Vito the Alien

I just wanted to leave this very short post to tell you that I have made my cat, Vito a Twitter account. Yes, I'm one of those people. I've just done it today and it's quite fun! Just last night I was looking at him and he looked at me directly in the face. I realised that he looked quite a bit alien. Not in a bad way, he's still very cute. He just has a very thin neck and face. So I've started him a tumblr and my friends Maggie and Christine made their cats, Hadley and Aiden twitters as well. So it's a whole twitter family!!

Cheers!

A Foggy Day in London Town

But the age of miracles hadn't passed!

Right, so as of 3 minutes ago there are now 588 days 'til I move to London. I thought I would just post about London since my friend just recently visited there and posted pictures and became jealous. Also because I keep listening to Frank Sinatra's version of A Foggy Day in London Town.

So, I've been having a rather difficult time in school as of late. I've just been wondering if those 500+ days were even possible to get through and I seriously considered for about the 4th time this semester alone about dropping out. I thought about this because I just couldn't really stand it here in Lubbock. It's just so ugly and apart from the few people I like, I really hate everyone here. With there unnecessarily big trucks and ugly accents and boots and cowboy hats. It's just ridiculous and I was getting so sick of it. And then school itself was just becoming overwhelming. I missed Florence so much and being there and being able to take my quiet walks alone across the Arno to get a bagel. I missed the cobblestone streets which, before had been the cause of my injured feet. I missed Italians and their yelling and honking and crazy driving. I even missed the tourists with their silly, unattractive tourist clothes and the fact that I was able to call a city that drew so many of them my home.

I started wondering if I could just leave school, drop everything, hop on a plane and move there. Maybe I could get a job in a pub as a line cook or a waitress or something. And get a small, albeit shitty flat. But I would be happy. Because I would be there.

Well in the end I decided that, even though it is painful, and just plain cruel of the world, but I have to stay here. Stay here and get my degree. When I walk across that stage I will have 38 days left. And then I can leave. I'll have the summer that I can work and save up last minute money and then I'll be off. I'll be one of the few in my family who will have graduated in four years and I'll be the second that has gone off far far away. My sister moved to New York straight after her graduation but she came back to Texas after two years. Not me though. I'm there for the long haul. For good. And then my life will have started.

I quite like the idea of completely uprooting myself. At this point in my life I'm quite apathetic. Both about my relationships and school in general. I'm basically doing enough to get my degree and that's it. No extra. Cause, I'm not a Ravenclaw or an overachiever. I just really like the idea of moving somewhere completely different and staying there. Not many people do that or want to do that.

I'm not saying I'm special. In fact I'm saying I'm weird. I don't actually know what's wrong with me but I just don't care anymore. Nothing can really keep me here. Nothing and no one. Maybe I'm just a really horrible person. I kind of like it though. Not caring. It's a very nice change from what I usually am. A blubbering mess because I care too much and don't know how I will possibly ever say goodbye to everyone. Now I just don't give a shit and want more than anything to leave and never come back. I would honestly be completely OK with not ever seeing some of the people that are in my life ever again. People I once cared so much about and would do anything for. I finally realised that they aren't actually that great and not worth giving up everything for. Kind of like Margo in Paper Towns. Now, I'm not claiming to be anywhere near as cool as she is. But like her, I've realised that I just need a change. A permanent one. To completely uproot myself. A different experience and different life. I can literally be anyone I want to be. Like myself for a change.

Plans:

I suppose I have to have some sort of plan for living there. For fitting in there and making my life and such. So I'm signing up for British history classes so that I know about British history in more detail. I am currently trying to convert myself to Celsius. Next comes the metric system (fucking America and it wanting to be different from everyone else! If you're an American you've basically been screwed over and it will now be harder for you to go to different places outside of the US. Fun, huh?). I would like to take a course in British politics cause I find it all a bit confusing so I'll have to see if Tech offers something like that. Then that's it. I'm basically going to do that so that I can know as much as possible about being a British citizen before actually coming one.

I'm not exactly sure of the process of becoming a citizen of any country, whether it's a test or an oath or a blood pact or what have you. I just know that I'm going to do whatever it takes. I'm looking that up right now actually. I'm a bit ahead of myself and clicked to read about the Citizenship Ceremony. Sounds exciting!

If it's a test then I am going to pass that test so hard that Her Royal Highness, the Queen herself is going to be like, 'Let's you and I have tea and we can discuss how you should have been British this whole time'. And I'll be like, 'yes, let's do that'.

I just can't wait to live there! To have my own Oyster Card with my FACE on it and have to ride into the city every day for my job and ride back again with groceries in hand and cat food for Vito. I wonder how he's going to like London. I'm sure he won't really care where he is as long as there is an abundance of food and another boy cat (I am about 99% sure he's gay. No, really. He totally is.)

I'll walk down the busy streets on the pavement in my khaki overcoat, umbrella hanging around my wrist. Chef's coat on underneath, on my way to work. It will have just rained the night before so there will be puddles to dodge and it will be cold and still have that damp, heavy feeling in the air. But the sun will be overhead. Right in my eyes probably as it will be the morning when I'm walking to work, in the direction of Parliament and the clock tower. Taxi cabs, Citrogens, Fords, Pugots, Audis and cars of every kind, passing me as I walk on the pavement. Businessmen on mobiles, talking importantly as they pass me, walking in the opposite direction. People walking out of side stores with Costa Coffees in hand, trying to juggle their briefcases, newspapers and umbrellas as they rush to the office or back to their car. Passing red telephone booths, buses, and post boxes.

So there you have it! Only 588 days, 22 hours, and 49 minutes to go! I think I can make it. And when it finally does happen it'll just be that much more sweet since I fought through so much time to make it.

'The sun was shiniiiiiiiiiinnng E-everywheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrr!'

Kitten Name!!

For some reason I didn't post his name in that last post, but since a lot of you have asked, his name is Vito. Sometimes I call him Don Vito like in the Godfather (cause I'm obsessed). It was between that, Lorenzo, Tony, or Giovanni (Gio for short). He just looked like a Vito so I'm really happy with it. I can't wait to see him tomorrow!! He's super cute and loves to cuddle! Whenever you're holding him, he climbs up to your neck and just kind of curves around it for warmth. It's adorable and I'm so glad that I have a snuggly cat. He's precious. : )

I wish you all could meet him!!

New Kitty! :D

So I was out riding my new bike and stopped by this field cause I saw some rabbits and prairie dogs. I heard this mewing (more like a scream mewing) and walked over to see a small black kitten in the grass. So I called my sister to ask what I should do and she said I should take him and bring him to a no-kill shelter. So I snatched him, put him in my basket (such a good idea to get that basket), rode back to my dorm and snuck it upstairs to my room. My roommates and I took him to the shelter but it was closed and figured that we wouldn’t be able to take him there till Monday since Sarah had band on Saturday. So I called my friend Christine and told her what was going down and she said she knew of a place where he could stay till Monday.

Then she saw him and saw how adorable he is and said, ‘hey, you want to keep this cat, right?’ and I said yeah and she said that we could make it work. So he’s going to live with her when her parents are over and then live with me after I move out. And Maggie and I were talking about moving in together so that we can both have our cats and we both like to cook and it will be awesome. We’re going to live in the same complex and have dinner paties with Christine and Kenneth and Josh and it will be awesome.

So I have a cat! Yay!! I’ve always wanted one. And it turns out that I found him at just the right time cause apparently people sacrifice black cats on Halloween. Even the shelters won’t take them cause of that. That makes me so angry and so sad! Who would harm something so cute? I’m seriously thinking about going to find some of these people and beating the shit out of them. Like, I could crash one of their crazy, fucked up parties and then when the cat sacrificing part came up, start screaming in rapid Italian and tell them that if they touch that cat in any way that is more than loving, ‘Ima fuck them up’. I could be the black cat rescuer. Legit.

The Anglophile talks about Britain

Hello again! Well I believe it's been a while since I last posted and to make up for that I am going to brush on the same subject of the title of this blog. Not so much the wandering part as I haven't done much of that since I got back from Italy. No, I am going to talk about Britainland and why I love it. Inspired by a post written by this man. You should all read his first. Go ahead, it won't take long. Off you go!

Right, all back? Good. Let's carry on.

In the aforelinked blog, Jazza writes briefly about the reasons he loves his country. He talks about their general liberal take on things, their superb education, and their brilliant sense of humour. Instead of writing several novel length comments I decided I would just cover everything in a separate blog post.

After thinking about it, he definitely got a lot of my feelings toward the place spot on. For instance, the humour; I love a good dose of sarcasm and it would be wonderful to be surrounded by it and have someone else be able to dish it out as well. I am extremely jealous of their education system because, being from America, I can honestly say that we generally only learn about America most of the time. But most of all I really love the simple things. The things British people do every day. Like grocery shopping! At Tesco and Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury's! I can't tell you how confused my good friend Martina was when I asked her, very enthusiastically where she grocery shopped over my visit there this summer. And I'm sure it must have been a very strange thing to witness as I stared in wide-eyed wonder at the size of the Tesco Extra she took me to. I hope it was at least entertaining and that she got a good laugh at her silly friend from Texas.

I love just thinking about how some day I will walk down the streets and pass the red telephone booths and get to look at all the fancy cars that I love so much every single day. And that I will have an apartment of my very own with a kitchen and a window down to a street that will look like this!

Which brings me to my next topic: Living there. I have a countdown to my 2012 birthday simply as an approximation date. As of 26 minutes ago it stands at an audacious 604 days. The current countdown date is set to May which will be right after I graduate from uni. Obviously I will need a little time to spend with family and to set my affairs in order before leaving the country for good so I was thinking about setting the official date at July 4th 2012. You see, the first two times I went to England with my church we left on the 4th of July. And because I enjoy irony as much as the next person I think it would be nice to carry on with the tradition. Well, I guess I'll be ending it there, but whatever. As my friend Chelsey said when I proposed this idea on tumblr, third times the charm!

So there you go, readers of this blog. The official date of my escape from the colonies move to London is set to the 4th of July 2012. I can't wait to start looking at flats and neighborhoods and stuff. It's all so exciting! And I'll go to Top Shop to get cool clothes and Tesco to get food and Marks & Spencer to get yummy fruit and Boots to get Lemsip and Soothers for when I get a cold. It'll be awesome. I'll be the weird one in my family for leaving the country and staying there, but when has that ever bothered me, right? Hey, I'll just be the cool, cooking, world traveling one at family reunions. The one with the best stories. Oh yeah, my awesome British life starts in 653 days.

Operation CHEER: An Introduction

Greetings Blogspot. I thought I would just post this pre-even-beginning-to-think-about-the-holidays-for-most-people because well, I have already begun to think about them. That's right. This is the start of many Christmas blogs to come. Mainly this post is to inform you about Operation CHEER! Inspired, of course by the great Maureen Johnson, Operation CHEER is a three part prank I will be playing on my siblings this December. As you may know, or not, I have started pranking my eldest sister Megan in the office of the Family business we both work at. The first one I did was called Operation Michael Jackson in my Co-Worker's Ceiling where I did just what the title implies. I waited for them to go out to lunch for one of their meetings, snatched the ladder from the store room, snatched the worlds longest, GREENEST and most attention drawing extension cord from the bathroom/store room, some old computer speakers I had found a couple days before, and of course my iPod. I made all the necessary technical connections of the equipment and started to work. Up the ladder I went, moved the ceiling tile to the side, placed the speakers up there, threw the end of the extension cord 2 offices down so that I could reach it from that ceiling and get it to a corner of the room where, despite it's greenness, would hopefully not be noticed in the corner. Then I put an alarm for my iPod to start playing Michael Jackson's Thriller through my sister/co-worker's ceiling at exactly 15:23 at which point I would be out of the office on important "errands". Replaced the ceiling tiles and ladder and continued on filing until they got back and I could leave.

I so wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that. I actually set up a camera in my sister's office to try and catch the reaction but unfortunately the camera decided that it would go off after 2 seconds of recording an empty desk and chair. So I just had to settle with them re-telling the story. And re-tell it they did. Many, many times to many different people. There was a lot of searching for the source of the music. My sister was going crazy. Hahaha. I would have loved to see that. She picked up her purse, computer, presser her ear against the filing cabinet to try and find out where it was coming from. Apparently my other sister even got up on the desk to try and see if it was coming through the ceiling some how ; ) I actually probably could have stayed because they didn't assume it was me for a long time. The hardest thing would have been keeping a straight face though. I don't know if I could have done it. I mean I'm pretty good after extensive training from my roommate Sarah, but I'm not that good. I don't even know if she's that good.

I haven't really done anything since then except for stuffing almost all the chairs in the entire office into her office. That was kind of spontaneous as I just walked by and saw it unattended and thought I should do something about it.

I'm hoping to spark some sort of desire to get back at me in her. And ideally I would like her to team up with the other siblings so that they could do something really un creative and lame to try and get me back so that I could have real incentive to carry out Operation CHEER. I mean besides the obvious of it just being amazing to hear their reactions. I think after I do that it will definitely spark something. SO! Moving right along...

The Plans

Megan's House: I'm going to purchase some really inexpensive wrapping paper (Walmart will probably have a really good special or something) and wrap everything in their house. I mean EVERYTHING. Including their CAT! Every item in their house will be gift wrapped!! CHEER!

Whitney's House: This needs a bit of backstory. My sister Whitney HATES those inflatable Christmas lawn ornaments that people put in their yard and is also VERY particular about her Christmas lights. They have to be white and they have to be perfectly straight. So naturally, after her husband Jamie gets up all the decorations to her liking I will... re-decorate. Starting with the lights. They will be replaced with coloured lights and depending on how many are needed I might splurge and by the ones the twinkle. These will be put up both carelessly and crookedly. Then I will put some of the aformentioned inflatable lawn ornaments that my parents purchased for the front of the Family business in their yard just to add even more CHEER!

Liam's House: This is the most complicated and daring of them all. First I am going to switch all the light bulbs in their house to red and green ones. Then I am going to set something up so that when they come in some confetti or fake snow falls on them. Both easy. Then I am going to try and rig something to their light switch so that when they come in Let it Snow starts playing. That's the hard part. My friend Joel gave me the idea for the light switch. He's really smart and good at that stuff so I believe him. I just need to get him to explain it to me better. He said you can just take the switch/face part off of it, switch and maybe add some wires and then it'll work. I'm thinking about using my old iPod mini so that it doesn't ruin it or something. Or an old stereo or something. That is if my iPod mini works. One day it just decided it didn't want to be an iPod anymore and deleted my whole library. Hopefully it'll work again after a 3 year sabbatical. To see how this might work I undid the light switch for my closet to look at the wires and stuff. It's a bit confusing but I think after some google help I should be OK. I did get shocked a bit though. I accidentally hit the switch to turn it on at the same time touching one of the wires that was wrapped around a screw in the side of the switch and got a bit of electricity. It was weird. It didn't really hurt but my finger still feels a bit tingly. It was quite shocking (lame) more than anything, really.

So yeah, those are my plans. I do have a slight problem however. I am debating whether or not I even want to pull one over on my elder brother because he, as Mario Puzo (author of The Godfather) puts it, "He is a man of respect". Not that he's a violent gangster but I mean he is the only one who could really get me back. And since I'm the younger sister he won't hold back. Especially after I've gotten him so good. Then again, not doing something after I've done something to all the other siblings may show a sign of weakness and he may peg me as a scared, easy target. I think I'm going to do it. If I can dish it out I have to be able to take it as well I suppose. And I have a couple pages in my notebook of potential things I could do. One of them involves the ransom notes that I got from the dollar bin at target. They literally read "I have _____. Please leave ______ by the ______ if you ever want to see _______ again. -Master of the Seven Seas". Awesome. I was really excited when I found those in my closet.

So that's pretty much it. Let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions. : ) I'll be posting more about this in the future when the time comes to actually pull it off.

Pace

I'm back, Baby!

It appears that my blog went MIA from everyone's reading list. I thought this most curious in the beginning (like 2 days ago) and it caused me quite a bit of stress. I mean, I LOVE hearing from you guys. However, I found the source of the problem and fixed it. You see after my post about the crazy roommate I went a bit paranoid and privatised like everything about this blog, except I thought for you guys. That is, I made it impossible to be found if you searched on google, changed the url and a few other things that I can't even think of. The culprit, it seems was the URL change. So I found out what my old one was and VOILA! It was FIXED! So let that be a lesson to you, DON'T. EVER. CHANGE. YOUR. URL. EVER. Unless you want people to not be able to read anything you right. It's just such a relief that I found out there was a problem because I thought you all had abandoned ship and thought my reading so atrocious that you didn't even want to blog yourselves anymore! Haha. Speaking of which, I have a dunk ton of posts from the past 5 months and I guess I'll post more about the trips and stuff. I'm so behind! I understand if you don't want to read them because when I write blog posts I tend to write epics and catching up with 5 months of that might make one physically ill. So yeah, basically you really don't have to unless you feel like it. -OR- I could re-post one every day and that could be my last half of the month BEDA (which might mean I could break some of them up and make them shorter. You can choose that too. Make them shorter or keep them long?)! Which do you prefer I do?? I'll leave it up to you.

Really though I have Elisabeth to thank. Thank you so much!! If you hadn't brought the problem to my attention I would have just gone on commentless and sad until I just deleted the whole thing! So thank you. That was very nice of you. : )

So normally I would say: now that we've had our Blogspot.com lesson for the day, let's continue on with our normally scheduled blog post shall we? but that's actually all I have for you. Sorry. Basically just an explanation on what happened and asking you what I should do about all the posts you missed. Well it was refreshingly short at least! Leave your answers in the comments! : )

PS. I've missed you guys.

Life of Adventure

In the interest of going with the trend that Emily and Elisabeth have set of updating their blog for the first time in a long time I am going to tell you about my newly updated FUTURE PLANS! It involves the mafia. Heheheh. And you were about to close this window. Got your attention now! Hopefully.

Anyway, I basically want to do a lot of things with my life. Which means that I have to get out of school like now. Or two years from now at least. After uni I'm thinking about getting a student work permit and heading to the BIG BRITISH CITY of London. There I will work at a desk job as a travel agent. I know it probably seems weird to aspire to work at a desk but for some reason I just want to do this for a while. A strange part of me wants to experience work in an office (like real office work. Not the temp stuff I'm doing now at the *Family Buisiness). I don't know why exactly I want to do this. Maybe it's from watching The Office, or from watching the Travel Channel since I was **7 but I really want to do this for at least a year and a half. And just living in London and having a normal person job in like the Financial District or something and getting to take the Underground into work every day sounds absolutely fascinating to me. I can't wait to do it.

After London I suppose I'll go to culinary school in New York City or something. Right after culinary school I really want to volunteer to be a Sea Shepherd. Like on Whale Wars. I'm not even kidding. I started watching the show and it's amazing. Maybe I could be a cook on one of the boats!! I mean who doesn't want to fuck with a whale killing harpoon ship?!? That just sounds awesome! I just had a rather irritating (understatement) conversation with my brother-in-law about whale wars and he asked me if I was a tree/whale hugging hippy. So I asked him if he was a whale killing fiend and he said "hey, whatever it takes. Animals were put on this planet for a reason." I'm hoping he was just being an arrogant prick to piss me off instead of actually believing what he said. My sister hit him on the leg and told him to shut up. I wish my dad had been there. He may be conservative and stuff but he's seen the show and totally agrees with what they're doing. He definitely would have put my brother-in-law in his place and made him look like an idiot. The problem is that when I get angry I can't really process my thoughts and witty remarks quick enough for them to still be relevant by the time I actually come up with one. I freaking hate that! Since he's such a bible hugger I would have brought up Genesis and how the first time an animal was killed at all was after the apple was eaten and was FOR CLOTHING! It never mentions animals being eaten in the Garden before then. Fuck. Why couldn't I have thought of that?!! That made me think again about vegetarianism. I think I want to do it. At least I'll see how far I get.

Wow, that was a tangent. Anyhow, I want to do that for a campaign or two and then do the chef thing. Perslaps the chef thing will take place back in London.

Now lets talk about long term. This is where the plan changes from what I had always planned on before. Before it involved living in London forever and ever, amen, but now it actually involves New York. I don't like this because it's still America and I'm pretty ready to get out of here. Also, and this sounds horrible, so horrible actually that I'm not going to mention it. Never mind. Anyway the new plan involves opening a restaurant, which is something else I had always been against. My previous thinking was that I wouldn't want to have to deal with all the management shit and that I just want to cook and work in the kitchen. Now however, with this idea I don't think I would trust anyone else to do it. I want to open an Italian restaurant. Now I know you're probably thinking very sarcastically that NYC DEFINITELY needs more Italian restaurants but mine would be different. It will be legit and GENUINE Italian! It will have legit and genuine pizza (it's been so freaking hard to find real Italian pizza in this stupid city that I live in), REAL cappuccino and espresso. REAL Italian bread and pastries that will be made ON SITE by a pastry chef. There will be NO Chicken Parmesan. That isn't Italian. It's American and there won't be any of that crap in my restaurant unless you happened to bring it in from outside which is rude and as owner and chef I would have to kick your ass. Or just kick you out. Whatever. There will also be live music every Saturday. Also art like all over the restaurant. Like copies of really famous works of art by famous Italian artists. Can you tell I miss Florence?? I miss being able to go to the Uffizi whenever I wanted (and for free!).

I will call this restaurant.... Ciao Bella! That's what the forward Italian men (in other words ALL ITALIAN MEN. Not that I'm generalising or anything) say to you when you walk through the San Lorenzo market. We will be famous for our wonderfully genuine Italian menu and our brick oven pizza! And all the pizza will be legit Italian kinds like *Margharita and diavola!

So since this restaurant will be in New York and since it will be Italian I bet it will be a favourite spot for some very wealthy Italian families, if ya know what I mean... (the mafia. I'm talking about the mafia). Here's what I picture (daydreamy music. The following narrated in a New York accent): It's a typical Saturday evening. The restaurant is bumpin. There's a line out the door and we've just started having to turn people away. The usual. I get called out of the kitchen because someone wants to meet me. Despite being busy, I love this part so I go. The waitress, young but professional and charming, leads me to a quieter back table. There's an older but still hansom man sitting at the head with a rather large family. The older gentleman greets me with a unique take on the Italian accent. It's not warm and friendly like I'm used to hearing. It's got a certain coldness to it that I pick up on immediately. Like this was a man who demanded respect. A man with a belly, both literally and figuratively. He told me that he greatly enjoyed the food and that I was a good business woman and that he planned to make this his Saturday night spot and that I should reserve this table for him. That he would make it worth my while. He says he understands that I'm a busy woman and probably need to get back to my work and dismisses me, but not before standing up to shake my hand and giving me a toothy, business-like smile. For a long time he never misses a Saturday. Then there's rumors in the news about a possible mafia war breakin out. He misses a few Saturdays in a row and then comes to me with a business proposition. He asks me if I would be willing to build a tunnel from his mall (that's what they call the string of houses the mafia family lives in) to the restaurant and that he would fund it, of course as well as pay me and the restaurant generously for our troubles. I agree and we end the meeting with a handshake from him and a sly smile from me.

Ok, that's the end of the New York accent part. Unless you really want to carry on. Who am I to stop you! Now obviously I will need a way to get around the city, what with my secret partnership with the most powerful Family in the United States, so what better than a little adorable, Italian made Fiat 500?! I mean is that not the cutest thing ever. And what will I name it, you ask? Vincenzo. That's right.

Sorry for that last part. That was like Car and Driver porn. I got a little carried away... I should also probably mention that I'm currently reading the Godfather. You can probably tell what that last part was inspired by now, huh? I should also ALSO mention that I know this is far fetched and crazy. The last part of this post is just one of those crazy what if day dreams that was further embellished and that I felt like putting into words. I know it won't happen, but hey, it would be cool, right?

In other news, I'm going to the restaurant supply store tomorrow on my work errand to buy a PIZZA PADDLE!!! I'm so excited!! I've always wanted a pizza paddle of my very own!

Oh yeah, I have a Twitter, by the way! I suppose I'll link this blog and post my twitter account on here or something. Perslaps that way people will actually read both of them!

*See what I did there?? In the Godfather Michael Corleone always capitalises Family Business when referring to his mafia family. I started doing the same with my familie's swim school business.

**True story. During the summer when it was too hot to go outside and since I was never really a cartoon watching kind of kid I used to watch Great Hotels with Samantha Brown every morning. I also loved staying at hotels when I was little. I was a weird kid. I also had this line up with my mum every night. After dinner we watched Emeril Lagasse, Unwrapped, and Good Eats with Alton Brown on Food Network before bed.

***The Italian restaurant I went to yesterday with my mum gave me a caprese pizza when I asked for margharita. I mean come on! They didn't even have caprese on their menu which just means they don't know the difference. This is also the restaurant where I started formulating my plans for Ciao Bella.

Wow, that's the most fun I've every had writing a blog! Perslaps I'll do it again soon!

Sometimes I really hate chefs...

... which is a bit of a problem considering I would like to be one some day. I am in the process of writing about my adventures in Ireland but until them, let me make a diversion.

This morning I took the practical exam for my Intro to Professional Cooking class and I was running a bit late because sleepy stupor I thought it would be fine it I hit the snooze button four times, making it so that I slept twenty minutes longer than I had originally intended. So I was running late and got there with about thirty seconds to spare and threw my coat and hat on and ran into the classroom where the only available cooking space was with the Canadian of Hispanic descent whom I may or may not have mentioned before in my first post about Italy. Anyway, I've cooked with her before and found her to be a bit difficult to work with. She's a bit bossy (understatement) and thinks that she's the only competent one in the class. So I set my stuff down, washed my hands, saw that the super secret assignment that was supposed to be a surprise was actually Spaghetti alla Carbanara just like everyone in the class had predicted it would be. The hint he gave us last class was that it would be something with egg yolks. Duh. There wasn't really much else it could be.

So she was getting pots and pans and messing with the stove so I started slicing pancetta. The knife I was using was a really dull classroom one though so it was REALLY difficult to cut the pancetta which is difficult to cut in the first place because it's about 50% fat and has been aged. So I finally got the first piece cut from the rest which she took and started to cube. The second piece was particularly difficult but when I finally got it separated from the rest of the pancetta I put the block of it back on the front table so that other people could use it. I was about to start cubing it when she grabbed it from me. Like, literally, my knife was about to make contact with the meat when it all of a sudden wasn't there anymore. I kind of looked down and blinked stupidly like, "did that just happen?". Then I turned and looked at her for an explanation to which she replied with raised eyebrows, "we need to be kind of quick. Find something else to do." and pushed the notebook toward me. We have two and a half freaking hours to get this really simple recipe correct. Whatever. So I read the directions and it said that you had to separate eggs but I guess my head wasn't all there because I was really taken aback and kind of pissed about the whole pancetta thing so I just completely cracked the egg, egg whites and all in the metal bowl. Unfortunately she was fairly close by and watching me when I did this and she was like "NO, NO, NO! Egg yolks! We're only using egg yolks!" and I apologised and became more freaked out that she was making such a big deal about it.

So I correctly separated the eggs and started whisking them with a fork because I couldn't find the whisk. Well apparently that pissed her off too and she said, "no, honey.", found a whisk, put her hand on her hip and gave me a pitying look like I was some kind of 4 year old who had never set foot in a kitchen before and was just wearing the uniform purely by accident. I had had enough by this point so I told her that it really didn't make a difference especially with this recipe but she put the whisk in the bowl anyhow and just proceeded to shake her head at my idiocy. So I whisked angrily and took my frustration out on those poor, innocent egg yolks.

Then the directions said to add the parmesan cheese and salt and pepper so I did that and proceeded to whisk it together. She then came over to see how I was doing slash reprimand me some more. "What did you do wrong? It's not liquidy enough."

"I did what the directions said to do."

"It doesn't look like there's." she said, taking the bowl from me and putting under Nina's nose.

Nina was working with John behind us. She's really nice and one of the only things that got me through that practical was being able to talk to them, Kate, and James who were working at the station next to ours. Nina just messaged me actually and sympathised with my experiences today. She's awesome. : )

"It's because you whisked it. Just use a fork so that it doesn't combine together so much." Thank you, Nina.

Then my partner pushed the bowl into my hands and said, "just start over." as if it had been my idea to use a whisk and ruin the egg sauce. Good one. So I could hardly believe that she did that and took the bowl and threw the stupid crap out. Nina gave me an apologetic look on my way to the trash can but it didn't really help because I still felt like an idiot.

I washed the bowl, got some more eggs, measured out some more parmesan and went back to our station. She told me to wait until the water was boiling for the pasta until I started on the eggs so I just read the directions to see if there was anything to do in the meantime.

It was then that we figured out that our stove wasn't working. Neither of them. She kept twisting knobs and moving the pots around and flipping switches and then proceeding to get mad at me when she discovered that one of the stove tops was off after she had just turned it off. I kid you not, she said, "what are you doing? This one isn't even on!". We ended up using the stove at the front of the room for boiling water and Nina and John's station behind us for pancetta cooking. Finally it was done and the pasta was ready to be added. I made the egg sauce, only this time I used a fork.

At this point I was feeling more than a little discouraged so I just proceeded to do dishes and clean the station. I decided that I would just drain the pasta and that she could do everything else which consisted of adding the pancetta and oil to the egg mixture, stirring so that the egg didn't cook, and then adding the pasta since I really didn't have confidence in myself to not turn it into an omelet and fail the whole exam. So she did and we were done and it turned out fine. It lacked salt which was probs my fault but I didn't even care because I was done and didn't have to work with her anymore.

She left and I finished cleaning off the counter tops and Kate came over to me and asked me how it went. I said it turned out fine but that my partner was a little bossy. She replied with a knowing look on her face and said, "yeah, she can be really difficult to work with. We've all done our time and know how it is." That helped a lot because I knew that it wasn't just me and that I wasn't a total idiot. It also made me mad though that she did that to Kate. Kate is so nice! And so patient and a wonderful cook! She definitely doesn't deserve crap like that. Nina, Sam, and James all agreed about how difficult she is so I was basically fine and was having fun in the class again.

Then Kate invited me to go to coffee so we went to a cafe and I got this Nutella cappuccino thing and it was good. They are really cool people and I'll be sad that I won't get to continue working with them. I wish I could continue my education there and have another year and half in Florence. That would be so awesome.

I am really not looking forward to going home. I thought it was just that I was sad to leave Europe but I really don't want to go home. I mean I miss my friends and my family and all but really I just don't want to be home. I want to keep traveling and keep exploring. I took a walk the other day on the other side of the Arno for about 5 hours. I found neighborhoods and churches and gelaterias and awesome houses. It was so cool. I listened to my ipod but the main songs were Alloway Grove by Paolo Nutini and Hey, Soul Sister by Train. I love those songs. I found another way to Piazzale Michelangelo from this awesome neighborhood on a hill and watched the sunset from there. So pretty. The Duomo looks so out of place from the rest of the city. It's kind of funny. I'll post a picture of that sometime.

OK, this post is ending now. I've ranted enough. Thank you for reading... or not.

Gelato count: 22

Nannertot escapades: 14

Song currently stuck in my head: You Know Me by Robbie Williams. We heard it on our first night in Rome and it's kind of become our song for the trip because we looked up the video which is hilarious and we keep hearing it on the radio. Love it.

Spring Break part uno

I know I said the next post I would I would publish would be about Paris. Well... I lied. You see, procrastination in blogging comes with some negative side-effects. One of them being memory loss. The days have sort of started running together for me and I've kind of forgotten the order of things. Spring break came first so I will post about it before Paris. I will also post about it in two parts so that it isn't insanely long like my last post which I'm sure no one read/wanted to read when they saw all those paragraphs. Sorry. This way will be better though and I will try not to be so detailed. : )

Anna Lee and Michelle left for Barcelona on Thursday the 18th of March before the rest of us because they don't have class on Thursdays. I finished class on Thursday and then packed and proceeded to not sleep at all that night. I was doing other things consisting of listening to Frank Sinatra, custom designing my own Bentley Mulsanne, publishing the pictures on Facebook in an album entitled "The Epitome of Class" along with the following in the description:

One day I will be rich. I will buy a Bentley and I will listen to Frank Sinatra while being driven around by my chauffeur. He will wear a suit, gloves, and a hat and his name will be Gavin.

Scene:
Classy neighborhood

Gavin: That is a lovely dress, Miss.

Me: Thank you, Gavin. It's Dior.
Gavin: Very good, Miss. Where too?
Me: The Ritz.

Location: My near future.

Now isn't that just the classiest car you've ever seen?

I also blogged and wrote most of the last post! I realise I take an unnecessary amount of time on these posts and write an unnecessary amount of detail. I don't mean to. I just can't help myself! I want to write it all down because it's important to me! So yeah, that blog took a really long time because I was writing while at the same time reliving the trip. We left at 6 AM to catch a flight and I was high off of no sleep whatsoever. We got on the plane and I sat between Alex and Kristen and they successfully distracted me by telling me stories and singing to me. It wasn't too bad except that we were sitting in the back of the plane and it was really loud and a stupid flight attendant kept berating Alex and was like, "no, you can't listen to music on your iPhone even if it is on airplane mode". I don't even believe them when they tell people to turn cellphones off. I've forgotten a couple times. There's no service up there and we've always been perfectly fine. It's just stupid. It was also kind of annoying because the in-case-of-disaster-evacuation-procedure is right in front of you on the seat so you are forced to stare at a plane that is on fire and billowing smoke. Nice. We got to Girona and took the hour bus ride to Barcelona and had a hell of a time finding our hostel. It took about an hour and we were wandering around with heavy bags and I was getting really pissed off. We stopped in a Dominos pizza to ask for directions and ended up just eating there because we were starving. First meal in Spain: Dominos pizza. Good one.

We finally found our hostel and it was kind of cool cause it was apartment style. I was staying in Anna Lee's and Michelle's room and when I got there there was a guy sleeping and snoring away. At 1 in the afternoon. Talk about sleeping your day away in Barcelona! After dropping our stuff off we set off to see the Sagrada Familia and some of Gaudi's other buildings. Gaudi was one character who was definitely ahead of his time. You know how some people just seem like they were born in the wrong decade? Well Gaudi definitely fit this category. By about a hundred years, mind you. It was kind of rainy and some of the buildings kind of reminded me of Parisian apartments. It made me happy and made me really want to go to Paris. We saw the magic fountain which was basically a huge fountain that lit up and sprayed water in different formations to different songs. They played Best Friend by Queen at one point so that was cool. Then for dinner we went to a restaurant for some Spanish food and sangria! I had tapas (some small octopuses in marinara sauce and cuttlefish). Alex and Kristen had paella which is this rice dish with saffron and prawns and mussels and it is delicious!! Kristen and I had some sangria and it was amazing! Alex tried some and described it as a Sonic drink for grown ups. Quite accurate. Then we went back to the hostel and went to bed.

The next day we went into the Sagrada Familia and took the elevator to the top so that we could see the city below and the crazy architecture up close. It was really cool. The tops of some of the towers look like lolly pops. They also look like some kind of Dr Seuss building. And there is a Christmas tree on the front. Yeah.

Then we went to meet Michelle's friend Abby who was studying abroad in Barcelona and she and some of their other friends showed us around. We walked down La Rambla and saw cute animals that this person was selling and then went to the central market and saw all this amazing fruit and cheese and fresh seafood. Like really fresh. The crabs and stuff were still moving. Awesome. We had this really good fresh squeezed fruit juice there too. I had passion fruit. It was great. Then we had chocolate and churros and went to the beach... which was cold. Then we went to Parc Guel and chilled at the top of the hill overlooking the city for like an hour and talked about movies and music and stuff. Then we looked at more Gaudi stuff.

Then Anna Lee wanted Paella for dinner so we walked around a little bit before just deciding that the place we went last night was the cheapest and had more of that. Then we went to this Irish Pub thing by Sagrada Familia because Anna Lee made friends with the guy that was sleeping in our room when I got in there who turned out to be Irish and named Ivan and he invited us out to go drinking. I kind of wanted to go back to the hostel because I was tired and because I'm lame like that but I decided to go out because everyone else was. Also because our hostel was like the hostel of requirement and I could never remember how to get back and would've probably never found it on my own.

We went to the pub for a while and it was mostly empty except for the bar which was crowded with men. One of the bartenders was from Belfast and the other one, the only girl in the whole place apart from us, was from Boston but had developed the same Irish inflections in her voice so that was kind of funny. Now that I think about it everyone at that bar was probably really excited when they saw five girls walk in. Anna Lee, Kim and Ivan started talking and the next time I looked over all had drinks in their hands, compliments of Ivan from Dublin. Oh dear. Alex and I talked to the bartenders and I talked to one guy who had an Aston Villa shirt on. Alex and I decided to leave because I dropped the idea of peacin' out to go get a Toblerone McFlurry from MacDo's and she thought that was an excellent idea. I'm pretty sure we witnessed some promiscuous goings on between some boys that looked to be about 16 and some prostitutes but the important thing is we got our McFlurrys. And they were delicious!! Along with the Tolerone candy bits, they also put some chocolate syrup in there which made for some extra happiness. It was wonderful. We got back to the hostel because Alex isn't an idiot and knew how to find it and then went to bed. When I got there Michelle was there and told me about her day. She had gone off with her friend Abby and had dinner with her host family.

I went to bed and woke up to Ivan coming in at what I thought was 2 or 3 but actually ended up being around 7AM. I fell back asleep before I saw Anna Lee come in but I assumed she was still in the living room. Then i actually woke up around 9 and noticed that she wasn't there. I told Michelle and she looked worried and then looked at my phone and noticed 8 missed calls from Kim. I called back and woke her up. They were fine and Anna Lee was sleeping in their room. They didn't have keys and were locked out for about half an hour and couldn't get anyone to answer their phones to let them in. Oops. I found out later that Ivan had really been determined to get with Anna Lee and that's why she didn't come back to our room. Awkward.

We all got ready eventually and set out for this cool caste, fort thing on top of a hill that overlooked the city. We had to take cable cars to get there but we did and we walked around for a bit and took pictures and stuff. Then we walked back down the hill and saw cute kids playing in the park and parrots in trees and statues of flamenco dancers and it was a pretty cool walk. Then I again dropped the idea of Toblerone McFlurrys which just turned into everyone craving MacDo's. So we went to La Rambla and purchased overpriced fast food which led to this slightly hilarious picture of Kristen in a slightly comatose state after eating a rather large portion of food.

That was pretty much our trip and we were really excited to move on to Ireland. We had a second dinner that consisted of Dominos pizza (twice in one trip... yeah, I know. Sad. But hey, Spanish food is expensive!) which we ate at the hostel while attempting to watch the Star Trek movie in Spanish. We gave up on that and decided to watch Father of the Bride instead. Love that movie. One of my all time favourites. And my dad's too! It was nice. Then we turned in so that we could get up bright and early in the morning to go to Ireland!

The end! I'll post about Ireland soon. Hopefully in a day or two. Hopefully this one wasn't too long. Sorry if it was. I'll try and get better at shortening these things.

Until next time...

Ciao!

Gelato count: 20

Nannertot Escapades: 14

Song: Total Eclipse of the Heart thanks to Glee.

Procrastination Post

I have never not wanted to do something as much as I do not want to do this paper. Seriously, it's literally causing me pain. I have 893 words written so far. I need 2000 in all. How the hell am I supposed to write 2000 words on eggplant?!?

Danielle is due to arrive in 59 minutes. I keep just wanting her to be here. I'm nervous and have been all week but I DON'T KNOW WHY!! What reason do I have to be nervous?? I totally don't! I just am for some reason. I'm definitely excited. I've been waiting for her to come to Florence pretty much since this trip started. It's going to be nice to show her around and take her to my favourite place in the city (Piazzale Mechelangelo) and have a picnic and take awesome pictures. I'm not afraid of my friends not liking her or anything like that. People can't help but like Danielle.

If anything I'm afraid they'll like her more than me and want to trade me in! I jest.

Help me if you can I'm feeling down

And I do appreciate you being around

Help me get my feet back on the ground

Won't you PLEEEAASE please help me?

31 minutes now. Haven't gotten any more writing done. This is going to suck. I guess I'll just stay up and do it tonight. I definitely can't focus and do it now. This paper is going to have hella big margins, that's for sure.

I guess I should address what a major-epic-fail I am at BEDAing or whatever the long acronym was that I came up with. I honestly couldn't come up with things to write. That's not entirely true. I could have posted these angsty posts but I didn't really want to put anyone through that. Also, I didn't even think anyone was reading them so it seemed kind of pointless to blog just to get something out if it was for nothing. Blogging isn't really therapeutic for me like it is for Hayley. It is sometimes. Like right now it's keeping my mind off of the fact that Danielle's train is supposed to arrive in 26 minutes. Usually though I'll just blog if I feel like it or like I want to type something. I read Will Grayson Will Grayson over the weekend and David Levithan's version of Will Grayson put me in a really angsty mood so I have a pretty long post that isn't exactly happy. Basically I was in kind of a mellow/sad mood and I blogged about it. I guess that's another example of blogging being therapeutic. I knew I wasn't going to post it so that helped. It's just a saved draft and that's probably (unless I'm feeling particularly self-destructive) how it will remain.

I can feel my temple throbbing. Is that normal? It's the right side of my head at my hairline and I can feel it moving. Weird. I don't know why I just wrote that. I'm basically just typing for the sake of typing now. 19 minutes.

So, this coming weekend I will be traveling to Barcelona, volcanic ash permitting. Ryan Air hasn't cancelled our flight yet so that's good. I'm pretty excited to go. I'm not however excited to fly. Flying sucks. Always. I know the physics of it but it doesn't help. It's stupid. Why I agree to get into something that huge and heavy and then let it carry me across oceans thousands of feet in the air I don't know. I guess I'm just crazy. At least I'll get a chance to show Danielle the frescos of Ryan Air. That will give us a few moments of entertainment before the freaking out starts at least. Maybe she'll tell me a story while we're taking off or something. That will help.

15 minutes. We're having tacos tonight. Michelle, Alex, The other Lauren, Danielle and I. It was originally just going to be Danielle and I because Danielle told me that she misses taco bell. I'm glad the others are joining in though. We'll have fun. Then for dessert we're makin Nannertots!! Wahoo!! This shit is bananas! Oh yeah!! What the heck am I nervous for?! This is going to be awesome!

Alora... I'm gonna go to the train station now. 12 minutes, you know. I hope her train is on time. My train to Paris was a whole hour late! Efficiency isn't really Italy's forte (more on that later). If you've made it this far then thank you for reading my therapeutic-slash-completely-pointless-blog-post-to-pass-the-time. I'm sure I'll have stories to tell you soon.

Gelato count: 16

: )

Late Night Kebab Runs

I just realised how much I am going to freaking miss being here after this semester is over. I kind of had a brief stint of home-sickness in the middle of class today but then I just wrote a postcard to my friend Kelsey and I was mostly better. Now I'm realising how much it's going to suck to be back home. I'm sitting on the foot of Alex's bed in their apartment and we are all three on our computers. 12 minutes ago I don't even know what we were talking about. Kim was sitting on Michelle's bed and we were having some sort of conversation. I was looking up recipes on Jamie Oliver's website because I do weird things like that sometimes (seriously though, his website is awesome. You should check it out sometime). It was then that I realised that I hadn't really had much to eat today. I voiced that looking at his website wasn't helping the hunger factor and Alex said that she wished the diner down the street was open so that we could get burgers and I looked at her and said, "the kebab place is still open for another 9 minutes". She looked at me with that wide eyed excited look that she has sometimes, shut her laptop and said, "let's get one!". We then proceeded to stuff money in our pockets, throw the nearest pair of shoes on and run out the door and into the stairwell of our apartment building (making it a literal kebab run). Kim was a bit inebriated from having drank almost an entire bottle of wine all by herself so that was entertaining.

We saw the cute kebab man and he smiled when he saw us and gave the kebabs to us for 1 euro off since he was almost out of ingredients and since it was the end of the night. Kim said something about missing us and that made me realise how much I am going to miss these people. Anna Lee, Kristen, Michelle, Alex, and Kim. We've all shared in this experience and it's going to suck being apart. We've already started making plans to roadtrip the country together to see each other. The only problem is that I don't really know if it's going to happen. It's the same with my high school friends. You always say you are going to keep in touch and see each other over the breaks and visit each other at school and it just doesn't happen. Sometimes you can tell if it's just words. It's easy to just throw the comment away when you know that. But sometimes it's someone you really care about and they don't make an effort at all. That's when it sucks. To realise that you still fully intend on keeping in touch and make the effort only to not have the effort returned. I hope it happens. These people are seriously awesome. We are all going to feel the same thing when we get back home too. Going to miss each other like crazy and going to hate the feeling of no one really caring about our trip and experiences when we get back.

I'm starting to sound like an angsty high schooler, I know. I don't mean to. I just realised though that it's sort of like we are in high school. The classes aren't that hard. We're all together pretty much all the time just like high school. Personally the transition from high school to college sucked and I was kind of depressed for a while. I loved my high school friends and I didn't have that many friends in college. Pretty much the only person I knew was Sarah. Thank god for her. I don't know what I would have done to be honest. It was really difficult going from the ease of having your friends around you all day every day to having them spread out around the state and sometimes thrown in other states. It sucked not seeing them every day like I used to. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it putting myself through these things just to have them end. I know it is. This is an awesome, once in a lifetime opportunity. I just wish it could keep going. I have a month and a week left. That's it. I wish I could tote these people around with me every where I go but I can't. I'm unfortunately going to have to leave them behind. Let them move on with their lives like I'll have to move on with my life.

I'm kind of bad at moving on. Like the London trip that I haven't really posted about yet. The last full day in London with Danielle was kind of brought down by my own sadness that it was the last day I got to spend in my favourite place in the world with my favourite person in the world. She told me not to think about it but it didn't really work. I was still sad that I had to leave though and that the experience had to end. I just wish that I could press pause and that I could keep living in the moment. No pause button though, unfortunately. I have to keep getting older and moments have to keep ending until I eventually end. Wow that was depressing. And sadly true.

I can't really think of anything funny to add to this. I'm really sorry about that. This whole post is just going to have to be sad and dead depressing. You don't have to comment or even read it if you don't want. Don't really blame you.

OK, here's something funny. Kim is singing slash dancing to this song right here. Too much drank for Kim. Good times.

B.E.D.A.+.T.F.W.M.T.M.U.F.L

So it has recently come to my attention how stupid it is for me to not be writing in this thing everyday. Honestly, why did I start a blog? Why did I start a blog with this title/username if I wasn't going to actually write about the wanderings of an anglophile. I want to change this. Which is why I am hereby starting B.E.D.A.+.T.F.W.M.T.M.U.F.L. or Blog every day in April + The First Week of May To Make Up For Lateness. It would just be regular BEDA if I hadn't forgotten about this project thing. Honestly April really took me by surprise this year. I was so surprised in fact that I went to Grom (best Gelato place EVER!!) and asked for the flavour of the month which was a delicious green tea with bits of white chocolate in it and was surprised/horrified to realise that it was the first of April and that the flavour of the month had changed to some kind of fragola (strawberry) milkshake! Not a very funny April Fools joke at all. Also I spent the first weekend of April in Paris with Danielle for Easter and was away from a computer. Enough with the excuses...

So I last left you off about a month ago before leaving for London. Wow. That is just unacceptable. Well, I already have a blog post about London in the works and it should come up after this one. In the interest of keeping this blog in sequential order I will not talk about Spring Break or Paris in this particular post. Instead I will talk about... get ready... Florence (!) since that is where I am living and I have yet to really do that. Pretty ridiculous. I am really sorry about what I put you, my lovely readers, through sometimes. You have probably been contemplating un-following me for the past month and a half because the only reason you started following me in the first place was to hear me talk about cool places. And I haven't even done that!! I'm so sorry!! I love you all and I will try and make it up to you!

OK, here I go...

So far I've told you about my classes, my crazy roommates and friends, nannertots... and... sadly that's it. It is tourist season in Florence right now. I guess that means that everyone is on spring break at home and abroad so they are all coming here. It is also really beautiful outside. It is sunny and getting warmer while still maintaining a colder temperature in the shadow of the Duomo. I am sitting inside at the kitchen table of our apartment. If I look to my left I can see the buildings and apartments surrounding me. Down below is some sort of courtyard. I can see the roofs of the buildings. They are the red ceramic tile sort. The tiles sort of layed haphazardly on top and next to each other. Weeds are starting to sprout between some of them. The building across has chips in the cream painted concrete and you can see the red brick show through. The green shutters swing open and shut with the wind. The Terrace across the courtyard is full of flowers which are just now starting to bloom a brilliant fuchsia and canary yellow. The top of the Mercato Centrale is visible and at around 19:00 I can hear the venders outside the market pack up there leather jackets and scarves and other souvenirs and pull their carts down the streets toward home for the day. For now it's quite silent. A sparrow is sitting on my window sill and twittering but other than that I can hear an occasional distant Italian voice apart from the sound of my own typing. Oranges are going out of season. Now it's strawberries and pears. Tonight for dinner I will have a fruit salad consisting of apples, oranges, strawberries, and bananas drizzled with a small bit of sugar to make the fruit sweat and the juices mix together. Fruit salads are lovely. They never really get old for me. I can always enjoy them.

Every day on my way to class I pass this clothes shoppe on the corner of my street. In the window are two manikins. One is without hair and is always, and has been since I've been here, dressed in some sort of Oriental purple dress. The other's outfit changes quite frequently. Always the same pair of plaid black and gray straight legged, high-water trousers and black wig. Sometimes she is sporting a black plaid coat with some read in it and other times its this very conspicuous red plaid coat of exactly the same style. It's basically the same coat but with different colour focus. The one is mainly black and the other is mainly red. As I said, I walk past this every day and every day the coat is different. Now I'm not silly enough to imagine that it is the manikin that can't make up her mind. Instead I like to believe that there's some sort of power struggle between two different shop assistants. Both of them fancying themselves world class status when it comes to clothing shop displays. I imagine them silently feuding by changing the coats. It's been the red one for a while however. Either the black coat enthusiast has been recognised for her full potential and offered to join a special school or even league for fancy clothing shop window displays or her red coat loving fiend of a colleague has hidden her beloved black coat in the depths of the shop basement so that the red coat will never again be usurped from it's rightful place in the display. I return to the drama of the clothing shoppe display window tomorrow to find out what has happened during the night or early morning of the shop's opening. Until then I can only wonder. I can also finish the blog post about London. Yes! I think I will do that!

Until next time, Arrivederci!!

Gelato count: 13

Nannertot escapades: 8

PS. Sorry this was so weird. I have a cold and am kind of drowsy so my musings are a bit weirder than usual. You can tell me how crazy I am. I won't be offended. : )

Bagels and Strawberry Ribena help solve the world's great mysteries...

Just wanted to post quickly on here partly because I haven't in a while but also to announce that I will be arriving in London in a few hours to spend time with Danielle and her other uni slash study abroad friends. I'm really excited to be going there is a really good chance that we are going to go to the West Ham, Bolton match on Saturday. She really wants to go and I am really excited to of course. When I asked her I thought at first that she wouldn't want to but she said that she really wanted to so that was awesome. Friday we are going to Buckingham Palace, Covent Garden, and the squares (Trafalgar, Leicester, and Piccadilly). I'm also going to introduce Danielle to Strawberry Ribena because it is so yummy. And I will definitely have a lot of bagels while I'm there too. Remember what happened last time? Oh the things you can solve with Bagels and Strawberry Ribena. It's amazing. I may come up with something brilliant while I have it so be ready. I'll probably post something really long and philosophical that solves several mysteries of the world so you should probably get excited.

I think that's all I have for you right now. I'm in the middle of writing a post catching you up on all the things I haven't posted about already. Should be done soon.

Gelato count: 11

Nannertot Escapades: 6

Song currently stuck in my head: You gotta wait a minute, wait a minute. Oh yeah...

This Shit is Bananas

Time for a more interesting post. Finally.

So while being here we've noticed some very funny things that Italians have said in English. Here are just a few. Note that we aren't making fun of them or being malicious. We just think it's funny and thought you would too.

"For what concern the things you are going to leave in the apt C, try to leave them in the area where the Kristen's bed is." - Alessia

"Watch out for the hole. Last time someone entered it... with the foot." - tour guide at San Gimingano

The first of these is particularly funny because Kristen is very very tall. 6'1" to be exact. In fact today at our cooking class one of the chefs looked up at Kristen with wide eyes and said "La Montagna!" which means mountain in Italian. Kristen said she had actually never gotten that one before. Very original, Mr Italian man. Very good.

So remember when I said "She should probably tell me what her favourite flavour of cake is the next time she sees me so that I can make it for her some time!"? Well that was just a test to see if she reads this thing. She's probably forgotten all about it but in the beginning of our trip she looked over my shoulder and saw the title of my blog and then proceeded to announce it for everyone to hear and talk about how "adorable" that was. She uses that word quite a lot. A lot of times to describe people, myself included. This was kind of cool at first because I usually want to (for some reason that I can't quite explain) be perceived as cute so it's kind of nice when someone says it. I think it's because I've always been the baby of my family and I used to look up to my older sisters a lot and also because I used to have this friend named Michaella when I was in first grade and one time she was on vacation with us I overheard my sisters talking about how cute she was and I thought they liked her more than they liked me. Not really sure if that has anything to do with it but that's the only event I can place such weird behaviour with. If I asked my sisters they definitely wouldn't remember this at all but it's quite clear to me. It's weird how stuff sticks with you. Even stupid things like that. Or maybe it's just me and I need to learn to get over it. Probably.

So anyway, Katie says that everyone is cute. Even when they're doing really normal things like cutting vegetables or eating cereal. I'm starting to get a cold so if I sleep on my back then I'll snore because I can't breath right. She told me this while we were making fajitas, "You were snoring in your sleep last night. It was adorable". At this point I dropped the chicken I was marinating and looked at her. Snoring is not something I would ever call cute. No matter who was doing it. Ever. She just compliments a lot and I usually don't really know how to deal with compliments. I guess I don't really like them for some reason. I think maybe because I don't do enough to deserve them or something. Like I could do better so why are you complimenting me? Maybe that's it. I've gotten a bit better about taking compliments from people even if I don't take them to heart. Usually I just smile and reply, "Thanks, dude" so that they won't harp on making me accept it. I'm sounding ungrateful. I'm not ungrateful. I would just like to earn the compliment and feel like I did something to deserve it. Like when Danielle or Bailey compliments me. I have to work for it so it feels really good when it happens. Katie on the other hand projectile vomits compliments on everything she sees so it just gets annoying after a while. And not a long while. We have a cooking class together so you can imagine what it's like in there. Or maybe you can't. I'll just tell you. The other day we were making Lemon Shortbread cookies in class and we were cooking together and she said to me and out loud, "She's like the head chef and we're all her little sous chefs." She said that twice and each time I didn't really know how to respond so I just said "not really" or something stupid like that. Then I was squeezing dough out of a pastry bag to make fun designs for the cookies and I made a little flower and she just stood there and watched me with a big, gross smile on her face (I say gross because it was motherly and no one should ever smile at anyone like that unless they have that relationship. You would have thought I had just tied my shoes by myself for the first time or something) and said to the other girl, "She's so good at this, it's ridiculous." I was squeezing dough out of a BAG!! How can someone be gifted at that? They can't. Anyone can do it. Just like anyone can cook. It's easy. Follow some freaking directions. I'm doing this because I like it. Not because I'm better at it than anyone else. I may know a few things that some people don't but that's ONLY because I learned it. I told her to stop right when she said that, but I think she thought I was joking because she said no with that gooey smile still on her face. I'm going to talk to her about it soon though. Only she tends to throw away anything you confront her about. She just replies with a "yeah, that's OK" really quick like it would be her answer no matter what you said. She did that to both Anna Lee and Kim whenever they confronted her about something. Hopefully I'll have balls enough to say that no, it isn't fine and it has to stop.

Anyway, another annoying thing she does is repeat herself a lot. Not on mistake like she doesn't realise she's already told you, but on purpose like she wants to remind you so that it will be the most exciting and important thing going on in your life at the moment. Anna Lee, Kristen, Alex, Michelle, and I have all taken to betting how many times she is going to repeat herself. I won €4 the other day! Yaayuuhh!! She also likes to burst into song all the time and she does it in a way where there are a lot of dips to the song even though that's not how the song goes and it's all head voice and annoying. It's like she's trying to make the song sexy and I'm like, "You're freaking singing Octopus's Garden, what the hell are you doing?" So anyway, the people involved in the betting game mentioned above have started playing a game called Knutes (it was the first word that popped into my head. It's a very wrong pronunciation of the bronze coin in wizarding currency, Knuts. Shut up) where we will drop a lyric into regular conversation with Katie and see if she bursts into song and we get points if she does. There's no prize really. Just a fun game. I came up with it when I overheard Anna Lee and Katie talking about Anna Lee's new boots (which Katie later copied and bought the exact same pair, only in black) and Anna Lee said, "Well, these boots were made for walkin". Then Katie started walk-dancing out of the room while singing that song. At first I was like, "Dammit, Anna Lee!" but then that gave me the idea for the game. It should be fun. I bet we'll all be really good at incorporating song lyrics into regular conversation soon.

In interest of keeping up with this pattern of posting things we keep secret from my roommate I am now going to reveal to you... Nannertots. They are an invention of Michelle's and they are amazing. First, you take a banana, slice it, and roll it in some sugar. While doing that some vegetable oil should be heating in a saucepan (not a lot. Gotta conserve, you know!). Crush up some corn flakes and heat some Nutella and a little bit of milk in another saucepan and stir so that it turns into a sauce. Put the bananas in the saucepan with the oil and let them fry. Take them out, roll them in the corn flakes and set them on a plate. At this point they look like tater tots which is where the name Nannertots came from. Then you drizzle the Nutella sauce on and VOILA! Nannertots.

Alex, Michelle, and I have been developing and perfecting this recipe in secret. The reason we can't tell Katie is because she really likes to steal things and take them for her own. The boots were just one example. Another example is the word "sorostitute". Now, I'm not sure how many of you know what this word means but it's basically a name for the sorority plastic. You know the type. The fashion may have changed since I've been out of the country, but while I was on campus at uni the general sorostitute fashion was Nike running shorts, a Northface jacket, and Ugg boots. This was in the winter with temperatures as low as 25. Occasionally they would put tights on under their shorts but they always had to have the shorts on. I understand that the fashions probably change every year, and maybe even every semester but even with that vague description you will always be able to pinpoint a sorostitute. And they are everywhere. Even on this trip with me. You may be asking yourself why a sorostitute wants to be in another country and your guess would be as good as mine. I really have no idea. Anyway, I dropped this phrase once in Rome and she's used it ever since. She used it 6 or 7 times yesterday. All when I was within earshot. No joke. Repeats herself A LOT. So hopefully you now understand what we're dealing with here and why we can't tell her about Nannertots just yet (or you know, ever). It's because every day (you think I'm exaggerating, but it would be at least twice a day) we would hear, "Dude, I made bomb Nannertots yesterday." Of course you made bomb Nannertots! Nannertots in and of themselves are "bomb". She uses that phrase a lot too. It's always "that's bomb" or "I made bomb___". I just don't want her to take that away like she takes everything else away. And I think the fact that she doesn't know about them makes them better. If she knew about them and was in on it they just wouldn't taste the same.

We came up with a secret phrase for when we want to retreat to Alex and Michelle's apartment to make Nannertots. We're going to say, "this shit is bananas". You may think that is really weird and not sneaky of us at all but you haven't been around our apartment. There are a lot of very weird things said on a daily basis. I could just be sitting at the table, doing my Italian homework and say, "dude, this shit is bananas!". It will work. And it may even get me a point in Knutes!

Anna Lee and I are going to try and come up with some pranks to pull on her and Kim. She came up with a really good one. There is a 99 euro cent store down the street from us and she saw those things that kids play with where you put this little dinosaur thing in a cup of water and watch it grow. Only she saw a penis shaped one. Kind of gross but it could be fun to slip that into her water bottle one of these days. We're going to have to think of some more. Leave suggestions if you have any!!

Shout out time! Elisabeth, that's awesome about the Terry's chocolate orange! They're so good and they last for quite a long time too! : ) The classes are for everyone but there aren't actually a lot of Italians that go to my school. It's an international school so people come from all over the world but I have yet to meet an Italian from there. Weird.

Anyway, I'm going to end it there. I could go on all day about how she annoys me but I really shouldn't. We'll save some for later. You may think that I am a mean person for this entry. I really hope not. Think about it. I have to live with this person for 3 more months. It's going to be really hard. I might as well have some fun while I'm at it. Also, I'm going to start putting random quotes by Anna Lee at the end of these things. She is funny and the things she says should be shared with the world. Heres the first:

Anna Lee Quote of the Day: In reference to this dress. "That looks like something colloquial women die in."

Gelato count: 9

Nannertot Escapades: 3

Song currently stuck in my head: What else?