One last post from Rome...

For Ashlea's birthday, Stephen and Jordan got her most of the stuff street gypsies sell in Rome. The one I hate more than anything is the bubble gun, but amazingly enough, when it was in a room with us instead of on the street being shot at us, it made it much more appealing. Anna tried to figure out the different surfaces she could make bubbles on.

This picture is from the Rome play. Every semester, the students put on a play and this year they did "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"

There's still one picture missing (because I have to get it from someone else since my camera doesn't work) of seven of us wearing "Flusche" shirts. Dr. Flusche is our art history professor and we think she might actually be a superhero, so we made shirts spelling her name. Each shirt is a medieval picture, so they all look like pictures alone, then when we stand together, we spell Flusche. We wore them to our last on-site class and she said we were her favorite class ever and that no one had made t-shirts. She even hugged us and took a picture with us! 

Well, the time is finally here... we fly back to America one week from Friday! This semester has been absolutely unreal and I'm incredibly grateful for all the memories, laughs, and experiences. I've gotten to see and do so much with so many of my close friends and that's just not the kind of situation that many people get to have (well, people who don't go to U.D.) This weekend we enjoyed our last real days in Rome (next weekend we have to study for finals) and it was very bittersweet. My friend, Stephen, and I co-designed the winning t-shirt for the semester this past week, which was pretty cool because that means we got a free shirt. I have one paper and one quiz left before finals and it is really hard to believe that the semester is really about to end. The professors, R.A.s, and our class have all been so awesome to spend this time with. It's so awesome to think of Rome in such a real way. It's definitely been 4 months that I will always remember with a smile. 

Pictures from Venice

This is one of the "streets" of Venice. It's kind of an awkward angle because I was taking the picture from a boat on the Grand Canal, but it gives you the idea. The water just leads straight to these peoples' houses, businesses, etc.!

In St. Mark's Square, the heart of Venice, the pigeons flock like crazy. People sell bird food, which largely causes the pigeons to stay there, so kids will go feed them to get them to sit on their shoulders and hands. They've been fed so much, though, that now you just have to stick your arm out or stand relatively still and pigeons will come land on you. This is my friend, Stephen, doing just that. The pigeons are so fearless that you can punch them out of the air or kick them, but the people selling the food don't like when you do that very much...
This is St. Mark's Cathedral from the side of the Doge's Palace.
Stephen, Ashlea, and I are sitting outside the Doge's Palace waiting to meet everyone for dinner. The arches are part of the palace.

Northern Italy Trip

So this past week was our trip to Northern Italy. More specifically, we went to Venice, Florence, and Assisi. 

Venice was like nothing I had seen before! It was a city without roads!! They just use the canals and walk to get around. We LOVED being in Venice. You could just wander around with no particular destination and always find your way back home, enjoying the entire time wandering. It was weird that pretty much everyone spoke English, but also nice because their Italian is very different from that in Rome. It really is like it's just frozen in time. Instead of city buses, they have boats, which we road all the way down the Grand Canal because the city is supposed to be seen from the water. We talked about how weird it would be to grow up there and never see a car. We went on tours all over the city with our professors. My favorite might have been the Ghost Tour with Flusche (the most amazing art history professor ever). It was probably the first city I actually didn't want to leave. [My camera also died here, so I don't have pictures after Venice.]

We moved to Florence next to immerse ourselves in a world of sculpture and art. Florence was also interesting, but it was not as beautiful as Venice or Assisi. We went through some museums and did that sort of thing (including the David and the Uffizi). Florence also gave us the chance to split up a bit and wander independent of a group of 15 people, which was a nice feeling after about 4 months of constantly being with people.

On Sunday, we made our way to Assisi and saw everything Francis. Dr. Stibora took us all over the city (which is actually built on a hillside--like, every time you want to go anywhere, you have to walk up a hill). Assisi was incredible from a distance and from inside. It looked like a picture of an Italian town that you see in the movies or something like that, but don't think actually could exist. 

It was a great last trip away from Rome. It was a really interesting taste of Italy beyond just Rome and the slums of southern Italy. Rome is still my favorite city in Europe, but Venice is definitely a close second. Now we just have a little over 3 weeks of tests and papers until we finally get to come back to the States!! When we were in our hotel in Venice, we were talking about how the room looked like it should be in a horror film and how we should  be able to turn a lamp and a hole would "open into a magical paradise, like America!!" That was when we realized that it must suck to be someone who wants to immigrate to America, but can't. Oh, and we decided that the girl who haunted our room was named Jennifer. The terrible smell that actually made my room mate throw up was her perfume. (Yeah, we loved Venice despite Jennifer. That's how amazing it was!)

Pictures will come later. I need to upload my few and steal peoples' pictures from the rest of the trip.

12 days, 1 pair of jeans, 3 showers

So, we got back from 10-day today (which was really 12 days for us). it was definitely incredibly memorable!!! 

We started with a day in London. Really, it was just the cheapest way to get to the U.K., but conveniently, we could go see Les Mis while we were there! We started out our day by going to Portobello Market. It was really cute and quaint, but then we decided to head into the heart of London instead of just the outskirts. We walked all over London until it was time to go to St. Paul's Cathedral for the Good Friday service, then to Les Mis!!!! We were sitting in row N, so it ended up being about the 16th row or so. It was absolutely amazing!!! We also never figured out how to flush the toilet in our hostel, so we just went in the city before coming back...

After London, we went to Glasgow. I have since been told by like 4 people that I should avoid Glasgow and that it's shady. Before we left, Dr. Roper said to be careful on Day 7 because that's when everything bad happens. Ashlea and I decided to call Glasgow "Day 7". We got to our hostel in the morning and handed the man our reservation for 2 beds in a female dorm. He responded "Female dorm? Well, we don't do female dorms. We'll find you a couple beds and there should be some girls in the room!" At that point, we didn't realize what we were getting into. The guy leads us through a maze of random rooms and stairwells until we finally arrive at our room. The door has no lock. It doesn't actually shut. It's more like one of the kitchen style doors that you just push through. We go in and the guy starts yelling about 

his Irish co-worker who didnt make our beds while he finishes making them. The basic run-down of this hostel goes something like this: the bed below me has blood stains, the linen looked like it had never been washed, the bathroom walls, floors, and ceilings were covered in substances that shouldn't remain in the bathroom, and ashlea tied her shoes to her bed to make sure no one would steal them. we were afraid to change our clothes or brush our teeth in the hostel, so we went to starbucks to brush our teeth and just didn't change our clothes. The second night, I went to tell the guy that we were checking out in the morning (our plan was to go to the airport and take it from there). A different guy was working, so he started yelling at me that I wasn't staying in the room I said I was. Apparently, that was impossible because there's a group of 25 coming into that room that sleeps 8. Ashlea and I were then instructed to go get our bags so he could move us somewhere else. When we got back, there were 2 girls standing there. We started talking to the American and she informed us that 

she was shocked she waited so long before leaving. They had gotten in that morning. The Australian one was talking to the guy and then said something about not knowing how to get to the airport, so Ashlea and I just looked at each other and said "we'll show you!!" so we all told the guy to give us back whatever money we could have and we went to the airport. once we got there, ashlea and i knew we had 2 nights to look forward to in the airport if we didnt find a hotel for the first night. we saw a big sign that said it had a free shuttle to the hotel and there was a free direct line to the hotel, so we figured that was our best option. they took us out to the middle of no where, but we were excited about having a shower and actually bed linens. the shower was colder than river water, so we used the water heater to make sponge baths in the sink. in the morning, the water worked, so we got show

er #1. we then spent an entire day in the airport. we read our lit trad homework, started our theology papers, played Guess Who? for a couple hours and cards for several hours.

After "Day 7", we went to Dublin and met the rest of the Gypsies. Well, really, we met Stephen because everyone else was sleeping in and shopping around Dublin. That's why he's our favorite. We told him that if he hadn't been there, we might have sat crying outside Dublin castle. The three of us walked up to the Garden of Remembrance and a couple other places before meeting everyone for dinner. 

From Dublin, we went to Galway, then to Kinvarra and saw the essence of Ireland. It was amazing!!! We stayed at a farmhouse that had a sheepdog and cows and sheep! Ireland was beautiful and we both want to go back and spend more time there. It was also where we got to take our second shower of the trip.

From Ireland, we went to Germany and stayed with Cara Miller. After a day on the trains of Berlin getting yelled at in German (apparently, we had children's tickets), we made it to her town. On Sunday, she made us a traditional German brunch before we headed into Berlin for a tour. She showed us a bunch of the monuments and such, then took us to the top of the capitol building so we could look out over Berlin. Then, we went back to her town and ate dinner. I had Wild Boar and Ashlea had Eisbhan (which is like pork cooked wrapped in its own fat so it stays tender...i think it was called eisbhan). It was crazy good!!! Monday we went back into Berlin and got our train to Munich. We saw some friends in the train station and were really excited when we knew all 4 of the other people in our couchette. It wasn't that hard to imagine since like half of UD was coming back from Munich on the night train, but it was still excited. We had to buy our tickets in Berlin from a lady who didn't speak English, so we were just happy they got us back to Rome.

We got into Rome this morning and celebrated as each new person got back on campus. It's really fun to trade stories about who didn't sleep in a bed over the entire trip and who got shaken by a man with no eyes in Morocco.