Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre is a rugged portion of coast on the Italian Riviera. It literally means the "five lands" and is composed of 5 little villages connected by paths. (Thank you wikipedia!) Anyway, lots of other people from my program already hiked Cinque Terre a few weeks ago. (We had plans to do it, but it was going to rain and we didn't do enough planning.) But, we were determined to do it this weekend.

Yesterday, Amanda (not my roommate or the house fellow...a different Amanda), Julian, Laura, Yunha, and I set out to conquer the trails. We packed some food for breakfast and lunch and hit the train at 9am. (All of the other groups that went from the villa in the past weeks left at 5am...we decided that was quite ridiculous!) We had to wait for a while for a train so we had our breakfast!

Here's Amanda and Laura with our breakfast: off brand Honey Nut Cheerios and red pop (we thought it was juice, but it wasn't!).

We had three hours or so on the train until we got to La Spezia, the bigger town just outside the 5 villages of Cinque Terre. We bought tickets for the park and then found a different train to take us to village number 5. We had some insider advice about starting at village 5 and ending at 1 since the hike from 5 to 4 and 4 to 3 are the hardest and the longest. When the train emptied out at city one, we giggled because we knew the right way to hike! 10 minutes later we got to Monterosso and began the hike. It was soooo exhausting and quite strenuous. (Everyone had told us about how beautiful the views were and how much fun they had...they forgot to mention anything about us actually having to do hard work!) Anyway, it took about two hours to get to the second town, Vernazza.

Here's Vernazza from the trail.

The hike was a lot of up and down stairs, but it was fun. Two of our companions dropped out after the first city and took a bus to the next town while we hiked. We thought the bus sounded like a really good idea but knew we would regret it if we didn't hike. From Vernazza to the next town, Corniglia, there seemed to be a lot of stairs. I think leaving the city started with a few hundred followed by a few hundred more five minutes up the trail! (And a few hundred more mear minutes later)

This is our victory picture (Julian, me, and Laura) that some French Canadians took of us after making it from Vernazza to Corniglia. (We were told by a friend from the villa that was hiking the other way that after this portion, it was a cake walk!)

The orginal plan was to find a beah at Corniglia to swim. Unfortunately for us, Corniglia wasn't as close to sea level as the first two towns. So, we met back up with Amanda and Yunah and had some lunch. (We had packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which were such a treat since peanut butter is quite rare this side of the Atlantic!) Here's what we saw when we rounded a corner of a mountain. This is Corniglia...where we wanted to swim...have a look...

Here's Corniglia, see, the little village way up on the cliff. Shoot, no swimming there!

Anyway, after lunch we headed to Manarola. From Corniglia on, the hike was a cake-walk. It started with 368 actual stairs down (1. thankfully they were down, not up... 2. I say actual stairs because they weren't made of compacted earth and rocks...they were tile and cement!). Julian, Laura and I got a little excited about the stairs and accidently ran all the way down! It was so much fun! Then, we figured we'd meet up with Yunha and Amanda later because they were pretty far behind us after we ran! So, we kept walking and found some stairs that led down to a "beach." This beach was all rocks, but it was water! We swam for a while in the very chilly and refreshing sea. We had brought swimsuits, which was a great idea, because we were able to let our clothes air out a bit. (Here's exciting news: from this point on in the journey, I didn't sweat! It was quite a nice change from the rest of the day!)

When we got to Manarola, Amanda and Yunha had sat down to eat. Julian joined them and Laura and I went to get gelato. I had some amazing green apple gelato...yum! Then, Laura and I did some searching and found some rocks right on the edge of the water to relax while the others ate. We did some talking, some listening to music, some writing, and watched the sunset. It was so great to have a little relaxing and quiet after the rest of our journey!

Here's a picture Laura took of me. This is where we were sitting and watching the sunset. It was a near-perfect evening!

Well, we finally made our way to Riomaggiore. This walk was about 20 minutes long and is also called "lover's walk". When we got to Riomaggiore it was pretty dark and we didn't explore the town much as we had to catch a train to La Spezia so that we could catch a train to Pisa to transfer to a different train to Florence where we caught a bus home to the villa!

The trip to Cinque Terre was, as I told the people with me, one of the best experiences of my life! It was so undescribable--although, I seem to have found plently of words here to describe it! Finally, I'm going to have to suggest, that if you ever make a trip to Northern Coastal Italy...check out Cinque Terre!

Boys don't help plan anything...fall break plans!

Fall break is rapidly approaching, well not too rapidly, it falls (haha) during the last week of October. My plans went back and forth a bunch of times due to traveling with different people and cheaper flights. We had our plans pretty much set and then turned our itinerary completely around because we could save heaps of money.

Laura, Amanda Villa, Abe, and I will be traveling together. We will start the trip by flying from Milan to London and stay for three nights (my roommate Amanda and friend Julian will also be there during our stay). Then, we catch a train/ferry combo to Dublin for two nights. This is followed by a plane ride to Munich for two nights. Our final destination is Stockholm, Sweden. We are super excited about all of this. (Esp. Stockholm as we will be staying on a boat, transformed into a hostel!) After two nights in Stockholm we fly back to Milan so we can get back for classes on Nov. 2.

Anyway, we are all over the map because it was the cheapest way to plan the trip. Our original plans included Amsterdam and not Stockholm. However, we saved like 200 Euro by going to Stockholm!!! (Exclamation points are officially back! (Because I am just that excited about this trip!))

Finally, about the title of this post. Abe, the guy coming with us on our trip, was worthless. Just kidding! (Kind of!) This past Sunday morning we sat down to plan the trip and look up hostels and spent 4 hours or so booking the trip, and what did he do? He handed Amanda his credit card and driver's license and let her do everything for him. If he tried to do that to me, I would have made him come book everything himself! For the record, I'm not mad about this at all and am really excited about Abe coming along because he is pretty hilarious!

A post about my Saturday adventure is coming tomorrow...stay tuned!
So, here's to waiting 24 more days until I can start that adventure (with a trip to the Almalfi coast and a trip to Oslo, Norway tucked into those 24 days, of course!).

Friday Frolics in Fiesole

We had no big plans for Friday so decided a day trip to Fiesole was in order. Fiesole is a little town on the opposite side of Florence than Sesto. We were able to take a bus to the train station in Florence and then switch buses to go out to Fiesole. Laura, the house fellow Amanda, and my roommates Amanda and Kristine went with. The city is pretty small and cute...the reason for many wanting to visit is the amazing view of Florence from the top of the city. Well, we sat and ate our packed lunch while staring down at Florence then walked a while and explored the city. We walked around for a while until we found a nice, high ledge to sit on and relax.

Here's Amanda, the house fellow, me and my roommate Amanda at the ledge that we hung out on. (It's really bad quality because I stole it off of facebook and put it on here!)

After that, we wandered around the city some more then sat down for coffee and relaxed some more. At this point it was about 5:00 and we wanted to make sure we got home before supper, of course!

I was so exhausted and decided to nap for an hour before supper. After supper, I did some skyping with Tracy, a friend from school and my mom. Of course, mom had to go right away becuase she had to go make a cherry pie because Maggie and Phil were coming over for supper...not fair!

Anyway, it was a fun day filled with lots of walking. We made plans on Friday to hike Cinque Terre on Saturday, but more on that in the next post!

Here's Florence from Fiesole. The picture looks better when it's bigger, and it's kind of smoggy looking. Weird. Anyway, it was quite a beautiful sight!

No more exclamation points!!!!

I gave my blog address to my roommate Amanda and she said I use exclamation points a lot. I agree, but they are so much fun to use. I suppose I will stop using them to please her. (Shoot, I just used one and had to delete it. It just happened again.)

Anyway, we spend a couple hours tonight trying to make fall break plans. I think our itinerary (as of now) includes Dublin, London, Amsterdam and Bavaria. Tomorrow is probably the day we will be booking everything. I'll let you know more details as we finalize our fantastic plans. :)

But Jane, you forgot to mention your Gondola ride?

You go to Paris and go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. You go to Florida and go to Disney World. You go to Rome and see the Colosseum and the Vatican. You go to Venice and ride in a gondola.

These statements are usually pretty true for tourists. Unless said gondola ride costs 120 Euro. What a tourist trap! And apparently the gondoliers don't sing Venetian songs, they sing Neapolitan songs...not that I could tell the difference there! Anyway, gondola rides were just too expensive and walking around was good enough for me!

There was a 50 cent gondola that took you across the canal...but I unfortunately never stumbled upon that. I just wanted to make sure and clear that up for everyone! (And don't worry, I still had a great time in Venice without a gondola ride!)

One more thing....

There are so many double-names in the villa. I mean there are under 40 students so you wouldn't think this would happen. Here's a taste of what we're dealing with.

An Andy and and Andrew.

Three Amandas (house fellow/RA, my roommate, and Amanda Villa)

two Kelseys

two Lauras

And Alex and an Alexa

I think there may be more, but what the heck!? It's so confusing!

Playing catch up...

Sunday morning brought Church. I'm going two weeks and counting without attending an Italian funeral! :) Also, Amanda Villa (not my roommate) came with me to Church this Sunday, which was fun! Sunday consisted mostly of homework and facebooking!

Monday, we watched a movie in my Italian Encounters class (Summertime with Katharine Hepburn). I also got my quiz from Italian class from last Thursday back. I got an A! Then, at 8:00 p.m. I had a mandatory movie to watch for a different class (Rome Open City with no one I've ever heard of before). After the movie I headed to the library in the villa to crank out my Art History paper. It was more of a personal reflection on a piece we've seen than a paper. Well, facebook, Laura, and my roommate Amanda distracted me and I distracted them. Needless to say, we didn't get a lot done.

They finally and I worked for about twenty minutes and got over 500 words done (the paper had to be 500 words!) but they weren't very good words. I was tired and had all afternoon on Tuesday to do it so I went to bed.

Tuesday morning we had on-site lecture with Professor Mariotti at the Bargello Museum. The museum had a lot of Michelangelo and Donatello. The lecture lasted until 11:15 and then Laura, Amanda and I hit the market on the way to the bus. I bought a nice cashmere scarf for 5 Euro. It's purrty! We came home in time for lunch and ate. Then I worked on my paper.

I ended up writing about Donatello's Mary Magdalene sculpture and one of Michelangelo's Pietas. It turns out Mich. made three Pietas...I only knew about the one in Rome. The one in Florence was pretty cool. Well, I got the paper done and in on time. Then I had Italian class in the evening, followed by supper. Then, after supper we had another mandatory movie for Studies in Modern Italian Lit (which we affectionately call SMIL). We watched Mediterraneo (again with no one I know in it). It was a decent movie.

After the movie I moved to the library to do some work and did Italian homework then decided to update the ol' blog. So, here I am! (It's so weird to update the blog regularly!) Anyway, I'll probably do some thinking about the movies we saw and some reading for Art History and then hit the hay! Buona Notte!

Venezia è una bella città! (part due)

I'll try to be a bit more concise about day two of the Venice trip since it seems I went a bit overboard with day one's post. Anyway, to end the towel story from the previous page, we didn't get any towels. My roommates didn't shower and I showered that night and dried off with our hand towel. I was mad at the hotel. But, hey, if that was the extent of my woes in Venice, I figured I'd survive!

Well, Ashley, Ashley, Tessa, Amanda and Laura had decided to get up and walk around Venice at six a.m. When they told me the plan I thought it sounded like fun! At 5:45 the next morning, I didn't want to go anymore. But, I got up and we walked around Venice. The sunrise was magnificent and, get this, there were no tourists around! Palazzo San Marco was empty, save for the pigeons. Ponte Rialto, empty! It was so perfect. We go back to the hotel for a breakfast of croissants, rolls, juice, espresso, nutella, etc. Then we headed to the dell'accademia (a museum) for a guided tour by Prof. Mariotti. After the tour we were free to do as we pleased until we had to board a boat at 4:30 to head home.

Many, many people wanted to check out the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and another modern art exhibit. I really am not a fan of modern art, at all, so I said I was just going to walk around. There were a few other people that also just walked around and hung out. We got lunch at a pizzeria (I had a good pizza with different peppers on it) and watch tourists at Palazzo San Marco. We got a few souvenirs and gelato.

We eventually all made it back to the hotel and then to the boat to take us to the bus. The ride home consisted of some staring at the scenery in awe and a very short nap (in which I was woken up because I drooled...no one saw!). We had supper at the villa when we got back.

Later in the evening I was freaking out because the trip to Venice (a city that Amanda and I both thought didn't exist until we saw it with our own eyes) made me realize that I'm living in Italy right now. And I'm still freaking out in my head--I try not to vocalize those thoughts because people may think I'm weird. Oh well.

Ah, Venice. Grandma and Grandpa Voelker think Prague is the most beautiful city in the world. I'm headed to Prague in November and I think it may have some competition from Venice in that category.

Venezia è bellisima!

(As a disclaimer, if this post seems a little awkwardly worded it's because I just got done writing an Art History paper and I was trying to sound smart in the paper! Also, I will probably repeat a lot of adjectives as words can't begin to describe the beauty that was our trip to Venice.) :)

Our trip to Venice was absolutely spectacular! It started with a far too early morning. The bus left at 7:30 and we had to have eaten breakfast and packed a lunch prior to departure. The ride was going to be about three hours long and I was so excited at the beginning of the ride! Immediately we drove into the foothills surrounding Sesto Fiorentino and then into the Apennine mountains. The scenery was amazing the entire way. I, amazingly, wasn't too tired so I chose to read my book--I'm rereading Pride and Prejudice because I love that book. But, driving through the mountain range made that a difficult task...too many tunnels! I finally gave up reading and took a little nap. It's Italian law for tour busses to stop on the outside of town to register with the Police (oh, Italians!). It was probably one of the ugliest places in all of Venice. But, it was just the place to register. Ten minutes later we pulled into the tourist's haven...buses, taxis, boats, tourists, tourists, and more tourists. 7 million people visit Venice per year and over 200,000 per day. Most stay fewer than 24 hours.

Anyway we met our architecture students (they were already on a trip for a few days and met us in Venice). Then, we boarded our private boat. The boat gave us a little tour of Venice, although we couldn't go down the grand canal as private boats aren't allowed there. We stopped at Murano...the glass blowing capital of the world (I don't actually know if that is its official title, but it sounds cool!). We had a little 5 minute glass blowing demonstration. It blew my mind...no pun intended! First he made a vase/bottle in two minutes. Then, a glass horse in under three minutes. He was just rolling the metal rod with molten glass on it and all of the sudden a horse head appeared. I can't even explain it...it was that cool! We then got to shop around the island for a while. The glass blowing used to take place on the main part of Venice, but as you may be able to imagine glass blowing is quite a fire hazard. And fire hazards on a group of 118 islands whose houses are mostly made of wood because wood is flexible and the materials have to be flexible because the city is sinking is not a good idea. (That was probably a very ungrammatical sentence!)

We got back on the boat and some of the grad students were complaining about how expensive it probably was to charter a boat to take us to the 5 minute glass blowing demonstration and shop for an hour, and they thought the demonstration wasn't even that great. But, at least for my roommate Amanda and me, it was one of the coolest things we've ever seen...and totally worth it! We didn't let them rain on our parade.

Anyway, the boat took us to a different dock on the main part of Venice that was quite close to our hotel...only one bridge away! :) We checked into our hotel room and freshened up. I stayed in a room with my roommate Amanda, and two girls named Laura and Yunha. I know Laura pretty well and didn't know Yunha very much, so that was fun. The whole group then gathered and walked to Piazzo San Marco (St. Mark's Square), the spot where all the main tourist attractions of Venice can be found. We had a date with two Venetian tour guides who gave us a tour of the Doge's Palace. (In my Italian Encounters class we had talked about Venice quite a bit and read articles about Piazza San Marco, so I really felt like I knew about the city and what things were...it was great!) Anyway, the Doge's Palace is the Palace where the Doge used to live, when they had a Doge. Also, a Doge was the ruler (like a Duke, I guess). It was interesting and we learned a lot about the history of Venice; I'll spare you the details.

After the two hour tour we had time to ourselves and needed to meet back at the Piazza San Marco at 7:30. During free time we got gelato, saw Ponte Rialto (one of three bridges, I think the oldest, crossing the Grand Canal that is filled with tourist shops), ran into a museum for a bit and did a lot of walking and exploring.

At 7:30 we hit one of two of my favorite parts of the trip. A private showing of la basilica di San Marco (St. Mark's Basilica!). A walk through of the church is something that every tourist does when he visits Venice. However, the building closes earlier than 7:30 and was opened just for the 40 of us; they bolted the door behind us! When we walked in, we stood in the entryway and got a brief history of the place by Professor Mariotti. (I don't know who this woman is that she has the power to get us a private showing of San Marco...but she rocks!) Then, we walked into the church which was pitch black and sat down. After we were all seated the lights start slowly coming on and lighting up different parts of the Basilica until finally all of the lights are on. It was quite an experience and one that, I'm sure, I will never have again. She told us all about the paintings and altars and everything! Then, the security guard turned around the altar for us to reveal the golden altar. This is the altar they use only for special holy days and, in the words of Professor Mariotti, probably the most grand and expensive piece of work we will see. It was all gold with gems added all over it. It is also turned around by a hand crank that has been in the church forever. Also, under the altar lies the remains of St. Mark the Evangelist. The condensed story is that two Venetian merchants stole St. Mark's remains from Alexandria in 828 and brought him back to Venice where he became the cities new patron saint. (St. Theodore got knocked out of that spot, poor guy!) We also saw the crypt where St. Mark used to be kept and many important bishops and cardinals are now buried. There's a lot more very interesting history that we learned, but I'll spare you the details and let you look it up if you are interested...or ask me!

Anyway, the tour ended and we were on our own. A group of seven of us--I'll name drop here because I know mom likes hearing the names of my friends!:)--Amanda Villa (not my roommate), Julian, Sam, Nishant, Alex, Kristine (my roommate) and me, went out to dinner at a cute little Italian restaurant. I had some good pasta with, get this Emma, crushed red peppers!

We bought some wine and were going to head back to the hotel to hang out for the night. I was navigating and asked if we wanted to take the short way or long way home and no one said anything until Alex said, the long way. Well, it was quite long. Two hours later and many wrong turns we made it. None of us minded the tour of Venice, except Nishant was getting a little angry! oops. I had no problem reading the map of Venice and figuring out where we were. My problem came when I realized I had no clue which direction we were facing...and street signs seem to be a rare commodity. Either there will be one street sign or just the name of the campo (square, piazza). So, my strategy was to figure out where we were, walk for a while then check the map and see if we made any progress. I thought it was working fine, other people disagreed. Anyway, Venice was beautiful at night, of course, and we had a good time.

When we got back to Hotel alla Salute everyone was too tire to hang out and drink wine so the other six went to bed. My hotel-mates Laura and Amanda were relaxing in the lobby so I sat by them for a while. We witnessed some angry Germans yell at the hotel staff...it was funny...there was also a towel fiasco. Our room, which had a bathroom in the hallway that was shared with other hotel rooms, didn't have any towels in it. I asked around and everyone else had towels so I asked the front desk for towels. He asked if we had a private bathroom and I said there was one right around the corner from our room. He said we don't get towels then...and refused to give them to me! :( Anyway, most of our friends were sleeping or didn't have extra towels....I'll continue this story in the next post...mostly because it's supper time! YUMMY! A presto!

Venice

Venice was amazingly beautiful.

Venice!

The whole program (all 38 of us) is off to Venice tomorrow to explore the sinking city! I'm most excited about our showing of the Cathedral of San Marco (St. Mark's Cathedral!). We arrive at 7:25 and go into the Cathedral. The door is bolted shut and we get to watch the paintings on the wall get slowly illuminated. It's going to be spectacular! Oh, did I mention this is a private showing just for our group!

Anyway, I'll be sure to update the blog about my gondola rides and the Bridge of Sighs when I get home on Saturday!

(P.S. 26 days into the trip and I'm caught up blogging. Finally!)

Wait, this isn't a vacation?

I think nearly 100% of students at this villa were under the impression that we were on a four month long vacation that involved a little reading and studying. WRONG! For the most part, every night after dinner consists of studying until bedtime. One of the Duke students said how they were told that this program is one of the hardest Study Abroad programs that Duke has to offer. What did I get myself into?

I've found that I have a plethora of reading, all the time...and I may never be caught up. But, it's not hard work; it's just a lot. The second week of classes went well and culminated with an Italian quiz this evening (which I think went abastanzo bene). Abastanzo bene means "pretty well" when someone asks "how are you." I don't know if it works in this case--actually it probably doesn't...oh well!

Anyway, my vacation has turned into hard core school in a 600 year old villa in Tuscany. (Who am I to complain!?)

If she's an artist, what is the other one?

Here's a little post about my roommates. I believe I mentioned their names before, but one is Amanda and she is a senior English major at Madison and Kristine is a super senior majoring in music, at Madison. We get along great. But I was really, really, really scared when I first met...Kristine.

When I arrived Amanda was here and napping. Eventually we went and walked around the town and got a snack and she seemed cool and pretty normal.

Then Kristine came. When she arrived she says, "Hi, I'm Kristine. This may sound weird, but I don't really like people." And I thought, ahhh....shoot!!!! Why would they put me with a roommate who doesn't like people...why wouldn't she get a single room! Anyway, it turns out she's not that weird! :)

One day when we were sitting in our room she starts telling me about our roommate applications. She said she wrote, "I am an artist, don't put me with some stupid sorority girl or I don't know what I'll do!" (It's better if you hear it in the dramatic accent I use when telling other people the story or making fun of Kristine for saying that!) I laughed so hard.

Amanda was skyping with her dad the other day and he asked about her roommates. Naturally, she told the story about Kristine being an artist. Her dad said, "Well, if one's an artist what does that make the other one." Amanda says, "Well, I guess she's a klutz and I'm a mess." (Quite accurate, I thought!)

So, room one has an artist, a klutz and a mess. And, we mesh together quite well!

Since I told a funny story about Kristine, one about Amanda is necessary. I previously wrote about a group of us going out the first Saturday we were here. Well, Amanda put on a dress and wore some high heels. A guy in the program named Sam says to her, "Wow, Amanda, you take off all of those hippie clothes and you kind of look nice!" I thought that was so funny and now make fun of her for that. It's great!

A Free Weekend!

There was a group of us that stuck around Florence and Sesto the first weekend. I figured I get lost plenty in Florence that I don't need to go and navigate another city. Friday I did two much-needed loads of laundry. When I put my clothes in the washer I decided to walk to the Esselunga--a supermarket for some school supplies and whatnot. It's probably about a ten minute walk. About 3 minutes into it, it starts drizzling. I think, "Wow, a little Italian rain. This is great!" Then, it starts raining harder, and harder, and harder. Just when I thought it couldn't rain harder, it did! Now, when I left the villa, the sky showed no indication of the downpour that was soon to come...so my raincoat and umbrella were sitting safely (and dryly) inside of my closet. Anyway, I made it to the Esselunga and sat outside for a while to wring my hair out and try to stop dripping...and I wanted to enjoy the rain from the protection of the overhang. I went into the supermarket and found what I needed all the while getting strange looks from the Italians. (Like none of them have been caught in a downpour before! pshh) It was sunny when I left the store.

Friday night we watched a movie called Italian For Beginners. I know what you are thinking...you stayed in on a Friday night to learn Italian!? (Mom and dad, you are probably proud of me for doing that!) But, the movie is actually a Danish film about a bunch of strangers taking an Italian class and then eventually going to Venice together. It is filled with death and drama. It was made in 2000, but looked like a home video from 1994. One of the professors strongly recommended it to the house fellow, so we watched it. We are unsure why he thought it was so funny. Weird.

Sesto has a pretty popular market on Saturday mornings. We got up and went to that around 8:30ish. They had tons of clothes and a food market with whole pigs. There was a volunteering day in Florence at 10am. American students were meeting to go down by the Arno and clean up. We had intentions of going but got to the bus stop at 9:45ish. We decided that the worst time to be late to a group is when no one knows you are coming. (There wasn't a sign-up. You just showed up at a fountain in downtown at 10 if you wanted to help.) So, Laura, Amanda and I went to a bar (which is actually a cafe...they just call them bars here!) for cappuccino and pastries instead! In the afternoon Amanda, Abe and I went for a stroll around Sesto and made reservations for supper. We went through a big ordeal trying to figure out how many people we should make the reservation for. We decided on 6. Then, a group of 9 of us left for dinner at Gratta. It was delicious. I had a calzone that was a little over-cooked, but it was reasonably priced. Dinner was followed by gelato. Delicious!!

Saturday night a few of us went to downtown Florence for a drink. We went to Fish Club then Schott Cafe. It was fun and pretty relaxing. A taxi ride from downtown to Sesto is about 25 Euro so we wanted to catch the last bus back from town. We left about 12:30 to come to Sesto. (Also, we didn't swipe our bus passes on the bus, so we got a free ride...I felt like a rebel. And was also very scared the whole time. I may not do that again!) Once we got back to Sesto we went to a little bar. We were all pretty wiped out so we went home and went to bed pretty early.

Sunday morning I went to church. (Funeral free this time!) Then, I came home for brunch. I don't think much went on that day besides homework and relaxing. Before I knew it, the weekend was over and it was time for a new week of classes.

Back to Reality

WARNING: THIS POST WILL BE INCREDIBLY BORING!

Classes started on Sept. 7. LAME! Well, they aren't that bad. My schedule's pretty intense. NOT!

Monday: Class 2 -3:30 and 6 -6:50

Tuesday Class 9:15-11:15 and 5 -5:50

Wednesday: Class 2 -3:30 and 6 -6:50

Thursday: Class 10-1; 2-3:30; 5-5:50

Friday: No classes!

The best part--or the weirdest part--is that I spent well under 2 minutes in commute to all my classes...combined! The classroom, known as the "Tower Room" here at the villa, is just down a flight of stairs from our room. This is one of the weirdest adjustments to having classes right in the villa. I think in Madison I probably spend at least 2 hours in commute everyday.

I'm taking four classes. The first is called "Italian Encounters" and is about foreigners and their encounters in Italy. We watch 12 movies this semester, during class time! (Needless to say, I'm excited about that!)

My next class we like to call SMIL (Studies in Modern Italian Literature!). There are only 6 people in the class, so I have to read every book...on time! This class, after some adjustments with the schedule, we have once a week for 3 hours. It's a little rough, but I only have to think about the class once a week this way. We read 5 books and watch 9 movies, outside of class! Also, over the course of the semester, we have to give three 15 minute presentations about national Identity and how it relates to a book or movie we read/saw in class. I'm a little scared. The other part of our grade is a 12-14 page paper at the end of the semester. eek!

Another class is Art History with the wonderful Professor Mariotti. Every Tuesday morning our class heads into downtown Florence to see all the Renaissance art that we can and get everything explained by Prof. Mariotti. The class is soooo interesting. But, I'm freaking out about it. I don't know how to take an art history class. She throws so much info at us every day that I don't know where to begin. I could begin by doing the "suggested" readings, right? Well there are usually 3 every week. One of the readings the first week is reading chapters 6-12 (over 100 pages) in a huge art history book..."for general review"...WHAT? I know nothing about art history. At all! So, I guess I have to pick and choose which readings are important....I may just check out wikipedia.org for a "general review" of Renaissance art. It will definitely be a great learning experience.

My final class is Italian. I have this 4 times a week for fifty minutes each class. It's pretty easy and I feel like I'm learning Italian, a little!

Classes snapped me out of the fantasy of Italy that I was strolling in and put me right back into the academic world. shoot! Only, this academic world is different because I'm not taking a single science course, which is kind of freaking me out!

Ciao!

Italin Funerals

It turns out that Sunday morning I learned more about Italian funerals that I've ever imagined I would. I got up and got ready for church in the morning. I had no clue what time mass would be, but I had planned on asking Helen--the villa "mom". She looked it up and there happened to be a 9:30 mass (it was 9:00 at the time). So I checked with her to make sure I knew what church I was going to and headed off. It's only about a 15 minute walk, so I got there early.

I was early enough for some guy to come start talking to me, in Italian. I had no clue what he said, but I told myself that he wanted me to scoot over so that he could sit in the pew also. He kept talking though. At his point I hadn't had Italian class so my repertoire of Italian words consisted of Buongiorno, ciao, and grazie! I said to him "I'm sorry, I only speak English." I think he got the point, because he stopped talking. Anyway, at about 9:28 everyone stands up and turns around. I follow suit only to see a casket being carried down the aisle. I'm guessing the man who was talking to me was asking something along the lines of how I knew the deceased person.

Well I weighed my options, and decided to stay. I figured it wouldn't hurt. And hey, mass is mass whether it's a funeral or not! After the funeral I headed back to the villa for brunch. Later on in the day, I went for a hike up the foothill in Sesto with Julian, Nishant, and Andy...the same people I went out with in Sesto two days before. We didn't find the right path, so we never found the great views of Sesto, but it was still a nice hike. Andy picked up a stick to use as a walking stick about 5 minutes into our journey. After a series of hilarious events with the walking stick, we now call him Moses (or Mo for short!). We had a great time during the hike.

Later on we ate supper then played bocce ball and relaxed during our last night of freedom before classes started.

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As an addendum to this post I'd like to speculate that the funeral encounter might not be that strange in Italy. I think that instead of separate masses during the week they just stick their funerals in during the regular parish masses on Sundays. Also, Italian caskets are a lot less lavish and more economical than American caskets.

Firenze--bathroom passes and bus rides

Saturday morning we took a bus into Firenze for a walking tour with the all-knowing Professoressa Mariotti. We started at the top of a hill where there was a church and a beautiful view of the city. We then walked down by the Arno (the river) and saw Ponte Vecchio. Ponte Vecchio is a bridge on the Arno that has shops on it, like most bridges did in the old days. I've been told butchers used to own most of the shops on the bridge, but now the shops are taken up by high-end jewelers. We also saw Ponte Santa Trìnita, a bridge that was destroyed 1944 by the Germans...but the Italians found every stone in the bottom of the Arno and rebuilt it with all of the original stones! We also saw some Medici palaces, the Duomo (Cathedral), some markets and other important sites. The tour ended at Santa Maria Novella, which is a church with the Santa Maria Novella train station right next to it. We were then given a bus pass and told to find the 2 or 28 bus and take it home!

A group of 7 of us went to find Florence maps at a tourist place then set off to explore the city. We also weren't getting any food at the villa that day so had to buy our meals. We found the market which has all the stands set up outside with purses and clothes, and inside a big building is the food market. There also happens to be some restaurants and we picked one to eat at. I had some tortellini with meat sauce and it was pretty good.

After lunch it was siesta time. Everyone in Italy takes a siesta. For three hours in the afternoon, life shuts down. completely. We walked around for a while and decided we deserved a siesta. We found a little park and sat down and chilled. Two of the people I was with were my roommate Amanda and a University of Michigan architecture grad. student, Micah. Micah happened to be telling Amanda how much he dislikes the pigeons that are everywhere. Amanda replied by saying you just have to tell the pigeons who's boss and they will respect you. Seconds after this exchange, a pigeon pooped on Micah's back. It was hilarious!

After siesta, many of us thought a bathroom break was needed. But, in true European fashion, bathroom use cost 50 cents. (I should have prefaced this story by saying at orientation we received a museum pass to get us into 8 Firenze museums for free--and we get to skip any lines!) Anyway, I suggested we use what I called out "bathroom passes". I decided we might as well milk those museum cards for all their worth and use them as bathroom passes too! So, let me tell you, the bathrooms in the basement of the world-renowned Uffizi gallery are something else! I will be using that bathroom pass--I mean museum pass--many times this semester! (However, we did end up sticking around for an hour and a half checking out the Uffizi--lots of art!)

After the Uffizi we took another siesta on the steps of the gallery. We just sat and watched the masses of tourists. There was also a pretty funny mime we watched for a while. We wanted to get supper so we got up and tried to find a place. We were near the Duomo--Cathedral if you didn't remember--and everything around there is over-priced and quite touristy. We walked further and found some side streets and eventually stumbled upon a pizzeria and bar type place. Andrew, a guy from Duke that was with us, and I ordered the same kind of pizza; I think it was onion and sausage. We both thought it was pretty good! Everyone else wasn't too impressed. It was also pretty cheap!

After supper we made our way back to Santa Maria Novella and hopped on a bus that took us back to Sesto. There was a group of 6 girls and 3 guys that were going to go check out the nightlife in Florence later on that night. We headed into town on the bus (getting on in the wrong spot adding 15 minutes to our ride--but that's alright) and went to a place called the Mayflower. It was suggested in someone's guide book that it wasn't too touristy. The book was right! There were no tourists...or locals! It was pretty dead, but we had a drink then went to find a club. It turns out the clubs are filled mostly with American study abroad students and creepy Italian men. But we found a cute place with rap-type music in the front and another dance floor in the back with...DISCO MUSIC! We disco-ed it up for quite a while...We weren't going to fit into one cab so four of us left a little earlier than the rest. We got home and went to bed...that was quite a first Saturday in Firenze!

Orientation and Siena

The next day, we had orientation all day..with meals interspersed meals, of course! We had a lecture about rules at the villa and things like that and a lecture by Professor Mariotti, the art history professor, about the city of Florence. We also found out that the next day, Friday we would be going on a trip to Siena and a wine tasting in a different Tuscan villa! Later in the day, the house fellow gave us a little walking tour of Sesto and told us where we could buy different things like bus tickets, food, where a good ATM was, course packs, gelato, etc.

Friday morning we had to get up early to go to Siena. It was about an hour and a half away from the villa and we traveled by coach bus. The day started with a little tour of some main parts of Siena from Prof. Mariotti--by the way, she's a genius and knows so much about any painting or church in Italy...it seems! We saw St. Catherine of Siena's house and church and that was interesting. We also saw the Cathedral in Siena. (For the tours, and art history classes all semester we get these receiver things that we plug headphones into and prof. Mariotti has a microphone...which I think is soo much fun!)

We were free to explore the city and eat our packed lunch. It turns out, in response to Florence's great cathedral, Siena wanted to build a grander cathedral. They built one tower and never completed it. Anyone is able to climb up the tower for a great view of Siena. Of course, the climb is on narrow winding concrete stairs, and it's really high! But, it was fun, and as promised there was a great view! There was a group of 6 or 7 of us that ate our lunches up there...I don't know if that was actually allowed, but we did it anyway. After lunch we went for a walk around the city and explored. It was a really cool place in that it was made on three main hills. (Whereas Florence is made in the valleys of hills!) Cars and motorinis (mopeds) had a tough time getting up and down the hills.

At 3:30 we met in the main square for a tour with prof. Mariotti of the government building. I thought it was very interesting, but the building was also very warm. When the tour was over we headed back to the bus and were on our way.

We stopped an hour or so into the trip at a villa for the vineyard tour and wine tasting. We learned all about Principe Corsini wine and then got to taste three different kinds. They were alright; I don't think I know enough about wine to really enjoy wine tastings! But I thought the tour was mighty interesting!

After the wine tasting we made our way back to the villa for supper. I think this is the night I went out in Sesto with three friends: Julian, Nishant, and Andy. We found a cute little place in the middle of the big square in Sesto (called Sesto Pub) with outdoor seating and we sat outside for a while and enjoyed the town.

We went to bed somewhat early as we had a walking tour of Florence with Prof. Mariotti the next day.

Moving into a 16th Century Villa

I arrived at the villa around 11 o'clock on Sept. 2. I was the fourth person to arrive. After taking care of the necessary room key deposit and getting a water bottle, I was taken to my room by the house fellow, Amanda. We left my luggage by the door and I was to come back and get it once I found my room. Amanda said she wasn't really familiar with the room numbers, so we went on a bit of a tour of the other rooms. After finally finding mine, I had to try and find the main door to go pick up my luggage. That was the easy part. I then had to carry my 50+ pound bags up the stairs...and I didn't really know where I was going. I got a little lost at one point and accidently ran into the house fellow who directed me to my room. I finally got my bags upstairs and thought unpacking would be a good idea. But, of course, I didn't do that. One of my roommates was already here, but she was napping. All I wanted to do after hiking the luggage up the stairs was shower...but I waited for that too. Now that I think of it, I'm not certain what I did until my roommate woke up.

But, she eventually did. And we met. Her name is Amanda and she seemed pretty cool. We started unpacking a little, but didn't want to get too far because we didn't want to take all the drawer space and closet space from our other roommate. By the way, for the family reading, I'm in the same room as Katie, my cousin, when she did the program two years ago. The same bed too! Anyawy, I like to think we have the best room because we have 3 windows, which is great for airflow! Although, the windows don't stay open when it gets windy and they are quite loud when they slam. We also have two dresses and two large freestanding closets out in the hall. Once we realized that it didn't matter where we put our clothes because there would be plenty of space, we unpacked completely. This was followed by showers!

After we were clean, and cooled down a little, we went out into Sesto because Amanda needed to find an ATM. She got some cash and we stopped at a little cafe for a 90cent pastery because we weren't getting food until supper that night.

The rest of the day passed in a daze of wandering around the villa and trying to figure out where we were going. We finally got another roommate, Kristine, a little later on in the day. (More on the roommates later!) At 7pm we had supper, which was a fantastic first meal! Everyone was pretty wiped out, so not much went on after supper!

This is my hotel?

My travels went smoothly after the luggage fiasco. I arrived in Florence around 7PM. I couldn't go to the villa until the next day, so I had to find a taxi. I handed the taxi driver a slip of paper with the address of the hotel on it and he took me there. The ride was 30minutes. This is when I got my first glimpse of Florence (or Firenze as it's known here!) I saw sooo many neon hotel signs, and each time I hoped it was mine. Finally, he pulls over but a huge wooden door that resembles an apartment building or something--definitely NOT a hotel! Well, since I can't ask the taxi driver if I'm in the right spot, I pay him and stare at the 14 foot tall door.

I finally see a little half sheet of paper next to a doorbell that says "Siggiorno Pitti guests ring here." So, I pressed the button and nothing happened. A few minutes later I tried again and then realized I should try the door. It was open. Then I was stuck in a creepy entrance-way because there was a gate blocking the way to the hallway and elevator. I stood there for 3 or 4 minutes before realizing I should try to open the gate (you would think I would have learned from my previous mistake!). The gate opened, so I turned around to get my bags, and the gate shut...and locked. After a few more minutes of waiting and constantly trying the gate, it was re-unlocked and I was able to get it.

I go to the elevator and realize I have no clue what floor this place is on (I was, afterall, expecting an entire building to be dedicated to this "hotel".) So, I get my things in the elevator--which was about 5 feet long. It was two feet wide at both sides of the elevator and about a foot wide in the middle--which made everything super awkward and hard to do. I press the floor two button...no luck. But, finally, floor three, a hotel!! I check in and get a key to my room.

After I got settled in my room, I took my computer out to do some emailing/facebooking/blogging. There was no internet! I went to ask the man at the front desk if they had internet because I thought they did. He said they didn't...so I found a neighbors internet and stole it! After an hour and a half or so, my battery was getting low so I got out my fancy converter and went to plug it in. Only, my computer has three prongs and the converter only lets you plug in two pronged things. I was sad....haha....

I closed the computer down and read my book and fell asleep around 10 or 11. I had to check out of the hotel at 10:30 a.m. and had the hotel worker call me a taxi to take me to the villa!

I'm not paying you...

The travels back to Valencia went smoothly (on the 31st of Aug.). We got back, relaxed in the air conditioned room, showered, and went to see "the sciences." That's what Sara kept calling them, and I'm still not certain what they are...I think it's a museum, the opera, some offices, and other things. It was a huge complex with very blue pools (not for swimming) all around. I saw it at nighttime, but apparently it looks a lot cooler in the day. It was also designed by the same person who designed the Milwaukee Art Museum. After that, we went home and went to bed.

Sara had to work the next morning so she left early. My flight to Florence was at 2:50 in the afternoon; I woke up around 10, showered, and packed my things up. It was a little hard rolling my two 50(+) pound bags, wearing my huge backpack, and carrying my computer bag in the very warm weather. It had to of been in the 90s when I walked to the metro. Anyway, I made it to the airport.

The line for checking in for Swiss Air was really long. Eventually I made it to the front and put my bags on the scale. They totaled 47kg. (The total for two 50lb. bags is supposed to be 46kg.) And the woman said I had to pay because they were over the weight limit. And I thought, okay, one kg over, maybe I can take something out. I asked her how much and she said it was 50Euro per kg over. She totaled it up and said 345Euro (over 500 US dollars). (The weight restrictions for travel within Europe are two 20kg bags, so my luggage was almost 7kg over.) I was really sad! :( When I booked my ticket with STA travel in Madison, they called swiss air to make sure this would be okay and they said it was fine because my flights were all on the same ticket. The travel agent said that I may get to the counter in Spain and they may charge me, but it would only be like 50 dollars. I didn't really have any other options when booking my flights, so I said okay.

I told her I didn't want to pay and they said I wouldn't have to. She made a call and told me I had to pay. At this point, I was near tears. I pulled out my itinerary and showed her how it was all on the same ticket and everything was supposed to be okay because of that. She made another call and told me I had to pay. I asked what I was supposed to have done with the extra 6kg of stuff that I brought to Spain...how was I supposed to get it to Florence? She finally had a coworker come over by her and they pressed buttons on the computer for a good 4 minutes. Finally she said, "It's alright" and put heavy tags on both suitcases. I said thanks and bolted before they could change their minds.

The moral of the story? You may think I should have just packed lighter in the first place to avoid any mishaps. But I think the moral is that crying--or nearly crying--can save you 345 Euro!

Lisieux, France

Liseux, France is a town that is an hour train ride away from Paris. It happens to have been the home town of St. Therese (of Lisieux). Maggie told me I should go there when she found out I was going to Paris. So, Sara Jane and I took a trip there for one of the days that we were in France. It was a great trip and possibly the favorite part of my trip to France. We arrived in Liseux where we wanted to find the Basilica and didn't know where it was. Sara wanted a map and we couldn't find one so I suggested we walk up. and up. and up. Eventually we found the Basilica of St. Therese. It was beautiful. It also had a nice picture of Blessed Zelie and Louis Martin (Therese's parents) hanging in front of it...since they will be saints next year, I think!

Anyway, the whole town is basically dedicated to them. There wasn't a whole lot in it besides St. Therese stuff. But we got a map and sat down on a bench facing the Basilica and ate lunch (bread, cheese, grapes). Then we checked out the Basilica and Crypt. The bones from Therese's arm are chillin' inside the Basilica surrounded by tons of beautiful candles, etc. The remains of Zelie and Louis are in the crypt in a big gold tomb thing. The crypt was very pretty colors with mosaics of scenes of Therese's life all over. Pretty.

After checking out the Basilica we wandered out back where the tombs of Blessed Zelie and Louis were. (They remains were moved into the crypt in May of 2008 or 2005--I can't remember.) There were also stations of the cross and a beautiful view!

We wanted to continue our journey so we got out the map of all Therese's sights to see and Sara started navigating. She looked at it for a minute and then we started walking. I asked if she knew where we were going and she said, "I think we just follow the blue line." It turns out there is an inch to two inch wide painted blue line on the side walk all around Lisieux that takes you to all of the places of Therese: Carmel, her parish church, her house, etc. I thought it was super sweet!

The first stop was Carmel, Therese's convent. There was a museum with all sorts of things about her life in it. (And descriptions in English, which was boss! :) ) The sweetest thing in the museum was a prayer book and medal or prayer card that had a bullet hole in it. It turns out a soldier had that in his pocket and the bullet didn't go all the way through it, so he didn't get hurt! Ah, awesome! We also saw the chapel and on the side of the chapel is a wax sculpture of her laying on her bed how she died. Underneath the sculpture is her remains.

After Carmel we headed down a main street (following the blue line, of course) and stopped at a bakery for a snack and stopped in a few stores. Then, we got to Therese's parish church. It was old! Louis had donated the high altar, which was pretty spectacular. Other places in the church were where Therese had her first confession and her family chapel. The chapel has a statue placed in the same spot that Therese sat for Sunday mass. The church also pointed out the spot where one of Threse's sisters got her calling to become a nun. (For those that don't know, Therese had 4 sister; 3 of whom became Carmelite nuns at the same convent as Therese, and 1 who became a Visitandine nun in Caen, France.)

The final stop was Therese's house. We waited outside and took some pictures; it was such a cute house! Then we were led inside and a long audio recording played...in French! :( But, we saw the parlor, dining room, Therese's bedroom, an inidentifiable room (turned into a gift shop--of course), and Louis' bedroom. The dining room and Louis' bedroom were only seen through a glass window. The backyard was also pretty. It had a really cute statue of Therese and Louis. I wish I could have heard what was being said, but it's alright.

After the house we hurried back to the Basilica so we could go to mass. (It was a Saturday.) We had plans on going to an international mass at Notre Dame Sunday morning, but this worked out better because we were already there and we had yet to climb up the Eiffel Tower and we were going to do that on Sunday morning as well. Anyway, mass was in the crypt, it was beautiful, and quite French. After mass we hopped on the train and went back to Paris!

(This silly blog isn't letting me upload photos right now, but I can give that a shot later...otherwise they should be on facebook soon...)

The Hand Sanatizer Didn't Make the Cut

There were a few things I didn't like about my Paris trip. First, the darn liquid restrictions when flying. We didn't check any baggage so I had to restrict my liquids to a small baggie. Unfortunately I didn't pack the hand sanatizer because I figured conditioner, shampoo, etc. was more important. Boy, was I wrong! It turns out that probably 90% of bathrooms we used didn't have soap in them. Apparently it's not a law for Parisians to wash their hands before returning to work. Ewww! Also, public restrooms don't have toilet seats. Weird. And bathrooms in restaurants are co-ed...also weird. It turns out the things I didn't about Paris have to do with bathrooms. But, the moral of the story is ALWAYS BRING THE HAND SANATIZER!

What I did in Paris...

Here's a (somewhat) brief list of things I did in Paris. I'm sure I could write stories about each thing, but that would be unbearable and no one wants to read about that.

1) Naturally, I went to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

2) Of course, I went to the Louvre; saw the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo among other things. The Mona was a little unimpressive, if I may say so. There was a rope across the perimeter so that you couldn't get within 15 or so feet. It was enclosed in glass so no piuctures turned out...but it's a masterpiece, so I saw it. The Venus de Milo was quite impressive and I liked it a lot. The rest of the Louvre was quite hard to navigate because there is SOO much stuff there. We saw a couple exhibits on Ancient Egyptian art which was cool. Then, because we were dog tired we left after only an hour or two there. Did you know that the Louvre shows 3,500 pieces of artwork at a time and has over 35,000 in storage...yeah. crazy!

3) Went to the Musee d'Orsay. This is a different art museum with a lot of Monet, Renoir, Manet, Van Gogh, and many others. It was great! We spent quite a bit of time in here looking at everything. My fave here was a painting by Renoir called Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette.

4) Notre Dame--beautiful, huge...

5) Champ de Mars. This is where Napoleon was trained. A military training school thing.

6) Sacre-Coeur (Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus). This was absolutely beautiful. It is also atop a hill called Montmartre. This had a beautiful view of Paris and we hung out of there for a while.

7) The opera...so awesome!

8) Champ Elysees-Etoile with the tomb of the unknown soldier. We saw a bit of the rekindling of the flame of the unknown soldier also.

9) Went to Lisieux, home of St. Therese (more on this to follow!)

10) Wandered aimlessly.

11) Rode the metro, a ton!

12) Walked a lot.

13) Had bread, cheese and grapes for lunch everyday because food was quite expensive.

14) Ate crepes.

Hmm...that's all I got from Paris. It was a great trip and I'm glad we went. Oh yeah, I forgot that the reason we were able to navigate through Paris so easily was the great tourist bus! 24 Euro for 48 hours of getting on and off the tour bus whenever you wanted! It was so fun! Ah, to be a tourist...I'll post some pictures of fun sights along the way in Paris.











Sara Jane and me outside of the Louvre

This is the little kid who was trying to dance like Michael Jackson per instructions from the other guy. His mom came and tried to dance later!





















Notre Dame!

Here's the Renoir painting I liked a lot!

























The obligatory "Eiffel Tower in the background from the tour bus picture!"

Arrival in The City of Love

NOTE: THIS PARIS TRIP TOOK PLACE FROM AUGUST 26TH TO AUGUST 31ST. I'VE JUST HAVEN'T BLOGGED ABOUT IT YET!

Sara and I hopped on the metro, ran to our train, rode the train for 3 hours, got on a different train for an hour, took a 20 minute bus ride, made it to the (freezing cold) Barcelona airport, slept on and off all night in the (freezing cold) airport, ate McDonalds for breakfast, boarded the plane, fell asleep before the plane took off, woke up upon landing, took an hour and a half bus ride to downtown Paris, hopped in the metro, walked a while and found Blaise's apartment. How's that for a quick summary of traveling to Paris.

Now, you may wonder who Blaise is. He is the guy we "couch surfed" with. Couch surfering is this website where you can message other people around the world and stay with them while you are traveling. It sounds creepy, I know...but it's free! So we found his flat and explored; it happened to be a studio type flat with a futon...and no bedroom. Sara and I were a little freaked out as to how sleeping would work and thought that maybe he would sleep at a friends place. No such luck...but I'll get to that later.

I showered and we hit the town...of course we figured we'd find the Eiffel Tower because they would have maps, etc. there and we could explore. We found it and then ended up at a part of town called the Trocadero, which has a fantastic view of the Eiffel Tower. We hung out there and saw some sweet breakdancing, including one of the dancers teaching a little kid how to dance like Michael Jackson. Blaise called Sara and came and met us. We ended up going for a walk to a different part of town for supper because it was cheaper.

After supper we went back to Blaises because we were super tired! Of course, the futon thing popped up in our minds. Turns out we were all sleeping on it together (it was a king sized futon, but still weird). I told Sara she was sleeping in the middle and she said, "fine." Anyway, Sara and I cuddled all weekend on half the futon and Blaise got the other half...it worked out fine!

La Tomatina!

Every year in a little town an hour outside of Valencia there is a food fight--actually, a tomato fight. We went to the tomato fight an it was one of the most disgusting experiences of my life! There were so many sweaty bodies and it was sick. After much walking and pushing by everyone we got to the streets where the fight was going to be. When it started, dump trucks would drive through the cities of the streets filled with tomatoes. There was like 10 people in the trucks who would throw tomatoes at everyone and the trucks would dump some in different spots. Four or five trucks came through in the hour that the fight lasted. I think I threw like five tomatoes the whole time. It was more like getting tomatoes chucked at you instead of a food fight! I even got a vine with tomatoes stuck to it thrown at me. There were so many sweaty bodies right next to each other and it was smelly and yucky. I don't know why people would ever want to do that more than once! After the fight we found a local woman who was around 60 years old hosing people down in front of her house. That didn't really help me get all the tomatoes off of me or out of my hair so we went to the river. The river was more of a stream/flat waterfall thing with about 4 inches of water. Sara didn't want to sit in it, but I felt so gross I just laid right down in it. It felt so good to be clean(er)!!! We waited about an hour for our ride then headed back to Valencia with just enough time to shower and finish packing before we headed for Paris. All said and done, La Tomatina was quite an experience. I'm glad I can say I did it, and I assure you, I will never participate again. :) (I don't have pictures because I didn't want to take my camera along, but I will add some when I become facebook friends with Sara's coworker Derek if he added them to facebook.)

BioPark en Valencia

Sara Jane met me at the airport and we took the metro to her apartment. Spain was sooooooo warm...okay like around 90 degrees i guess. But, compared to the cool summer we had in Wisconsin, I wasn't ready for it. After we got to her place I took a shower then we went downtown by the beach. We had paella with chicken and rabbit--yes mom, I ate rabbit! All I could think about though was how sad I felt for Thumper (from Bambi!). After supper we walked down the beach a little bit then hiked home for a much needed night of sleep.


The night of sleep turned into a night and most of the day sleep. I slept in until 2. Sara was getting a little anxious and wanted me to wake up. Eventually I did and she made us some stir fry for lunch. We were trying to figure out what to do that day--go to the zoo, aquarium, or beach. The zoo won. Sara said we could bike it and it wasn't that far. After a little bit of the bike ride I told Sara we needed to take a break--she said I sounded like her mom when she came and visited Sara and they would bike. But, I was jet lagged, thirstier than a blue toad heckler at a hit parade, and sweaty. The heat was nearly unbearable. (Also, the fact that the bike I was riding was a little girls bike didn't help a lot. Sara offered me the adult bike, but the seat was too high...there would have been an accident for sure! The picture is of the bike I rode.)



We made it to the zoo, eventually! The complex is new and cost about $90 million to make. It really only had African animals. There were white rhinos, zebras, huge pelicans, giraffes, baboons, etc. It was not a lot like a normal zoo. The animals that could live civily together were put in the same enclosure and seperating the enclosures were a lot of natural land barriers. There were few cages and the enclosures were pretty big. The scenery that the landscaping provided was so neat! Needless to say, like at any zoo, I took too many pictures of animals...tooo many. The picture is one of my favorites from the zoo. Yes, they're making out and have a cute little baby too! :)

When we were done we biked back to her apartment; my bike's tire didn't make it the whole way and we had to walk the last 15 minutes or so. We went to the grocery store for a snack and for snacks for the trip to Paris, ate our snack, showered, and relaxed. At about 10 we went out for tapas with Sara's friend/coworker who is also from Madison. Tapas are like many different little appetizers that we all share. Then we went home and packed for Paris.

Little bits of lots of languages

The plane ride went smoothly and everything was great. I had plans of reading a book or two during the flight, but Swiss Air had other plans for me. There was around 50 movies, a bunch of TV shows, music channels, and games. I played some Sudoku, Tetris and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"...watched two movies, listened to music, and watched a documentary about orangutans. I didn't sleep at all. I thought it was quite funny when they served us breakfast at 3a.m. Well, anyway, I eventually got to Valencia. Everything was on time and I just had to wait for my luggage. This was a pretty small airport so I'm not sure why it took sooooo long for the luggage to come--about 1.5 hours. I did have two fun experiences in foreign languages. I helped a woman find her baggage claim. She asked in German where it was going to be and I helped her out. (Apparently I didn't do a good enough job as a native German speaker said something after I helped her.) Then about 10 minutes later, a woman came and asked me where the baggage from Sevilla would be. I looked at the sign posting where baggage was and figured out hers was on belt 5. Then I had to go through the numbers and remember how to say 5 in Spanish! I wasn't really able to form a complete sentence in Spanish like I could in German. I said "Seville es en cinco." And she was super confused...so I had to try and tell her that the flight from Zurich was on belt 4 and her luggage was on belt 5...it was a lot of "Zurich es cuatro. Sevilla es cinco." Anyway, my minimal knowledge of multiple languages has paid off. Now, if only someone would ask me how to say "a little bit" in Haitian Creole...tu bitzi...

A Blog!?

This is mainly a way for my mom to know what I've been up to. Although, maybe Emma will read it too! :) Please leave comments or send me emails jcvoelker@wisc.edu (or do both!) Love from Florence, Jane!

Adventures in O'hare

Standard procedure is to arrive at the airport about three hours early for an international flight...or so I thought. It took all of twenty minutes to check my baggage, say goodbye to mom and Emma, go through security and find gate M16. The flight was delayed thirty minutes. So, I was sitting alone at the gate three hours and ten minutes early with nothing to do. Apparently only about ten other people felt it was important to get to the airport early. I read for a while but got a little restless. In the spirit of the big adventure that I was about to embark on, I decided to go on my own adventure in O'hare's International Terminal. I learned a lot. For example, the terminal has many weird wooden statue things. It may or may not be modern art--which i don't like. I deciphered two of them as a wooden board with a kidney in it and a pretzel made by someone who had never made a pretzel before. Who knows? There is also a sweet fire safety exhibit for kids that was also interesting for adults. On my adventure through the terminal i decided that someday I will fly first class so that I can get into one of those lounges reserved for those passengers. As I wrote this I was sitting on the ground between a plant and a garbage can. I can only imagine the fun that lay behind those tinted doors and signs that say, "First Class Passengers Only." (The only problem is that I will never fly first class, so I am in the midst of planning an attack to sneak into the lounges.) Finally, the best part of my adventure was counting the steps it took to get from gate M1 to gate M21 (the whole terminal). Now, I know why you are wondering why I counted that. But, I ask you, why not? Nevertheless, I know I'm weird...but it was fun! Well, two check bags, three bathroom stops, a $2 bottle of water, a $5 Rolling Stone magazine, a 99 cent book called 40 Fascinating Places of the Bible, and over 1400 steps, it's time for my adventure to begin! Well, actually, I still have an hour to wait.

(This post was written on my departure day Aug. 23. I couldn't post it until I made a blog and had Internet access!)