Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Alley's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, June 28th, 2006
1:41 am	Been Awhile I've been home for awhile now. Just as I was starting to get over how much I miss Perugia, Michelle's gotta go visit it and remind me about it's amazing coolness. I can't wait to go back. It's hard to find people to talk to about it while I'm in Jersey. My grandma likes listening to stories about Italy to a point but she has a lot of other things on her mind. Other than that I'm trying not to bore people with my stories. I'm trying to keep it to a minimum, though I gotta say, as soon as I'm back up in Boston odds are the stories are just going to fall out. So sorry everyone, you're probably gonna be bored to death by my stories. At least I'll be living with Ashley so she and I can reminisce together. I'm excited for that. Current Mood: tired Current Music: tv again (Comment on this)
Friday, May 12th, 2006
2:03 pm	Still Avoiding Responsibility It's more than depressing to realize study abroad is actually and officially over and that I'll be returning home in a few more days. While the actual session ended April 30th, I've been hiding out in Ireland since then and will be here till I am finally forced to return to my home and native land. Where I am beyond flat broke. Oops. But it was worth it and there is not one thing I regret doing while I was there that I would take back to save some money. It was an incredible experience and I can't wait till I'm back in Perugia again. I loved it there. It actually felt like a home. I knew the area, I knew the people. It was nice. And I miss cheap cappuccinos. Coming to Ireland in between Italy and the US has made me realize how much money I'll save at home. That damn Celtic Tiger has made Ireland ridiculously expensive, especially when the dollar's shitty value against the euro is taken into consideration. I can't recommend enough to people to go on at least a semester abroad. I would have done more had my schedule permitted it. I loved it. Current Mood: complacent Current Music: whatever's playing in the cafe (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 29th, 2006
12:39 pm	Last Day I'm super depressed about this whole leaving thing. Not digging this part of studying abroad. Not in the least. Last night was much fun. The talent show was fantastic. Jeni San kicks ass at her music and I'm so going to be like "I knew her before she was famous." I plan on doing the same thing with Jessica when she ends up on the stage belting out operas. But I do have to say the skit at the end about a semester here was the funniest performance. We got most of it on tape, although I'm sad we missed Andrew doing his impression of professor Ilg and going on about the Wizard of Wenice and the Wenus, etc etc etc. So I'm a little worried about my bag. I hate getting rid of books, so instead of getting rid of books I have aquired more. So shoot me. So now my bag is decently heavy and Aerlingus will not let me travel if my bag is over the weight limit of 70lbs. Although they will let me pack a separate bag and pay extra for that, which seems dumb that I can do that but not just pay extra for an overweight bag. Again, I don't actually know if my bag is overweight. I have no concept of these things. Maybe Michelle can figure it out. I hope it's not too heavy. That woudl make me very very sad. :( I'm just not thinking about leaving. I'm in a lovely state of denial where I pretend this isn't actually happening and I'm not going to be returning to real life. Real life. How overrated. Current Mood: depressed Current Music: i got friends in low places... (Comment on this)
Friday, April 28th, 2006
1:31 am	My Last Final Has Ended It's so sad. I can't believe it's almost over. I've been in denial about it. I've just been telling my self I'm throwing all my stuff in my suitcase just to see how it looks in there. Not cos I have to actually leave. That's just silly. I'm far from ready to leave Perugia. I'm just getting settled, just getting used to the insanity that is living in Italy. I'm not ready at all to return to the US. I was sitting on the steps last night watching a couple friends drink (my early final and my responsibility prevented me from buying my own bottle of wine...that and I didn't realize that I'd find them there and that's what we'd be doing) and one of the girls is leaving today. She was incredibly sad to be leaving, which made me realize how sad I am to be going. It's probably better I didn't go up and see Joel since he was getting upset at the thought of leaving today and everyone would have been sad and that's not good. I don't want to be sad. I want to be in denial. I'll accept I'm not in Italy when I'm back in Jersey. Tonight is the Talent show, which I am looking forward to. It should be funny and hopefully I will understand enough of the Italian in the skit making fun of the staff to enjoy it. I think I'm going to have to spend a lot of time hanging out at Mike's Pastries when I'm back in Boston. I need to go somewhere where they speak Italian so I can convince myself I didn't learn a decently pointless language that's only spoken in one country. And I must never tell my Grandma I just said Italian might be decently pointless. It would not make her happy. At least I can talk to her in Italian. Of course she's moving down to South Carolina the week I come home so that will make it more difficult than when she was near me in Jersey. She needs to get on e-mail. Current Mood: sad Current Music: headache (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 19th, 2006
5:50 pm	It can't be almost over This has gone by far too quickly. Far far far too quickly. I'm not ready to leave yet. Not near ready. There's too much more to do and to see. Granted I'm ready for these classes to be done, but that's about it. Michelle and I are planning on coming back here after graduation for awhile and taking more Italian, hopefully with Robbie, our Italian teacher here. Hopefully we can talk to our currently landlady and see if we can get our same apartment when we come back. I hope so cos Rita rules as does that apartment, though someone has locked us out of the garden. I want to ask Rita about that cos that really just added another thorn in my side about my day today. OK, so I'm a genius and ruined my Sim card so I kind of have a phone now. Let me try to start at the beginning. Now usually I make good use of the Keylock function (what a 2003 joke...sorry...had to add that in...you can just ignore it if you don't know Eddie Izzard) because I have my phone in my pocket a lot. But I was going to have my purse with me this one night so I decided keylock was unnecessary. Wrong! Very wrong. Apparently I turned my phone off then on again without realizing it. That wouldn't be so bad but my sim card had a pin number you had to enter to get back into the phone. A number you could only enter so many times. And I was entering numbers. So when I went to use my phone I only had one try left and wouldn't you know it, I put in the wrong number. And it blocked my Sim card. I don't know if this amazing security device is on all Sim cards, or on all Vodophone sim cards, or on all Italian sim cards or what, but it's the stupidest thing and whoever came up with it should drive into a brick wall. See when your sim card is blocked cos the number was put in there too many times, it's gone. It's locked forever. No one can ever get into it again. Which means I lost all of the phone numbers I had, as well as my own phone number. Super. Michelle rules and has an extra sim card from Ireland I'm currently using. Unfortunatly, I have no one's number and no one has this Irish one so getting in touch with people is hard. And, because it's an Irish number, everything I do here is an extra roaming charge. Grrrr to sim bloccato! Grrr I say. I'm not so much depressed about leaving as I am in denial about it. I am just refusing to believe it's true. Even when I start to pack up my stuff it's just cos I feel like seeing what can fit in my suitcases and not because I actually have to leave. Italy really does drive you absolutely out of your mind, but then you look at the view and drink a cappuccino and think "How can I stay mad at you?" I don't want to leave that. There's also stress about finding an apartment at home. I hate stress and now I really hate apartment searching. Boh. Current Mood: cranky Current Music: nope (Comment on this)
Monday, April 10th, 2006
10:25 am	Oops So I guess it's been awhile since I've written. But the week with St. Paddy's day and Spring break was very hectic. I wrote about it somewhere, but apparently forgot to post it. And then with classes coming to an end which means lots of papers and whatnot are due soon getting on a computer is proving to be more and more of a challenge. I'll try to get up to speed. Ireland: Ireland was super amazing cool, as per usual. I had much fun hanging out with Michelle's family and I'm going back for a couple weeks after the program ends here. Michelle's going there before going on her backpacking trip, and I've pretty much been adopted into the Joyce family anyway so I have to go back. Hopefully Ashley and Ashling and whoever else will be able to make it out there. We might try to do a hike (nothing too crazy) in Connimara or around Dublin but we still need to look into that. Spring Break: Travelling time in total: 4 days. Time spent at our actual spring break location: 2 days. So we sucked at planning this one. Everything was done in a round about way and we definitely should have could have done it better. But we didn't. And now I've seen several airports. We got to Rome late Tuesday night and checked into the Yellow Hostel for a full 4 hours of sleep before we had to get on a bus to get to RyanAir's airport. I hate Ryan Air by the way. We go from Ciampino Airport to Girona "in" Barcellona. I say "in" because their version of "in" the city is a good hour or so drive outside the city. Same thing with Ciampino being "in" Rome. We have time to kill in Barcellona before going to the real Barcellona airport so we wander around for awhile, see the outside of one of the Gaudi buildings and do a lil shopping. I really like Barcellona and I hope I get a chance to get back there. Of course it was strange going from Italian speaking country, where I may not know the language completely but I get the gist of it, to going to Spain where I am just in the dark. I took French in middle school, high school and college so I have no Spanish background. I could just hear Julio making fun of me for not learning Spanish when I was younger. I really should try to learn it. Anyway... We fly from Barcellona to Madrid and Madrid to Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. We get in to our hotel around midnight. (We flew into one side of the island and our hotel was on the other side.) The next 2 days were us doing a whole much of hanging out by the pool, eating, and hanging out on the beach. It was exactly how Spring Break should be spent. Doing nothing but reading and drinking fruity drinks. It was fantastic and I really do wish we could have spent more time there. We leave Tenerife kind of early Saturday and get to the Tenerife airport. Our flight from there to Madrid was OK, and if Madrid airport had food that was any good even our lay over there wouldn't have been so bad. But then we had to get to Girona. I have ot mention again that I hate Ryan Air. We stay the night in Barcellona because, again, Ryan Air is stupid. The flight leaves very early in the morning and since the Ciampino Airport closes we figured Girona would too and we couldn't just spend the night in the airport. We catch a 5:30 bus to Girona and then wait for our flight. We find a couple other people in the Umbra program who had slept at the airport (apparently they have to leave them open...but just one door to the place is unlocked). We do the usual, get our tickets, go through security and go upstairs to wait. Then all of a sudden there's an announcement. The flight to Rome is delayed. That sucks but we deal with it. Not long after there's another announcement. The flight to Rome has been cancelled. There was something going around about hte weather being hazy in Rome so the plane couldn't leave. That was crap. My mom had flown into Rome roughly around the same time our plane to Girona should have been leaving and she said it was a gorgeous day with not a cloud in the sky. Ryan Air, if a flight isn't full enough, cancells the flight instead of paying to fly it. So we had to all scramble to find our bags and then fight to get on the flight going to Pisa at 10:30. It was either that or wait till 6 that night to fly into Rome. And, as I mentioned above, my mom and company were flying into Rome that Sunday and got in at 8:15. Ashely rules and she fought with the guy to get us on the Pisa flight. So now we run to go through security and everything to get on the Pisa flight. But that flight is delayed 3 hours. And when I say it's delayed I mean we just stand at the gate because they never actually make any announcements about it being delayed. They don't tell us a damn thing about what's going on. Then around hour 3, they switch the gate on us. They just change it to a Shannon flight. Which is dumb because there are 3 gates not being used, but they decide to screw with us. So we sprint to the other side of the airport (it's not that big) and get in line for the Pisa flight. We get into Pisa around 2:30, 3 (we were supposed to get into Rome originally around 10). Now we have to get a train out of Pisa to Perugia. So I hate Ryan Air. Mom's Visit: My mom, aunt, cousin and mom's friend came up to visit Italy for a week. They were first in Perugia, went over to Assisi, then to Venice, Florence, back to Perugia and then I went with them for 2 nights in Rome. They had a great time and I was so happy to get to see them. My birthday was the Thursday they were here and my cousin's the Friday so we went out for a nice dinner in Rome. I was so sad to see them leave, but also sad to realize how soon the program was/is ending. Pompeii, Sorrento, Capri, Naples: This weekend we went on a trip with the class to all the places listed above. It was so much fun and I love being in that nice warm weather. I loved Capri and Sorrento and I hope I can go back there again soon. Sorrento is just such a cute city and Capri is gorgeous. We took a boat tour around the island, but weren't able to see the Blue Grotto. It was closed for...whatever reason. Their Italian, so who knows. Then we hiked up to Capri city center and had lunch. Poi, we went to the top of the mountain. It was an amazing view. Just stunning. We stayed there for a few hours before heading back down to make the boat back to Sorrento. Those were my 2 favorite places out of that trip. Naples and Pompeii were nice and I enjoyed seeing them but I really liked Capri and Sorrento. And they really like their lemons down there. Now I'm here trying to hurry so I can make it to my Ren Art class, which I so should have been studying for since we have a quiz today. Oops. Then I need to do some mor ephoto work and defintely more drawing work. Not enough time to do everything. I guess they should just extend the program a couple...weeks? I'd be ok with that. Current Mood: hungry (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 16th, 2006
8:39 am	Spring Break and St. Paddy's Day So things have been going super amazing, as per usual. I love it here. It's just so incredible. There are people here who really want to go home. I don't understand them. It just so great here. I love it. It's weird to think that one of the best weekends I had here was going on the Michelangelo trip with Michelle's class. It was so much fun though. I was going to hang out with Dan but he left early so I just booked a spot on Michelle's trip with her. The first day and night was in Florence the next day was in Rome. My favorites that we saw (cliched or not) were The David and the Sistine Chapel. They are so amazing and even having seen them reproduced a thousand times they are still mesmerising. Michelle actually stopped midsentence when she first saw the David. Beyond just breathtaking works of art was also the company of the trip. My Ren Art field trip seemed very...cliquey. This trip everyone was friendly and talking to everyone else. And the professor was animated and genuinly into what he was teaching. And the fact that, when Michelle and I joined Prof Quag(insert whatever ending you wish here), an Umbra staff member and another Umbra student, for drinks and dessert the night in Florence and someone asked the Professor a question about Michelangelo he said "Who the fuck is Michelangelo? I need a drink." It was such good company. Even back at the hotel we met up with some more people on the trip and stayed up with them for awhile longer. We may have only managed 4 hours of sleep, but it was worth it. The next few weeks are going to be hectic. Tomorrow we leave for Irlanda for St. Paddy's day with the Joyce family. Really the best way to spend it, I feel. You know, if you can see Dropkick. Then back in Perugia on Monday, and then off to the Canary Islands for Spring Break. Man I am going to be way more than broke when I come back home, but I am looking forward to this. I can't wait. It will be fabulous. And then it's back to Perugia where I'm sure I have a lot of work due. I think my Italian is going pretty well. Not as well as I would idealy like, but decently well. Photo I'm enjoying and I feel like I had a very productive day today in the lab. Drawing is...going. It's my pass fail. I know it. It does make me feel better that the class is averging a C-. And then Ren Art. We'll see how that one goes. The midterm was OK. I have no idea how I did. I could really go either way. So now I need to leave so I can get food and pack and hopefully meet up with some people. I love it here! Current Mood: chipper Current Music: Helter Skelter is stuck in my head (Comment on this)
Monday, March 6th, 2006
10:35 am	Our Friends are Here, Our Friends are Here! Yay! Our friends are here. Dan and Lesh got to Rome on Friday. It was so good to see them for the weekend. And we walked around Rome soooooo much. I was glad Michelle and I had been there once so we had a very basic idea of where stuff was. We tried to see the Sistine Chapel but we accidently got in the wrong line. Although I said the chapel is not the dome of San Pietro, the Australian kid Henry we were hanging out with didn't believe me. I didn't mind though because the Dome and the Cupola were amazing. And only 537 steps up! It was insane when you were actually climbing around in the Dome to get to the very top. And the view from there is astounding. It's just amazingly gorgeous. Unfortunatly, we missed the Chapel because by the time we did all this it had closed. Much sadness, though more for Lesh and Dan since I think Michelle and I are gonna be back next weekend. She has a class trip there and I might tag along so I can actually see the Chapel. So right now Dan and Lesh are in Venice so Michelle and I can get some work done here in Perugia. We had 1/2 of our Italian midterm today, the oral part. We had to write and memorize and performe a brief skit in Italian. Ours was so dorky and I think one of our translations was off and instead of saying "Ay there's the rub" it said something much more...inappropriate for school? Though Roberta, our teacher, seemed to find it funny so it works for me. See what happens when you try to translate Shakespeare. And see what happens when you let an English dork and Theater nerd write a skit for Italian class. Classes are getting stressful. Art classes are just a hell of a lot of work outside class and having 2 of them, especially after not having any art classes since high school, has been interesting. So drawing is going to be pass/fail. I hate doing these huge drawings, which we have to do 10 of by the end. I have 1 completed. I guess I could work on the others I have started. No wait, I have 2 completed! Score. 8 to go. Crap. And I hate still lifes. They're so boring. But people move around so much and I draw slowly. I may have to do some photo work, even if the teacher is very against us doing drawings from photos. He doesn't need to know. Photo I think is going well. It's so great to be doing photo again. I've missed it so much. Photo also requires a hell of a lot of time out of class to complete all the work, but since I enjoy that so much it's fine. I deal with it. Photo is slightly less stressful than drawing so it's OK. Though drawing and photo really shouldn't cause stress. That doesn't sound right. But they do. Ren Art is going. I'm pretty ambivalent towards that class. I don't know how the test will be. I might have an idea once I get this paper thing back. I have no idea how I did on it. Not a clue. We'll see. I do think I'm going to have to give up highest honors hope. Sadness. But I'll live. I'm enjoying myself way too much here to worry about that. Well, not way to much, as I am still stressing about grades and whatnot. Stranieri classes were so great because there was no stress. Grades didn't count for anything. We got no grades. We took no tests. We just studied. I liked that. Grades suck. I'm excited for Dan and Lesh to see Perugia. I love it here so much, I hope they do too. I'm sure they will. I don't see how they couldn't. Current Mood: stressed Current Music: no music (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 26th, 2006
12:59 pm	Weekend in Florence I had my Renaissance art trip this weekend. We went to Florence and saw lots and lots and lots of museums, churches, palaces, etc. Everything was so beautiful. And if my backpack wasn't trying to rip my shoulders off the whole time I bet I would have enjoyed it a lot more. I woke up early Friday morning to get to the bus stop. Having never gone there before I was going to try to find it on Thursday, so I'd know my way the next morning. But it was raining by the time I got out of photo. So my search for it was cancelled. I figured it can't be too hard to find. The map makes it look like it's just down at the bottom of the escalators. But I do suck at reading maps. But I'm also lazy, so I just tried my luck Friday morning. I was successful. It helps that there are signs. But going through the little cavern at the bottom of the first escalator wasn't too fun early in the morning, especially when the only other people there are cleaning guys. But, because I didn't know if I would easily be able to find my way, I left a little earlier than necessary and was the first person there. Yeah, that was fun. Oh, and I should mention my love of buses. I took my dramamin before leaving and I had my iPo to block out everythign so I was actually find on the busride. There's so much to see in Florence, though I felt like we covered a decent amount of it. The churches are so beautiful. I completely understood what Julia was talking about when she said you walk around Florence and go "Oh look, the most beautiful thing I've ever seen" and then you walk around a corner and go "Oh wait, now that's the most beautiful thing I'ev ever seen." I loved Church of St. Croce, but I think I liked it the most cos it had Dante's tomb and I'm an English geek. It's sad to see how many of the frescos are ruined in the churches, espeically the ones that were painted over at some point for whatever reason. So I don't have much to do today. Well, actually, I probably have a lot I need to get done today for classes. I suddenly remember why I liked work better than classes. The weekends were mine. I didn't have work to do for them. I didn't have drawings and prints and books to read. I could just be. I need to find an English language book. I read all of mine. I just finished Harry Potter last night. I'd never read any of them before. It was good. But sadly, a quick read. Michelle said one of the stores might actually order the next one for me, which would be really cool, though I have absoltely no idea how to ask that in Italian. Oh well. Since it's Sunday, nothing I can do about it today. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: justified black eye by no use for a name (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, February 20th, 2006
10:07 am	So You Want to Take an Overnight Train? Don't take an overnight train. You won't sleep on it. You'll tell yourself "I'll sleep on it." But you won't. Especially when you have connections in 2 cities and you can't miss them or you'll really be screwed. This was an amazing weekend, with just enough stress involved to bring out down from cloud nine to around 4 or 5. Michelle's parents came out and we met up with them Thursday night and made them dinner. Friday morning "bright and early" we started our weekend. It was supposed to be bright and early anyway and we were going to go to Assisi first. But we made it our closer to the crack of noon, so we decided to skip Assisi. It's all of 20 min from Perugia, so if we didn't go on this trip it doesn't bother me. Our first stop was Siena. It was a really really pretty city. Saw the city center, and the duomo. I felt so smart cos this was all stuff we had just gone over in my Ren Art class so I was tellign them about it. Next stop Pisa. We got to Pisa after nightfall. I thought we'd missed our chance to see the leaning tower, since we were planning on staying in La Spezia. But, because we decided to take the scenic route, which was completely worth it, we stayed in Pisa. We spent a good hour trying to find the stupid tower, which you think would be better marked since it's pretty much the only thing people go to Pisa for. We finally are about to give up and we pull over by this hotel and lo and behold, there infront of us is the tower. It's so crazy, it doesn't look real. We stayed at that hotel where we had a view of the tower right out the window. The next morning we got some pictures (where some stupid tourists had to ruin a shot for me cos they decided to play with this dog that was looking all intently at the tower. jerks) and wandered around for a bit, then headed up the coast towards Genova, or Genoa, whichever you prefer to call it. It started to rain when we got there so we didn't spend too much time walking around. We went to the Aquarium which was really cool, and the only thing tha twould have made it better would have been polar bears. But it did have a hummingbird room where the hummingbirds just fly around you. I hadn't thought of it before but I'd never seen a hummingbird live before, just pictures. They're insane. And so fast. It was the coolest thing. We leave Genova and head to our hotel, an hour outside of Torino. It's a little sketchy since it's this rinky dink town (La Citta del Vino, so it sounded promising) and we go to the hotel, but they tell us our room isn't there. So they take us to this other B&B. I slept decently well there, and we had an excellent meal at what looked like was the only restaurant in town. I enjoyed. The next morning, this time actually bright and early, we drive to Torino. After hassles about changing our train (we couldn't) parking the car and getting the tickets everythign was set. We left our bags in a hotel room Michelle's mom found and booked while we were there, which was very nice because if we couldn't leave the bags there we wouldn't be getting them for another couple of days. It was pouring rain during this time. We stop for lunch aroudn 2 or so and it starts to snow. Super. We go over to the stadium and see the game. It was so much fun and our seats were really good. I took a bunch of pictures, which I hope come out. Sadly the US lost. That was very rude of them. They came so close. After the game Michelle and I hoped on a 9:05pm train. We got to Bologna at 12:54am and then to Terontl at 5:15am and were to arrive in Perugia at 6:39am. We were a good 20 or so minutes late getting into Bologna. Then we got to hang around that skivvy train station for awhile. I hardly got any sleep on the way from Torino to Bologna. Maybe 20 min of napping. Then the train from Bologna to Terontl shows up. I'm so so so happy we reserved seats cos the train was packed. It was a car where there are little rooms of 6 seats. There's a hallway outside these rooms that's pretty much just big enough for one person. The hallway was jammed with people. That had to be breaking all kinds of saftey codes. We sat at the Bologna train station a good 25-30 min after we were supposed to leave. I don't know why. But I did manage to sleep for about an hour on that train. I was right next to the window, which I need to be to try to stave off the motion sickness and the window was open jsut a crack. THat was actually nice, since the train before it was so hot and stuffy. But then the window opened a little more, and it began to rain. But I couldn't get it closed and neither could the guy across from me. Then, when he's trying, he actually opens it more. So he just pulls down the shade and goes to sleep. Now the rain isn't coming through as much, but it's freezing cold. I didn't have a hat or scarf on when I was sitting outside in Torino in the snow, but you bet I was wearing one on that train. Even with our delay we somehow manage to get to Terontl on time. We hang out in the waiting room and I have my breakfast/dinner, a small thing of cookies. I'm so healthy. We get on the train and all seems to be going smoothly. But then, just a mere 2 stops from the Perugia train station, the train stops at Magione for 40 min. There was no explaination. And there were no conductors to question. Not that I know if they would be able to speak English anyway. It was very frustration. And people really need to learn that if they watn to get on a train, they should let the other people off first. But they haven't figured that part out yet. So I got back to the apartment, chaged, washed my face, brushed my teeth and headed back out to class. And now here I am. And I'm so incredibly tired. And Michelle and I are having Chinese food and a lot of wine for dinner tonight. And I need a nap. Current Mood: exhausted Current Music: in need of sleeeeeeeeeep (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 16th, 2006
9:23 am	No roof AND it's rainy So today is the 3rd, and we've been told last, day that Michelle and I are banished from our apartment between the hours of 8am and 5pm. Actually today they even told us they would be finished fra due, around 2. Yay. Which works out well since the 2 of us have class until 3, so they should be done and packed up by the time we get back. Although I wouldn't be too surprised if we had to spend the afternoon cleaning and putting all of the furniture back. That won't be fun. At least Caterina isn't supposed to come see if our apartment is clean for awhile. It might take some time to get all that stuff up. Everything is just really dirty. Dusty from all the plaster, more specifically. Blech. I'm really looking forward to not having to get up at 7. Of course, this comes at the time that Michelle and I will probably have to get up early tomorrow because we're leaving for Pisa first and then Torino for the Olympics!! I'm so excited about that! I can't wait to see hockey again. And Olympic hockey, no less. Correct me if I'm wrong, but drawing's not supposed to be painful, is it? I don't know what I did, but my shoulder feels so weird after my drawing class. It's a 4 hour class. The first 2 hours we spent doing 15 second figure drawings. Cos it was moving so fast you didn't really have time to break, so at the end of that my leg that had all of my weight on it could hardly move and my shoulder was getting sore. Then, after our lunch break, we did a 30 minute drawing and a 1 hour drawing. I felt bad for the model since my shoulder was killing me, I can't imagine how uncomfortable she was since she had to hold these positions for so long. Well, I can imagine, cos she kept moving to stretch limbs out, which is understandable except that makes it that much more difficult to draw. Which is why I like drawing form photos, which he is very against. I like drawing people but people don't sit still. I think that's actually one of the reasons he likes them and tells us we need to do these figure drawings. Which I just realized I don't know when I'm going to get to do my large figure drawing, sinc eto do a figure drawing I need a figure to draw. Finding figures to draw is much more difficult than finding a still life to draw. Still lives don't complain and you don't have to work around their schedule. I'm having such a great time here. I really wish all of our friends could come and out and just see how amazing this is. I need a nap. Current Mood: sleepy Current Music: black eyed peas is stuck in my head (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
10:14 am	Go To Venice Michelle and I were in Venice for the weekend. It was amazing. Words really can't do the place justice. Seeing pictures of it can't do the place justice, though pictures will be included. It was just so beautiful and such a fantasy land. It's crazy that a place like that exists in the same universe with somewhere like Boston or even Perugia. It's just so in a world unto itself. I really hope it doesn't actually sink in my lifetime, as my Natural Disasters and Catastrophes teacher said it would. I don't think I could stay in Venice for long periods of time. I loved Venice. I liked to visit there. But it's just so touristy. They're everywhere. You have to wonder what's authentic versus what's there for the tourists. And the prices are so jacked up because of it. I definitely want to go back to Venice but I'm really happy we're in Perugia and not some major tourist destination. So few people in Venice would actually speak Italian to us. They just heard us and spoke English, even when we would speak Italian to them. It was frustrating. I don't think I'd learn any Italian if I was there. I like it here in Perugia. Even if it is cold. At least it's not Boston's winter. :) So Michelle and I are pseudo homeless for a few days. Just for the days though. At night I believe we're going to be let back in. See, our neighbor's ceiling fell. More specifically, all the plaster fell off. So they had to replaster it. Because the buildings are old and whatnot they decided to check our apartment to see if our ceiling might fall. Turns out it might. So today and tomorrow people are in our apartment replastering the ceiling. So Michelle and I grabbed the stuff we need for the day and will be wandering around from 8am till around 6pm. Good times. But our landlady is the nicest woman. She's so sorry that we have to leave. She just kept apologizing. All in Italian, since she only speaks Italian. And she got Michelle a bottle of champagne and a little bottle of essential oil body wash for Michelle's birthday yesterday. She's the sweetest woman. Yay for having an amazing landlady. Time is flying by. I wish it would slow down. I can't believe we've almost been here a month. I can't believe we only have 3 months left. It's so nice to just be here and to not have all the worries I have when I'm at home. And the lifestyle is so much calmer, so much less focused on working, working, working. It may be annoying at times when you find stores are just always closed, but it's not really that bad. And it's just nice that people do take that time off. I love it. ( Pictures ) Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: michelle got me sick :( but i'm in italy! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
4:16 pm	Back to Classes I feel like I'm slowly getting into the swing of thing with classes, as the time goes on. I don't htink it actually took me that long either, considering it's been since last April that I had classes. The stranieri classes were one thing to get used to, but there really wasn't any homework or anything. It was just kind of go, listen, try to figure out enough so when you're called on you can answer. But it wasn't the same pressure as the classes now. I think the biggest thing is the grades. We weren't grading in Stranieri so I only did well because I wanted to do well. Now I have to do well because I want to do well and because I want all A's. If I get all A's I think I can graduate with high honors, which would make me amazingly happy. I want to see if I am able to take one class pass/fail while I'm here though. Well, I know I can take the class pass/fail, I want to see if I can take it and still be able to graduate high honors. Michelle's gonna calculate it out, cos she's a math geek and that's what she does. That and cos she loves me. I want to take my drawing class pass fail. It seems like a class that I could end up getting all B's in, even if I try. And I think I'll enjoy the class a lot more if I know I'm only going pass/fail with it and I don't have to worry about an actual letter grade. I hate letter grades in art classes. Their so difficult to figure out. And I already have another art class to worry about. I am really really looking forward to have all this studio access though. We can use the darkroom/drawing studio anytime from pretty much dawn till 11pm. That makes me very happy. I'm thinking during the week if I am needed that's where I'm going to be found. Maybe not the right way to spend my time abroad, but I forsee me doing it and enjoying it. And besides, I love it here so much I don't plan on making this be my only time here. Not at all. Hopfully my classes don't stress me out too much. I don't know if I can get that stressed while I'm yhere though, soI'm not really all that worried. Current Mood: a little nervous Current Music: computer lab (Comment on this)
Monday, February 6th, 2006
1:20 pm	Bologna and Luca for the weekend It’s so weird to think a month has already gone by. It doesn’t feel like we’ve been here that long. This last weekend we went to Luca and Bologna. Our friend here came to Italy because a friend of hers studied in Luca and loved it. It’s a cute place. But not somewhere I’d like to stay for any amount of time. Michelle and I took an early train out there and got in around noon. The place has great shopping. Everything is really inexpensive. She and I wandered around for awhile, saw this one church in the center of town that was beautiful. We people watched and then met up with our other friends who were getting into Luca later. After debate about where to go and having to wait for the restaurants to open up, we went to this little place that I don’t think is quite known for their food. But it was good food and inexpensive. I’m not that crazy about Luca for a couple reasons: 1) It’s really small. We were there for the afternoon and I feel like we pretty much saw everything. 2) The place shuts down at around 8. The restaurants are open. But that’s it. There are no stores, I think we saw maybe 2 pubs, which meant the only people out on the street were really creepy people. We had to deal with these creepy people for awhile when we were trying to get back to our hostel for the night. And the city is walled in which means you have to find an exit in the wall in order to get out of the city. So it took us about 30 min to get out of the city because of creepy guys and the wall. We stayed at this hostel where the rooms were really nice. It was much more like a really cheap hotel than a hostel. The rooms were doubles, private, with a bathroom in them. The lady that ran the place was a little off though. She just seemed angry anytime you needed her. And since we only needed her when we wanted to check in and check out it’s not like we had been bugging her for hours. I was just glad we didn’t have to deal with her a lot. Michelle and I woke up early the next day and walked around the wall that keeps the city in and everything else out. It’s a 4km walk. It was a really nice walk and I’m glad we got up around 7 to do this walk. We went in a duomo but had to leave early because services had begun. We got a cappuccino, because Michelle and I drink them in mass quantities now, and then Michelle got a really cheap bag. Very sweet deal. Michelle and I then got a train out of Luca heading to Bologna. We were originally going to stay the night, but my eye was acting weird and hurting and Michelle wasn’t feeling 100% so we decided to get one of the late trains out and just come back to Perugia. We saw this church, San Petronio, that is only ½ finished. Most of the church is built, and they seem to have done a lot of work to the inside, but the outside they only finished part of the façade. Only part of the façade to the church here in Perugia is finished. It seems to be a typical Italian thing. It was funny to look at, and kind of sad, considering how nice the façade they started looked. We then went over to these 2 leaning towers. Apparently Italy is full of leaning towers. One of them was on a 3.2 meter lean, but the other was only a 1.3 meter lean, so we got to climb it. It was 498 steps up. We got the coolest view of Bologna from there. It was so pretty. Bologna was much more crowded than I thought it would be. Via Indepenzia was a lot more crowded than I thought it would be; almost reminded me of 42nd street, with less neon. It looked a cool place to spend some time. I definitely enjoyed it there better than Luca. Current Mood: bouncy Current Music: tracks of my tears (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 2nd, 2006
4:20 pm	And now the real classes start We've finished our month of Intensive Italian. It was actually kind of nice to only have to worry about one subject. I did like our month of Italian. But I'm excited to finally be taking another photography class and to have access to a darkroom again. That's the class I'm most excited for. I haven't had drawing yet so I'm not sure how that will go, although I'll probably enjoy it. My Ren Art class seems cool, if a little dull at times. Italian is now a standard I'm used to taking. But my photo class I'm really excited for. We have a couple options for how we want to do our class assignments; either a portfolio of mostly B&W work we do in the darkroom and everything, or else a Photo Diary where we take a bunch of color photos but a lot more than we do wit hthe B&W. I'm definitely doing the portfolio. I know she said it was more work in the darkroom and such because with the Diary we can just take color film and get it developed. But I like the control I have when Im' in the darkroom and I'm able to burn and dodge what I want and I can add filters and I can change what I want, instead of trying to manipulate it with Photoshop after the fact. Although she said it takes about an hour and a half to develope a roll of film and an hour to make each print. Having taken photo in high school, when classes were 42 minutes long, I know we didn't take an hour and half to develope our film. We couldn't have taken that long. I know it took virtually the whole period to do, but we definitely finished in that time. The longest part was the drying, which we just left overnight. Maybe drying is included in her time estimate. And same with the prints. Maybe I usually only made 1 print in the 42 min time period, but it really wasn't unusual for me to be able to complete more than 1, or at least get 1/2 way done with a second one. I'm really looking forward to these classes. And it's weird to be back in classes since the last time I was in classes was last April. Now that's a weird feeling. Michelle and I just booked our tickets to Ireland for St. Paddy's day. I'm a little disappointed we won't be able to make it to Galway for St. Paddy's day, but at least her cousin Jon will be in Dublin while we're there. And we'll make it to Galway the next night. The ceiling in our apartment might collapse on us. Super keen. Our neighbor's ceiling fell in the other ay and someone came in to see how our ceiling is holding up. Someone is coming in a few weeks (our landlady is going to tell us when) and replaster the ceiling I think. I think that's what they said anyway. The problem is the landlady and the construction man pretty much only speak Italian and of course Michelle and I pretty much only speak english so there may be some communication problems. Current Mood: chipper Current Music: computer lab lalala computer lab lalala (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 29th, 2006
3:34 pm	Our Weekend Plans Michelle and I were supposed to go to Ireland this weekend. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. Which is really a shame, because I would have loved loved loved to go. Then she was planning a surprise weekend. We were going to go to Siena and Pisa. Then we decided we’d just go to Siena. Then either the train station or the website lied about the price. So we decided to just go to Lago Trasimeno. It’s this huge lake that’s about 30 min away from Perugia. It’s apparently a big draw in the summer when they have all of these water activities going on. It was pretty dead when we were there, but I enjoyed it anyway. Hell, I probably enjoyed it party for that reason. It was very quiet, we had a nice cappuccino and fresh cornetto. I enjoyed it. Then we just came back and relaxed. I enjoy the time here. There is time to just sit back and relax and to really not have to worry about anything. At home there’s always something to keep the mind occupied. But here I have time to just sit and think and work on Italian. I’ve really enjoyed having just the Italian and not having to worry about other work. I wish I was doing better in it. Not that I’m doing badly now. Just I want to just know the language. I want to just be fluent. Obviously, I’m not going to just wake up one morning and be fluent, but I’m trying. I’d love to be able to come back and just take some classes at Stranieri. That would make me really happy. I feel anti-social here. Not so much that I don’t hang out with many of the other people in the program, but more because I have no desire to and have absolutely not problem not making friends. It’s more the realization that I don’t really want to make friends with the others in the program that makes me feel anti-social. I mean, there are people here that are cool and I would like to hang out with, but the fact that it’s mostly just been Michelle and I hanging out hasn’t bothered me too much. I feel like I’m doing a horrible job putting in to words how amazing it is here. Nothing I write is really doing it justice. There is a lot to be annoyed with, but there’s so much more that is so beautiful, so amazing, that it completely outweighs the bad. I do feel bad not keeping up on world events more. I was in the computer lab the other day and I read a couple online papers and the newest stuff on Wikinews. It was mostly because I had more time than I had anticipated before class. It was kind of nice to see what is going on in the world again, since watching the news here just leaves me feeling less informed instead of more. I’ve tried watching the news, but because it’s in Italian I feel like I’m doing more harm by misunderstanding what’s going on. Hopefully I’ll be fluent enough to watch the news and pick up a news paper. I want to get a copy of the Little Prince in Italian. I have it in English and French. That’ll just be the book I learn in multiple languages. Then I can learn the phrases from it that I like so much in all different languages. Il faut bien que je supporte duex ou trios chenilles si je veux connaitre le papillion. “It is necessary that I put up with 2 or 3 caterpillars if I want to get to know the butterfly.” Now I’m just rambling. I’ll stop. I just felt like writing something. Although I don’t even know if this is what we’re supposed to be writing about in this journal. Oh well. Current Mood: cheerful Current Music: I really don't like macs (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, January 27th, 2006
3:38 pm	The Only Stress I'm Really Feeling Here Michelle and I were talking to a couple other people in the program from Northeastern who were talking about what a different experience Northeastern kids are having here versus other students. This came about while the 4 of us were talkin about having to get our resumes out and what our next co-op will be and graduation plans. Most of the people here going home are going to go get summer jobs working as lifeguards or something. But we have to plan out all of this stuff with resumes and job interviews that have to be done ahead of time. And it's all getting stressful. It's bad enough when we're home, but being this far away is making it even more difficult. Then there's the case that maybe I won't be able to get a co-op. Then what? I just e-mailed my advisor and asked her what the deadlines and such were in case I decide to graduate a semester early. But I don't know what graduating a semester early will do to me. I need to start now looking at grad schools if I want to start that next Spring semester. Or maybe I'll just have to take the semester off and work and wait till the fall for grad school. Because I haven't really begun looking at grad schools yet, which isn't good. I need to get on top of that. Of course I may have to wait a little while for grad school to make sure I have some money for it. And I need to find a school where I get a lot of money to go there or, even better, I can teach there and they pay my tuition. I know Northeastern does this, cos I had a grad student as a Soc teacher. I wonder if they'd do it for English. Probably not. But I suppose it's worth talking to the department about. I actually don't want to have to think about this right now. I know I have to, but I really don't want to. And being so far away makes it very easy to just forget about it. I envy the students that don't have to worry about this right now. Current Mood: nervous Current Music: the theme from scrubs (3 Comments |Comment on this)
11:42 am	Ha, I told you I'd get pictures up eventually I'm having such an amazing time here. It's so beautiful and so amazing. I've heard there are people in the program that want to leave. Hell, I heard there are people that already left. I can't imagine leaving. I think....no, I know it makes big difference having Michelle here. I don't think I could have done this trip on my own. Or if I could have, I wouldn't be as happy as I am. Michelle and I may not get along with most of the people in the program, but I really don't have a problem with that. I wonder what it really says when the only people we really hang out with here, other than Theresa, are not Americans. I think it's just the level of maturity of the people in this program. The level of maturity and I really feel a lot of people here are taking the opportunity to be here for granted. It's so amazing to wake up each morning and realize you're in a whole other world. We were on a tour of Perugia and we were taking about the views out people's apartments. Somone said one of their windows just had a view of a wall, to which someone piped up "But it's an Italian wall!!!" That's exactly my thought. And that's not to say it's perfect here. Far from it. But you just kind of let things roll off your back. When is a certain store open? That's really a matter up for debate. Sure the sign says it opens again at 4:30, but it really depends on the owner if the store is actually going to open up again. You just get used to things being on a fluid schedule. And then you kind of move to a fluid schedule as well. Katie, I don't know how well you'd deal with that. So like I said, I finally have a couple pictures, both of Perugia, and a few of Rome. Enjoy. ( Italian Pictures ) Current Mood: ecstatic Current Music: Hope you enjoyed (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 23rd, 2006
3:51 pm	Weekend? A Roma! Michelle and I spent the weekend in Rome. It was lovely, and is looking even better given how warm it was there and the fact that there are flurries here in Perugia now. We left later than planned on Friday and got into Rome around 5:30. The train ride wasn't that bad; just under 3 hours. At one stop the entire Italian army got on. I don't know what was going on but the train was just packed. All the seats on the train were arranged in groups of 4 (2 chairs facing 2 chairs). Michelle and I sat together, the only woman in the group sat across from me, and another army man sat across form Michelle. One of the other army guys came over and sat in 1st army guy's lap. Sitting guy goes (in Italian, which I don't think I can completely translate and more importantly spell) "3 girls are sitting here and you sit on my lap?" I laughed. Michelle and I only spoke a little to one anohter on the ride. I kept dozing. At the end of the trip the sitting army guy got Michelle's bag down for her. She said "grazie" to him, which immediately confused him. He asked the others in his group if we spoke Italian and if we had understood him. Though we really hardly understood everything he was saying, I laughed to think we scared them cos he thought we did speak Italian. HOpefully next time something like that happens we will know enough Italian. :) I think it'd be fun. Rome was very beautiful and very dirty. I feel like they didn't really try to combine all of the old buildings and sites with the new. It's jarring to see this modern building next to the ruins of some BC wall. But it was still a lot of fun to be there and see everything. I just wish it wasn't so touristy. We saw the Colosseo, from the outside only. We didn't want to pay to go inside. If we do, we'll do it with Dan and Lesh when they come to visit. We went to the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, saw the fountains, and mostly wandered and people-watched. It was so much fun. And I didn't really feel unsafe. The crazy ladies that throw their babies at you so when you catch it they can rob you weren't out. Apparently they are only really out during the summer months, when more tourists are around. Works for me. I still kept a lcose close eye on all of my stuff. And didn't bring anything valuable. Being in Rome is so different from being in Perugia. It's a big city, more like NYC, whereas Perugia is much much smaller. Perugia is more like Boston, because of all the students, although much smaller. Perugia is lively but quieter. I like it here so much. Like Michelle said; you always like th efirst city you visit the best. And living here just makes it such a comfortable place. It's like home. And it lacks the tourists. Yay. I don't know how much I'd like studying in Rome. I took my Italian placement test today. I hope I did well. I think I did. So many people were saying they did badly so they'd be put in a lower level and they'd have less work. I understand wanting less work, but you're in Italy! Wouldn't you like to speak the language? I know I have more invested, cos really one of the reasons I came was to learn Italian. But still, it seems dumb to not make the effort to learn it. I feel bad not knowing it. I'm here, and everyone is speaking so I should go through the trouble to learn it. And poeple bitch in the states about people not learning English. It's this mentality that make people at the states. The "I don't need to learn Italian. You learn English" that does it. It's frustrating. On a happy note, Michelle and I foiund some good bread finally. Perugians don't like to make their bread with salt, and the unsalted bread blows. Keep that in mind if you come here. Buy salted bread. And I'm getting hungry so I think I'll head home soon and find something to snack on before dinner. Mmmmm Current Mood: calm Current Music: when the moon hits your eye... (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 20th, 2006
10:27 am	Apologies I had pictures I was loading up to a website so I could share them with everyone. Unfortunatly the computer was taking too long and the lab was getting shut down. Mauro was singing his "time to get off the computers now" song. You really can't argue with that. But I will put up some pictures soon. Just not yet. Cos Michelle and I are going to Rome for the weekend. Yay Rome. I hope I don't get pickpocketed. I'm dropping any babies that are thrown on me. Shouldn't have chucked your child! Either that or I'll just stay away from all groups of children in general. So again, my apologies for the pictures. I tried. I actually tried. And I'm going to have fun in Rome! Ciao Current Mood: don't wanna get robbed... Current Music: i have the addams family theme stuck in my head (1 Comment |Comment on this)