well i'm finally home! thanks to lufthansa i almost didn't make it, but after arguing with associates in germany, italy, and switzerland, i managed to get home on the planned day.

i guess that's the end of this blog until next spring! thank you for reading and commenting and staying in touch :)

last weekend in italy!

so yesterday i went to the island of MURANO with sky. you know, the place where they make murano glass. it was incredible! we saw a guy blowing glass, and he made a glass horse in a matter of minutes. every store was prettier than the last, and i saw the most gorgeous glasswork. sky and i made friends with lots of the store owners, because we were (gasp!) americans that could speak wonderful italian! i had a conversation with one store owner in particular who said i had such good italian that i should come to italy to teach! we talked for a while and i told him i was studying in padova and that venice was my favorite city, and when i left he gave me a free keychain. :)
after murano, we went to lido again to relax on the beach for a couple hours. the ocean was a little cold, but hey it was still a venice beach.

i've been studying and reading all day today, because tomorrow is a review day and tuesday i have all my finals! i have two written exams, one oral exam, and one timed essay.

today i also packed up one of my suitcases completely, and have the second about half packed. i have my ride to the airport organized, and am all set to go! i can't believe i only have about four days left here!

more rome pictures:



the spanish steps. can you see me?


not hiding anything


the trevi fountain!


in saint peter's


the altar in saint peter's by bernini. the twisted columns are designed after the columns of solomon's temple




saint clement's

more pictures!

in front of constantine's arch!


good without gluten! you know it!


at the coliseum


candid friends!


better picture of me at the coliseum




constantine's arch


the piazza in front of saint peter's




this used to be one of nero's bathtubs! it's probably full of sketch and evil.

so on tuesday i took laura to saint anthony's basilica, and then we decided to go into venice for dinner (what a hard life i have!). we wandered around the whole city, to saint marks, to the rialto bridge, and pretty much everywhere. every once and a while we'd just look at each other and be like hey, we're having dinner together in venice...what. we talked endlessly about linguistics, which was pretty fantastic. we wandered through a bunch of little deserted side roads and wound up at this really amazing bar/restaurant. we got fusili with pesto and ravioli with ragu, and just sat there for hours. the owner was this young and hip lady who did pretty much everything. it was quite the find, basically. another cool thing: while we had been walking around, we got stopped by two students, one from italy, one from france, who were working on an art project that involved asking us what justice was and taking our picture. very cool.

yesterday laura and i had lunch at cafe pedrocchi, this swanky but not overly expensive place with the greatest ice cream dishes ever. after that we went to the scrovegni chapel, which was full of original frescoes by giotto. it was quite an experience seeing such legendary stuff up close. we had dinner at one of my favorite restaurants with some of the other girls, and then went to a really cool bar that played reggae music so that laura could try some traditional veneto drinks. after we got back to the room we stayed up pretty late talking about Serious Things and that was pretty wonderful.

this morning laura departed for france once again. i just had my very last petrarch class, and in 20 minutes i'll be having my last self expression/grammar class! this weekend will be finishing the italo calvino book and preparing for my two final exams. the petrarch exam has a question and answer (and probably analysis) part as well as a sit down essay, and the grammar exam has a question and answer portion and a 20 minute one on one oral exam. pretty scary!

i'll be home a week from today...

so my friend laura is finally here! yesterday we wandered about and shopped a bit; i got to try on exciting clothes that i could never afford haha. we also went inside the duomo and saint justine's basilica, and i had never been in either before so that was cool. there was quite a bit of trouble talking the hotel staff into letting her live in my room with me, but we figured it out. we had a conversation with one guy at the hotel who spoke to her entirely in french and me entirely in italian, and although most of it was debate, it was still linguistically awesome.

lots of work for class and such, finals are next monday and tuesday.

more updates to come! today i'm taking laura to saint anthony's and venice!

I GOT AN A- ON MY PETRARCH PAPER.
i can't believe it! yay!

in other less earthshaking news, i now have a ride to the airport for my trip back to the US, although it involves staying awake for about 24 hours and doing a lot of nothing for a while.

oh did i mention? A-.

so it's raining and thundering like CRAZY right now. i'm with two friends using the internet at school, and we're not quite sure how we're getting back to the hotel alive.

anywho, i had a pretty cool day. i slept in, then i went to the antiques market that's in il prato della valle the third sunday of every month. it was reeeeally cool. after that i wandered through la piazza del santo where saint anthony's basilica is and got a really awesome prosciutto crudo e mozzarella sandwich. while i was wandering some back roads with my sandwich, a french couple flagged me down and were speaking quickly in french, and then were like "ERBE. ehhh....piazza...ERBE." so i was like oh hey okay i know where that is! they didn't understand english OR italian, so i just spoke to them in italian for practice's sake (and i was hoping it'd be closer to french than english), and was like well i can't really explain how to get there because it's pretty far away, but i'm going in that direction so i'll take you! when we got there they asked if i lived here (i can understand easy french verbs woo), and i said i was studying italian. then they said but you ARE italian and i was like ha no, i'm american! and they were all NO WAY (because that is totally the lexicon of elderly french couples).

italian until proven guilty haha.

last full week of school starts tomorrow! my friend laura is also coming into town tomorrow afternoon, i'm SO excited. ^_^