My Last Post: Ciao Roma...

I believe this will be my last post.

Tomorrow is Sunday and I leave for the airport at 4 am Monday morning. My experience here has been great and I can't believe I am going home. I am so excited to go home and see the fam and celebrate Christmas but I am actually really sad to leave. I have met so many great people and made new friends especially close ones. I have lived in a different country for 3 months which is something that not a lot of people can say. I have traveled to many different places. I have experienced life. I wasn't in Chicago, studying at DePaul, sitting around and hanging out, or working at Potbelly. I was here in Rome where I was able to experience a different life and culture. The main things I have taken away from this trip our the people i have met, the culture i have experienced, the two lovelies that i was able to develop great friendships with, and most importantly I think I know who i am again. I might have not immersed as much in the city/culture or developed my language skills as much as I wanted to, but that's ok. Even though my experience wasn't what i thought it would be, it was still just as worthwhile and rewarding and i wouldnt change it. So here is to everyone and thing that made this experience so important and life changing:

Merm and Dad

Aunt Shelley and Uncle Stephen

DePaul University

Italiaiedia

Laura and Christina

and most importantly...

Rome :]

Athens

I went to athens the past for 4 days. it was great and i loved it! it was a mix of a beach town, urban city, and the mountainside. it's amazing how one place can feel like all that. i stayed with my friend tony who i know through my other friend luke. tony is greek and goes to depaul for school but this quarter he stayed in greece. so me and laura and christina stayed and hung out with him. luke was also there too. it was nice to see two of my friends again. we stayed at tony's house and got free good greek food from his mom. it was awesome!! we went and visited the new acropolis museum, national archaeological museum, the acropolis, and we walked and drove around areas of athens. we also went to two clubs and two bars. it was soooo much fun! it was laura's bday the other night so we went out and celebrated :] nothing else really. it was big and white like i imagined it. after all my travels i think i like paris, athens, and prague in that order. if i include rome i think it goes at the end. rome was cool and fun but i enjoyed these other cities better.

i go home soon and i cant wait. literally.

Pompeii and Napoli

Tuesday my class and i took a day trip to pompeii and napoli. we left super early in the morning and had a tour of pompeii. i have been there before and wasnt that impressed because i had seen it before and i didnt like it that much in the first place. but i did learn some new facts and it was still interesting. we then had a tour of napoli. i liked it. it was mix between a beach town and a setting in oliver twist. i think that is why i liked it, it had two totally different feels. that was our trip. it was fun overall i suppose.

tomorrow is thanksgiving and the school has organized a dinner for us which is wonderful. it is awesome that they are letting us celebrate thanksgiving even though it isnt important to them.

this weekend i go to greece and im so excited!!!

Firenze!

so i know this is a week over due but blame the internet at my house! haha! Florence was great!the weather could have been better though. it rained a little and was overcast and chilly. (i dont know what happened to this text! haha sorry)

Saturday:

we got in and our art history teacher was with us for the majority of saturday. we basically had class. he showed us around florence while lecturing about architecture and sculptures. we then went to the uffizzi which was awesome for a second time. boticelli is so amazing!!!! we then had time to chill and walk around before dinner.

Sunday:

we saw david which was just as amazing as before. i am so amazed michaelangelo did that, it baffles me. we then had a few hours to do whatever and i went to the leather market and shopped with some friends. next we went to agriturismo terre di bacio. OMG! it was so beautiful and relaxing. i want to go there again! the best pic and story of this trip was that our bus could night get up the massive hill to the place because of the mud so we had to carry our luggage and walk up the hill, haha. we had a fabulous dinner and wine and oil tasting. we even stayed in apartments which reminded me of america or just didnt remind me of italy or europe haha. after dinner since we were in apartments we all got together and drank wine in one of the apartments. it was so great.

Monday:

we left for san gimignano which is a small medieval town. it was really pretty and we saw a church that had famous frescoes, i forgot the name. we explored then went to bagno vignoni where we got to swim in an italian hot spring water bath! it was such a cool experience! we all looked funny with our swim caps, haha! that was the trip. it was a lot of fun and i realized that rural italy is so gorgeous and if i came here again i would just go to places like that.

oh and just fyi...i think i might be going to berlin this weekend- which made this past weekend my last in rome.....well i guess the weekend i leave is my last but i will be packing and what not. i guess last for sure where everyone would be here :[

FALL BREAK '09 cont.!!! (start at the one before this one)

prague was so gorgeous! it wasnt what i expected at first but our second day changed my mind. it reminded me of medieval times and fairytales. i felt like i was in shrek or something, haha. the same people came with me except rachel went back to rome, laura's sister cate joined us, and some of laura's friends met up with us for a night. the hostel was better than i thought, which was good. i didnt do too bad with researching places to stay on this trip, proud of myself. also i was the planner and navigator. i was called rick steves because i planned everything from his book. that is one of my nicknames now, ricky steve, ha.

we explored old town and its square. we saw the astronomical clock which was one my favorite things. at every hour the grim reaper would ring a bell and the twelve apostles would look out the window, its really cool. we also went to the havelska market which was a craft fair. we went to the jewish quarter and saw the pinkas synagogue, the old jewish cemetery, and another synagogue that was about the jewish religion and traditions. the pinkas synagogue had the names of the prague jews who were in the holocaust and who died on the walls. it was so profound, i couldnt handle it. there were so many names...also there was an art exhibit of holocaust children's drawings and it was just so sad. we went on charles bridge where we saw great views of prague (another one of my favorite things), saw a little of little quarter and its square. i liked the feel of little quarter the best. it gave me the sense of what i expected of prague. we went to the castle quarter and saw the buildings and churches there, also great views of prague. on our last day we sat and chatted at a coffee shop, went to the mucha museum, went to a teahouse, and shopped on wenceslas square. the mucha museum was about mucha the czech artist who did art noveau paintings and prints, i really liked his work. the teahouse was really fun with the atmosphere feeling rustic, warm, and relaxing. we had hearty and meaty czech food which was basically meat and dumplings the whole time. we had czech beer as well as guiness at an irish pub which was suggested in my book. one of my all time favorite things was getting sausage in this little square. it was yummy and just fun to go up and order and just eat it right there. probably the funniest thing i did was the prague pub crawl. we did it for halloween, it was my first pub crawl, and it was so much fun! wouldnt mind doing another haha.

well that was fall break. i leave for florence for 3 days with my class. let you know about that soon! also, i have wednesdays and fridays off now so i can explore more of rome and relax. i know im going to miss rome and everything here but i am ready to go home....but like i said, i know its going to be bittersweet :]

FALL BREAK '09!!!

omg...i had a blast for my fall break. paris was just as fun and beautiful as i wanted it to be and prague was gorgeous. i spent 5 days in paris and the last 4 days in prague.

paris was awesome. the buildings reminded me of playmobil dollhouses, haha. also i felt like i fit in more because i looked like a lot of the french girls. the food was great or just really the crepes were the bomb! the hotel we stayed in was in the latin quarter, served breakfast, was clean, and helpful. my impression of paris was basically 10/10. i didnt want to leave and i now want to learn the language, haha, and go visit again. i went with my friends laura, addison, rachel, and madeline.

we went to monmartre and saw the moulin rouge which wasnt impressive and the sacre-coeur basilica and saw a view of paris. we went to a french mass and heard a 25-minute organ recital at st. suplice and we went to the orsay (impressionism) and the pompidou center (modern). the orsay was probably one of my favorite things i did in paris. we also went to the notre dame, sainte-chapelle, palais royal courtyards, the louvre, champs-elysees, and the arc di trioumph. i actually wasnt that impressed with the louvre but maybe that was because it was still very crowded for off-season and i was exhausted. i did love the mona lisa though from seeing it in person than i did before. the notre dame was very relaxing as well as the palais royal courtyards. rachel, laura, and i went there and sat for a few hours and then went to a cafe. that was one of my favs on the trip too. we went to the pantheon, luxemborg gardens, and the eiffel tower. the luxemborg gardens were gorgeous and i could have stayed there for hours. the eiffel tower was amazing. i found the notre dame from the top and i was so excited and then it all hit that i was in paris in europe and in italy studying abroad and how great of an experience this is. also we all drank wine and ate baguettes in front of the eiffel tower for dinner, it was so much fun. on our last day we went to ile st. louis, the jewish quarter, other parisian streets for shopping, the gardens of plantee, and the notre dame again. ile st. louis is an island next to the notre dame island. it isnt touristy and has great shopping it was a lot of fun. for our last parisian hoo-ray we got crepes and sat in front of the notre dame at night. it was a great way to end the trip. i had great and and a number of crepes from vendors and places that were recommended in my book. we also got an ice cream crepe from haagan-das which was amazing! i had french onion soup twice and i loved it! i tried my friend's steak tar-tar and it actually was pretty good. i also had a croque and parisian ice cream. i loved paris....everything about it was amazing :]

Eurochocolate!!

i did two really fun things this weekend: fonclea & eurochocolate!

fonclea is a live band club/restaurant. i went with a group of people and it was a lot of fun. a few of us got there early to get a table and we got a table right in fron

t of the band. we had appetizers and drinks. i had a margharita which was really weird, haha. the band we heard was a cover band for the Bee Gees. they were re

ally really good and it was a lot of fun! at the very end we started a dance party which was crazy. it was just a really fun night :]

sunday i went to eurochocolate in perugia! i went with my friend laura and we left rome at 8 on a packed train (we sat/stood in between cars). we got there around 10:30/11. it was easy to get to the festival because there were people telling us what we should do and everyone there was going to eurochocolate. we spent around 3 hrs. there. it was so huge! there was soooooo much chocolate!! i tried this cake thing with fruit and churros with chocolate, they were really good! my favorite was italian hot chocolate...omg...i got dark chocolate and it was so warm and it was also thicker than our hot chocolate. it was the best! also i tried this white chocolate piece of chocolate with grains or rice cakes and it was my next favorite thing. i bought 2 gifts and dark chocolate filled with banana for myself. the coolest thing i saw there was chocolate sculptors. perugia has a chocolate school.

so these students were scuplting things from huge blocks of chocolate. they used sculpting tools, axes, and a drill-yes a power drill. we even had to shield ourselves from the chocolate that was being sculpted off!

we didnt actually stay there long enough to see what they sculpted but it was really cool. you had to push and shove to get near the sculptor's assistants because they were giving away the chunks of chocolate that were sculpted off from the blocks of chocolate, yummy! it was an exhausting day because i basically traveled all day because we got back around 8 something but it was a lot of fun!

THIS WEEKEND I'M GOING TO PARIS AND PRAGUE, AHHH!!!