From requests from my mom and Sarah, I am going to try to do my best to keep updating my blog more frequently (with no promises of quality or length of the entries...). I arrived safely in Italy on Monday morning with no problems, although it was probably one of my more absurd airport experiences. My roommates and some other friends in Siena had requested that I bring back some different kinds of candy from America, so my mom and I had gone to Target and Costco to load up on a variety of sweets. I guess my eyes were a [View Full Entry]

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Here’s a very belated and sort of abbreviated account of my Easter trip to Sicily last month. Easter in Sicily was certainly an experience I will not forget. I was very lucky to get to experience Sicily within the context of a large and exuberantly welcoming Sicilian family who immediately opened themselves and their home up to me. It was a warm but easy sense of welcome, without any huge gestures or clear statements of ‘make yourself at home’, displayed simply by the way they picked me up at the airport, hustled me into the family car, and immediately starting talking [View Full Entry]

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I got back on Tuesday from a very exciting trip to the south of Italy. I went with Samantha, one of the students this semester. It worked out really well because we have very similar ideas about how to travel—which basically means that we don’t plan things well because we think it's more fun to explore (this also involves getting lost a lot and walking around aimlessly). We also think that food and drink are the most important part of any trip. Following these rules, we had an entirely random and delicious trip. Friday evening we took an overnight bus to [View Full Entry]

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I’m still recovering a little from my impromptu but wonderful trip to America a few weeks ago. It was wonderful to visit home and see family and friends, and although I’m happy to be back in Italy, I’m really missing everyone very much. Here’s a brief rundown of my trip: basically, the program director was in the States visiting colleges but unfortunately got pretty severely ill and couldn’t finish, so the program flew me over to finish the last week of her visits. I flew into Washington D.C. and had a very tearful reunion with Mom and Dad (I heard a [View Full Entry]

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The other day two of my roommates decided to put internet in our apartment. They’re really excited to blast into 2009 with new-fangled downloading-at-home capabilities. I came home the other day and Olinda was all in a huff. She told me: ‘I tried to download Happy Feet but instead I accidentally downloaded a porno about a guy with a foot fetish. I sat down expecting to watch a nice little movie about happy, dancing penguins but instead I had to watch some guy sucking on his girlfriend’s toes.’ She was certainly not amused. The new students have arrived and everything [View Full Entry]

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Christmas in Austria I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday! I just made it back to Siena safely after a great week in Austria. I left last Monday night on an overnight train. It was not such a good trip-there was this terrible family in the car with me. The mother kept yelling at the children and she kept telling me that I was on the wrong train. She asked where I was going and when I said ‘Innsbruck,’ she shook her head and told me I was in the wrong place. When I told her to leave me alone [View Full Entry]

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Well, I am officially terrible about keeping this updated. My goal for next semester is definitely to write more. I decided rather than trying to write everything that has been going on these past few months, which is impossible, I would include some random photos from various trips and things throughout the semester, from the first days to the last. The semester ended last week and all of the students sort of trickled out. Everyone is gone now, even most of the professors and other people who work here. I leave tomorrow evening for Austria on an overnight train and I'll [View Full Entry]

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I have gotten way behind in writing. I am going to give a few random pieces of what has been going on here in the past few weeks… I am also going to post some pictures soon. To begin with, here’s a random funny language blunder of the week: I woke up early and was in the kitchen having breakfast and packing my lunch for school. Typically I either bring some kind of sandwich or leftover pasta, a banana, and a little package of biscotti. So, I made a salami and mozzarella sandwich and I was looking for the plastic wrap, [View Full Entry]

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I am having trouble concentrating to write this entry because I think I am delirious from the extreme amounts of pesto I have been consuming in the last week. Over a matter of days I ate an entire, rather sizable jar of pesto. Basically, the pesto here is amazing. I bought myself an excessive jar, convinced that pesto is one of those indefatigable items (like peanut butter and honey) that you just sort of buy once and can keep sitting around for an undefined period of time. I was making myself a nice plate of pasta and pesto when I read [View Full Entry]

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I came home late yesterday evening after eating dinner at a restaurant on the piazza with the school. One of my roommates, Letizia, a law student at the University of Siena, was sitting at the kitchen table studying and we were chatting for awhile. We get along well and we were talking and gossiping about our days, boys, our families, and all sorts of things. Well, I was telling her that sometimes my mom and I go to this new casino that just opened near our house. Her eyes grew wide and she started laughing really hard. When she could finally [View Full Entry]

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