Originally, I started this very blog post as a complain-rant because it's 1:30 in the afternoon and I just ate breakfast and returned to my bed. I have too much to do over the next two weeks and my lovely American friends are leaving soon. But I'll start over and actually give you an account of my life, instead of a list of things that are irking me. Oh and if you were curious, this is how the original blog post started out:
"Title: This shirt is itchy, it's giving me a rash.
So for the title, I will offer an excuse of sorts. I am wearing a cotton shirt that I just washed a few days ago and it had been hanging in my room. When I put it on I became itchy, but as of now it's the only shirt I've got that has long sleeves. Reasons for this itchiness? I believe that it is the humidity here and also my on-again off-again allergy to mold, which isn't helped by the fact that everything here has some trace of mold in it/on it thanks to...what? THE HUMIDITY. My eyes are also itchy. Stupid mold/mystery skin allergy. Boh.
I woke up this morning in a bad mood because, like every day that I've been here it is raining. Also I dreamt about home last night. Lame."
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And now for the things that I would really like to write about. Yesterday I read 50 pages of an Italian novel, which before this point I thought would be impossible for me. Of course it took me a few hours, but I'm proud of myself and I feel more productive than I did yesterday morning. I also have a six page paper which I am trying to avoid writing--it's in Italian, naturally. So you can see my dilemma. You hate writing your papers/presentations/lab reports in English, just imagine having to write them in a different language. Già.
So yesterday I felt good because there was sun and blue sky--albeit with a bit of gray sweeping cloud interrupting every now and then. Still beautiful, it made my day. I woke up and showered, did some laundry, did some dishes and went into the center to go and hang out at BU's school-center-offices. The best part: everyone is traveling this weekend so I had the place all to myself--the not so awesome part: I arrived around 1:30 and they close at 3:00 on Fridays. bummer I only got an hour of reading done. Then Mara almost locked me in, which wouldn't have been terrible because I can just imagine the amount of work I could get done locked in a building in the center of town without food, my computer or anyone to distract me. (so much progress). But I managed to escape. And after I moseyed on over to the supermarket where I bought snacks for myself because I always get really really hungry before dinner. It's that middle time that feels like you're trying to pass a desert without water. And I bought nutella (my lifeline and peanut-butter substitute) a big piece of bread with rosemary baked into it, two packages of ricotta cheese, and some pasta. I packed it all into my disgustingly in-need-of-a-wash university bag and took public transport home.
Weird occurrence on the way to the tram stop. I swear I saw somebody I knew, but I didn't quite know how to approach the situation. My friend Isabella and I met this guy at a birthday party and he was relatively nice/gave us a ride home after the party. So I was walking past the place where people wait, leaning on the metal bars, and who did I see but Ludovico...we had that really weird moment of "do I know you" as I walked by and it probably didn't last as long as I thought but I'm positive that it was him. Of course, how do you randomly interject into a conversation and suggest to a person that you possibly don't know that you actually do know them. Wouldn't it be horrible if it turned out to be some guy named Marco who just happened to look like Ludovico? And furthermore there is that great thing called the language barrier. So I walked by and sat down on the other side of the tram stop. Oh well, life is strange.
I got home and was warm and cozy in my sweater. Did some further reading, ate all of my bread with ricotta--helloooo calories! Read read read. Ate a whole bowl of pasta for dinner and tried to lock myself upstairs to write my paper. However, Angela sent me an eleven page New Yorker article about Wikileaks, so of course I began to read it--my interest in international affairs got the best of me. Then she began to talk to me about said article and then I went on skype and my mom called me. Sooo basically last night was a whole lot of "I didn't really do anything school related". This is a shame because I have very much to do and very little time to do it in--I would much rather be comfortably and steadily working than frantically and hysterically working. And what else what else...
I don't know what I will do when I'm here for my month da sola (alone). It honestly kind of freaks me out...never have I ever been so intimidated by buying a pair of boots. Not to say that I don't have the capability to actually accomplish minor and relatively large tasks, I guess the fear of total miscommunication lurks around every corner and I'm still trying to get over it. There are glimmers of self confidence and self certainty though, I just have to reclaim them. I think it's pretty much like this: I have to accept the fact that I'm an American living abroad and that I shouldn't be ashamed of my country even though it is now known as a place of (not by everyone, but by many people) ignorance, brute force, the Jersey Shore (which I have never watched before), McDonald's, and guns. Makes me sad. But I am American and always will be, I have to learn to embrace it.
Life here is nice though and I do really enjoy it for the most part. I like my afternoon coffee breaks and my sometimes morning coffee breaks and the fact that I pretty much eat well wherever I go. I enjoy that there are trains that go everywhere (though they are sometimes late and often switched around to different tracks) on time for the most part, and that I only have to pay about 3 euro to go somewhere 40 minutes away whereas to get into Boston I have to pay $12 roundtrip. I love walking and spending hours looking into store windows and I enjoy how, for the most part things seem to be more easy-going here.
I do miss the open spaces of New England and the possibility of being alone in a field. And I do get sung to sleep and woken up every morning by the sound of vespas being revved and of the dogs down the street barking and the lady who owns them (or maybe a passerby) yelling "basta, zitto!" But I do know that when I return to the land of peanut butter, french fries, and Boston accents I will have an extremely difficult time forgetting about my life here. And now I should really write my paper because I'm having dinner with Alessandra at 7 PM at her house in centro....wooh! Cheers, I will most likely write letters during January.
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