the people in this program frustrate me.

intensely long blog. ready go.

As Cori and I might say, I Binged your mom last weekend. And we did.

Anyway, it was our Bing trip this past weekend---we went to Pompei, Amalfi Coast, and Naples, in that order pretty much. We were warned like crazy beforehand that we would be robbed, raped, and die in Naples if we didn’t stay alert, but we all came out of it alive for the most part. Probably because we stayed in Sorrento, a really nice resort town, and were only in Naples for like 3-4 hours.

FRIDAY

Woke up superearly to lug our stuff 30 mins to the train station- Cori is better than I and packed all her stuff in her backpack but I had my duffel bag. Train ride was 3.5 hours, mostly filled with eating snacks, talking with Nell and Val, and listening to my iPod, the best travel invention of all time. Arrived in Naples and got on our Pullman (aka large tour bus)—apparently all buses in Italy are called Pullmans, regardless of make. Anyway, the traffic in Naples was horrendous, so it took us like 20 mins to turn around and get on the freeway to Pompei, and people scrape each other’s cars all the time, its kind of like a bumper-cars-fend-for-yourself type of thing.


When we arrived in Pompei, we ate lunch, and I had the first bad gelato I’ve had here so far. Major disappointment, but it was soon remedied by seeing the ruins of Pompei. Very cool—we had an expert on Naples history (NOT a tour guide, she says) named Maria Laura, who was very small but very knowledgeable hahah. Anyway, we wandered around for like 2+ hours.. lots of wandering. We saw temples and homes and fast food counters where Brad claims they cooked Cori’s back in the day. There was this building with 2 dead people in it—we couldn’t really figure it out cause it was in Italian but we thought it was people who had been covered in hot ash, which then cooled into a sculpture-like thing. So creepy—some unnamed people in our group were taking pictures with the dead guys…ew. We also went to the forum and took a million pictures, and to a brothel. I was really struck by how well preserved most of it is—but mostly by how many stray dogs there were running around. Oh, and also how many freakin times the sorority girls asked me to take pictures of them.. at one point I def gave them some lip about it… oops. Oh wait I don’t care.


At night, we went out to dinner, I ate my weight in food and wine. Then a bunch of us sat outside by the pool drinking the cheapest spumante ever, and exchanging funny stories about people at Stanford. Aww. Cori and I thought we’d be sharing a bed, but lo and behold it was two beds pushed together with one comforter. Intense. Oh, our hotel was in Sorrento and was very nice on a sidenote.. and Cori was my roommate, obviously.

SATURDAY

We woke up, ate breakfast at the hotel and boarded the bus again to tour around the Amalfi coast. For a few hours we were driving on these roads that we had to share with other buses and cars on the edge of the world. Literally, just a small wall of cement separated us from the edge of Italy/our deaths. So scary! We got to Amalfi alive, thank god and went through the church—however, at this time we were so tired of churches and standing around listening to Maria Laura talk for ages. Afterwards, we all wandered around—people were suntanning at the end of October! It was beautiful and like 75 degrees…damn. Once more, many pictures were taken. That’s kind of our thing, being girls, apparently…who knew that I was one?

Next we drove on to Ravello, another small town on the coast. This one was less happening, and we had to go through another church, but we also toured this beautiful garden. Bussed back to the hotel in Sorrento on the scary roads. At one point we had to get in reverse and I swear the back of our bus was about a foot from the edge of the cliff.

A bunch of us (just girls this time) went out to dinner together. There was an attempt to unite the two groups in the program, but it failed rather miserably.. oh well. A few of us went up to Brad and Will’s room, where they were watching The Ring in German—we narrated with lots of German words that we knew (weinerschnitzel, gutentag, frau, Weitzel). We were pretty good at German… I didn’t understand the movie at all, actually. Instead of dwelling on it, however, a bunch of people went swimming, too cold for me and I had no bathing suit… stayed up for awhile talking and then went to sleep.

SUNDAY

Breakfast in hotel, checked out, bussed back to Naples to go to yet ANOTHER church.. ahhhhhh! Then we had the “Bing Lunch” with about 10 courses—fried dough and some ricotta thing, pasta carbonara, caprese salad, and then coffee. We were all waiting for the Neapolitan pizza, but none came. : ( We piled back onto the train and spent the 3.5 hours going crazy, as I did not bring any books and my iPod was dying slowly. Mostly talked to Carolyn and Val, and took ridiculous pics. We played Egyptian rat screw towards the end, which got heated real fast—reminded me of Trancos ski trip and my dear “cousin” Andrew.

Quite a solid weekend- don’t you love when rich families pay for you to go places?

Current tasks:
-preparing all the work I have to do for next week because Ashley comes this weekend!!
-Hostels for Rome and Venice
-History midterm, Italian midterm, and Art History take home midterm all due next week. GAH.

It’s looking like I’ll be changing my flight home from Dec 15 to Dec 20, so I can go to Spain for a few day with Christine, perhaps Cori, and see Kristen. Home just before Christmas yay!

p.s. i still feel large.

mmm.

an old man just rode by me on his bike and yelled "hey blondie--you [a] honey!"

that's italy for you.

p.s. i finally put my pictures on a shutterfly album so people who aren't on facebook can see!

---> http://laurakay.shutterfly.com

vanity on a train

Cori, Brad and I ate Japanese food on Saturday! ahhh!! most exciting things that's happened in a few weeks.. well foodwise. It was a pretty epic dinner- it lasted from 9:30-12:30 and consisted of 2 courses for cori and i, and about 6 for brad. i had rice with chicken and curry! (shoutout to teddy) hahah.

Sunday the three of us were supposed to go to Ravenna for the day, but Brad ended up missing the train, so it was just Cori and I. We spent a total of 6 hours on trains to get there and back, and only spent 4 hours actually there haha oops. we did go to see the mosaics that Ravenna is famous for, and to the city's art museum, which was free on sunday for some special festival.


The most memorable part of our lovely trip to Ravenna, however, was the picture-taking cori and i did all the way to Ravenna on the train, and for the hour we had to wait for the train back. We're hot, except in a scrubby traveling student kind of way.








This weekend is the Bing trip to Naples and Pompeii (!!!!)

this week seemed pretty uneventful.

not in the mood to write out full sentences, hence, my week in bullets:

- RAIN. very much cramped my style.
- tour of san lorenzo and san marco- saw some pretty famous early and high Renaissance art
- class.. lame, lame, lame.
- feeling large, so i went to the gym several nights- it felt amazing
- saw the most breathtaking view of the Duomo ever from Owen's host brother's penthouse apartment
- Universale on Thurs night again--fun but didn't live up to last week
- more rain. wet shoes and pants all week-- i hate that
- ate life-changing gnocchi with pesto made by my host mom
- coffee with my language partner Giulia- some nice, some awkward conversation in italian and english
- realized it wouldnt work for christine and i to see each other this weekend
- worked on plans for travel after my program- spain!
- wrote some epically long emails
- bought a pair of boots today! first italian purchase besides food
- talked on the phone to several wonderful people who are all over the world :)

ok, so maybe it wasnt that uneventful, but it felt like it. maybe the vacation portion of this experience is starting to wear off.

bologna!

Saturday I went to Bologna to visit a museum for my art history class. The museum was mostly dull, sadly, but the city was great. I was getting a little tired of the same old Italian town thing, but Bologna was very much a university city—lots of young people, GREAT food, and lots of shopping. Still haven’t done much shopping, and practically no buying though. : (

When we got home, we went straight to dinner at the amazing osteria that Owen took us to a few weeks ago—actually I was the only one of us who’d been, but it definitely lived up to last time for me. Had the delicious prosciutto pizza again, and bruschetta, and afterwards, gelato. The group was a little odd…it was a strange combination of people I am friends with (ie. people I have things to talk about with) and then the sigma chi guys (who are actually quite cool) and most of the sorority girls in the program. Afterwards, we all went to a bar where it was 3 drinks for 10 euro. Sweet. Alas, we just wandered around for awhile, per usual, and eventually just went home.

Sunday night we went to a gelato place that Will and Brad recommended, where they serve gelato in real fruit. Yeah, pretty amazing, except brad ordered the avocado filled with avocado gelato and the bitched about it… no idea what he was thinking. Mmm I had the most amazing lampone con nocciola (raspberry with hazelnut).

Sunday night cori and I also had the most hilarious conversation with our host mom. First, we talked about all the words for pregnant, because cori and I feel rather large after eating so much everyday. Then we were listening to pink floyd, and that started a conversation about whether our host mom likes pink floyd, led zeppelin, the beatles, etc. Fyi: she does enjoy some good pink floyd, zep, beatles, elvis, but most shakira, who she calls “una diavola” (a devil) because she is so good looking. Also, my 60 yr old host mother went to a singles party the other night, but came home disappointed because she doesn’t want to be one of those “desperate women only looking for men.” I laugh.

As most of the past month was filled with eating, I went to the gym today for the first time. It’s way ghetto compared to my love, arrillaga, but it works I suppose. All the Stanford girls go there, and it has wireless! And I hadn’t worked out in a month and it felt DAMN GOOD. Shoutouts to my gym people, tammy and liberty.

Seems like it will be a rather slow week, but who knows. I did turn in my first actual assignment that required thinking yesterday though. I miss you people.

o.m.g.

last night was ridiculous. we went to this club called Universale, where international students get in free on Thursdays. First of all, a quite appalling thing transpired when cori and i were walking to meet our friend will. Email me if you'd like the story--i'd rather not write it here.


anyway, so a bunch of us went to this club, which was amazing--incredibly chic with 2 floors, huge bar, just general ridiculousness. aron was also there, as usual, with his big group of italian friends, and lee-michel, whose name probably means nothing to you all, bought dom perignon again (he did last week too). dear god. we danced the night away of course--first hip hop then it changed to house music, which i hate, so i hit up the smaller hip hop room, where i brought sexy back. fyi. its back hahah. some people got a little crazy...hint hint DEVON SWEZEY, but all in all a really fun time. we left around 3 or 3:30 cause we were pretty dead, but cori stayed til 4 when it closed. what a beast i have for a roommate.

sooo, 4 hours of sleep and a 3 hour class later, i feel great today. not.

giovedi

I realized I haven’t talked much about my classes here, and frankly there isn’t a lot to say for them. First, I am taking a pretty mediocre Italian 21 class. The teacher is a great person but the teaching component, not so much. Her teaching methods are just ridiculous and not worth going into. I am also taking a modern Italian history class for my major, also very much a disappointment. The professor knows what hes talking about, but that’s all he really does-talk continuously for 1.5 hours without stopping or using any other medium to keep us awake. He has been lecturing in English but has been threatening to change to Italian soon, at which point I will completely tune out.

My other two classes are slightly more exciting. One is an art history class on Modernism (i.e. Picasso, Braque, Mondrian, etc.), which has been really interesting, but punctuated by this one girl who thinks class is a show all about her. My last class is studio art, probably my favorite class here. I haven’t been in an art class since high school, but I quickly realized how much I missed it—we get to do a combination of sketching, painting, photography, and looking at contemporary Florentine art. Woohoo! It’s way fun, except the first class we went to this museum of natural something or other, and sketched models of opened up human bodies and fake fetuses. Mmmmm! Fine art.

+++++

Anyway, we went to the Opera last night, thanks to the Bings. I also found out that Stephen Bing, aka father of Elizabeth Hurley’s illegitimate child, is the son of the superrich Bings who pay for us to go places. Regardless, the opera was Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)…it was super long and all in Italian. The best part was dressing up, to be honest. It was my first opera though, as far as I can remember…maybe I slept through any others I’ve seen.

Trying to figure out hostel situation for Paris, Rome, and Venice while simultaneously planning travel after my program. As we know I am horrible at planning, this is going slowly. On another note, I think I am getting sick, but desperately trying to ward it off.

I miss friends!! Can’t wait til Christine and Ashley come visit me, and Thanksgiving in Paris : )

i cant get my pics to upload on here right now :( sadness.

Tonight: some nightclub where international students get in free—ideally many pictures will be taken, esp. by Carolyn, who goes crazy with the camera
Friday: perhaps Fiesole (small town in hills of Florence, with Roman ruins) with Cori
Saturday: Bologna—museum visit for art history, supposedly excellent shopping

i feel large.

Now for my adventures of this weekend—

Saturday, everyone picked up and went to Bologna for the day…except Nell and I. Instead, we went to this amazing market at San Lorenzo. It is both a huge outdoor market with really nice but mostly affordable clothes (unlike US street markets), and a 2-story indoor market filled with the most wonderful foods. It really reminded me of Pike Place in Seattle, if that’s what it’s called.. I forget the name. We ate the most delicious sandwiches, fresh fruit, and dried fruit mmmmm. 2 American couples started talking to us as well, so it was nice to speak completely in English for once.

Later on, we had a romantic dinner for two with, again, amazing food (it usually is). MMMM proscuitto pizza, grilled vegetables, and a 3 euro bottle of wine (ha). We also ate this wonderful fruit dessert at some fancy place in Piazza della Repubblica.


Nothing too exciting happened after dinner/dessert—we got harassed because there were no guys with us (my wingman is always MIA), so we just parted ways and went home. Pretty disappointing.

Sunday Nell, Val and I took the train to Lucca, a really quaint town about an hour Northwest of Florence. The entire old city is enclosed by a huge, circular, brick wall, which was pretty cool-not gonna lie. We wandered around aimlessly, ate lunch, had ice cream, and decided it was beautiful but just too small for our liking. We hopped a train back to Florence, which we now more fully appreciate. It is small enough to walk around but still feels like a big city--mi piace moltissimo.

We took way too many pictures in Lucca…geez. Here are some…

we love wall.

their duomo

we saw a turtle in their botanical gardens


val and nell :)

dang.


we walked up on the ramparts. yay us.

Bing Opera tomorrow night!

last night was our first bing dinner. it was designed to let us all get to know each other, but naturally it ended up being 3 tables all separated into the groups we usuallly hang out in anyway. muaha. anyway, the food was of course quite, quite tasty, as the bings would never let us down.

first of all, we had a huge jug of red wine on the table, of which we were supposed to drink one small glass each. welp, each of us had like 3 glasses. we also had bread, which is always unsalted here for some reason. not so good..not even dipping sauce like at home!!!

anyway, the first course was penne with pesto and those little cherry tomatoes..mmmm. it came out in a huge serving dish, which was rather annoying. then we had scallopini (veal, evidently) with delicious rosemary potatoes, and a pretty average salad. mmmmm then came the scoop of gelato and assorted fruit together. then i had the strongest espresso ever, which felt interesting with the wine.

i really dont have much else to say.

pictures!

thanks to val, i now know how to post pictures on here, so im going to go crazy now.

first of all, tammy (who no longer sends me personal emails..hint hint tammy) requested that i tell her more about the food and the people here.

as for the food, there is simply too much and it is simply too good. my breakfasts usually consist of bread and gnutella, fruit of some kind (usually DELICIOUS peaches, apples, or pears), and these wheat cookie/cracker things that my host mom buys, God bless her soul. Lunch varies from an entire margherita pizza, which I ate today like the fatty I am, to sandwiches on bread called panino, usually with some kind of cheese and meat. I have found that the prosciutto cotto (cooked ham) and pecorino cheese are quite good together. honorable mention: turkey and mozzarella with pesto sauce.

then come the hours before dinner, and there are many because most nights we eat at 8 or 8:30, but tuesday and thursday my mother has dance lessons til 9 pm, so i pretty much starve until then. (shout out to ashley, who would die as well). The food totally makes up for the starvation period, however. There are always at least 2 courses followed by a dessert, usually of fruit. Cori and I cannot stop eating bread, and will be 200 pounds by the time we leave here. The meals we have are pretty much determined by what is in season here, vegetable-wise, which is a little different from America. Right now melanzana (eggplant) is the hot new veggie, so we have that A LOT. kind of funny considering I dont think I'd ever tried eggplant in the U.S. Most things we eat are either cooked in heavy olive oil, salt, etc. but taste amazing.

As for the people, kind of a vague request, Tammy. The people in the program are, for the most part, cool. There is the group of sorority girls who are rather exclusive but appear decent enough. Then there's everyone else: all nice people, as far as I can tell, some were friends before the program but it's fairly easy to break into their world if you hang around enough heheh. The few guys in the program (8 or 9 out of 35) all kind of do their own thing, most likely enjoying the odds here. Most of the Stanford people who are here I have met in the past or at least heard of-- most often we share mutual friends (funnily enough, often sigma nus).

I haven't gotten a handle on the Italians here yet. The ones we meet through the language partner program and Aron/Cameron seem to be real nice people, mostly guys, and not conform to the sleazy stereotype. However, the "Ciao bionda" creepy-type guys are ubiquitious as far as I can tell, especially at night. Such a change to go from Stanford, a really safe place where you can wander around alone at 4 am and be fine, to come here, where I felt really unsafe walking 10 minutes alone the other night at midnight and decided to go at sort of a power walk/slow run home haha.

and now, the pictures. i posted a lot of these on facebook but anyway..

our room at our host mom's apartment

first damn good sandwich i had when i got here:

the stanford center--right on the Arno, next to the ponte vecchio


the roommate and i


more girls


the most beautiful synagogue ive ever seen..oops im not jewish



and lastly, florence soccer!!


ciao bellini.

my plans for the next few weekends (tentatively):

this weekend Oct 7-8: probably day trip to a nearby city
Oct 14-15: Bologna
Oct 21-22: Perugia chocolate festival, Christine visits from Rome!!
Oct 27-29: Bing trip to Naples/Amalfi coast!!! :)

Thanksgiving tickets are booked to Paris
Nov 22-25. be there or be square--even you Santiago people.

i have wasted all of today in the center instead of being out in the city, but i needed an internet catchup day. i added pictures on facebook, but i still should take them more often. i am bad...also sent out postcards day before last so i hope you all get them before i get home!

time for art history class.