Busy!

I went to Salamanca to visit Cat this weekend. Summary: spent many, many, many hours in trains, buses, planes, cabs on Thursday and Sunday. In between, slept not a lot. Had lots of tapas (Spanish tortillas are good) and spent a good about of time in pubs. Made a friend (it's like I'm in elementary school).

I know, you feel like you were there. I'm too tired.

Colby-wise, I (of course) had a terrible, terrible number and so did all of the girls I'm living with. Almost went off campus but tried room draw. Ended up in a two room triple in West Quad. Could be worse. Quotas suck (I'm really very profound).

So, home in a little over two weeks, then road trip, then Senior Week, then farm.

Home in a month. Exciting.

It's already April 11?

Photos take forever to upload on here; apparently you can share Facebook albums with the whole wide world now, so if you're interested: photos!

Went to the beach today. Viareggio, it's about an hour and a half away by train. I ended up going alone, which sounds sad as I'm writing it, but was really nice in reality. I walked along the beach for a couple of hours. That's it. Stood in the ocean (way, way too cold for swimming). Collected a few seashells. Mostly just walked, though. Now I smell salty and beachy and my cheeks are sunburned. Viareggio itself isn't the prettiest place, but there are these mountains that basically rise right out of the ocean, with snow on top. It's really beautiful.

Easter festivities this weekend. We bought a dove cake and on Sunday a few of my suitmates and I are making a feast. I guess there's a big parade, and something about an exploding cart, near the Duomo. Florence is pretty much overflowing with tourists right now, has been ever since we got back from break, actually. It's hard to walk, it's so jam packed.

Lots of traveling this past weekend. On Friday, Erin and I went to Venice. We were planning on staying the night, but hostelworld.com is again a piece of shit, and our hostel again ended up being in the middle of the ghetto and required a few buses and lots of walking to get there, so we decided not to waste time trying to find it, and just did the day in Venice. It actually wasn't a very nice day, chilly and rainy and really windy, but we walked all around the city, bought some Murano glass, ate a semi-decent meal. There's a piazza there where people sell birdseed and pigeons attack you, so of course we bought birdseed and let ourselves be covered in pigeons, which in retrospect was pretty gross, probably... who wants pigeons in their hair... but it was fun, anyway, so there you go. We headed back to Florence late Friday night.

Saturday it was raining and cold and windy in Florence, so I holed up in my room and watched movies on alluc.org, literally all day. It was pretty productive.

Yesterday we hopped on a train to Arezzo, which turned out to be great. They had this huge flea/antique market that we wandered around for a few hours. Had crepes and gelato for lunch, then took a train over to Cortona, which is this really tiny hill town about an hour away from Florence. The train only takes you to Comuncia (?), and apparently buses don't run on Sundays, so we started walking up. After a few hours we ended up at a really pretty, deserted old church about halfway up, where we met a nice Canadian family who offered to drive us up to the town, so we did that, then spent an hour or two exploring. Really, really pretty views. Had a candy bar (KinderBueno!) for dinner (I know, I've got a pretty balanced diet going) and started walking down. We decided to take a few shortcuts through olive groves and backyards, because the road was really twisty and we wanted to cut out a few loops. Got stuck a few times on the edge of cliffs. I was brilliant and wore flip flops, and now my feet are completely busted and cut up and covered in ant bites, which is great. Good day though.

Going through a homesick phase. I'm just tired of trying to speak Italian, and of being stared at by creepy men, and of, I don't know, everything... just a phase though, hopefully I'll snap out of it soon. I was feeling sad the other day, so I went to McDonald's and had some french fries. Great.