Finalmente! Questo film...

I've been meaning to post this short video for a really, really long time! It's pretty funny, and quite true, or so I've heard. I don't know about some of it from personal experience. So, enjoy:

Paris at Christmas Time

Okay, at least one more thing. Since Becky has posted something about our trip to Paris, I must now do the same for the sake of our non-existent competition. If we were competing over posts, I think Becky would win by default since she has about a hundred more than I do. But oh well, I'll still write something about our trip to Paris! We had a really awesome time and did nearly everything we'd wanted to do, which is nearly a miracle considering that we had about three and a half days and none of us speak French. Though it did help that a lot of the signs were written in French and English and that a lot of the people spoke at least a little bit of English. However, we're still going to pretend that we managed to do all we did through much trial and tribulation. That way I feel accomplished!

Sunday evening, after we arrived and got settled in the hostel, we walked around and ended up finding our way to the Church of the Sacred Heart, or in francese, la Basilique du Sacré-Coeur. The church was positively breathtaking, and after we'd looked around inside for a bit, some nuns came out and started singing, so it felt like a little piece of heaven and its splendor. Or at least that's what I like to think!

La Basilique du Sacré-Coeur

The next day, which was Monday, we left early in the morning (well, 9:00 at least) for the Louvre. We spent THE ENTIRE DAY walking THE ENTIRE LOUVRE. We were there for about 9 hours, and we literally walked the entire museum. And I actually remember some of the things I saw! Maybe because I took pictures...

Cupid and Psyche

So, after the Louvre we walked toward a big ferris wheel that we could see from the museum and that I hoped would be a carnival. Sadly, it was only the ferris wheel. But we walked through a pretty park, and the ferris wheel was near this big intersection with an obelisk and lots of other cool stuff that I suspect were famous and took pictures of. I also took a lot of pictures of the ferris wheel, which I suspect I was a little obsessed with.

My obsession :oD

The next day (after a very well-deserved and restful night of sleep!) we started with an attempt to see the Bastille. I don't even know exactly what we should have been looking for (a prison of some kind?) or whether it's still around, but I guess I'll never know since we didn't find it! We did, however, find our way to one of Victor Hugo's houses. They had a little museum inside (as expected) and it was free! Hooray for free things! It was actually quite a nice little display, too. After we finished there, we started our rather long walk to Notre Dame, and on the way we stopped in at least one other church, and I also saw a store named after me! Or at least coincidentally with the same name. I don't know anyone in Paris, so somehow I doubt it was named after me. Unfortunately. Notre Dame was everything it's cracked up to be. The stained-glass windows were positively amazing, and they had music playing (or possibly even live) there, too. Between the Gregorian chanting--I'm not really sure that's the right type of music, but we'll pretend it is--and the colorful rays of light, I was in awe. Even among all of the crowds of people and busyness in the church, it still felt like a holy place. I left the cathedral feeling blessed.

The square that contains the house of Victor Hugo

I think we're going to be very good friends...

The back of Notre Dame; unfortunately the picture I took of the front got lost because my camera was being stupid. So, you'll just have to settle yourselves with this one till I get pictures from Sean. And hope that he took some of the front.

Looking at one of the stained-glass windows with a weird reflection on the camera

I didn't feel so blessed for long, though, when we started climbing the Eiffel Tower an hour or two later! I recalled vividly my fear of heights about an eighth of the way up to the first floor, and we were on the stairs. However, thanks to the encouragement of Becky and Sean, and thanks to very sturdy metal railings, I made it up to the second floor with them, which was as high as we could go on foot. And the view was definitely worth it! We walked up right about at sunset, so we got to see the city in daylight and then also in the dark. Beautiful!

On the way there

Me on the Eiffel Tower, 2nd floor (I think) during the light show - sparkly! :o)

Beautiful sunset over Paris

After we climbed carefully back down the tower, we took the metro part of the way home and stopped at Moulin Rouge to see it in the dark, since Keturah had told me that it's not that impressive, but definitely better at night. I thought it was a little impressive, but I am glad that we went at night. It was in a halfway-sleazy part of town, though. It was a bit surreal because half of the stores around it were sex shops, but there were also normal stores interspersed between them, and most of the people walking around were families or older, distinguished, or normal people. Weird. Anyway, after that, we went back and eventually got to bed.

Bright lights, big city...I never did get what was with the windmill, though

The next morning, we got out of bed and packed up everything. Fortunately, we were able to leave our luggage at the hostel for the day so we could tour around on our last day without dragging our bags behind us. Our first stop for the day was the Church of the Sacred Heart again for daytime pictures. After that, took the metro to l'Hotel des Invalides and the tomb of Napoleon, which was really big and impressive and covered in gold. After a bit of exploring there, we walked to the Petit Palais and went inside for some time to look around. The Petit Palais had some really nice artwork, and again this museum was free, at least for the permanent collection. After that we walked to the Palais Garnier Opera House, stopping at another pretty church on the way. The Opera House is where the Phantom of the Opera was set. We did have to pay to get in there, but I think it was worth it! The staircase was certainly grand, and so was this really cool foyer. After that, we raced back to the hostel for our bags and took the metro to the Arch of Triumph, or l'Arc de Triomphe. We only took enough time to get some pictures before running to catch the bus back to the airport. After a long trip home, that was the end of my trip to Paris! I really loved the city. Paris is gorgeous! I'm really glad I went.

Becky and I in front of the Church of the Sacred Heart

La Basilique du Sacré-Coeur in the daylight

Everybody has fun at l'Hotel des Invalides!

We could be twins. Except that he's in marble. And I'm much cooler. Literally (notice the red nose).

If Napoleon had commissioned this for himself, I would have thought he was conceited. Very impressive!

Palais Garnier - Angel of Music? :o)

Sean, Becky and me on one of the balconies overlooking the grand staircase

Below the grand staircase

Goodbye, Paris! L'Arc de Triomphe

So, in summary of this huge post (my longest yet), these are the things from my checklist of Paris that I got to do:

1. Saw the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur

2. Walked the entire Louvre

3. Went inside the house of Victor Hugo

4. Saw Notre Dame

5. Climbed the Eiffel Tower and saw it in day and night

6. Posed in front of Moulin Rouge

7. Walked down the stairs in front of the Sacré-Coeur that are in the movie Amelie

8. Went to the Hotel des Invalides and Napoleon's tomb

9. Went inside the Petit Palais

10. Went to the Opera Garnier

11. Took a picture on the grand staircase from the Phantom of the Opera

12. Saw the Arc de Triomphe

Plus a lot of extras. And all this in only three and a half days. We must have superhuman powers. :oP THE END!!!

Merry (Late) Christmas!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas even if it is a little late. Or, in Italian, Buon Natale!

Here everyone is definitely still celebrating Christmas. Becky and I went out for a walk this evening and found that nearly everything is closed. There were quite a few families and older couples out walking, too, but no one was out to shop or run errands. After wandering around near the school since we couldn't buy bus passes (mine is completely used up and Becky left hers in the room, which is also almost finished), we finally found a bar (a café in Italy) that was open and decided to stop for a couple of caffè (coffees). There were a total of four people inside, including us. It was nice, though, because we could speak in Italian (a little bit) and not feel quite as stupid as we usually would. After that we walked back to the school in a roundabout direction. And I'm writing all of this just to have something to write! I've been busy lately, but not with anything really newsworthy. I'm sure everyone really wants to hear about how I hand washed my clothes this afternoon and all of the little things like that. So, here's another post. Finally. About almost nothing. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! :o)

Oh, and here are a few pictures I took on our little outing today, since I've decided to chronicle everything I do in pictures. Well, nearly everything.

Some mannequins making weird faces that made Becky and I laugh.

Becky and I copying the mannequins. I think we look prettier than they do! :o)

Che bellissimo sunset!

Oh, and what beautiful girls, too! ;o)

And now that's the end for now! Maybe one of my New Year's resolutions will be to update my blog more often, though. We'll see! Ciao everyone!

Lucca

I uploaded this picture for my profile picture and thought, why not leave it up here? So, this is a picture of me in un parco (if you can't figure out what that word means, I'm a little worried) in Lucca. I really loved Lucca, even though it was a rainy day. As they say here in Italy, fa brutto tempo!

Trip to Napoli

Okay, I'm going to jump ahead of myself a bit and go ahead and post the video from our trip to Napoli, the Amalfi Coast, Capri and Pompeii here since they put it on the internet. Here it is:

Silenzio Accademico

Today is "silenzio accademico," or dead day. Our finals begin tomorrow, and I feel positively terrified! It's not that I've been doing terribly in my classes, but I'm worried that I'll start now. Meanwhile, in other news, a record is broken when I make two posts in two days!

So, I mentioned Cinque Terre but didn't really expound on any details. I'll say a little more about that trip now and try to also get to some of the other trips since then. As I may or may not have mentioned, the day was partly cloudy and even a little rainy sometimes, but I was actually glad for that since it meant less tourists, excluding ourselves, of course. We started out at the first town, Riomaggiore, which is also where the "Via dell'amore" starts, which is a walkway that goes through this stone tunnel-type thing with graffiti all over the walls. The graffiti was pretty awesome, though. I had fun there even if I wasn't with a lover. Or was I?

Anyway, I walked with some of my friends and one of my teachers, Milena, to the next town, Manarola. It was a picturesque little place, and I think that's where I bought my Cinque Terre dessert that was made of angel-food cake with apples and confectioner's sugar and probably some other goodies. It was quite yummy, plus it had the added attraction of being named after the place, which is a sure way to lure in unsuspecting tourists. After that we took in some of the scenery and continued our trek between that town and the next one, Corniglia. I really liked Corniglia, but it had the unfortunate feature of forcing us to walk up hundreds of stairs to finally reach the town itself. In Corniglia I bought some gelato and saw a bunch of beers in front of a store with pictures of famous, or possibly infamous, people on the labels. Hitler seemed to be a popular one. I also had the fun experience of having my skirt blown up by the wind in Corniglia. Let's just say I'm thankful that no one was paying enough attention to be able to tell me whether it went all the way up or not!

After wandering around in Corniglia for a bit, we took the train to the last town, Monterosso, passing up Vernazza, which was one of the places I really wanted to see, but it was okay that I missed it. In Monterosso I walked on the beach and watched while Milena talked a couple of the men on the beach into letting us (Becky, Milena and I) use some lounge chairs, which would normally have a charge during the high season. I eventually moved on to look at the giant man carved out of rock toward the end of the city, and then we rode the train back to La Spezia and took the bus home. All in all, it was a busy but incredible day! And now I must go to study some more. I'll see about writing about a few of the other trips during my breaks.

Cinque Terre

So, I'm finally updating again. For now, I'm still going to catch everyone up a little bit before I start doing current stuff. On September 26, we went to Cinque Terre, a set of five coastal towns in the mountains along the sea. It was absolutely gorgeous, though it did rain a bit and it was partly cloudy for most of the day. Anyway, so here's a video that one of my classmates put together with pictures and short films from the trip. Also, I'm going to maybe post a few pictures in this blog, but I'm also going to have a separate page for pictures since I have so many and since they take forever to load here. SO, without further ado:

First Impressions

I know I've been here for more than a month now, but I had planned to write about my traveling and my arrival in Italy, so everyone's going to have to put up with old news.

First I have to say that flying was amazing. I had flown in a small plane before, but never in an airline, so the experience was quite different. I'd never been so high! The clouds were gorgeous and a lot more interesting from above. When we first got up in the air, the atmosphere was so hazy that it looked like a big bowl of blue soup with dollops of sour cream floating on its surface. As we traveled further north, though, and over the ocean, the atmosphere got clearer and the clouds got bigger.

I took probably way too many pictures of the clouds because I love the sky and wanted to share some of the scenery at least with my dad, who may be the only one who appreciates it, and to remember my first flight over the ocean.

When we flew into Frankfurt, the sky was overcast with just enough space between clouds to cast an eerie light on the city. The panorama looked like something out of a science fiction novel, completely with skyscrapers and space ships (well, I imagined we were in a space ship, anyway).

We found our way through the airport to the trains, though we thankfully didn't have the trouble that I'd heard we would have. Keturah (my travel companion who is also now my roommate) and I took a train to a town or suburb called Mainz, about twenty minutes from the airport. Mainz was nice, though the weather was a lot colder than we had expected, considering we had left America in summer heat. We found a little café and settled down with some tea to write letters, or in my case, write in my journal. I felt a bit out of place, really, considering that no spoke much English, and Keturah and I didn't want to be conspicuous as tourists and Americans. However, after sitting for a bit and enjoying the tea, I felt better. This was my first minor experience with culture shock, I suppose.

After we wandered Mainz for several hours, we returned to the airport and boarded another smaller plane for the flight to Florence. I enjoyed this flight nearly as much as my first flight because we flew over a lot of mountains, and I took about another hundred pictures. I first realized we were in Italy when I saw the ocean with tiny snakes of water crawling away from it. I couldn't tell you which cities I saw from the air, but I was too much in awe to pay close attention to the actual layout and geography.

Our plane landed at the Florence airport after 6 pm, and we were met by Liviana, the girls' dean. We climbed into the big ADRA van she had driven to pick us up--she explained the the other van was in use at the time--and I had my first experience with Italian traffic. I wouldn't call the memory traumatic, but I have to admit I was on the edge of my seat a few times when we came within inches of other cars or when people decided to change lanes whether or not there was room for them in the desired lane. To my surprise, we arrived unscathed just in time for dinner.

Speaking of food, it is now time for lunch, so I'll be continuing later. I'm going to have to post pictures later, too.

Ciao!

Hello everyone! My first blog entry, wow. I just realized something very interesting. Apparently Google is the Italian Google here, and so is my blog website since it's through Google. Therefore, all of the options and instructions for blogging are in Italian. I'm going to have to figure out a way to have it in English, because while I'm definitely learning a lot of Italian, I don't know the computer terms at all really. Anyway, this is kind of a test blog to see how it looks and whether I'll change the layout or not. Hope everyone is doing well!