I'm so sad. Everyone is leaving. Most people have already left. some are already home. and we leave on wednesday morning. our apartment is pretty much packed up and it looks so bare. But even though i'm going to miss it here, i'm really excited about seeing everyone at home. i'm a little bit worried about how shelle's going to react. i just hope no one gets hurt. So. Last tuesday, keri sarah and i headed out to Fiumicino airport to fly to amsterdam. i hate flying. keri ended up with the worst flight experience though. she didnt get to sit with sarah and i so she was stuck between a guy leaning all the way back and a lady turned around in the seat behind her constantly banging on her seat. The Schipol airport in ... read more

Even though i'm pretty relieved to know that i wont have to go on any more 12 hour train rides across the continent any time soon, i'm still pretty sad about the fact that i'm almost done with my semester here. I ended my 6th day of rail travel with our trip to Munich for thanksgiving weekend. Keri and Sarah and I started out trip from Rome on Wednesday night after another long wednesday, and since we didnt book sleeper cars, we spent the night in an uncomfortable box with some initially irate italian lady and did not sleep, or at least i didnt. but in the morning, the ride was beautiful because we were traveling through mountains and fields covered wtih snow. soooo much snow. more than i've ever seen in my life. we got ... read more

Ahh got back from Venice last night. everyone else is still there, but keri adn sarah and i decided to come back early because its really expensive to stay there and we saw everything in the first day anyway. Venice is so beautiful though. Gorgeous. Started out pretty rough though. Since keri sarah rachel and samantha and i all had eurail passes we didnt get the reservations for the train and were just going to use our passes instaead. going fine until about florence until the guy came by to check our passes and told us we had to pay 20 euro for our seats (the reservations would have cost 12 if we'd bought them before). 20! that was about half my budget for the entire trip. good thing i brought extra money with me, even ... read more

So last sunday was the papal mass!! it was an amazing experience. not only was this an opportunity to go to receive mass from the pope, but it was a cannonization mass where he cannonized 5 saints. how cool is that? so anyway that morning we all got up super early to get ready and go. The mass itself started at like 9:30 or 10:00 but we had to get there at about 7 in order to get into the gates and get seats. We all meet at teh bridge before the sun was even up and walk into St. Peter's Square. There are people EVERYWHERE. they all have flags and there's bands playing and huge groups of nuns and monks wearing ballcaps and bandanas and the groups of people are singing their natinal anthems and ... read more

seriously. best place on earth. ok i'm lying a little bit on this journal b/c i'm not actually in switzerland anymore. but i wanted to put another country on here. so anyway, last thursday night we got all our crap together and took the bus to termini from school. i had to wear my coat b/c i didnt have room to pack it adn we got on such a crowded bus and i was sweating so bad and we werent very happy. but we got to termini early and got some delicious mcdonalds. the train station wasnt as scary as imagined. pretty easy to figure out except that the sleeper car we were on was pretty miseable. the setup is one little cube with 6 people and there is enough room for them to all sit ... read more