Scopa and Salute

I had a great and very interesting two weeks in Italy and Spain. I learned so much about how to travel and with each person I met and every new culture I encountered I found my whole world turned around. How can one be so sure of anything when there are so many different religions, cultures, governments, languages, etc? Oh life. This trip was random, long, and delicious. There is no way for me to write anything fluid about it…

-Gelato=Life. I ate gelato almost every day I was in Italy and ohhhh baby it is good. There are endless combinations to make. I can’t even remember my favourite one right now. Was it banana and nutella? Uva fragolla? I don’t know but I do know I want more, now please.

-Andrea lives close to the Arno River that runs through Firenze and at the end of my time in Italy I had at least 35 mosquito bites on my body, and then got a few more after that. I am from the mountains and I have gotten eaten alive by mosquitoes many a time and I have scratched the holy shit out of my mosquito bites in the past, but these were not normal mosquitoes or normal mosquito bites. They were mutants and I looked like I had leprosy or the plague. I came I saw I conquered. I swelled, I itched. I bled.

-I went to visit Ha Ani in Orvieto. This small Italian town’s population is appx. 8,000 people and no one speaks English. It is beautiful and like a little fairy tale. One night we played capture the flag in the town and it is small enough that each team had an entire piazza as their home base and we just ran around the town in the sweet October air. I hate silly competitive sports like this and I fucking hate capture the flag normally, but this was so much fun! I think my team would have won but eventually the little Italian police came and we got to a point where both teams knew where each other’s flags were but we just didn’t have enough people to conquer. Ha Ani’s program has only about 15 kids. So fun!

-Two kids from my program here in Denmark were in Florence too and we got some good wine and just chilled on the steps and drank it after speaking butchered Italian to this cute old man wine seller. I swear wine tastes better in Italy, outside, on a piazza’s steps.

-In Spain at my hostel I had some bed confusion on the first night. My safe, letter K, was in the corner so I assumed my bed was also in the corner next to my safe. I was wrong! I came in late one night to find a hairy pretty much naked boy in “my” bed. I was freaking out because it was really late and there were 20 other people in the room and I just didn’t know what to do. I needed a place to sleep so I wake him up and make him recite to me which bed he has and in the end, in the dark, I found out that my K bed was on the other side. People were so mad and it was pretty hilarious in a tragic way for me. I had actually taken a siesta in what turned out to be his bed earlier in the day and he saw me and just said he laughed and let me sleep there. Ohh man.

-Also the kids in my hostel thought I regularly talked on the phone in the night. If you know me at all you might be familiar with my sleep talking habits. I don’t just mumble, I have full on conversations with only god knows who. Kind of embarrassing…

-At the hostel we got free dinner and breakfast. It was the best and most perfect place to stay. Oh and 2 liters of beer for 3 euro. Slightly dangerous…hehe.

-I loved getting to practice my Spanish. Mexican Spanish is different than the Spanish spoken in Spain. And in Barcelona they actually really speak Catalan which is a strange hybrid of French and Spanish. But I must become fluent in Spanish when I get home! Almost everyone I meet over here speaks at least two or more languages. I hate the fact that English is becoming the main universal language. We have it way too easy as Americans.

-Ryanair, while it is cheap initially, can suck. It didn’t completely suck for me but I realize that you have to be careful. We had to take an hour bus ride after our flight and it was just a little annoyance, but I know now to double check where Ryanair is actually flying me and if it is worth it in the end when thinking of additional expenses!

-La Sagrada Familia was a religious experience for me. When it is finally done I will go back to Barcelona for sure. The detail and all of the different materials used in the construction is amazing and I just love the organic and nature inspired style!-I had a fantastic siesta on the grass at the leaning tower of Pisa. I love sunshine and grassy naps!

-I love Kababs! They are like the European burrito. The ones in Spain are better than in Italy and Denmark from what I have experienced…

-In some ways its sad to think of all of the great people I meet and I will never see any of them ever again…I love global networking!

-I watched that “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” film when I was in Barcelona and it was so cool to see all of the sites that were in the movie because I had been there too! I really enjoyed the movie too. I haven’t gone to the movies since I’ve been over here because it really isn’t my thing but I forgot how much I love going to the movies.

-I splurged and bought myself some Italian leather shoes! They were quite expensive but I only came to Europe with a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of flip flops, a pair of low heels, and my rainboots. My mom sent my old working flats that I loathe and they hurt my feet, so I still REALLY needed to find some good shoes that were a) comfortable for walking and dancing b) not gonna die in the rain c) versatile (aka BLACK and can be worn with tights or pants) d) cute and I do believe I have found them. I still need to break them in a little bit but I hope they work. I have really sensitive and gross feet so I need some good shoes finally in my life!