Last night some friends and I said goodbye to Florence by going out to dinner, having a snowball fight in the history-making snowstorm, and stumbling up to Aria’s door for one last hug.  I had planned to wake up a little early this morning and say my own personal goodbye by heading to my favorite cafe for one last sublime cappuccino, but, as always with Italy, things didn’t go as expected.  Interesting fact: when it snows in Florence, the whole city closes.  No one goes to work, no taxi drivers respond to reservations, and (most exasperatingly) only 8 airport employees come to work. My relaxing, hazelnut cappuccino morning suddenly became a frantic race to escape Florence.

Like a network of fugitives on the run, my CET cohorts and I started communicating through rumors and BBM chains about the closed airport, the cancelled flights, and the general sense of “fuck you, eager holiday travelers” we felt from Italian airport employees, the world, Mother Nature, and the slightly off prosciutto in the sandwiches from the overpriced airport cafe.  Long story short, there were hundreds of Americans in Florence’s sketchy airport for many hours, and I don’t think anyone made it home.  Now we’re all sprinkled across free hotel rooms in Germany, hoping for a better tomorrow harder than an Obama voter on November 3rd.

That said, please let me wax nostalgic for minute about my time in Florence.  Like everyone who studies abroad, I had a wonderful time. I had more fun in 4 months than some people get in a lifetime, I made great friends, I changed a lot (mostly for the better), and I learned a lot, both in the classroom and outside of it.  Sometimes our Italian workbook would get strangely poetic and ram some wistful phrase between exercises about who is going to Maria’s party when and what they are bringing (use direct objects!), and this one phrase stuck with me:

Partire e un po’ morire

That “e” should have an accent, but I’m not that good at wordpress.  Basically, it means that to leave is to die a little. That sounds melodramatic, (and is) but still feels a little true.  Even I’ve been surprised at how much Florence, and all that goes with it, has touched me.  This morning I cried and felt short of breath in the airport bathroom, not because of travel stress, but because I felt like it was wrong to take such pains to leave a place I love so much.

When I was here, I seized every moment of the day.  I felt more alive and engaged and happy than I ever have, and I’m terrified to lose it when I come home.  I learned to focus less on the minutiae of errands and obligations, and more on what makes me happy.  I didn’t have a laundry hamper all semester. Instead, I had a pile on the floor under my desk that cycled from there to the washer every week.  And the world didn’t end, I just spent the time I would have been scouring Ikea for some cheap bin at the Uffizi instead.  And for me, an utterly Type A, varsity-level worrier and clean freak, the little things like this were huge. This was my dolce vita, and I will always carry a little of it with me now.

In spite of this admirable personal growth, I cannot wait to do some laundry when I get home.  It will go in a dryer, it will be warm and snuggly, the whole process will be done in 90 minutes and nothing will be stretched to circus-tent proportions.

Some pictures and proof I made it home alive will follow later.

I’ve been looking through my previous entries trying to find where things could have gone wrong, and I think this sentence is the culprit:

The movie sucked (get it? It’s a vampire movie!), but there were lots of attractive shirtless men and it was in English, so the immature tween in me was pleased.

You’ll notice the hyperlinked words in that sentence (but you won’t click on them- blog stats says only 3 people do), that are probably the source of the problem.  So just to redeem myself, I’ll insert the pictures those are linked to right here so you all can see them.

not fat

also not fat

I actually Googled “shirtless men getting fat” to see if I could find this blog, but I gave up after 8 pages of Men’s Health articles about how to lose your manboobs.  Reader that got here looking for scantily clad fat dudes, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

That must sting almost as much as crushed civil liberties and rampant corruption does!

First, yesterday Silvio Berlusconi was struck in the face during a rally in Milan!  Here’s a NYT article about the incident and a brief primer on Berlusconi’s evils, here’s a disappointingly chaotic video of the attack, and here’s my view: that jerk had it coming.  Ok, yeah, yeah sure it’s bad when citizens illustrate such little respect for institutions and actors of the state that they will hit them in the face with souvenir statues of Milan’s cathedral.  But Silvio Berlusconi is a rat, a liar, and a cheat.  He is the scum between my toes.  He makes George W. Bush look honest and forthcoming!  That said, I would like it if Italians expressed their civic malaise through more peaceful avenues like, say, a ballot box…

Is it really that tilty? New England geography baffles me.

And now, for something completely different, we will exalt the greatness of Connecticut.  One very attentive reader noticed my dig at Connecticut in my last post, and quickly jumped to her home’s defense.  As a proud Texan and a dedicated DC lover, I understand and admire her pride.  So, dear readers, please give Connecticut a second look through Rebecca Reichardt’s loving eyes.   I made the text UCONN blue just to get into the spirit of things!

“I couldn’t help but notice that you once thought of Connecticut as “a place that once seemed boring and undesirable.” While I am very happy that your Florentine experience has fostered a desire to visit my beloved native land, I fear that after visiting Storrs, the home of the great UCONN Huskies, your original opinion of the state may be confirmed. Thus I have taken it upon myself to compile a list for you of cool shit about Connecticut.

1. The Hamburger was invented at Lou’s lunch in New Haven.
2. The Frisbee was also invented in New Haven.
3. America’s first theme park is Lake Compounce in Bristol. It’s actually kind of lame (it’s fun peaked during my 8th grade class trip), but it’s still cool that it’s there.
4. Bristol is home to the Carousel Museum AND ESPN.
5. Captain Kidd [I didn't know who this was, but I'm impressed after looking him up!] allegedly buried his treasure in the Thimble Islands off the coast of Branford.
6. Our state mammal is the Sperm Whale. I’m not exactly sure why, but I think that’s pretty cool. Also, the state song in Yankee Doodle.
7. Whiffle balls and PEZ candies are made in Shelton and Orange respectively. Thus, Connecticut is probs responsible for at least 6.54% of childhood fun.
8. The dude who discovered the Titanic has his home base at the aquarium in Mystic.
9. During Thanksgiving time, Gozzi’s turkey farm in Guilford dies its turkeys turkeys bright colors.
10. Seth MacFarlane and the guy who plays Mac (like in the Mac commercials) are both from Connecticut.
11. The UCONN Huskies are the best basketball team in the history of the world.
12. East Haven has more Italians per capita than any other town in the United States of America. Pizza in Connecticut is NO joke.”

A few weeks ago, I felt as nervous about my lack of Christmas spirit as Charlie Brown.  Italians don’t get excited about Christmas spirit in October the way we Americans do, so I was forcing it.  I was caroling in the shower and wearing red and green a lot, but something just felt off.  And then, by December 1 it was like living in a winter wonderland.  It got a lot colder, they turned on all the cute light displays in the center, and then the Christmas Markets opened!  I went on a little day trip with Aria (our intrepid leader) and Kelsey to this village called Palazzuolo Sul Senio for our first Italian Mercato Natale experience.  We were the only Americans in the village (it was a small enough place for me to comfortably say that I saw every resident and tourist to be seen), which is a truly rare find in Tuscany.  There was great food, a polka band, and lots of cute families.  I thought this was the pinnacle of Christmas cheer until we got back to Florence and I saw all the lights and the German-style Christmas market in Piazza Santa Croce.  Baked goods, hot wine, and crafts galore!  I bought some slippers there the other day, and I’ve been wearing them pretty much ever since.  Embarrassing confession time: I turned down a social engagement because it didn’t sound fun enough to warrant taking off said slippers and putting on real shoes.  I am becoming Liz Lemon, and I think I like it.

Anyway, now I am full of Christmas cheer, even if it is mostly of a hermit variety.  Now I belt Christmas carols all the time, I have an uncontrollable urge to bake, every item seems like a gift potentiality, and I miss my family.

Riding the carousel in Piazza della Repubblica

Florence got a little less fun sometime around 5 am on Saturday morning because all of my dear amici from UConn headed to the airport to go home.  I had a great semester with them, and now I have a strong desire to visit Connecticut, a place that once seemed boring and undesirable.  For a while the semester seemed condemned to loneliness because many of my Vanderbilt peers came here in friend groups already or, in a select few cases, seemed like monstrous bitches.  Then I went along on a CET-sponsored outing for the Festa della Rificolona and met these social saviors.  (A recommendation to future students abroad: go along on program activities! They’re always fun and usually free!) Both individually and collectively, they exhibit that winning mixture of charm, cleverness, and fun that you’re a fool not to try to befriend.  Plus they laughed at my jokes.  I miss them already.

We had a great last night, though: the single most delicious, decadent, and “Italian-feeling” (we were there for hourrrs) dinner I’ve had all semester, riding the fabled carousel in Piazza della Repubblica, gelato, parlor games, sparklers (!), and nearly-teary goodbye hugs in the street.

Their departure and the sudden influx of schoolwork for final exams has suddenly made my impending obligation to leave this perfect place feel frighteningly real.  But I’ll save that emotional land mine for a different entry.

Last night I went to an art show some of my friends were having as the celebratory conclusion to a rigorous drawing course this semester.  Portraits, still lifes (lives?), and schematics galore! They were all wonderful and deserving of far more roses than I brought with me to the show.  I didn’t actually intend to bring roses with me, but the florist forced me into it.  Apparently Gerber daisies are ugly and you only bring them to people you don’t like.  She made a nice bouquet, but she was a little sterner than your average Italian.  She was also allergic to flowers…

After their terrific exhibit, we got some truly amazing takeout lasagna and hung around their apartment before heading out to a bar.  If I had to guess at what forms the strongest bond between myself and this group, I would not say it was because we share mutual interests, goals, or awesomeness (clearly those are secondary foundations).  I would say it’s because we all like to sing and dance around at night, and not in a sleazy discotheque way, but with a Charlie Brown Christmas party level of exuberance.  When I need to recruit friends to join me at Beatles night (an inexplicably tough to sell to the other Vandy kids), I can count on them, as I did last Tuesday!  Then we rush over to Bebop and sing/scream and dance foolishly until we’re so hoarse and sweaty we have to leave the club/glorified steam pit in the ground.

Lori knows how to belt a ballad

And in that vein, last night we sang and danced around Florence.  We listened to old Christina Aguilera songs and Lady Gaga’s latest robot impressions in their apartment, and then we took our jam session over to Joshua Tree  Pub. I would never recommend Joshua Tree to people looking for an authentic Florentine nightlife experience, an extensive and classy bar offering, or even a good-smelling setting. But I would wholeheartedly recommend Joshua Tree to anyone looking for a cheap and potent beer called Firesomething (it sounds like a brand of broom from Harry Potter) and lots of ballads you and your merry mates can sing along to.   We’re talking about the sort of place where they sometimes turn down the music so the whole bar can scream “WAOOOOH-OH-OH-OH WITH OR WITHOUT YOUUU” during the really face-meltingly good part of that song; in essence, we are talking about a wonderful place.

This is what it looks like when I sing along to Foreigner

Upon further research, we realized we’d stumbled upon the Palais de Tokyo, a very hip modern art museum.  The exhibits look weird and unappealing, and the groundskeepers need to step up their game.  The place was covered in leaf piles and looked creepily abandoned.  Here’s what it looks like during happier times:

Still a little menacing in the sunshine

Are you surprised to learn that I have a YouTube account?  This is a fact that surprises even me sometimes, so I’d understand your shock.  I got it for all my Twilight montages!  Haha, just kidding.  I made the account so I could share this video by Hilary Gastel with the world.  It’s so darn cute that I couldn’t keep it to myself.  Plus, maybe some of you will find “Hilary Studies for Finals” inspiring/topical now that we’re entering exams season again!

It was closed, but let's not read into that.

If I had to really describe my trip, I’d say that Lauren and I walked around Paris.  We walked around Pere Lachaise cemetery, which is actually very interesting.  Oscar Wilde’s grave is covered in kisses from admirers, and it’s reassures one’s faith in humanity to see that one is not alone in highly valuing sass, wit, and bright red lipstick.  (Don’t worry, responsible readers. Swine flu fear kept me from smooching Oscar’s tomb.) Then we made our most important purchases of the trip: berets! With our native Parisian costumes perfected, we walked around the Louvre-Tuileries Gardens and gained a fresh understanding of how things got so out of hand in 1789 because I imagine I would have felt good and fired up with impoverished rage if I’d been an eighteenth century peasant among all that luxury.  We also wanted to walk around the Centre Pompidou, but as those French are wont to do, there was a strike.  Oh well, I guess that means that I just have to go back to Paris and visit the museum another time, ostensibly when labor conditions are more suitable.

"Greve" is French for "strike" or "big letdown"

On Friday night, Lauren’s friend Etienne kindly took us around so we could see how real Parisians party.  It turns out to be much like Americans partying, but with better outfits and more wine.  Being the Americans with rusty French is sort of a social liability at a party, but everyone was very nice anyway.  We met one guy who’d been sent to study abroad in Omaha, and (to my surprise) he wasn’t bitter about such a crappy placement- he really liked getting to see “zee profound America.” There was this other guy who’d been sent to study in Canada, and I guess he really assimilated to life there because he was sort of weird and annoying.

On Day 2 we meant to go to the Grand Palais to see the cool building itself and a Renoir exhibit, but we ended up walking so much we got tired and went to a Christmas fair and lunch instead.  Teaser: someone got a gift at the Christmas fair!  In the afternoon we took shelter in the warmth of a movie theater and saw New Moon!  The movie sucked (get it? It’s a vampire movie!), but there were lots of attractive shirtless men and it was in English, so the immature tween in me was pleased.

On the last night, Lauren and I went on an old lady/best friend date that included steak-frites and a cute

Well if that doesn't melt your heart, then I just don't know what to do with you.

stroll along the Champs Elysees and to the Eiffel Tower.  But you never can tell with Paris, so there were some twists. We inadvertently ended up dining at a North African restaurant, so I had cous cous (delicious) and Lauren’s steak-frites looked like the exotic dish.  We also passed fire-breathing Parisian young toughs along the Seine!  We timed our stroll perfectly, too, because we got to the Eiffel Tower just in time too see it sparkle at midnight to herald in a new and beautiful day in Paris!

Before we left on Sunday night we walked around Paris some more (why break the tradition?).  To fill up on energy for our windy and drizzly last day, we had positively delectable pancakes at a diner by our hotel called B.I.A., which is a little less funny when you learn it stands for Breakfast in America.  Then we oggled puppies and kittens in a pet store along the Seine.  In related news, I really want to get a pair of puppies and name them Skinamarink and Dinkadink.

In case a long-winded entry didn’t get the message across, let’s do a quick recap: Crepes, Christmas fairs, Robert Pattinson, cafe au lait, sparkling Eiffel tower, berets, Oscar Wilde, Abelard and Heloise, Parisian strolls, getting to speak French, baby animals, pancakes, and a weekend with my best friend.  Though the days in Study Abroad Dreamland are rapidly dwindling, they Calvin and Hobbes wisdom still applies: the days are just packed.

Things I have eaten (clearly the most important information while I’m in France):

1. champagne

2. apple sauce crepe (YUM)

3. cafe au lait

4. croissant

5. baguette with jam

My journey here was long, but basically painless.  In true Italian fashion, my train transfer from Pisa to the Pisa airport was switched with under 2 minutes to spare, so I got my cardio for the day sprinting from platform 14 to platform 2. Two funny characters from the trip:

1. Old Italian lady next to me on Ryanair Flight 9976: Clearly this signora had a severe fear of flying, but also a strong desire to look out the window.  It was raining the whole flight, though, so there wasn’t anything but scary stuff to see.  After some turbulence and lightning, she started working her way along a rosary.  I’m not really afraid of flying, but when someone starts doing Hail Mary’s during turbulence, it worries me.  I thought she was going to break the chain from squeezing the beads too hard during our bumpy landing.  And of course, since it’s Ryanair, we all clapped when the flight landed safely.

2. Boy-crazy 16 year old girl on the bus from the airport to Paris: When this little Italian girl found out I was American, I knew we were in for a long bus ride.  I was riddled with inane questions (no, I have never met Lady Gaga, and no, my father is not a cowboy), which were mostly funny until we got to boys.  Italians just don’t understand how or why a girl my age could be single, so I’ve invented a boyfriend to placate strangers.  So when Marta asked if I had a boy, I told her about my fake one.  She bought it, but she didn’t understand why I didn’t have an Italian on the side… the country struggles with faithfulness.  The only thing that let me ride in peace was when our Twilight divide was revealed: she’s on Team Jake and I’m on Team Edward.  I wanted to ask her how it felt to be on the losing team, but clearly this was a disagreement we couldn’t talk through. She turned away from me and muttered about me being crazy!

I spent the first few weeks I was here constantly on the go.  In order to get somewhere on time, you have to leave so far in advance! I hardly had time to breathe because I was so busy running to catch a bus or sprinting down a street.  After complaining about this to Aria, our program director/life in Florence guru/friend, she shared a crucial bit of wisdom with me: that semi-contained chaos of Italian life cannot be precisely enough manipulated to allow for promptness.  The only way to successfully get along is to quit fighting and simply eke out the easiest path you can through the muck.  Basically, you either spend tons of time and energy racing to get somewhere on time, or you slow down and accept lateness.

As my harried roommates can attest to, this is still an aspect of Italian life I struggle with.  None of our professors seem troubled by starting class 15 minutes late (one especially lax prof usually arrives after the whole class has assembled), but I am.  I can remain calm until we are actually late, then the panic begins.  Clearly my assimilation to the Italian style of time-management is only skin deep… On the plus side, my legs and my shoulders have gotten a lot stronger this semester, the legs for speed walking to site visits and the shoulders from muscling through hordes of fat tourists on the sidewalks.

My latest battle: my jeans.  My mom sent me some much-needed new jeans (remember my earlier complaining, Blythe?) but they were 4 inches too long, so I sought out a tailor.  After much effort, I finally dropped them off somewhere successfully last Thursday.  They said they’d be ready Friday, which is an awfully long time for one pair of pants to be hemmed, but whatever- we’re on that cute Italian time, you know??  But then I realized these infamous jeans wouldn’t be ready for my trip to Paris this Thursday, and that’s heartbreaking because I really wanted to paint a stylish and well-put together picture of myself for Parisians and Lauren.  So then I went back today to see if I could get them a day early (HA), only to learn that they will actually be ready later than expected because the tailor was “sick.” I say “sick” because Italians are weenies who deem any ailment fatal so they don’t have to work.

This small injustice aside, I love it here.  It’s beautiful and calm and delicious and perfect, but sometimes you just want your damn pants.

There are so many Americans in Florence that you have to reserve a turkey weeks in advance and then go fight for it in the central market.  Italians have little to no respect for lines, reservations, or any organizational structure intended to deal with crowds, so the reservation is more a formality that just adds an extra layer of self-righteous conflict (“BUT I HAD A RESERVATION!”) than anything else.  Plus, Italians (rightly) believe that their food is the best in the world, so they don’t really carry international offerings in grocery stores.  Italians also have special disdain for the foods Americans hold dear like cheddar cheese, chili, soft baked goods, and obviously anything Thanksgiving-related. These sorts of international goods and ingredients are only available for unbelievably high prices in specialty grocery stores, and they all sold out of cranberry sauce fixings sometime around Halloween.  So since making a Thanksgiving dinner seems like such a daunting task, I’ve decided to embrace the holiday by participating in that other Thanksgiving tradition: travel.

Instead of a tryptophan-induced coma, I will spend this Thanksgiving in Paris with mon amie! (Read it so it rhymes! Cute, right?) Lauren and I became best friends during the dark, dark years of middle school, but now that our skin and social ept-ness have cleared up, we are classy ladies who holiday in Paris.   There won’t be turkey on our trip, but somehow I think I’ll survive in the land of crepes, the release of the 2009 beaujolais nouveau, cafe au lait, and brie.

I am positively giddy about this trip!  If you don’t love Paris, then you’re stupid.  It is beautiful and historically significant and delicious and fun and full of French people – what’s not to love?  Plus I’m taking “Making of Modern Paris” next semester, so now I can have the real deal fresh in my mind!  And even though my Italian is slowly progressing, I look forward to being in France so I can put my many years of French to good use and feel smart instead of stupid for a while.

I hope you all enjoy your football, your Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, your turkey, and your family tensions boiling just beneath the surface of the holiday season.  I feel a little homesick because I’m missing these gems of American culture and my family, but there’s worse fates than Thanksgiving with your best friend in Paris!