, when we got to the train station we had enough time to walk around a bit outside before the train left. Luckily, Chen, Keshia, and I had our own compartment, and Caitlin was a few compartments down from us in the same car. We finally settled down around 11pm, and I was just getting to sleep when we heard a knock on the door, followed by, "PASSPORT CONTROL!" The three of us fish through our stuff, find our passports, and I'm the first one to hand mine to the border patrolman. He looked, stamped, and grabbed Keshia's, where he did the same thing. Then Chen's turn came. And he looked. And looked. And asked for a secondary ID. And consulted his book. Finally he told us that Israeli passports are easily forged, stamped it anyway, handed it back, and left us in peace. We slept until at 3:15 we again heard "PASSPORT CONTROL!" Same situation. Fumble through the bags, American passports first, problem with the Israeli one. Again at 4, 6, 6:30, and the last time was at 7:30. By the time they finally left us alone, I was livid, but snuggled back up under the blanket for a catnap since we weren't scheduled to arrive in Budapest until 11. No such luck. An hour later, our compartment was opened yet again, this time by the conductor, who said in a rather cheerful voice "dormire e finito!" And with that, he took away our sheets and pillows, and left behind three sleepy, rather confused girls. Then Caitlin came in and started singing, which is never a good thing to do to me when I'm angry and sleep-deprived. I take no responsibility for my actions when I am in such a state. When we finally got to our hostel in Budapest, I was exhausted and would've liked nothing more than to take a nice long shower and a nap, but we couldn't sleep away our first day, so we met up with Caitlin (who was staying somewhere else) and went to Castle Hill. Our first stop was of course for food, because by this time we had been up for countless hours and hadn't had anything to eat since the half of dinner we ate in 5 minutes the night before. Chen, Keshia, and I all tried goulash, which I quickly discovered is my new favorite kind of soup. It's probably very fattening, but it's delicious (the two could be related). When we reached the top of Castle Hill, the first thing we saw was a big church, and it took us a while to discover that it was Matthias Church, started in the 12th century and finished in the 19th. Then we stumbled upon a fortress wall with pretty views, which we found out later was the Fishermen's Bastion (all these places were in my Lonely Planet guidebook, but they weren't actually labelled so it was hard to know what we were looking at). When we finally discovered that the "castle" was an unimpressive building now housing a modern art exhibit, we wandered down to the Danube and walked back over to the Pest side of Budapest. We ate dinner at a place called Menza, which was amazing. I had a steak with two eggs and french fries, and it made my belly smile.
The next morning Chen, Keshia, and I met up with Caitlin at St. Stephen's Basilica, which is enormous. My favorite thing about this church by far was the fact that they had St. Stephen's 1000 year old hand enshrined there. Then we walked to Varosliget (the city park), and on the way, Chen and Keshia decided to climb all over some statue. It was pretty funny because the base was taller than Chen is. I'm still not sure how she made it up there. In the park, the first thing we saw was Vajdahunyad Var-- the schizophrenic castle. It's called that because it was built in four or five different vastly different architectural styles (Tudor and Gothic are two of them). It's a gorgeous castle, complete with a moat and its own lake where people go sailing in the summertime. On the far side of the park was the Budapest zoo, so the four of us amused ourselves for several hours with that. Next door was Szechenyi Furdo-- some of the Turkish baths. Keshia, Caitlin, and I spent a too-short hour in the thermal spa while Chen walked around outside. When we came out, we were wrinkled and rather relaxed. We found a little restaurant for dinner, where I ate a milanesa (it wasn't quite up to Lelo's or mom's standards, but it was still a milanesa), and then we walked around outside. We came across the city's Jewish quarter and the rather imposing synagogue in the process. After reaching the Danube, we turned around and went back to the hostel for the night.
On Sunday morning, the four of us took the suburban railway to Aquincumi, which is the most complete ruins of a second century Roman civilian town left in Hungary. It was pretty cool- basically, it was a playground for big kids. Who can resist climbing all over ruins and taking awesome pictures? We spent a good portion of the morning there, and after lunch, Chen, Keshia and I went to Vaci utca, the main shopping street, in the hopes of finding something cool to bring home (but unfortunately I didn't have much luck with that). I did see an apron with the goulash recipe on it, but it wasn't very well made, and it wasn't cheap either. Our train left Budapest at 5pm, and the trip back was rather similar to the trip there-- we got our own compartment again, and were also woken up 6 times for passport control. So now I have 12 useless stamps in a passport that already has stamps on top of old ones. We arrived in Venice at 7:15 in the morning, exhausted, hungry, and grimy, and had to shower quickly and get to class by 11. That was fun. Here are the pictures from the weekend:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015590&l=2989a&id=3901306
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015591&l=774db&id=3901306
I got back my two midterms (from Italian and Representing Renaissance Venice), and I did pretty well so I'm happy. I've got two papers to write before I leave with Tia on Friday for Spanish Guy, a response paper to write for Massimo, and I have to pick a topic for my final paper (8-10 pages) for Representing Renaissance Venice. I don't think that these professors really understand what "midterm break" means. Clearly, in their vocabularies, "break" means "assign more work." At least I've got these first two days to get it all done, and hopefully to find a summer job too.
In other random news that I feel is important to share, there was a bomb at Williams last weekend. Apparently it was three Williams students, who, according to the e-mail, "were curious as to such a device." They lit it and fortunately it failed, so no one was hurt. They're going to court sometime over the summer for delinquence and making a weapon, but my favorite part was that they "may or may not be suspended from the college." So basically you can set a bomb off at Williams and still only get a slap on the wrist from administration. That amazes me. That school is absolutely rediculous. I'm so glad my time there is almost over.
Speaking of Williams, I enrolled in classes for next semester. I'm currently in Psychology 401 Senior Seminar, Psychology 332 Cognitive Development, Psychology 352 Clinical and Community Psychology (my personal favorite), and History 225 The Middle Ages (because Professor Goldberg is my favorite teacher ever and I would take any class taught by him because he can make absolutely anything fascinating).
Well, spring break has officially started, and I've got tons of work/packing/laundry to do. So of course I'm going to enjoy the fact that I am roommate-less for tonight, and I'm going to have a gloriously long and uninterrupted sleep. Good night!
Thursday, April 19, 2007
On my way out the door
I'm trying to remember my last-minute things for Budapest, and I realized that I didn't put up pictures from last weekend's trip to Ravenna. So here they are:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015449&l=3ec81&id=3901306
Sorry that I can't say more about it, but basically the highlight was seeing the church of San Vitale, which I learned about last year in my Charlemagne class. And eating a piadina, which was a pita-like panino with prosciutto and mozzarella in it. Yum.
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015449&l=3ec81&id=3901306
Sorry that I can't say more about it, but basically the highlight was seeing the church of San Vitale, which I learned about last year in my Charlemagne class. And eating a piadina, which was a pita-like panino with prosciutto and mozzarella in it. Yum.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
PUO AVERE EFFETTI DIURETICI.
That's on the label of every water bottle I get from the mensa: "Can have diuretic effects." Doesn't water normally have that effect? Maybe this water is supposed to make you pee even more? Boh. (My favorite phrase in Italian-- I don't know).
Well, speaking of Italian, I had my midterm today. That was.....well, I'm just hoping I don't break my record low of a 7%, let's just put it that way. Massimo said it was going to be easy, and he definitely lied. He did have an amusing section about how his wife left him for a collegue though (we had to fill in the prepositions). If it's true, I don't blame her. He deserves it.
Yesterday I had to give a 30-minute oral presentation about nuns in Renaissance Venice. In general, it wasn't too bad-- the professor kept trying to interject with things, and most of the time it was my next point, so he gave up and just let me speak (it was supposed to be my presentation anyway, not his!). Most of my audience was nodding off til I started talking about how a lot of the nuns found clever ways of getting their boyfriends in the convents (they were forced into being a nun by their families who didn't want to provide a dowry to all their daughters). My personal favorite was a story about two nuns who took out an iron bar from their window and used it at night to bang a hole in the outer wall of the convent, allowing their boyfriends through, and then they hid them in a storage cellar for a week and visited with them at night. These nuns were pretty hilarious. Anyway, the world didn't end as I had suspected it would, and now my presentation is over and I can relax the rest of the semester!
And finally, I am starting to get over this horrible cold. Yesterday I was convinced it was the flu- I suppose it could've been, because it was definitely worse than just a normal cold. But how weird is it to get the flu after getting the flu shot??! I'm just glad it's leaving me-- it'd be horrible to be in Budapest this weekend when all I want to do is sleep and eat soup. Speaking of soup, I'm rather famished. Exams always make me hungry. Keep your fingers crossed for identifiable mystery meat!
Well, speaking of Italian, I had my midterm today. That was.....well, I'm just hoping I don't break my record low of a 7%, let's just put it that way. Massimo said it was going to be easy, and he definitely lied. He did have an amusing section about how his wife left him for a collegue though (we had to fill in the prepositions). If it's true, I don't blame her. He deserves it.
Yesterday I had to give a 30-minute oral presentation about nuns in Renaissance Venice. In general, it wasn't too bad-- the professor kept trying to interject with things, and most of the time it was my next point, so he gave up and just let me speak (it was supposed to be my presentation anyway, not his!). Most of my audience was nodding off til I started talking about how a lot of the nuns found clever ways of getting their boyfriends in the convents (they were forced into being a nun by their families who didn't want to provide a dowry to all their daughters). My personal favorite was a story about two nuns who took out an iron bar from their window and used it at night to bang a hole in the outer wall of the convent, allowing their boyfriends through, and then they hid them in a storage cellar for a week and visited with them at night. These nuns were pretty hilarious. Anyway, the world didn't end as I had suspected it would, and now my presentation is over and I can relax the rest of the semester!
And finally, I am starting to get over this horrible cold. Yesterday I was convinced it was the flu- I suppose it could've been, because it was definitely worse than just a normal cold. But how weird is it to get the flu after getting the flu shot??! I'm just glad it's leaving me-- it'd be horrible to be in Budapest this weekend when all I want to do is sleep and eat soup. Speaking of soup, I'm rather famished. Exams always make me hungry. Keep your fingers crossed for identifiable mystery meat!
Friday, April 13, 2007
Estamos en Munich!!!!!
I know, I know; I'm really late with getting this update out. I offer the excuses of having had a midterm on Thursday and being sick now. Well, here's Salzburg and Munich in one word: AWESOME.
Here they are in quite a bit more:
Our trip seemed doomed from the start. Last Thursday afternoon, right before Chen, Keshia, Lauren, and I were headed off to the train station, Keshia got a phone call about a family emergency, and decided not to come. Lauren and I headed off as planned, and Chen stayed with Keshia for a bit and planned on meeting us at the train station before the train left. Once Lauren and I finally made it through the big long line at the ticket counter, we had about 10 minutes to spare before our train was supposed to leave. So far, so good. Lauren went off to find Chen, and I was left alone to deal with a sour-looking old man behind the desk labelled "international departures." I handed him the reservation paper and asked for the printed tickets. He said no. I asked, "what do you mean, no?" He said "come back tomorrow." Then my inner obnoxious American came out and started getting angry. "NO I am NOT coming back TOMORROW!!! The train leaves in TEN MINUTES! I already PAID for those seats and I am getting on THAT train!" He sat and argued for another five minutes, and then finally said "okay I'll see what I can do." He took my reservation paper, and disappeared. Disaster #1. Chen came and found me with one minute til the train was supposed to leave, and I was in a panic. After quickly explaining the situation to her, she said "okay, now's not the time to argue. Let's get on the train anyway." So, with visions of being tossed out of the train somewhere in the Alps, the three of us ran toward the train and managed to get on just as the doors were closing. We found our seats as the train pulled out of Venice. When the ticket man came by an hour later, I calmly explained the situation. Disaster #2. He gave me an I-don't-believe-you look, but said he would come back later to sort it out. However, a random person (disaster #3?) saved us. At the next stop, someone started talking in Italian quickly over the intercom. I didn't pay much attention to it until I heard in English "...are stopped indefinitely. We will pass along details as they come." Immediately I recalled Amy (another girl studying with us) talking about when she went to Cinque Terre, and how a woman committed suicide by jumping in front of the train, stalling them for five hours. I dismissed the thought though, thinking, "how many people would have that idea??" Apparently it's popular here-- someone had collided with the train in front of us, and we were waiting for the mess to be cleaned up before we would be allowed to continue our journey. (It wasn't clear whether the person jumped or it was an accident). At any rate, the ticket man never did come back. Thanks to the delay though, we arrived in Salzburg at 6AM instead of 4AM, which was comforting to three girls travelling alone through places where they don't speak the language at all. Once we checked in to the hotel, it was time to go on the Sound of Music tour. Lauren, Chen, and I felt bad going on it because Keshia had been the one who was really excited about this portion of the trip, and she didn't get to enjoy it with us. The views over the lakes were gorgeous, but we spent too much time on the bus and not enough time at the locations. When we arrived back in the center of Salzburg, we met up with Sayaka, a Japanese student who was travelling by herself. The four of us walked through the Mirabell Gardens to the historic city center, where we visited Mozart's house. I loved his house. They had a large collection of his instruments: two organs, two harpsichords, a piano, a violin, and a horn of some kind, and they also had letters he wrote and even some original music. I guess you have to be a music nerd like me to find all that as interesting as I did. Anyway, after that, the four of us stumbled upon a rather large fortress (not the Salzburg Fortress, but a different one). This one had a lot of pretty nature trails to explore and talked about the ancient history of the area. Lauren and Sayaka weren't as into the "hiking" bit as Chen and I were, so they decided to go shopping while we explored the historic city center (and ate an obligatory ice cream). We met up again with Lauren and Sayaka for dinner at an Asian fast-food-type place which was pretty good. The next morning, Lauren, Chen, and I set out bright and early for Hellbrunn (which means "Springs of Hell"), the pleasure palace of Archbishop Markus Sittikus. It was built in the late 1500s, and this man was a hysterical genius. The gardens of this palace are gorgeous, with lots of fountains and flowers everywhere. We were herded into a circular area with a stone table and stools with little holes in the middle of the seats. That was where the archbishop would entertain his guests. He liked to get them good and drunk, and then he would surprise them by turning on the water, which would squirt out of the seat and drench their bottoms. The best part is, at that time it was considered a crime to be standing in the presence of a seated archbishop, so they had to literally grin and bear it. After a demonstration (using some very eager little boys as the "guests" and a very reluctant older woman for the "archbishop"), we moved on to other exhibits in the trick gardens. I made good use of my raincoat that day-- in one room, water "rained" from the ceiling, and outside of another, a deer head mounted on the wall spouted water through his mouth and antlers! Out of the entire trip, Hellbrunn was by far my favorite place. After Chen and I quickly toured the inside of the palace, the three of us headed back to the city center, where Lauren went shopping again and Chen and I headed up to the Festung Hohensalzburg (the Salzburg Fortress). We discovered that we get along really well together because out of the whole complex, we liked the toilet (it protrudes out from the side of the turret....and opens at the bottom. In the words of our tour guide, "bombs away!") and the torture instruments. They had several very funny-looking masks, thumb screws, a huge pointy wheel that was dropped on criminals until they were squashed to death, and other unidentifiable objects. Too bad all the descriptions were in German, because it would've been really good if we knew what they were used for and what crimes deserved which punishments. Anyway, once we met back up again with Lauren, the three of us went to the train station and hopped on a train to Munich. I like travelling on trains-- the scenery was so pretty as we crossed the Alps. Oh, here's a random Sound of Music trivia fact: that mountain they climb over to "escape into Switzerland" at the end? It would've led them straight into Nazi Germany. And another one: the mountain that Maria runs down at the beginning actually takes 3 hours to hike up. Well, unless you're Maria, because it took her only 3 minutes to run down it and enter the abbey again. Okay now back to the trip.
We got to Munich on Saturday night, and obviously everything was closed, so after checking in at the hostel we walkded around and found ourselves in the middle of the old town. Lauren got very excited because there's a huge Zara (her new favorite store) and an H&M spanning two blocks. We wandered past all the main sites at night, and then ate a quick dinner and went to bed. The next morning we got up early and went to Dachau concentration camp, which took us several hours. There was a lot of information to take in, not only about that particular camp but also about Nazi Germany and even the lead-up to the war. The only parts of the camp that were original were the gas chambers (which were never used for mass killings for whatever reason) and the crematorium. I think the most chilling for me was a "shooting range" tucked away in a forested area: there were trees with ivy crawling up them and wildflowers all over, and a bare concrete wall with a sloped base that ended in a 6-inch ditch about 8 feet away, which was apparently dug to collect the blood. The rest of the camp was reconstructed and somehow just didn't seem realistic enough to have a shocking effect. Around lunchtime we went back to Munich, and I ate a weiner schnitzel at an outdoor restaurant, listening to classical music played on the marimba (a xylophone-type instrument) and rock music played on an accordion in the square. We watched the Glockenspiel, which is a bell tower of a church that plays three times a day and has moving marionettes. At the end, a German rider on a horse jabs his lance through an Austrian one and then other marionettes dance. It was....interesting. Then we walked around some more and found ourselves in the gardens of the Residenz for a while. We didn't get to go in anything because it was Easter Sunday and rather late in the afternoon, so everything was closed, but it was still nice to just walk around and see it all (of course, while eating Haagen Daz rum raisin ice cream...can't go to Germany and not eat Haagen Daz!). When we got back to the hostel, we were exhausted, and the next morning we got up and went straight to the airport and came back to Venice. It would've been nice to have more time though-- I could've definitely spent another day at least in Salzburg, and we didn't really see much of Munich.
Here are the pictures:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015212&l=cd6ff&id=3901306
And here:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015213&l=0acf8&id=3901306
On other news, on Thursday morning I put on my favorite pair of jeans and they ripped in a very unconvenient location, which made me very sad. Then I had to take a midterm for my Representing Renaissance Venice class, which I finished 30 minutes early. I think it went well. Today, Friday, Keshia, Chen, Caitlin, and I were supposed to go to Ravenna, but sadly the train workers are on strike. I'm convinced it's because the police are too lazy to clean up whenever a body collides with the trains, so the conductors probably have to do it. Anyway, they should be off strike tomorrow, so those are the plans for Saturday. Today I ended up sleeping a whole lot because I accidentally took two Tylenol Cold PM in the morning, thinking it was the AM one. Oops. I did manage in my foggy state to get a bit of work done on my presentation on nuns coming up on Tuesday, which was good. Hopefully I'll finish that either tomorrow on the trains or on Sunday. I'll be busy this week: on Monday, Leslie Davis from Duke study abroad will be visiting and she offered to take us out to dinner, then that night I have a make-up class since my professor was sick a few weeks ago, Tuesday's my presentation, and Wednesday is my Italian midterm. Then Thursday night Keshia, Chen, (possibly Caitlin), and I are leaving for Budapest for the weekend!
*Edit: I just realized I didn't explain the title. Well, on Saturday night as we were wandering around Munich, a random guy came up to us and asked with an accent if we spoke English. He then proceeded to ask us what city we're in. I answered "Munich." His eyes grew wide and he turned to his friends and said in Spanish, "Do you know where we are????!!! We're in Munich!!" His friends laughed and said, "so?" He kept protesting though, because apparently they were supposed to be in some other city. All of them were clearly in an altered state of mind. Chen, Lauren, and I found it rather hilarious.
Here they are in quite a bit more:
Our trip seemed doomed from the start. Last Thursday afternoon, right before Chen, Keshia, Lauren, and I were headed off to the train station, Keshia got a phone call about a family emergency, and decided not to come. Lauren and I headed off as planned, and Chen stayed with Keshia for a bit and planned on meeting us at the train station before the train left. Once Lauren and I finally made it through the big long line at the ticket counter, we had about 10 minutes to spare before our train was supposed to leave. So far, so good. Lauren went off to find Chen, and I was left alone to deal with a sour-looking old man behind the desk labelled "international departures." I handed him the reservation paper and asked for the printed tickets. He said no. I asked, "what do you mean, no?" He said "come back tomorrow." Then my inner obnoxious American came out and started getting angry. "NO I am NOT coming back TOMORROW!!! The train leaves in TEN MINUTES! I already PAID for those seats and I am getting on THAT train!" He sat and argued for another five minutes, and then finally said "okay I'll see what I can do." He took my reservation paper, and disappeared. Disaster #1. Chen came and found me with one minute til the train was supposed to leave, and I was in a panic. After quickly explaining the situation to her, she said "okay, now's not the time to argue. Let's get on the train anyway." So, with visions of being tossed out of the train somewhere in the Alps, the three of us ran toward the train and managed to get on just as the doors were closing. We found our seats as the train pulled out of Venice. When the ticket man came by an hour later, I calmly explained the situation. Disaster #2. He gave me an I-don't-believe-you look, but said he would come back later to sort it out. However, a random person (disaster #3?) saved us. At the next stop, someone started talking in Italian quickly over the intercom. I didn't pay much attention to it until I heard in English "...are stopped indefinitely. We will pass along details as they come." Immediately I recalled Amy (another girl studying with us) talking about when she went to Cinque Terre, and how a woman committed suicide by jumping in front of the train, stalling them for five hours. I dismissed the thought though, thinking, "how many people would have that idea??" Apparently it's popular here-- someone had collided with the train in front of us, and we were waiting for the mess to be cleaned up before we would be allowed to continue our journey. (It wasn't clear whether the person jumped or it was an accident). At any rate, the ticket man never did come back. Thanks to the delay though, we arrived in Salzburg at 6AM instead of 4AM, which was comforting to three girls travelling alone through places where they don't speak the language at all. Once we checked in to the hotel, it was time to go on the Sound of Music tour. Lauren, Chen, and I felt bad going on it because Keshia had been the one who was really excited about this portion of the trip, and she didn't get to enjoy it with us. The views over the lakes were gorgeous, but we spent too much time on the bus and not enough time at the locations. When we arrived back in the center of Salzburg, we met up with Sayaka, a Japanese student who was travelling by herself. The four of us walked through the Mirabell Gardens to the historic city center, where we visited Mozart's house. I loved his house. They had a large collection of his instruments: two organs, two harpsichords, a piano, a violin, and a horn of some kind, and they also had letters he wrote and even some original music. I guess you have to be a music nerd like me to find all that as interesting as I did. Anyway, after that, the four of us stumbled upon a rather large fortress (not the Salzburg Fortress, but a different one). This one had a lot of pretty nature trails to explore and talked about the ancient history of the area. Lauren and Sayaka weren't as into the "hiking" bit as Chen and I were, so they decided to go shopping while we explored the historic city center (and ate an obligatory ice cream). We met up again with Lauren and Sayaka for dinner at an Asian fast-food-type place which was pretty good. The next morning, Lauren, Chen, and I set out bright and early for Hellbrunn (which means "Springs of Hell"), the pleasure palace of Archbishop Markus Sittikus. It was built in the late 1500s, and this man was a hysterical genius. The gardens of this palace are gorgeous, with lots of fountains and flowers everywhere. We were herded into a circular area with a stone table and stools with little holes in the middle of the seats. That was where the archbishop would entertain his guests. He liked to get them good and drunk, and then he would surprise them by turning on the water, which would squirt out of the seat and drench their bottoms. The best part is, at that time it was considered a crime to be standing in the presence of a seated archbishop, so they had to literally grin and bear it. After a demonstration (using some very eager little boys as the "guests" and a very reluctant older woman for the "archbishop"), we moved on to other exhibits in the trick gardens. I made good use of my raincoat that day-- in one room, water "rained" from the ceiling, and outside of another, a deer head mounted on the wall spouted water through his mouth and antlers! Out of the entire trip, Hellbrunn was by far my favorite place. After Chen and I quickly toured the inside of the palace, the three of us headed back to the city center, where Lauren went shopping again and Chen and I headed up to the Festung Hohensalzburg (the Salzburg Fortress). We discovered that we get along really well together because out of the whole complex, we liked the toilet (it protrudes out from the side of the turret....and opens at the bottom. In the words of our tour guide, "bombs away!") and the torture instruments. They had several very funny-looking masks, thumb screws, a huge pointy wheel that was dropped on criminals until they were squashed to death, and other unidentifiable objects. Too bad all the descriptions were in German, because it would've been really good if we knew what they were used for and what crimes deserved which punishments. Anyway, once we met back up again with Lauren, the three of us went to the train station and hopped on a train to Munich. I like travelling on trains-- the scenery was so pretty as we crossed the Alps. Oh, here's a random Sound of Music trivia fact: that mountain they climb over to "escape into Switzerland" at the end? It would've led them straight into Nazi Germany. And another one: the mountain that Maria runs down at the beginning actually takes 3 hours to hike up. Well, unless you're Maria, because it took her only 3 minutes to run down it and enter the abbey again. Okay now back to the trip.
We got to Munich on Saturday night, and obviously everything was closed, so after checking in at the hostel we walkded around and found ourselves in the middle of the old town. Lauren got very excited because there's a huge Zara (her new favorite store) and an H&M spanning two blocks. We wandered past all the main sites at night, and then ate a quick dinner and went to bed. The next morning we got up early and went to Dachau concentration camp, which took us several hours. There was a lot of information to take in, not only about that particular camp but also about Nazi Germany and even the lead-up to the war. The only parts of the camp that were original were the gas chambers (which were never used for mass killings for whatever reason) and the crematorium. I think the most chilling for me was a "shooting range" tucked away in a forested area: there were trees with ivy crawling up them and wildflowers all over, and a bare concrete wall with a sloped base that ended in a 6-inch ditch about 8 feet away, which was apparently dug to collect the blood. The rest of the camp was reconstructed and somehow just didn't seem realistic enough to have a shocking effect. Around lunchtime we went back to Munich, and I ate a weiner schnitzel at an outdoor restaurant, listening to classical music played on the marimba (a xylophone-type instrument) and rock music played on an accordion in the square. We watched the Glockenspiel, which is a bell tower of a church that plays three times a day and has moving marionettes. At the end, a German rider on a horse jabs his lance through an Austrian one and then other marionettes dance. It was....interesting. Then we walked around some more and found ourselves in the gardens of the Residenz for a while. We didn't get to go in anything because it was Easter Sunday and rather late in the afternoon, so everything was closed, but it was still nice to just walk around and see it all (of course, while eating Haagen Daz rum raisin ice cream...can't go to Germany and not eat Haagen Daz!). When we got back to the hostel, we were exhausted, and the next morning we got up and went straight to the airport and came back to Venice. It would've been nice to have more time though-- I could've definitely spent another day at least in Salzburg, and we didn't really see much of Munich.
Here are the pictures:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015212&l=cd6ff&id=3901306
And here:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015213&l=0acf8&id=3901306
On other news, on Thursday morning I put on my favorite pair of jeans and they ripped in a very unconvenient location, which made me very sad. Then I had to take a midterm for my Representing Renaissance Venice class, which I finished 30 minutes early. I think it went well. Today, Friday, Keshia, Chen, Caitlin, and I were supposed to go to Ravenna, but sadly the train workers are on strike. I'm convinced it's because the police are too lazy to clean up whenever a body collides with the trains, so the conductors probably have to do it. Anyway, they should be off strike tomorrow, so those are the plans for Saturday. Today I ended up sleeping a whole lot because I accidentally took two Tylenol Cold PM in the morning, thinking it was the AM one. Oops. I did manage in my foggy state to get a bit of work done on my presentation on nuns coming up on Tuesday, which was good. Hopefully I'll finish that either tomorrow on the trains or on Sunday. I'll be busy this week: on Monday, Leslie Davis from Duke study abroad will be visiting and she offered to take us out to dinner, then that night I have a make-up class since my professor was sick a few weeks ago, Tuesday's my presentation, and Wednesday is my Italian midterm. Then Thursday night Keshia, Chen, (possibly Caitlin), and I are leaving for Budapest for the weekend!
*Edit: I just realized I didn't explain the title. Well, on Saturday night as we were wandering around Munich, a random guy came up to us and asked with an accent if we spoke English. He then proceeded to ask us what city we're in. I answered "Munich." His eyes grew wide and he turned to his friends and said in Spanish, "Do you know where we are????!!! We're in Munich!!" His friends laughed and said, "so?" He kept protesting though, because apparently they were supposed to be in some other city. All of them were clearly in an altered state of mind. Chen, Lauren, and I found it rather hilarious.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
What's in a name?
Well, actually a lot's in a name. For example, when people read Great Expectations and see the name Mr. Pocket it reminded them that he was a character who wished he had more money in his pockets. When people hear the name Mildred, an old lady (for some, well, me anyway, a British old lady) automatically comes to mind. When VIU students hear Orla, we think of Spawn of Satan. When we hear Romeo or Juliet, we think of love. And that brings me (rather circumlocutorily) to the topic of my post: I went to Verona last weekend!
I must begin by saying that Verona is a very cute town, but it's rather sad that its claim to fame is not having the second largest Roman colloseum (only the one in Rome is bigger), but the Casa di Giulietta-- that's right, a fictional literary character's "house." You can even visit her "tomb" where she's "buried." And if you pay a whopping 5 euros, you can go inside her house, see a few paintings of her and Romeo, and stand on her balcony (which is actually a stolen sarcophagus glued to a second-story window). If the line's not too long, you can send her an e-mail, but my friends are still waiting for a response. They figured if they can visit her house and send her e-mail, the least she could do is reply. After all, it's only polite to write back to admirers.
Well, so after we stood in the courtyard of her authentic medieval house and rubbed her right boob for good luck, Chen, Keshia, and I decided to explore the rest of the city. The colloseum was very cool, and it's still used today for concerts (although I can't imagine that sitting on a stone seat for a whole concert is very comfortable). We ate lunch in a Chinese restaurant (it's sad but the food was really good and a whole lot cheaper than eating Italian food there!), and then went across the river and climbed a little hill to see a castle, which was (of course) closed. The view was very pretty though, and after we had had enough of it we made our way down and entered the Archeological Museum located at the foot of said hill, which of course, we had to climb again because the museum is basically half the hill. At the bottom there was a Roman amphitheater, which, when it was in use, was complete with an orchestra pit and curtains that were moved with a pulley system. Then we made our way through a small chapel to a museum building that used to be a monastery but now has an entire collection of decapitated statues and bodiless heads, and we passed through a Roman graveyard before finding ourselves back on the street we started from. In all, it was a nice, relaxing day, and I'm glad that the three of us travel well together. It's rare to find two new friends to go to Verona with as plain old tourists, and not for their international wine festival (which, coincidentally, the rest of VIU was in the city for).
Pictures can be found here:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014763&l=8655d&id=3901306
On a small housekeeping note, I have had to change the privacy settings on Skype because several times now I've received rude phone calls from strangers in China or Turkey at 2AM. The last one woke me up three times in a span of 10 minutes, and when I told him politely but firmly to not contact me again, I was met with a string of F words in a tone so angry I was awake for the next hour, sure that he was going to hunt me down from Istambul and kill me for refusing to take his phone call. I had to leave the phone off the hook the rest of the night to avoid hearing from him again. So I've attempted to solve the problem by blocking calls from people not on my list, but I know that that creates a problem for several people. I probably can't receive calls from Dad's office because it's never from the number that I use to call them, and I'm not even sure I can receive calls at all (because you never know with modern technology...everything that can go wrong seems to do so happily at the first chance it gets). So I just wanted to apologize for anyone who cannot get through, and if you find this too annoying, either let me know via e-mail or a comment on here and I'll change them back and just leave the phone off the hook at night, or call me on my landline at a time I would probably be in the room (i.e., after 9pm here). Okay just wanted to get that cleared up.
I haven't been updating this blog as often as I did last semester because lo and behold, the professors here are assigning this weird thing called homework! It's a strange concept, but every other week I have to write two papers (one for each of the Spanish Guy's classes), and Massimo (Teacher of Doom) assigns homework every other night as well. Today he infuriated Keshia by saying that American kids have issues with Italian and are just horrible when they try to learn it because we're brought up only knowing one language (English) fluently. I hate to agree with him, but it is true that in general, the American students here are the ones with the worst pronounciation and the hardest time speaking. However, he didn't mention that for us, it is easier to guess at the meaning of words we don't recognize than for some of the other nationalities in class. Anyway, I didn't take much offense at what he said; I guess maybe because I grew up speaking two languages (even though my English is far better than my Spanish is), and I found French to be fairly simple to learn (although sadly, most of it has gone out the window since I haven't used it in three years). I just don't have many problems with learning Italian. My problems with Massimo's class stem from Massimo, who really infuriated me yesterday because not only did he come in to class reeking of cigarette smoke, but he had the nerve to sit practically on top of me the entire class period. I think that out of an hour and a half, he probably spent only 20 minutes of it where he wasn't able to touch me. My jacket now smells like smoke (actually it constantly smells of smoke because of him) because he sits so close that his shoulder touches my arm, no matter how far I lean to the opposite side of the desk. It's really rather frustrating and irritating, but I'm afraid to complain because as it is, Spawn of Satan (Orla) decides our grades based on how much she likes us, so I definitely don't want to be on Massimo's bad side in addition to already being on Orla's. (Silly me for accusing the maids of stealing my money! Of course they are so honest and would never do such a thing!) Ah well, sorry for griping so often on here about Massimo and Spawn of Satan. It's hard to stop a rant when all I can think of is how I'd like to be more practiced in the art of defenestration.
To change the subject, I shall impart the wonderful knowledge I have garnered on the all-knowing wikipedia.com (my newest method of procrastination...and you can't complain either, because it's educational!):
Kiwis used to be called Chinese gooseberries. They changed the name as a marketing strategy during the Cold War because sales were going down because they were associated with China. The leading producer of kiwis in the world is Italy. They are rich in vitamins A, C, E, and potassium. I eat two kiwis every day in the hopes of nourishing my body with something other than refined sugar in bread, pasta, cereal, and croissant form.
Cleopatra was the last Egyptian pharaoh. She reigned from 60-30BC, when she killed herself with a snake. Apparently one of the most famous stories about her is when she presented Caesar with a Persian carpet, and he unrolled it to find her in the center. Nine months later she gave birth to his son, and then made an "alliance" with Antony that resulted in three more children. Antony's wife kindly took in her children after Cleopatra and Antony died. I really have no idea how this came into my head, but I suppose I must've been trying really hard to stay awake in class one day and all of a sudden I had the desire to know when the last Egyptian pharaoh died. So I looked it up.
And this has been facts.com, bringing you interesting facts whenever you definitely didn't want to know, signing off until next week.
I must begin by saying that Verona is a very cute town, but it's rather sad that its claim to fame is not having the second largest Roman colloseum (only the one in Rome is bigger), but the Casa di Giulietta-- that's right, a fictional literary character's "house." You can even visit her "tomb" where she's "buried." And if you pay a whopping 5 euros, you can go inside her house, see a few paintings of her and Romeo, and stand on her balcony (which is actually a stolen sarcophagus glued to a second-story window). If the line's not too long, you can send her an e-mail, but my friends are still waiting for a response. They figured if they can visit her house and send her e-mail, the least she could do is reply. After all, it's only polite to write back to admirers.
Well, so after we stood in the courtyard of her authentic medieval house and rubbed her right boob for good luck, Chen, Keshia, and I decided to explore the rest of the city. The colloseum was very cool, and it's still used today for concerts (although I can't imagine that sitting on a stone seat for a whole concert is very comfortable). We ate lunch in a Chinese restaurant (it's sad but the food was really good and a whole lot cheaper than eating Italian food there!), and then went across the river and climbed a little hill to see a castle, which was (of course) closed. The view was very pretty though, and after we had had enough of it we made our way down and entered the Archeological Museum located at the foot of said hill, which of course, we had to climb again because the museum is basically half the hill. At the bottom there was a Roman amphitheater, which, when it was in use, was complete with an orchestra pit and curtains that were moved with a pulley system. Then we made our way through a small chapel to a museum building that used to be a monastery but now has an entire collection of decapitated statues and bodiless heads, and we passed through a Roman graveyard before finding ourselves back on the street we started from. In all, it was a nice, relaxing day, and I'm glad that the three of us travel well together. It's rare to find two new friends to go to Verona with as plain old tourists, and not for their international wine festival (which, coincidentally, the rest of VIU was in the city for).
Pictures can be found here:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014763&l=8655d&id=3901306
On a small housekeeping note, I have had to change the privacy settings on Skype because several times now I've received rude phone calls from strangers in China or Turkey at 2AM. The last one woke me up three times in a span of 10 minutes, and when I told him politely but firmly to not contact me again, I was met with a string of F words in a tone so angry I was awake for the next hour, sure that he was going to hunt me down from Istambul and kill me for refusing to take his phone call. I had to leave the phone off the hook the rest of the night to avoid hearing from him again. So I've attempted to solve the problem by blocking calls from people not on my list, but I know that that creates a problem for several people. I probably can't receive calls from Dad's office because it's never from the number that I use to call them, and I'm not even sure I can receive calls at all (because you never know with modern technology...everything that can go wrong seems to do so happily at the first chance it gets). So I just wanted to apologize for anyone who cannot get through, and if you find this too annoying, either let me know via e-mail or a comment on here and I'll change them back and just leave the phone off the hook at night, or call me on my landline at a time I would probably be in the room (i.e., after 9pm here). Okay just wanted to get that cleared up.
I haven't been updating this blog as often as I did last semester because lo and behold, the professors here are assigning this weird thing called homework! It's a strange concept, but every other week I have to write two papers (one for each of the Spanish Guy's classes), and Massimo (Teacher of Doom) assigns homework every other night as well. Today he infuriated Keshia by saying that American kids have issues with Italian and are just horrible when they try to learn it because we're brought up only knowing one language (English) fluently. I hate to agree with him, but it is true that in general, the American students here are the ones with the worst pronounciation and the hardest time speaking. However, he didn't mention that for us, it is easier to guess at the meaning of words we don't recognize than for some of the other nationalities in class. Anyway, I didn't take much offense at what he said; I guess maybe because I grew up speaking two languages (even though my English is far better than my Spanish is), and I found French to be fairly simple to learn (although sadly, most of it has gone out the window since I haven't used it in three years). I just don't have many problems with learning Italian. My problems with Massimo's class stem from Massimo, who really infuriated me yesterday because not only did he come in to class reeking of cigarette smoke, but he had the nerve to sit practically on top of me the entire class period. I think that out of an hour and a half, he probably spent only 20 minutes of it where he wasn't able to touch me. My jacket now smells like smoke (actually it constantly smells of smoke because of him) because he sits so close that his shoulder touches my arm, no matter how far I lean to the opposite side of the desk. It's really rather frustrating and irritating, but I'm afraid to complain because as it is, Spawn of Satan (Orla) decides our grades based on how much she likes us, so I definitely don't want to be on Massimo's bad side in addition to already being on Orla's. (Silly me for accusing the maids of stealing my money! Of course they are so honest and would never do such a thing!) Ah well, sorry for griping so often on here about Massimo and Spawn of Satan. It's hard to stop a rant when all I can think of is how I'd like to be more practiced in the art of defenestration.
To change the subject, I shall impart the wonderful knowledge I have garnered on the all-knowing wikipedia.com (my newest method of procrastination...and you can't complain either, because it's educational!):
Kiwis used to be called Chinese gooseberries. They changed the name as a marketing strategy during the Cold War because sales were going down because they were associated with China. The leading producer of kiwis in the world is Italy. They are rich in vitamins A, C, E, and potassium. I eat two kiwis every day in the hopes of nourishing my body with something other than refined sugar in bread, pasta, cereal, and croissant form.
Cleopatra was the last Egyptian pharaoh. She reigned from 60-30BC, when she killed herself with a snake. Apparently one of the most famous stories about her is when she presented Caesar with a Persian carpet, and he unrolled it to find her in the center. Nine months later she gave birth to his son, and then made an "alliance" with Antony that resulted in three more children. Antony's wife kindly took in her children after Cleopatra and Antony died. I really have no idea how this came into my head, but I suppose I must've been trying really hard to stay awake in class one day and all of a sudden I had the desire to know when the last Egyptian pharaoh died. So I looked it up.
And this has been facts.com, bringing you interesting facts whenever you definitely didn't want to know, signing off until next week.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Czech This Out!
Okay, so don't mind my horrible play on words for the title of this post...just accept the fact that I'm a nerd who would come up with such a title. Anyway, my shortened version of the trip: Prague was absolutely gorgeous, and is definitely high up on my list of most beautiful places I've ever been to. I think you definitely need to put this city on your list of places to visit sometime in your life.
Check out the pictures here:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014614&l=f1c6b&id=3901306
And here's the rest of them:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014616&l=ac12b&id=3901306
Okay so now for the long story. Actually I may try to keep this as quick as possible because I've been going to bed late recently and it's already 11:37pm here. Well, on Thursday night Keshia and I packed our bags and headed to the Ferrovia (the train station). We had a really yummy quick dinner at a restaurant right next to the station, and then, after clearing up the confusion as to which train we were getting on (it was labelled "Vienna" but really ended in Prague), found our little sleeper cabin. It was rather tiny, with two couch-bench things, and then two fold-down couch-bench things really high up. We were told to sleep up on the top ones and not on the bottom ones. This'll be important later. Once the train got underway, and after both of us got over our initial excitement of being in an overnight train for the first time, we decided to be good students and do our homework. So Keshia worked on a 5-7 page paper on racism for her Segregation and Apartheid class, and I laid down with a book called "A Short History of Venice", which is only 127 pages long, but you'd think it was 500 by the amount of time it took me to finish it. Actually I'm still not done with it. Anyway, the point is, I read about 20 pages and took a nice snooze. Once I decided I wasn't going to fool myself by pretending I was working anymore, I climbed the rickety metal ladder and "made my bed" with the sheet-like thing (it's actually a queen sheet sewn together to make a sort of sleeping bag) and a rather dirty fleece blanket, and a miniature square pillow (half the size of an airplane pillow). After managing to wriggle my way into my sheet sleeping bag thing (which took about 10 minutes, I kid you not), I noted that if I moved about half an inch to my right, I'd fall right off the "bed" onto the floor a good 5 and a half feet below me (to say nothing of the ladder I'd hit on my way down). Needless to say, I didn't sleep very much for the first half of the night. Around 4AM, both of us woke up from an unidentifiable bump on the tracks (suicidal cow perhaps?), and we decided that the German train lady was clearly not thinking about our physical and mental safety when she told us we couldn't sleep on the bottom couchettes that looked exactly like the top ones only closer to the floor. After dragging ourselves out of our comfy warm cocoons, we re-made our beds on the bottom bunks, and slept much more soundly until 7am when German Train Lady banged on our door and yelled "PASSPORT CONTROL!" Then all of a sudden two uniformed, unsmiling German men appeared in our bleary eyesight demanding to see our Papers. Somehow my confused morning brain translated that into passport, and after fishing around in my bag for it, I handed it to them. They scrutinized the picture, opened it to a blank page (why can't passport control people stamp in an orderly fashion?), and put a smudgy unidentifiable mark passed off as a stamp on it. Then our passports were shoved back at us, and we were just about to lie back down again when German Train Lady came back with "breakfast": two crunchy white rolls (although they had really soft middles), a little packet of hot pink "strawberry jam", and the largest pat of butter I've ever seen in my life, accompanied with burnt tea and weak coffee. I say weak because after getting used to Italian coffee, I'm pretty sure even Starbucks will taste like water. But, by this time in the morning, it had been a whole 12 hours without eating anything, so Keshia and I ate up rather quickly in the hopes of resuming our lovely nap (we weren't scheduled to arrive in Prague til 11, afterall). Unfortunately, German Train Lady appeared just as we were contemplating the best position to maximize comfort, and grabbed our sheets, blankets, and pillows. She was followed this time by the Czech passport control people, who were just as silent and unfriendly as the German ones. And they were just as bad at placing their stamp in an organized spot. You'd think they wouldn't want to have to hunt for a spot in my passport in a few trips from now, but I guess it keeps their job interesting. Anyway, we settled back into our paper/reading routine until we finally reached Prague, 14 hours after our voyage began.
When we first got to the train station, we noticed that everything in Prague is only labelled in Czech. This is very helpful since obviously Czech is a common world language and everybody who's anybody knows how to speak fluent Czech. We weren't the only Americans wandering around aimlessly, hopelessly searching for something resembling an ATM machine. When we finally found one (and it actually had an English option on the screen! shocking!), I decided to pull out 2000 Czech Koruny, which amounts to roughly $100US. The very intelligent machine spat out one 2000 Koruny bill, which more than annoyed the metro ticket man when I wanted to pay for a 300 Koruny 3-day ticket. Fortunately, the Prague metro is extremely easy to figure out, and our hostel was fairly close to a metro stop. (Random aside: I've noticed my English is turning into European English-- the English of non-native speakers. An example? Somehow I can't stop saying "metro" instead of "subway." My vocabulary has taken a beating this year, between Australia and Europe!) Okay back to my story. We checked into Hostel U Melonou (which apparently means Hostel Watermelon in Czech), dropped our bags off, washed our faces and brushed our teeth, set off in search of Prague Castle. We got off at the right metro stop, and were so excited about finding the Charles Bridge (it was built in the 1300s) that we accidentally crossed it and went the complete opposite direction. It wasn't all a hopeless situation though: we did want to go to the Old Town anyway, so we simply reversed our schedule. Oh, a word about the weather: it was FREEZING in Prague. In fact, we had snow flurries most of the first day and freezing rain the second, so I'm in full winter garb for most of the pictures. Okay back to the Charles Bridge now. We saw the Astronomical Tower, which was cool because supposedly the 12 apostles come out of the clock and do a little dance or something every hour. We kept trying to catch it all weekend, and finally were able to see it the last hour before we left on Sunday. Keshia and I decided it was just a tourist trap, because something sort of came out and blew a trumpet or something, and then went back in through the door it came out of. Actually it was so quick that while I was trying to take a picture of it, I ended up missing it altogether. Once we decided the clock was a lost cause, we moved on and saw Tyn Church and St. Nicholas Church (of which there are two, and I'm still not sure which one we saw). Both were very pretty, and we found it kind of strange that there are so many beautiful churches in a country where half of the population is atheist and the other half are (mostly) non-practicing Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Anyway, we also walked through Josefov, which is the old Jewish quarter. We found a really good dinner restaurant there, where I decided to be adventurous and try local food. I had steak (yummmm BEEF), but it was literally swimming in a goopy sauce that I have no idea what it was made of, and accompanied by cranberries, cut-out pieces of bread (called "dumplings"), and, strangest of all, whipped cream. It didn't taste as bad as it sounds, but it's not something where I'd die unhappy if I never ate it again. Dessert, however, was awesome: a crepe with fresh fruit and ice cream. It reminded me of the crepes I had in Cairns with Mel, but this one was even better. After dinner we saw a Black Light Show, which apparently is very popular there among tourists. It was called Aspects of Alice, and supposedly followed Alice after she left Wonderland. It was without a doubt the strangest show I've ever seen in my life. Most of the tricks were cool, in the sense that they had lots of props and people floating in the air without cables (they were lifted up on poles attached to the backs of their clothing, and the poles couldn't be seen because it was really dark except for the things glowing in the black light), but I didn't get much of the plot, other than right at the end Alice got married and then had a baby which I think died. All I got out of it was how weird the Czech people are, because it was filled with random nudity that was totally unnecessary. For example, in the background they had a screen that had really random projected images on it, like faces and cars etc. Sometimes it was just naked female bodies. Very strange. We decided we could've done without seeing that show, and went back to the hostel and went straight to bed.
Saturday morning we got up bright and early and actually made it to Prague Castle before 9am, when everything opens there. We walked around and took a lot of pictures, and then went into the cathedral and the interior of the castle before we had to leave to meet our tour group for the lunch cruise. The food on the cruise was pretty good, although they definitely didn't have enough meat (the dishes ran out quickly and weren't refilled), but Keshia and I managed to stuff ourselves anyway and we took some really pretty pictures of the city. Then we decided to go back to the hostel because we had to be at the opera house before the show started at 7. We saw Candide, which is an American musical by Leonard Bernstein (the man who did West Side Story), except the music was in English and the narration and most of the speaking was in Czech. They did have a subtitle machine at the top of the stage, but at one point they had Czech up there while the characters were speaking Czech and English while they were singing in English, so they weren't very helpful. Also, hearing English being sung by Czechs is extremely difficult to understand. And lo and behold, they also had random nude women!!! I'm pretty sure that Bernstein didn't write in any parts for naked women on Broadway back in the 1950s, so I think it's just a Czech oddity. Nudity aside, I found the play enjoyable, even though it was a little confusing because of the language thing.
On Sunday morning we got up bright and early, after remembering to change our clock the night before because of Daylight Savings, ate a quick breakfast, checked out, stored our bags, and headed straight for Prague Castle so that we could finish what we had paid for on our ticket the day before. We saw St. George's Church, which was pretty, and then walked through Golden Lane, which used to be where the peasants that worked in the castle lived. Later it was considered popular to live and work in these tiny houses (and by tiny I mean tiny-- I hit my head on most of the doorframes!), and Franz Kafka worked in a bright blue one in the 1930s. Most of them are shops and museums now though. Then we made our way back down the Old Royal Steps for the last time, and visited two synagogues, the first of which is a museum that has the history of the Jews in Prague, and the second is dedicated to the people who were killed during the Holocaust. Both of them were very old beautiful buildings, and it was cool to see inside a synagogue instead of more churches for a change. The Holocaust has always interested me, and I've read survivor stories since before 4th grade even, so the second synagogue was especially fascinating to me. All the walls were covered floor to ceiling with names and birth and death dates for people killed by the Nazis who were just from the Prague area. The handwriting was only as tall as my thumbs are wide, and to see that many names written, and the enormous amount of space they take up, is really sobering. It's one thing to know facts and numbers, and quite another to have a visual of them. The really interesting part of the exhibit though were the drawings made by children, ages 5-15, who lived in the Terezin ghetto before being deported to concentration camps. They were beautiful and contained such meaningful and grown-up themes, and there were more than 4000 of them. A few had pictures of the children next to them, and sadly most of them never returned. On our way out of the exhibit we had to pass through the Old Jewish Cemetery, which in some places is 12 layers deep because the Jews weren't allowed to bury their dead anywhere else in the city. I heard a guide tell a tour group that during WWII, the cemetery was very important because it was the only "playground" children could use, and it became a central meeting point for friends, families, and lovers. It's hard to picture little kids playing hide-and-go-seek between crumbly tombstones that are centuries old. After leaving Josefov (the Jewish Quarter, which was the only ghetto to not be destroyed by the Nazis-- they planned to leave it as a "museum of an extinct race"), we finally managed to catch that darn astronomical clock in time to see it, although both of us were rather disappointed. Then it was time to go to the airport, and we said goodbye to Prague. The airplane was wonderful-- I had a whole 3 seats to myself, so naturally I stretched out and fell asleep. I was only sad that it was only an hour ride. Once we reached Venice, we spent an extra 4 hours getting from the airport to San Servolo, because of full ferries and annoying timetables, but we finally got home, exhausted, and I definitely went straight to sleep.
Yesterday and today I met Carynne and Annie, girls from Williams, in Piazza San Marco and had the opportunity to show them around Venice a bit. It was good to see them, because I haven't really kept in touch much with many Williams students (well, other than the occasional facebook message). I'm trying to get more motivated and send out postcards, but I sent out a bunch last semester and only got one back (from Carynne). In Venice news, I don't have much of interest to report, other than I have a rather long list of complaints that will be written up in a formal letter and sent to both Duke and Williams at the end of the semester. I haven't added Massimo to that list, but his behavior towards me (and Margaret in his first class) could definitely be charged as sexual harrassment if he were a professor in the States. I don't know about you, but I don't like having my professor put his hands on my shoulders and his chin on the top of my head while he's staring down at what I'm working on during class. Spanish Guy also has kept picking on me lately-- although definitely in a better way. He's made mention of my papers in class several times now, and I'm the only one he's singling out. I think that's a good thing, but it also brings his attention, and I'm also the only one he calls on outright, even though I'm not the only one who doesn't participate voluntarily often (I'm not even the only American student to be quiet in those classes, so it's not like he's picking on me because I'm a native speaker). He just wants to hear my opinion on everything, but as Ofer (an Israeli student) has pointed out, I turn red, my voice gets shaky, and I stammer a lot whenever I speak in class. Ofer thinks it's funny, but I'm really thinking it's not. It makes me miss Williams classes where professors are sensitive to nervous people and graciously let you participate in other ways. I also have to pay Orla (the program director) a visit, because another student told me that Orla told her that if a professor mostly assigns A's to students in his or her class, she will go through and even out the grades so there are an even number of A's, B's, and C's. Judging from the fact that I'm taking three literature classes, and I know one of my fortes is writing good papers, if I get anything less than all A's I'm going to be incredibly angry. Actually maybe I'll e-mail her instead of talk to her in person, because if I have that answer in writing then I can prove to Duke and Williams that my grades are less than what I deserve. Genius ideas like that come to me at 1AM. That is why I don't start papers until the middle of the night the day that they're due. But I digress. That's just one in a list of many rumors I need her to clear up for me, because arbitrarily assigning grades is not okay. Especially not when this Duke transcript will be seen by graduate schools. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I've written an entire book in this entry, and you're all probably really bored or have given up on reading it. Plus I'm really tired and have yet to finish reading that darn so-called Short History of Venice book, so I'm going to go lie down on my bed and have nice happy dreams of my trip to Salzburg and Munich in two weeks!
Check out the pictures here:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014614&l=f1c6b&id=3901306
And here's the rest of them:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014616&l=ac12b&id=3901306
Okay so now for the long story. Actually I may try to keep this as quick as possible because I've been going to bed late recently and it's already 11:37pm here. Well, on Thursday night Keshia and I packed our bags and headed to the Ferrovia (the train station). We had a really yummy quick dinner at a restaurant right next to the station, and then, after clearing up the confusion as to which train we were getting on (it was labelled "Vienna" but really ended in Prague), found our little sleeper cabin. It was rather tiny, with two couch-bench things, and then two fold-down couch-bench things really high up. We were told to sleep up on the top ones and not on the bottom ones. This'll be important later. Once the train got underway, and after both of us got over our initial excitement of being in an overnight train for the first time, we decided to be good students and do our homework. So Keshia worked on a 5-7 page paper on racism for her Segregation and Apartheid class, and I laid down with a book called "A Short History of Venice", which is only 127 pages long, but you'd think it was 500 by the amount of time it took me to finish it. Actually I'm still not done with it. Anyway, the point is, I read about 20 pages and took a nice snooze. Once I decided I wasn't going to fool myself by pretending I was working anymore, I climbed the rickety metal ladder and "made my bed" with the sheet-like thing (it's actually a queen sheet sewn together to make a sort of sleeping bag) and a rather dirty fleece blanket, and a miniature square pillow (half the size of an airplane pillow). After managing to wriggle my way into my sheet sleeping bag thing (which took about 10 minutes, I kid you not), I noted that if I moved about half an inch to my right, I'd fall right off the "bed" onto the floor a good 5 and a half feet below me (to say nothing of the ladder I'd hit on my way down). Needless to say, I didn't sleep very much for the first half of the night. Around 4AM, both of us woke up from an unidentifiable bump on the tracks (suicidal cow perhaps?), and we decided that the German train lady was clearly not thinking about our physical and mental safety when she told us we couldn't sleep on the bottom couchettes that looked exactly like the top ones only closer to the floor. After dragging ourselves out of our comfy warm cocoons, we re-made our beds on the bottom bunks, and slept much more soundly until 7am when German Train Lady banged on our door and yelled "PASSPORT CONTROL!" Then all of a sudden two uniformed, unsmiling German men appeared in our bleary eyesight demanding to see our Papers. Somehow my confused morning brain translated that into passport, and after fishing around in my bag for it, I handed it to them. They scrutinized the picture, opened it to a blank page (why can't passport control people stamp in an orderly fashion?), and put a smudgy unidentifiable mark passed off as a stamp on it. Then our passports were shoved back at us, and we were just about to lie back down again when German Train Lady came back with "breakfast": two crunchy white rolls (although they had really soft middles), a little packet of hot pink "strawberry jam", and the largest pat of butter I've ever seen in my life, accompanied with burnt tea and weak coffee. I say weak because after getting used to Italian coffee, I'm pretty sure even Starbucks will taste like water. But, by this time in the morning, it had been a whole 12 hours without eating anything, so Keshia and I ate up rather quickly in the hopes of resuming our lovely nap (we weren't scheduled to arrive in Prague til 11, afterall). Unfortunately, German Train Lady appeared just as we were contemplating the best position to maximize comfort, and grabbed our sheets, blankets, and pillows. She was followed this time by the Czech passport control people, who were just as silent and unfriendly as the German ones. And they were just as bad at placing their stamp in an organized spot. You'd think they wouldn't want to have to hunt for a spot in my passport in a few trips from now, but I guess it keeps their job interesting. Anyway, we settled back into our paper/reading routine until we finally reached Prague, 14 hours after our voyage began.
When we first got to the train station, we noticed that everything in Prague is only labelled in Czech. This is very helpful since obviously Czech is a common world language and everybody who's anybody knows how to speak fluent Czech. We weren't the only Americans wandering around aimlessly, hopelessly searching for something resembling an ATM machine. When we finally found one (and it actually had an English option on the screen! shocking!), I decided to pull out 2000 Czech Koruny, which amounts to roughly $100US. The very intelligent machine spat out one 2000 Koruny bill, which more than annoyed the metro ticket man when I wanted to pay for a 300 Koruny 3-day ticket. Fortunately, the Prague metro is extremely easy to figure out, and our hostel was fairly close to a metro stop. (Random aside: I've noticed my English is turning into European English-- the English of non-native speakers. An example? Somehow I can't stop saying "metro" instead of "subway." My vocabulary has taken a beating this year, between Australia and Europe!) Okay back to my story. We checked into Hostel U Melonou (which apparently means Hostel Watermelon in Czech), dropped our bags off, washed our faces and brushed our teeth, set off in search of Prague Castle. We got off at the right metro stop, and were so excited about finding the Charles Bridge (it was built in the 1300s) that we accidentally crossed it and went the complete opposite direction. It wasn't all a hopeless situation though: we did want to go to the Old Town anyway, so we simply reversed our schedule. Oh, a word about the weather: it was FREEZING in Prague. In fact, we had snow flurries most of the first day and freezing rain the second, so I'm in full winter garb for most of the pictures. Okay back to the Charles Bridge now. We saw the Astronomical Tower, which was cool because supposedly the 12 apostles come out of the clock and do a little dance or something every hour. We kept trying to catch it all weekend, and finally were able to see it the last hour before we left on Sunday. Keshia and I decided it was just a tourist trap, because something sort of came out and blew a trumpet or something, and then went back in through the door it came out of. Actually it was so quick that while I was trying to take a picture of it, I ended up missing it altogether. Once we decided the clock was a lost cause, we moved on and saw Tyn Church and St. Nicholas Church (of which there are two, and I'm still not sure which one we saw). Both were very pretty, and we found it kind of strange that there are so many beautiful churches in a country where half of the population is atheist and the other half are (mostly) non-practicing Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Anyway, we also walked through Josefov, which is the old Jewish quarter. We found a really good dinner restaurant there, where I decided to be adventurous and try local food. I had steak (yummmm BEEF), but it was literally swimming in a goopy sauce that I have no idea what it was made of, and accompanied by cranberries, cut-out pieces of bread (called "dumplings"), and, strangest of all, whipped cream. It didn't taste as bad as it sounds, but it's not something where I'd die unhappy if I never ate it again. Dessert, however, was awesome: a crepe with fresh fruit and ice cream. It reminded me of the crepes I had in Cairns with Mel, but this one was even better. After dinner we saw a Black Light Show, which apparently is very popular there among tourists. It was called Aspects of Alice, and supposedly followed Alice after she left Wonderland. It was without a doubt the strangest show I've ever seen in my life. Most of the tricks were cool, in the sense that they had lots of props and people floating in the air without cables (they were lifted up on poles attached to the backs of their clothing, and the poles couldn't be seen because it was really dark except for the things glowing in the black light), but I didn't get much of the plot, other than right at the end Alice got married and then had a baby which I think died. All I got out of it was how weird the Czech people are, because it was filled with random nudity that was totally unnecessary. For example, in the background they had a screen that had really random projected images on it, like faces and cars etc. Sometimes it was just naked female bodies. Very strange. We decided we could've done without seeing that show, and went back to the hostel and went straight to bed.
Saturday morning we got up bright and early and actually made it to Prague Castle before 9am, when everything opens there. We walked around and took a lot of pictures, and then went into the cathedral and the interior of the castle before we had to leave to meet our tour group for the lunch cruise. The food on the cruise was pretty good, although they definitely didn't have enough meat (the dishes ran out quickly and weren't refilled), but Keshia and I managed to stuff ourselves anyway and we took some really pretty pictures of the city. Then we decided to go back to the hostel because we had to be at the opera house before the show started at 7. We saw Candide, which is an American musical by Leonard Bernstein (the man who did West Side Story), except the music was in English and the narration and most of the speaking was in Czech. They did have a subtitle machine at the top of the stage, but at one point they had Czech up there while the characters were speaking Czech and English while they were singing in English, so they weren't very helpful. Also, hearing English being sung by Czechs is extremely difficult to understand. And lo and behold, they also had random nude women!!! I'm pretty sure that Bernstein didn't write in any parts for naked women on Broadway back in the 1950s, so I think it's just a Czech oddity. Nudity aside, I found the play enjoyable, even though it was a little confusing because of the language thing.
On Sunday morning we got up bright and early, after remembering to change our clock the night before because of Daylight Savings, ate a quick breakfast, checked out, stored our bags, and headed straight for Prague Castle so that we could finish what we had paid for on our ticket the day before. We saw St. George's Church, which was pretty, and then walked through Golden Lane, which used to be where the peasants that worked in the castle lived. Later it was considered popular to live and work in these tiny houses (and by tiny I mean tiny-- I hit my head on most of the doorframes!), and Franz Kafka worked in a bright blue one in the 1930s. Most of them are shops and museums now though. Then we made our way back down the Old Royal Steps for the last time, and visited two synagogues, the first of which is a museum that has the history of the Jews in Prague, and the second is dedicated to the people who were killed during the Holocaust. Both of them were very old beautiful buildings, and it was cool to see inside a synagogue instead of more churches for a change. The Holocaust has always interested me, and I've read survivor stories since before 4th grade even, so the second synagogue was especially fascinating to me. All the walls were covered floor to ceiling with names and birth and death dates for people killed by the Nazis who were just from the Prague area. The handwriting was only as tall as my thumbs are wide, and to see that many names written, and the enormous amount of space they take up, is really sobering. It's one thing to know facts and numbers, and quite another to have a visual of them. The really interesting part of the exhibit though were the drawings made by children, ages 5-15, who lived in the Terezin ghetto before being deported to concentration camps. They were beautiful and contained such meaningful and grown-up themes, and there were more than 4000 of them. A few had pictures of the children next to them, and sadly most of them never returned. On our way out of the exhibit we had to pass through the Old Jewish Cemetery, which in some places is 12 layers deep because the Jews weren't allowed to bury their dead anywhere else in the city. I heard a guide tell a tour group that during WWII, the cemetery was very important because it was the only "playground" children could use, and it became a central meeting point for friends, families, and lovers. It's hard to picture little kids playing hide-and-go-seek between crumbly tombstones that are centuries old. After leaving Josefov (the Jewish Quarter, which was the only ghetto to not be destroyed by the Nazis-- they planned to leave it as a "museum of an extinct race"), we finally managed to catch that darn astronomical clock in time to see it, although both of us were rather disappointed. Then it was time to go to the airport, and we said goodbye to Prague. The airplane was wonderful-- I had a whole 3 seats to myself, so naturally I stretched out and fell asleep. I was only sad that it was only an hour ride. Once we reached Venice, we spent an extra 4 hours getting from the airport to San Servolo, because of full ferries and annoying timetables, but we finally got home, exhausted, and I definitely went straight to sleep.
Yesterday and today I met Carynne and Annie, girls from Williams, in Piazza San Marco and had the opportunity to show them around Venice a bit. It was good to see them, because I haven't really kept in touch much with many Williams students (well, other than the occasional facebook message). I'm trying to get more motivated and send out postcards, but I sent out a bunch last semester and only got one back (from Carynne). In Venice news, I don't have much of interest to report, other than I have a rather long list of complaints that will be written up in a formal letter and sent to both Duke and Williams at the end of the semester. I haven't added Massimo to that list, but his behavior towards me (and Margaret in his first class) could definitely be charged as sexual harrassment if he were a professor in the States. I don't know about you, but I don't like having my professor put his hands on my shoulders and his chin on the top of my head while he's staring down at what I'm working on during class. Spanish Guy also has kept picking on me lately-- although definitely in a better way. He's made mention of my papers in class several times now, and I'm the only one he's singling out. I think that's a good thing, but it also brings his attention, and I'm also the only one he calls on outright, even though I'm not the only one who doesn't participate voluntarily often (I'm not even the only American student to be quiet in those classes, so it's not like he's picking on me because I'm a native speaker). He just wants to hear my opinion on everything, but as Ofer (an Israeli student) has pointed out, I turn red, my voice gets shaky, and I stammer a lot whenever I speak in class. Ofer thinks it's funny, but I'm really thinking it's not. It makes me miss Williams classes where professors are sensitive to nervous people and graciously let you participate in other ways. I also have to pay Orla (the program director) a visit, because another student told me that Orla told her that if a professor mostly assigns A's to students in his or her class, she will go through and even out the grades so there are an even number of A's, B's, and C's. Judging from the fact that I'm taking three literature classes, and I know one of my fortes is writing good papers, if I get anything less than all A's I'm going to be incredibly angry. Actually maybe I'll e-mail her instead of talk to her in person, because if I have that answer in writing then I can prove to Duke and Williams that my grades are less than what I deserve. Genius ideas like that come to me at 1AM. That is why I don't start papers until the middle of the night the day that they're due. But I digress. That's just one in a list of many rumors I need her to clear up for me, because arbitrarily assigning grades is not okay. Especially not when this Duke transcript will be seen by graduate schools. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I've written an entire book in this entry, and you're all probably really bored or have given up on reading it. Plus I'm really tired and have yet to finish reading that darn so-called Short History of Venice book, so I'm going to go lie down on my bed and have nice happy dreams of my trip to Salzburg and Munich in two weeks!
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
It can only look up from here....right?
Somehow I recall saying that phrase earlier in the semester, and quite obviously I was proven wrong. Well I'll be optimistic and hope that the rest of the semester goes a lot smoother than this first bit has gone. I went to the police station today and filed a report about my stolen cash. I've got a copy (actually the policeman gave me the original) so I can ship a copy of that off to Duke soon. I'm trying to encourage other kids to come forward and make police reports, because the more people I talk to the more stories I hear of things being stolen, and in particular on the days the cleaning ladies come. For now I've locked up anything remotely valuable in my huge green suitcase, and if they try to move it back to the top of the closet again I'll have to come up with something clever to do like booby-trap it or something. I'm open to suggestions.
In other news, on Saturday I went with Keshia, Margaret, Megan, and Chen to Padua (Chen is an Israeli girl....her name isn't pronounced "ch" as in "chocolate" though; it's more of a gutteral "h" sound, like the "h" part of the "hokay, so, here is the earth..." impression that I do. But for most of you that isn't very helpful. Sorry. Suffice it to say that it's not a sound that exists in either the English, Spanish, or Italian languages). As soon as we got there, we realized that the city is HORRIBLY marked, and the signs don't actually point to where you need to go (even moreso than Venice, which is pretty impressive). Anyway, we had these sights on our to-see list: Basilica di San Antonio, a garden of some sort whose name escapes me at the moment, and (my personal contribution to the list) the university where Galileo taught. The fact that I was really eager to see that made me think that maybe I'm a little more like dad than I care to admit. Sorry dad. Anyway, Margaret and Megan, the two superCatholic girls of our group, had to leave around lunchtime, so we made the Basilica our first stop. First we saw a really cool palazzo that used to hold an enormous market, with a few really random things inside it (like a meridian line, an enormous wooden horse that some claim as the Trojan horse, and a punitive stone where thieves were made to sit bare-bottomed three times while repeating something to the effect of "I repent of my sins" and then were banished from the city). I told you they were random. Then, as we continued on our way to a building we saw in the distance and thought it must be the basilica, we passed through their open-air market of shoes. I think all of us except Chen bought shoes. I got some really cute red boat shoes that are really comfortable, and made my day a lot brighter (literally). The saying about buying shoes being theraputic is so true. When we finally were able to tear ourselves away from cheap (price, not quality) leather shoes, we crossed a really cool mini-park filled with Roman-esque statues glaring down at us and arrived at the entrance to the enormous church we had seen in the distance. Turns out it wasn't the Basilica di San Antonio, but some other church. The basilica was in the opposite direction. After walking in circles a bit more, we managed to find it. The most noteworthy part of this church was Saint Anthony's tongue, jaw, and vocal chords displayed in a gold shrine behind glass. I didn't know vocal chords looked like mini-intestines. And let me tell you, seeing a shriveled tongue that was hundreds of years old was almost the second coolest thing about that day, other than my red shoes. I'm totally serious too. After walking around and admiring the paintings and mosaics a bit more, we made our way out and tried to locate il Bo, the original building of the University of Padua. Around 2pm, Chen, Keshia and I decided we could not continue without getting some food in our bellies, and Megan and Margaret decided to go back to Venice to get some work done. After an enormous 7 euro lunch of an entire pizza, a bottle of water, and a coffee each, we set out determinedly to find il Bo. On the way we managed to walk past a sign that said "Casa di Galileo Galilei." We stood there trying to figure out what exactly was his house, because it was pointing at a graffitied, semi-modern appartment building that definitely was being lived in. I took a picture of the sign, so if any of you can figure out where Galileo lived let me know. Finally, after literally hours of wandering in circles, we managed to find il Bo-- a building we had passed at least 4 or 5 times, and is apparently labelled very helpfully "Gimnasio". Chen and I were rather sad that we didn't make it there in the morning, because the classroom where he taught has been kept the same and is still used, but only open to visitors in the mornings. We managed to sneak into another classroom and take a picture or two, but it would've been much cooler to see Galileo's classroom. Once we finished gawking at all of the stone plaques (which someone suggested were medieval "yearbooks") and paintings on the walls, we made our way slowly back to the train station. We stopped in the Giardino dell'Arena, a garden that has grown out of some ancient Roman arena ruins, and took some pretty awesome pictures. Oh, before we got to the garden we went back to that first church, which, we learned, has Luke's original casket on display. It was a very pretty church too. I found it kind of ironic that Margaret and Megan were so eager to find Saint Anthony that they missed Luke in the process. Anyway, overall, it was a very good day and Padua is definitely someplace worth re-visiting. If I have time later in the semester I may try to go back.
On Monday I had to give my oral presentation about Boca in Italian class, which was oh-so-much fun, let me tell you. I'm just glad that Massimo didn't say anything about me reading off of my paper, because I was shaking by the time my two and a half minutes were up. My academic goal in life is to be invisible, and usually I'm rather good at it. I don't know why the professors here haven't picked up on that yet. For example, today in Spanish guy's Tourism class, we had a two-page paper due, and we always go around our semi-circle and discuss what we wrote. I always sit in the center but off to the left side, calculated precisely so that I cannot be called on to begin because I don't sit in a logical place to start from. Except for today, because as soon as Quintana sat down, he looked straight at me and said "CHRISTINA! Why don't YOU start us off today? What similar thoughts about travel did Edward Gibbon, Goethe, and George Sand have?" I don't know what it is about the professors at this school, but I have been getting way more attention from all of them than I care to have. I guess I prefer speaking in the Spanish guy's classes though; at least he doesn't creep up behind me and breathe down my neck like Massimo does. I swear the only way of knowing he's there is because he always smells like cigarette smoke. If he didn't smoke I'd be completely freaked out all the time because he's really good at being sneaky.
I'm really excited about tomorrow though-- Keshia and I are going to Prague for the weekend! We got really cheap tickets to go to the opera, although Candide, a musical, not an opera, is playing. At least it's in English. I realized the other day that it's really rare for me to go to a place where I can't even fudge my way through "hello" and "thank you" in the local language. This semester will be an adventure, because between Prague, Austria, Germany, Budapest, and Croatia, I definitely won't know what I'm eating in the restaurants or seeing at the museums!
Okay so pictures from Padua:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014447&l=ea3e5&id=3901306
And now it's bedtime, or I'll never wake up in time to wash my hair and pack. Look for a really exciting update maybe on Sunday night!
In other news, on Saturday I went with Keshia, Margaret, Megan, and Chen to Padua (Chen is an Israeli girl....her name isn't pronounced "ch" as in "chocolate" though; it's more of a gutteral "h" sound, like the "h" part of the "hokay, so, here is the earth..." impression that I do. But for most of you that isn't very helpful. Sorry. Suffice it to say that it's not a sound that exists in either the English, Spanish, or Italian languages). As soon as we got there, we realized that the city is HORRIBLY marked, and the signs don't actually point to where you need to go (even moreso than Venice, which is pretty impressive). Anyway, we had these sights on our to-see list: Basilica di San Antonio, a garden of some sort whose name escapes me at the moment, and (my personal contribution to the list) the university where Galileo taught. The fact that I was really eager to see that made me think that maybe I'm a little more like dad than I care to admit. Sorry dad. Anyway, Margaret and Megan, the two superCatholic girls of our group, had to leave around lunchtime, so we made the Basilica our first stop. First we saw a really cool palazzo that used to hold an enormous market, with a few really random things inside it (like a meridian line, an enormous wooden horse that some claim as the Trojan horse, and a punitive stone where thieves were made to sit bare-bottomed three times while repeating something to the effect of "I repent of my sins" and then were banished from the city). I told you they were random. Then, as we continued on our way to a building we saw in the distance and thought it must be the basilica, we passed through their open-air market of shoes. I think all of us except Chen bought shoes. I got some really cute red boat shoes that are really comfortable, and made my day a lot brighter (literally). The saying about buying shoes being theraputic is so true. When we finally were able to tear ourselves away from cheap (price, not quality) leather shoes, we crossed a really cool mini-park filled with Roman-esque statues glaring down at us and arrived at the entrance to the enormous church we had seen in the distance. Turns out it wasn't the Basilica di San Antonio, but some other church. The basilica was in the opposite direction. After walking in circles a bit more, we managed to find it. The most noteworthy part of this church was Saint Anthony's tongue, jaw, and vocal chords displayed in a gold shrine behind glass. I didn't know vocal chords looked like mini-intestines. And let me tell you, seeing a shriveled tongue that was hundreds of years old was almost the second coolest thing about that day, other than my red shoes. I'm totally serious too. After walking around and admiring the paintings and mosaics a bit more, we made our way out and tried to locate il Bo, the original building of the University of Padua. Around 2pm, Chen, Keshia and I decided we could not continue without getting some food in our bellies, and Megan and Margaret decided to go back to Venice to get some work done. After an enormous 7 euro lunch of an entire pizza, a bottle of water, and a coffee each, we set out determinedly to find il Bo. On the way we managed to walk past a sign that said "Casa di Galileo Galilei." We stood there trying to figure out what exactly was his house, because it was pointing at a graffitied, semi-modern appartment building that definitely was being lived in. I took a picture of the sign, so if any of you can figure out where Galileo lived let me know. Finally, after literally hours of wandering in circles, we managed to find il Bo-- a building we had passed at least 4 or 5 times, and is apparently labelled very helpfully "Gimnasio". Chen and I were rather sad that we didn't make it there in the morning, because the classroom where he taught has been kept the same and is still used, but only open to visitors in the mornings. We managed to sneak into another classroom and take a picture or two, but it would've been much cooler to see Galileo's classroom. Once we finished gawking at all of the stone plaques (which someone suggested were medieval "yearbooks") and paintings on the walls, we made our way slowly back to the train station. We stopped in the Giardino dell'Arena, a garden that has grown out of some ancient Roman arena ruins, and took some pretty awesome pictures. Oh, before we got to the garden we went back to that first church, which, we learned, has Luke's original casket on display. It was a very pretty church too. I found it kind of ironic that Margaret and Megan were so eager to find Saint Anthony that they missed Luke in the process. Anyway, overall, it was a very good day and Padua is definitely someplace worth re-visiting. If I have time later in the semester I may try to go back.
On Monday I had to give my oral presentation about Boca in Italian class, which was oh-so-much fun, let me tell you. I'm just glad that Massimo didn't say anything about me reading off of my paper, because I was shaking by the time my two and a half minutes were up. My academic goal in life is to be invisible, and usually I'm rather good at it. I don't know why the professors here haven't picked up on that yet. For example, today in Spanish guy's Tourism class, we had a two-page paper due, and we always go around our semi-circle and discuss what we wrote. I always sit in the center but off to the left side, calculated precisely so that I cannot be called on to begin because I don't sit in a logical place to start from. Except for today, because as soon as Quintana sat down, he looked straight at me and said "CHRISTINA! Why don't YOU start us off today? What similar thoughts about travel did Edward Gibbon, Goethe, and George Sand have?" I don't know what it is about the professors at this school, but I have been getting way more attention from all of them than I care to have. I guess I prefer speaking in the Spanish guy's classes though; at least he doesn't creep up behind me and breathe down my neck like Massimo does. I swear the only way of knowing he's there is because he always smells like cigarette smoke. If he didn't smoke I'd be completely freaked out all the time because he's really good at being sneaky.
I'm really excited about tomorrow though-- Keshia and I are going to Prague for the weekend! We got really cheap tickets to go to the opera, although Candide, a musical, not an opera, is playing. At least it's in English. I realized the other day that it's really rare for me to go to a place where I can't even fudge my way through "hello" and "thank you" in the local language. This semester will be an adventure, because between Prague, Austria, Germany, Budapest, and Croatia, I definitely won't know what I'm eating in the restaurants or seeing at the museums!
Okay so pictures from Padua:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014447&l=ea3e5&id=3901306
And now it's bedtime, or I'll never wake up in time to wash my hair and pack. Look for a really exciting update maybe on Sunday night!
Friday, March 16, 2007
As if this week couldn't get any worse
Someone stole 230 euros out of my wallet, and there's no way of finding out who it was or of getting it back. I give up, can I come home now?
But I just want to do my laundry...
Today is Friday. On Fridays, Venice International University has been kind enough to grant us the day off from classes. For most, this means sleeping in, missing breakfast, and enjoying waking up slowly at whatever time you want. Or, getting up superearly to go on some exciting adventure outside of Venice. For Saki and me, this means waking up at the crack of dawn (okay, 8 o'clock) because the cleaning ladies have posted a sign on our door saying we MUST BE OUT OF THE ROOM BY 9AM OR IT WILL NOT BE CLEANED. Some may think that a room can go two weeks without being cleaned, and sometimes I am of this opinion also, but when this includes your towel and your toilet paper rations, it is imperative to be out of the room before they arrive. As it is, Saki and I could easily have been toilet paper thieves in another life. We're stealthy. Anyway, I digress. So I woke up this morning and went down to breakfast at 8:30 with my book, expecting to read a few chapters while relaxing over breakfast, go back up to my clean room around 9:30 or so, and go to Palazzino 12 (another building) to do my laundry while doing homework and mending my shirt, which had lost a button a few weeks ago. That was the plan, anyway. I made it down to breakfast with my book, and then was joined by Margaret and Cassie, so I sat there til almost 10, talking with them. Then I went up to my room. It was still dirty. Annoyance #1. I figured well, it's okay, I still have to do laundry. So I grabbed my overflowing basket, my rather slim wallet, detergent and a book and make my way over to Palazzino 12. I sing hallelujah's when I get there because both washers are empty. Since I only have one 2 euro coin with me at the moment, I fill up one washer with two pairs of jeans and two weeks' worth of underwear, drop the coin in, and press start. Then I take out my 20 euro bill and go to Reception, where I know the oh-so-kind ladies there have changed money for my friends before. NO WE DON'T CHANGE MONEY CHECK THE BAR. Okay thank you very much. So I go to the bar, where again NO I HAVE NO CHANGE. O...k....so now what? I wander over to the coffee machine, thinking that it'll surely give me change if I put in a 20. Too bad it only accepts bills that are less than 10. So I march all the way back to the building at the other end of the island, thinking that surely by 11 o'clock my room's been completely cleaned and the ladies are done so I can figure out where to get change from. As soon as I walked in the door, I heard three women screaming in Italian. Somehow it didn't surprise me when I reached the top of the stairs and found the cleaning lady yelling with two of her superiors, and then at me when I tried to get in my room (I figured she was finished since she had so much spare time to get into arguments with people). At this point I discovered that there was something rather irritating right in the center of my eye, and I could see it because it was covering my pupil but I couldn't manage to poke it out. I knocked on Keshia and Caitlin's door, hoping that maybe one of them could give me some change, and thankfully Keshia had two ten euro bills. I tried using her bathroom mirror to get rid of the fuzz in my eye, but the lighting in our bathrooms is so poor that it was a hopeless cause. I thanked her profusely for her change and stumbled down the stairs and back to the building with the bar to try to change it again. As soon as the lady saw me walk up to her, I saw the smile fade from her face, and knew that I'd have to change tactics if I was going to get anything from her. So I ordered a chocolate croissant, thinking that I could at least save it for tomorrow since we'll be out on the first vaporetto and breakfast won't be open yet. She gave me my change with a scowl and shoved the croissant at me, but I was elated because FINALLY I had two more 2-euro coins. Of course, what I really needed was one 2-euro one and two 1-euro coins, because the drying machine only costs 1 euro (for all of 10 minutes of drying) and conveniently doesn't give change. I figured going back to ask the lady for some one euro coins wasn't the best idea, so I settled for the idea of having crunchy underwear and jeans for the next few weeks. When I returned after making a small, successful detour to the bathroom to poke the fuzz out of my eye for good, my laundry was waiting for me. I began taking it out and hanging it on the drying racks, when I noticed little bits of paper on everything I was pulling out. Now that is something I am paranoid about. I hate it when I wash things and they come out still dirty, so I check and double check my pants' pockets before putting them in the wash. Well, I check the front pockets, because I never use the back pockets. Except for last weekend in Milan, when I put my subway ticket in my back pocket to be able to find it easily. It was my own fault, but by this time I was ready to at least maim some pigeons out of frustration. Once I finished hanging all my "clean" clothes up, I set about doing my other load, which had my nice Lacoste shirts, a few Juicy shirts, and other nice brightly colored clothing. I always wash nice clothes on cold. Except this washing machine was stuck on setting 3, which was warm, and I didn't have a way of knowing that until the money was in and the machine was started, and once you push start on those ancient things, there's no going back. So I watched helplessly for several minutes as my nice clothes circled several times and then decided I didn't want to watch the expensive side of my wardrobe be mutilated, so I sewed my shirt button back on and came back to my room, which was finally cleaned. By now the wash should be done though, and I'd better run back over there before someone takes it all out and dumps it on the dirty floor. People here are so rude about laundry-- I finally found my two socks that were missing from last time I did laundry: someone had used both of them to wipe out the detergent slots, and then left them all crusty and goopy on top of the washers. I think I'll never complain about doing laundry at Williams again-- at least there the washers are big, the dryers go for 60 minutes, the machines are in the same building as you are, and they conveniently cost only $2.50 per complete load via a swipe card. Here I'm almost spending more on laundry than on trips, and I've got to make sure I've got 10 euros in 1 and 2 euro coins before lugging all my stuff over to the next building.
I think I may take a ride over to Piazza San Marco and see how much damage I can inflict on those pigeons after all...
I think I may take a ride over to Piazza San Marco and see how much damage I can inflict on those pigeons after all...
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Musings from a Madhouse
Musings from a sickhouse may be a more appropriate title. I've got a small mountain of dirty tissues beside my computer, and my aim at throwing multiple tissues into the garbage can four feet away from me is quickly improving. All I know is that I'd better stop coughing sometime soon or Mom'll be able to hear me in Florida. Everyone living in my house knows you're doomed if you've got a cough and you're within a 50 mile radius of her. I think the lack of nutritious food here really is starting to be a problem. Every once in a while I break down and eat the perfect square that they label "beef", and sometimes if I'm really lucky they have a piece of chicken breast that actually looks like it came from a live animal once. I've stopped eating pasta, and I'm working on giving up my croissant in the morning, but I know that once I do that I'll start getting really hungry during Massimo's class. Unfortunately, that man picks on me enough-- I don't need my angry stomach drawing more attention. I think I need more vegetables. Well, a greater variety of nutritious vegetables-- not potatoes and rubbery carrots. I'm just tired all the time, even when I shouldn't be, and my fingernails are getting flimsy and breaking (which is unusual, because I've always had really strong nails), and the worst part is I'm sick. The other night I woke up in the middle of the night and my entire body was shaking from cold. The only problem is we sleep with the window closed and the heater on because Saki has no body fat (I, on the other hand, need it to be a refreshing 70 degrees in my room to sleep comfortably). And when I woke up, I had on flannel pants, a sweatshirt, socks, and two heavy blankets! Usually I sleep in a tank top and pants with only the sheet on. As for sleeping all the time...well, on Monday I came back from my first Spanish guy class to take a short nap before my second one (I have two hours between those classes), and I woke up at 6pm. That's a problem, because my hour and a half long class ends at 6:30. This resulted in being picked on by the Spanish guy during yesterday's first class, but mercifully he left me alone during the second one. Maybe the fact that I turn red and squirm in my seat every time I'm called on gave him a little clue that I'm not a fan of being tortured. Oh well, at least I've only got two classes left and then I can spend tonight and tomorrow asleep in the hopes of recovering (well, with the rude interruption of the cleaning ladies at 9am tomorrow). Saturday the plan is to go to Padua and Verona. It's an ambitious plan, but as long as we get an early start it should be good. Last night I spent longer than I should've in planning the rest of the Prague trip, but it was semi-successful: we now have train tickets to get there, a hostel to stay in, and are in the final stages of booking airfare back. I wish Italian Expedia.com would cooperate and let us use a non-Italian credit card without having to call them up. But that is how the cookie crumbles.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Fashion, Food, Flowers, Fun....Feta?
Between travelling and schoolwork I've been super busy this past week or so!
On Wednesday night I ate dinner at Professor Chafe's apartment (the Duke professor for this semester...he's really nice, but I'm not in any of his classes because he teaches political history). We ate a variety of dishes from many different nationalities. I'm sorry I don't know the actual names of the dishes, but here's my go at it: Japanese chicken, Japanese pumpkin, Czech potato pancake-y looking things, German meat patties, and American pie for dessert. All of it was delicious. I'm hoping I can get the recipes for all of them, because I think they'd be good easy dishes to make at home too.
On Thursday I went with Keshia to see the Picasso exhibit. I had my first triumph here-- I spoke to the ticket lady in Italian, and she actually answered me in Italian!!! That's a big deal, because if they suspect you're a non-Italian tourist they always answer you in English. I was proud of myself. Actually my Italian has been improving a lot, although I must say it gets really confusing when I speak in Spanish at night and then have to switch to Italian the next morning! I think Massimo (my Italian professor...who seems to always pick on me) takes back his rule of speaking any language other than English in class whenever I speak, because he points out that quite a few of my words come out in Spanish instead of Italian. I must say though, he can't really do much about it because his rule was no English. He lets the Japanese kids speak Japanese in class, so why can't a few of my words slip out in Spanish? Oh right, I was talking about Picasso. Sorry for the tangent. Anyway, yeah Picasso was.....weird. I never was a fan of his work, but this exhibit was definitely strange. The only thing I was glad about (other than being answered in Italian) was the little book I got at the bookshop called Italia...Da Favola. It's a book of fairy tales set in different cities in Italy. Cinderella is the one set in Venice. I haven't read it yet, but I'm excited to get some free time sometime on a train ride or something soon.
On Friday morning, Keshia, Margaret, and I left on the 7:05am vaporetto to go to the train station. We caught a fairly early morning train to Milan, and arrived there just after lunchtime. We had no idea where we were going, so we took a taxi to the hotel, which ended up being rather close (although not quite walking distance) and definitely by a subway stop. We had a 3-person room with a bathroom on the third floor, and I was the only one out of the three of us that managed to figure out how the lock on the door worked. It was one of those old-fashioned keys with the huge heavy keychains so you leave them down at the front desk and then pick them up again when you return. Anyway, after dropping our stuff we set off in search of the Duomo via the subway system. When we reached the Duomo stop, we heard all this screaming that sounded like there was a rollercoaster right above us. Turns out we walked right into the middle of the Italian equivalent of TRL (that show on MTV where they count down the top 10 most popular songs for the day in Times Square). There were lots of screaming girls holding posters and chanting "Ricardo, Ricardo!" Not too sure who Ricardo was, but apparently he was popular. Once we managed to weave through all the bodies, we were able to get inside the Duomo. The church is enormous! It's beautiful from the outside and the inside, but the work on the outside of the church is so detailed it must've taken more than a hundred years to finish. We climbed the 165 winding, narrow stone steps to the top and took lots of pictures. Once we finished gawking at the Duomo we made our way to Castello Sforzesco, which was a medieval castle in the middle of the city, complete with (non-functioning) moat and all. It was really cool, except that the guy at the door literally shut the door in our faces after letting the people right in front of us enter. If we had been there two seconds earlier we would've been allowed in. Oh well, next time we'll be two seconds earlier. We still got some pretty good pictures from the outside. Then we walked around and looked at some stores, and ended up eating at a Greek restaurant (random, I know, but it was the only thing around the hotel and we weren't keen on the idea of taking the subway late at night). All three of us had salads which were really good. The next morning we checked out of the hotel at 7:30am, killed time by trying in vain to find good bargains on expensive brands, and then took the train to Bologna. The first thing we saw was a huge tower that was 500 steps to the top! Keshia and Margaret climbed it, but my feet were killing me from the walking we had done the day before and earlier that day in Milan, so I waited at the bottom on a random column thing. My butt was numb by the time they got back. Then we walked to the main square, where we saw a statue of Neptune, the Basilica di San Petronio, a rock living room set, and had some random Italian guys try to take pictures with us. That was odd. Anyway, we went to the Archeological Museum, where they have an exhaustive collection of broken pottery shards from Roman and Greek pots, and a really small but cool Egyptian mummy collection. Once our stomachs and feet couldn't take it anymore, we walked just out of the touristy area and found an amazing restaurant where we ate tomato and mozzerella salads followed by pizza. My pizza had cheese, onions, mushrooms, prosciutto, and a fried egg on it. Sooooo yummy! Then we leisurely made our way back to the train station and came back to Venice, arriving around midnight on Saturday night. It was a good weekend, but an exhausting one. Here are the pictures:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014256&l=f301d&id=3901306
On Sunday afternoon I had my interview of doom. I applied for a counselor position at Camp Wediko, a treatment program in New Hampshire for kids with severe emotional and behavioral problems. The interview was two hours long. The lady started with talking about the camp (since none of the important information about it was online), and then asked me a whole bunch of really hard questions. It felt more like an interrogation than an interview. Almost all the questions were "think of a time when.....and how did it make you feel?" I hate those kinds of questions. I don't think I'd even use them when I become a shrink. Plus, most of the questions were so vague. "Think of a time when you had to think on your feet and describe it." "Think of someone you have conflicting emotions about and tell me about your feelings." "How do you handle critical comments?" Then, just as I was thinking this couldn't get any worse, we got to the last part of the interview. She gave me two role-playing situations, where she was a child and I the counselor. The first scenario was she was a 14-year-old boy, and the two of us were walking to the lake from the cabin. She started with "are you gonna wear that bathing suit you wore yesterday? Cuz you looked fine in that bathing suit" and kept pushing the conversation towards boyfriends and sex. I just tried really hard to change topics, and it took a little while, but we ended up talking about boats and waterskiing. I counted that one a victory. The next one was she was an 8-year-old girl who wanted to tell me a secret but made me promise not to tell anyone. I of course didn't want to promise, because I could see where that was headed, but I didn't know how to get her to tell me what the secret was without doing so. Needless to say, I was very glad when that was all over with. I did ask the interviewer how much the salary was, because it wasn't on the website at all (hardly any information was), and it's 1400-1700 dollars for 45 days with the kids with only 5 days off and a week before and another one after the kids leave. She told me that most of the counselors go to bed and breakfasts and do the whole college scene thing on their days off. I'm thinking that is not where I want to spend my summer, especially since I'll have hardly any time at home and I can't afford to start off next semester already exhausted and drained. We'll see what they say in a few weeks, but if anyone hears of any open nanny/babysitting/housesitting/petsitting/basically anything jobs around Boca, let me know. Or any rich people who need a babysitter to travel with them. That'd be a nice job too.
Anyway, on Sunday night I met up with Julian and Monica Alonso, from Chile. They took me out to a really good restaurant (I've got a card from there for when Tia and Lelo come!) and I ate...STEAK!!!! And prosciutto, but I was so excited for the steak. It could've been a bit juicier, but it was delicious. Julian told me that he hasn't eaten fish here because Lelo told him what I learned about the rate of tumors because of the toxins in the water from Porto Marghera. I must say, it's not the worst thing in the world to eat only beef (and pork...but I'm not the biggest fan of pork really, unless it comes in prosciutto-form)!
Other than all that news, San Servolo is starting to look a little less like a prison since the flowers are starting to bloom. Keshia gave me her old roommate's automatic hot water kettle so I can make myself some tea whenever I want it. Oh, and we just booked the overnight train to Prague for the weekend of March 23! Keshia had to go to class so we'll have to get a flight back on that Sunday night and a hotel room sometime later. I'm excited to go though; it's someplace I've never been (imagine that!) and everyone's telling me it's supercheap. And of course, it's a beautiful city. Speaking of beautiful cities, we're thinking of changing our Easter plans from Switzerland to Salzburg and Munich. I think Jen was really the only one who really wanted to go to Switzerland, and since there's five of us, she's outnumbered. This upcoming weekend Keshia, Megan and I are going to do an intense one-day trip to both Padua and Verona. We want to see the university where Galileo was a professor, and of course we have to go to Juliet's house in Verona. They have a statue of her outside "her house" and people say that if you rub her right breast it'll bring you good luck in love. They also have a room in this house that's full of computers and you can e-mail Juliet. I found that pretty funny considering a) she's dead, and b) she never even existed. Oh well, it's worth seeing...after all, that's what being a tourist is all about, right?
Well, I'm off to grab a slice of yummy pizza in Campo Santa Margarita (I swear, this pizza shop is going to know us by name by the time this semester is over). I've got an excuse for getting pizza for dinner this time though-- I'm going to a Vivaldi concert in a church not far from there tonight and we can't go to dinner here or we'll miss the vaporetto to get to the concert on time. Pizza con salami it is! Or maybe con cipolla. Or funghi. Or prosciutto. Or....
On Wednesday night I ate dinner at Professor Chafe's apartment (the Duke professor for this semester...he's really nice, but I'm not in any of his classes because he teaches political history). We ate a variety of dishes from many different nationalities. I'm sorry I don't know the actual names of the dishes, but here's my go at it: Japanese chicken, Japanese pumpkin, Czech potato pancake-y looking things, German meat patties, and American pie for dessert. All of it was delicious. I'm hoping I can get the recipes for all of them, because I think they'd be good easy dishes to make at home too.
On Thursday I went with Keshia to see the Picasso exhibit. I had my first triumph here-- I spoke to the ticket lady in Italian, and she actually answered me in Italian!!! That's a big deal, because if they suspect you're a non-Italian tourist they always answer you in English. I was proud of myself. Actually my Italian has been improving a lot, although I must say it gets really confusing when I speak in Spanish at night and then have to switch to Italian the next morning! I think Massimo (my Italian professor...who seems to always pick on me) takes back his rule of speaking any language other than English in class whenever I speak, because he points out that quite a few of my words come out in Spanish instead of Italian. I must say though, he can't really do much about it because his rule was no English. He lets the Japanese kids speak Japanese in class, so why can't a few of my words slip out in Spanish? Oh right, I was talking about Picasso. Sorry for the tangent. Anyway, yeah Picasso was.....weird. I never was a fan of his work, but this exhibit was definitely strange. The only thing I was glad about (other than being answered in Italian) was the little book I got at the bookshop called Italia...Da Favola. It's a book of fairy tales set in different cities in Italy. Cinderella is the one set in Venice. I haven't read it yet, but I'm excited to get some free time sometime on a train ride or something soon.
On Friday morning, Keshia, Margaret, and I left on the 7:05am vaporetto to go to the train station. We caught a fairly early morning train to Milan, and arrived there just after lunchtime. We had no idea where we were going, so we took a taxi to the hotel, which ended up being rather close (although not quite walking distance) and definitely by a subway stop. We had a 3-person room with a bathroom on the third floor, and I was the only one out of the three of us that managed to figure out how the lock on the door worked. It was one of those old-fashioned keys with the huge heavy keychains so you leave them down at the front desk and then pick them up again when you return. Anyway, after dropping our stuff we set off in search of the Duomo via the subway system. When we reached the Duomo stop, we heard all this screaming that sounded like there was a rollercoaster right above us. Turns out we walked right into the middle of the Italian equivalent of TRL (that show on MTV where they count down the top 10 most popular songs for the day in Times Square). There were lots of screaming girls holding posters and chanting "Ricardo, Ricardo!" Not too sure who Ricardo was, but apparently he was popular. Once we managed to weave through all the bodies, we were able to get inside the Duomo. The church is enormous! It's beautiful from the outside and the inside, but the work on the outside of the church is so detailed it must've taken more than a hundred years to finish. We climbed the 165 winding, narrow stone steps to the top and took lots of pictures. Once we finished gawking at the Duomo we made our way to Castello Sforzesco, which was a medieval castle in the middle of the city, complete with (non-functioning) moat and all. It was really cool, except that the guy at the door literally shut the door in our faces after letting the people right in front of us enter. If we had been there two seconds earlier we would've been allowed in. Oh well, next time we'll be two seconds earlier. We still got some pretty good pictures from the outside. Then we walked around and looked at some stores, and ended up eating at a Greek restaurant (random, I know, but it was the only thing around the hotel and we weren't keen on the idea of taking the subway late at night). All three of us had salads which were really good. The next morning we checked out of the hotel at 7:30am, killed time by trying in vain to find good bargains on expensive brands, and then took the train to Bologna. The first thing we saw was a huge tower that was 500 steps to the top! Keshia and Margaret climbed it, but my feet were killing me from the walking we had done the day before and earlier that day in Milan, so I waited at the bottom on a random column thing. My butt was numb by the time they got back. Then we walked to the main square, where we saw a statue of Neptune, the Basilica di San Petronio, a rock living room set, and had some random Italian guys try to take pictures with us. That was odd. Anyway, we went to the Archeological Museum, where they have an exhaustive collection of broken pottery shards from Roman and Greek pots, and a really small but cool Egyptian mummy collection. Once our stomachs and feet couldn't take it anymore, we walked just out of the touristy area and found an amazing restaurant where we ate tomato and mozzerella salads followed by pizza. My pizza had cheese, onions, mushrooms, prosciutto, and a fried egg on it. Sooooo yummy! Then we leisurely made our way back to the train station and came back to Venice, arriving around midnight on Saturday night. It was a good weekend, but an exhausting one. Here are the pictures:
http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014256&l=f301d&id=3901306
On Sunday afternoon I had my interview of doom. I applied for a counselor position at Camp Wediko, a treatment program in New Hampshire for kids with severe emotional and behavioral problems. The interview was two hours long. The lady started with talking about the camp (since none of the important information about it was online), and then asked me a whole bunch of really hard questions. It felt more like an interrogation than an interview. Almost all the questions were "think of a time when.....and how did it make you feel?" I hate those kinds of questions. I don't think I'd even use them when I become a shrink. Plus, most of the questions were so vague. "Think of a time when you had to think on your feet and describe it." "Think of someone you have conflicting emotions about and tell me about your feelings." "How do you handle critical comments?" Then, just as I was thinking this couldn't get any worse, we got to the last part of the interview. She gave me two role-playing situations, where she was a child and I the counselor. The first scenario was she was a 14-year-old boy, and the two of us were walking to the lake from the cabin. She started with "are you gonna wear that bathing suit you wore yesterday? Cuz you looked fine in that bathing suit" and kept pushing the conversation towards boyfriends and sex. I just tried really hard to change topics, and it took a little while, but we ended up talking about boats and waterskiing. I counted that one a victory. The next one was she was an 8-year-old girl who wanted to tell me a secret but made me promise not to tell anyone. I of course didn't want to promise, because I could see where that was headed, but I didn't know how to get her to tell me what the secret was without doing so. Needless to say, I was very glad when that was all over with. I did ask the interviewer how much the salary was, because it wasn't on the website at all (hardly any information was), and it's 1400-1700 dollars for 45 days with the kids with only 5 days off and a week before and another one after the kids leave. She told me that most of the counselors go to bed and breakfasts and do the whole college scene thing on their days off. I'm thinking that is not where I want to spend my summer, especially since I'll have hardly any time at home and I can't afford to start off next semester already exhausted and drained. We'll see what they say in a few weeks, but if anyone hears of any open nanny/babysitting/housesitting/petsitting/basically anything jobs around Boca, let me know. Or any rich people who need a babysitter to travel with them. That'd be a nice job too.
Anyway, on Sunday night I met up with Julian and Monica Alonso, from Chile. They took me out to a really good restaurant (I've got a card from there for when Tia and Lelo come!) and I ate...STEAK!!!! And prosciutto, but I was so excited for the steak. It could've been a bit juicier, but it was delicious. Julian told me that he hasn't eaten fish here because Lelo told him what I learned about the rate of tumors because of the toxins in the water from Porto Marghera. I must say, it's not the worst thing in the world to eat only beef (and pork...but I'm not the biggest fan of pork really, unless it comes in prosciutto-form)!
Other than all that news, San Servolo is starting to look a little less like a prison since the flowers are starting to bloom. Keshia gave me her old roommate's automatic hot water kettle so I can make myself some tea whenever I want it. Oh, and we just booked the overnight train to Prague for the weekend of March 23! Keshia had to go to class so we'll have to get a flight back on that Sunday night and a hotel room sometime later. I'm excited to go though; it's someplace I've never been (imagine that!) and everyone's telling me it's supercheap. And of course, it's a beautiful city. Speaking of beautiful cities, we're thinking of changing our Easter plans from Switzerland to Salzburg and Munich. I think Jen was really the only one who really wanted to go to Switzerland, and since there's five of us, she's outnumbered. This upcoming weekend Keshia, Megan and I are going to do an intense one-day trip to both Padua and Verona. We want to see the university where Galileo was a professor, and of course we have to go to Juliet's house in Verona. They have a statue of her outside "her house" and people say that if you rub her right breast it'll bring you good luck in love. They also have a room in this house that's full of computers and you can e-mail Juliet. I found that pretty funny considering a) she's dead, and b) she never even existed. Oh well, it's worth seeing...after all, that's what being a tourist is all about, right?
Well, I'm off to grab a slice of yummy pizza in Campo Santa Margarita (I swear, this pizza shop is going to know us by name by the time this semester is over). I've got an excuse for getting pizza for dinner this time though-- I'm going to a Vivaldi concert in a church not far from there tonight and we can't go to dinner here or we'll miss the vaporetto to get to the concert on time. Pizza con salami it is! Or maybe con cipolla. Or funghi. Or prosciutto. Or....
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