I have finally gotten settled, so now I can write and tell you all about it. I got a real job! In an office, with a desk and a computer and my own telephone extension! Whoopee! I did it, I graduated and got a job! I am a legitimate adult! WOW!
So evedently my blog is still active and I can continue to use it... I did it, I graduated and now I am going to be a Success! I'll write more later and prove it. I've got big news! Yippee, Yippee
I made it! I am back home and it is such a happy relief to be here. But just to make things a little funny, my luggage got lost somewhere. So I am home but my backpack is lost somewhere out there in some bustling airport luggage room. but I really don't even care! I am home and safe and have eaten a wonderful late night meal with my family and now I will get to conk out in my very own bed. Oh how much I love my bed, and my pillow that is perfect. It is so great to be back, all the animals were happy to see me. The dogs jostling for my attention and my sweet kitties were even happy to have me home, or at least I think so.
It already feels like I haven't been gone..like it was all just a dream or maybe I was only gone for week. It feels strange, like I didn't acomplish anything. Right now feels even more peculiar cause I don't have anythings to show for it. I just got out of the car and walked into the house, like normal. I didn't have my backpack or anything. And now I can't pull out the trinkets and maps or anything to prove that I have been gone, that I have been to Malta and Croatia!!!! Most Americans couldn't even point out those two wonderful countries on a globe. But I have been there, I have lived there! But without my luggage I can't prove it! Or at least that is the way it feels right now. But maybe everything will feel different in the morning. I definalty do need a good night's rest. I have been traveling on planes, trains, boats and buses for the last 3 days and none of them are very conducive to sleep. So I am to wash my face, brush my teeth and fall into a deep, deep, deep sleep...........
oh things went so much worse than i could have expected. The rome office of STA tried to be helpful but ended up causing me much more trouble. they said could change my ticket for only$25, which is true if i a had a paper ticket in my hand but i didn't and we didn't relieze this key information until later. so i followed their advice and called stupid US Airways and told them i wanted to cancel my flight home, per STA guidiance. oh and if i could have eaten those words my life would have been so much easier today. but cest la vie. it happends. so anyway for about an hour today i was left with NO WAY HOME. no ticket exsisted to get little rika back home again. the horrible us airways agent said "sorry once you cancel your flight, it can't be undone". even though it was the same damm lady from ten minutes earlier. ooohhhh! she still makes me upset. so then once i was totaly freaking out in a public train station i decided to call home. cause i was supposed to let my mom know when i would be arriveing at seatac. so then as soon as my mama answered, the tears let loose., "mom, i don't know what to do. i can't get home. " poor mom, i think it had to be after midnight sometime. and my phone card was running out cause i had spent the last hour and a half on the phone and on hold. so i tell her the basics and the phone card cuts out. oh God that is the worse feeling. so i go find another card and calm down and call home again. so to make a long and agonizing tale shorter, my mom saved my hide. she got hold of a US Airways angent with a bit more claught/clout(sp?) and was able to make my ticket re-materalize. so i do get to go back home!! YAY! so right now i am back in rome after a day spent on the train and i will be spending the night at the airport. be cause i will not be missing my flight tomorrow!! or ever again in my life!!
well this is it. it is 7:40pm on tuesday evening and i start the process of getting back home in a 1/2 hour. ugh, it is going to be bad, i just know it. i obviously didn't plan this croatia trip very well. but i have no regrets. the only ferry back to italy leaves at 11pm tonight, i have got my ticket. my flight from rome to the states leaves at 11am tomorrow. and there is not much of a chance that i am going to make it back in time for my flight. so i have accepted the fact that i will miss my flight. shoot! but what ya gonna do? i have called the STA office here in Zagreb and supposedly it is only going to cost me $25. which i hope is true. ugh! it still sucks. but all said, i am still extremely happy that i came to croatia. i have absolutly fallen in love with this country, and will definalty be back. i have also learned from this week, that it is ok to travel by myself. i do fine on my own. and that is a really good thing for me to have learned. i certainly have a lot of respect for you guys that did two whole months on your own. i don't know how i would have done for that long. ugh all i can think about right now is all the sitting and being bored i have in front of me. ugh i hate that part of traveling. oh this is kind of funny,but today i went into a bookstore and guess what book i should see sitting on the shelf but none other than "The Art of Travel" . how apropriate! i guess the journey home is just as much a part of the travel experiance as the Anticipation of Departure and the Arrival. so here i go, although i would be kind of happy to just stay here. but i am looking forward to seeing all you guys again. i had a dream last night about the homecoming and presentations. what i mostly remember was the New Zealand A's (?) (the matty, chris and dan group) presentation being very funny and entertaining. which i am sure will be true. i guess i am excited to be coming home!
i am in dubrovnik now. it is very cloudy and not so warm. i found a room easily, but it is kind of scary. i had a very nice time the island of Hvar, i had a great room to myself for about 12 bucks a night. so now in dubrovnik it is about 7 bucks but not as nice. i am in a family home, i have my own area with bedroom and bathroom but it is obviousloy someoneś bedroom, there are a bunch of keanu reeves posters on the wall. ha ha! it is really amazing how different it is to travel by ones self. it is so easy to make new friends. that was one thing i was sad about traveling with hesper was that we never made any new friends. but just in the last four days i have just met some precious people. it is really nice. so here?s to new friends!
Sheesh, hesper hadn't even been gone a day and i got a marriage proposal by a tunisian/italian fella. i had decided to go to croatia, and this guy was in the seat next to me on the train to Ancona. it was so weird! yesterday was probably the most surreal day of my entire life! he only spoke italian and french, which didn't really work. but i guess it didn't stop him. it was a really long three hours, the country side out the window was really pretty. but all that's over now. whew!
so right now i am in croatia. and i love it, it is so absolutey wonderful. i took a 10 hour ride last night. i paid the extra to get a cabin, which is something i have always wanted to do. it was really fun! i had a cabin to myself with bathroom. and i slept like a baby, i actually wished it was a longer ferry ride. so i wouldn't have to get up early. it left italy at 9pm and arrived in Split, Croatia at 7 o'clock this morning. so i have just been wandering around this port city this morning. it is so beautiful, i think this is the most beautiful, incredible place i have ever seen, in all the places i have traveled. i have bought another ferry ticket to take me to the island of Hvar this morning. the coast of croatia is full of islands, the book says there are 1,185. so i am going to head south, island hopping, until i get to Dubrovnik and then i will turn around and head home fast. i am so excited! God it is absolutey gorgous! it is a sunny, golden morning. ooh i got to see a beautiful pink sunrise going through the islands from the ferry. the coastline is very hilly it looks kind of like the san juans but not quiet that steep. oh i love it! so until next time... Dovidenja, rika
well it is very intersting the way things have way of repeating themselves. we are back in rome and staying in the same part of town as when we first started out on this journey. we even stumbled upon the very same internet cafe that we used to write our first blog abroad. so here i sit with my mind being warped by how much has happened and all the experiances hesper and i have had since we arrived in rome in Febuary. it is pretty incredible, cause i remember eveything so vividly from that first jet-lagged day. as i sit here now i even feel that same need for sleep. we had to get up at 3 am this morning to make our flight out of malta. so it is time to call it a day and turn in for the night. tomorrow we are going to the vatican, a fitting end to my project. i am excited to see it all, especialy the swiss guard! so colorful for spring! i still do not know exactly what i will do or where i will go when hesper and her mom leave on wednesday. but time is dwindling away fast. we are going to go out to a nice dinner tomorrow night as a celebration of our acomplishments, it will be a nice way to end things and say good-bye. it has been so nice having hesper's mom here, she is just a great person. i have come to love her to pieces. she is a very good suragete mother. and she doesn't seem to mind doing the dishes! yipee! (To my own dear mama, no one replaces the real thing!, I'll see you in a week and a half! love, rika
Our lovely Xlendi, gosh it is so nice to be back here. ever since i wrote that nasty blog about the weather being real shit, it has been beautiful and warm every day.
just by chance i got this photo of xlendi from the air as we were flying over malta, way back in Febuary!
this is the view off our roof top at sunset. since hesper's mom came we have taken a table up there so we can eat breakfast and dinner up there.
gotta love the busses here!
yikes today is thursday and we fly out on monday. i can't believe that this whole experiance is almost over. i am still having dreams where i am at home trying to get ready to leave for this trip, then i wake up and the sun is streaming in and i relize that this is it, i am here! but now it is over. well almost, we fly back to rome monday, then hesper leaves on wednesday morning. i don't fly home til the following wednesday. i am anxious about that week i have on my own. after about the first two weeks hesper and i spent together, we joked that by the end of out trip we wouldn't even need words to comuncate anymore. we would just be able to read eachother's minds. but now that that time is here, it really isn't that far fetched. we have definatley become very close, and i am very glad that we have gotten along so well. in fact now we joke about being the conjoined twins, and once we are seperated there will be this whirling empty space where the other is missing. we wonder if when we get back, if others will be able to notice a differance in us, i mean besides our gorgeous tans and Maltese sense of fashion! i am pretty sure our sense of humor has been warped by this trip, but only for the better! heh. honest to God i don't know what to do with myself during that last week. i don't want to stay in rome, i know that. something about the one being left behind just sucks. so i am going to strike out on an adventure of my own. i thought about going to Moscow cause it has a nice ring to it....From Malta to Moscow! but i think i would freeze in russia with only my mediterranean wardrobe. so something a little warmer. right now the south croatian coast is weighing heavily. a lot of islands are there. but the place i want to go is on the mainland shore, it is called the 'pearl of the Adriatic' or also Dubrovnik. so i could do that or i could go spend the week in venice which is a nice choice too. or i could do the italian tour and see Seine, Florence and pisa and what every else catches my fancy. i don't know a world of possiblities! and then home, home, home, and the need to find a home!
A photo of Downtown Valleta. This is what I imagine Prague looking like.
This photo was taken in Valleta outside of the main cathedral. we had just been turned away from entering, since we had no ticket. so i was erked and saw a mocking photografic revenge. so now we have the Masturbating Statue
a nicer photo taken in Victoria on Gozo. this is a very common sight to see saint shrines built into the walls
A little bit of Graffti that i thought was interesting
The festa day on Gozo
Before the ceremony started while the altar boys could still run around
a little later when the band came out to play, the cardinal would be arriving shortly
A little more of the same
A photo of our deliriously fun day with bicyles. we rode all over Gozo, from shore to shore!
this is in Xlendi and is an image i have seen a few times but finally decided that it was too great not to whip out the camera and take a picture. this is a very common way to get the horse out for exercise. we have seen shetland ponies running beside trucks and this white stallion a few different occasions. so picture this and then to make it even better as this car passed they had "eye of the tiger" playing really loud. it was priceless! i have seen this car and horse before with about eight kids packed into the back of it, taking the horse for a run around the countryside.
I don't remember the name of this town, but it is where we went with Sirio for a Carneval parade
This was the beach that was a 10 minute walk away on one of the few sunny days ever! in the background is the Island of Monte Cristo! and of course that is my beautiful assistant Hesper!
A first glimps of our cabin. that is Ms. Hesper with her feet in the bidet! we decided that the bidet could be put to better use as a mini-tub-footwarmer. this is one of my favorite photo's from this entire trip. and yes i do have her consent to use it in my blog.
(This is the same place as before only this picture was taken yesterday, not nearly as nice, eh? i got wet taking this picture, the waves splashed up and got me. Ah, always the dedicated photographer.)
This was taken yesterday as well. That is Hesper!
Ooh, What a Sexxy girl I am! I don't know how this car got here but it was set on fire at some point in time.
ok now for the real Blog-
Ugh, the weather has not been so nice for about the last 2 weeks. Everyday we wake-up and open the curtains to another gray day. It sucks and is not the Malta we know. Before when we stayed in Paceville, everyday we?d open the curtains and gloat saying ?Ah, another glorious day in Malta?. It was wonderful to know that everyday was going to be sunny. But now it is kind of hard to get up in the morning. We have been sleeping in later and staying up later. I think Hesper and I have become a couple solar powered girls. The clouds here are different from the Northwest, they are not nearly as dark. So even though it is cloudy and gloomy here it is still pretty light. There is just this heavy layer of white clouds that sits over the island. In the last two days it has been getting worse, there has been a fog that has moved in and By God it rained! But once again by Northwest standards it just sprinkled. Even though it is spring here it doesn?t really rain, like in the month that we have been here it has rained probably a half inch and that?s it. This is definitely an arid island, upon which there is a huge tourist industry. It reminds me of Jamaica Kincad?s book about Antigua. There is a definite water shortage here but no one talks about it. In our hotel room there are two stickers above the sink one says something about ?Please use your towel for more than one day? but it makes it sound like you can save the environment by not making them use the detergent to wash them rather than the water. Then there is another sticker that says ?Water not fit for drinking? in an assortment of languages so we have to buy all our drinking water. Which is really expensive, we are paying about $3 for a little over a gallon of water! Ouch! And we have shopped around to find the best price. We even bought them in the neighboring city one evening and then lugged the bottles the 1/2 mile home, uphill! That was one of the great things about Gozo and our house in Xlendi, we could drink the water from the tap. It tasted like crap but it didn?t make us sick. It was super salty water, yuck! So our kidneys got a good work out, filtering out the extra daily salt intake. But hey we saved a lot of money not having to spend $6 every other day. We have heard second hand that Malta imports water on big tankers from Italy. Which I am sure is a bit pricey as well. There also these big industrial buildings that say they are REVERSE OSMOSIS plants. An interesting idea, I am not sure exactly how it would work but it sounds plausible.
so hesper and i are back in paceville! we came back to the big, main island to finish up some sight seeing before going back to Gozo with hesper's mom, who is coming next thursday. We had high hopes for staying in another fishing village on the west coast called Marsakala or in a central village called Mdina also known as "the silent city". but nobody has cheap prices like Paceville. so here we are, surounded by hotels and dance clubs. we made it through friday night and we're getting braced for another bumpin' night tonight. so last night we decided to give it a try and see what kind of fun a couple of greener girls could have with a whole street of disco clubs. it was an experiance! it left us both bessing american men and their good sense to were baggy jeans. uugghh! we saw so many men in skin tight, white jeans. and hair product, lots and lots of grease and goo. we even saw the ocational guy wearing a headband. yep, it's all true. oh it was bad! and as for the girls, well we did have an idea of our inadequacies but to even qualify as being female we would have had to have much bigger hoop earrings. perferably plastic and about the size of the of my hand. our hair would have to be straightend till crisp and then cut in a very ragged coiff. then one of the following would have to be on display; extreme clevage, full midrif that goes very low, or a skirt that is short enough for the cheeks to be visable when standing. and then the absolute must for all maltese women, Garish Stilletos. extremely tall, white and and with a long pointed toe. so hesper and i took note and decided we really like being american. and jeans and tennis shoes are just dandy.
this is on malta just west of Paceville. i think i took this photo the day after we arrived. it was so nice to leave Elba and arrive in heaven.
this is a picture of Xlendi, where we have been staying for the last two weeks. isn't it lovely? we have certainley enjoyed staying here. this last weekend the bay filled up with jellyfish, big brown ones.
i am good student, i just finished the documentation kit. i had been dreading the cultural inventory and procrastinating doing it. but i just finialy did it this morning yippee! so my documentation kit is compleate, yeah!!! ok on an other note, i have to change my project.... it is not possible to study the coastal ecosystem on malta. there isn't any! it is just volcanic rock that drops off into the water. the fist day that we went to the beach upon our arrival to malta, i was stunned to not be able to find a single creature along the shore. it is just baren, craggy rock and then water. the tide has no real effect here,the water line stays static. so there are no shore birds. there is no plant life unique to the coast. the plants that grow by the water are the same species that grow anywhere else on the island. so even if i did stick with my coastal ecology, hesper's and my projects would overlap way too much.
so all this said, i have changed my focus to the role of religion(pure catholicism)in the lives of the maltese people. i'll admit the final push i needed was seeing the turn out for the Cardinal that came to visit. it was pretty amazing to see the devotion. so i am not sure if i have to write a new prospectus or what formaly needs to be done next? but i have started my "research" on my own. it is great, i really like this topic and am enjoying my studies. i was even able to tie my cultural inventory into my new religion theme. i chose a place in victoria where i have been spending a lot of time lately. it is the public library as well as an elementary school that share the same building. it was very intersting to be in a public place that displayed religious articals everywhere. so i was able to take some interesting photos of the relgious displays found in a very public place. in addition to the regular religious fervor, things are become even more exciting due to the upcoming of easter. so to get ready for it and become aclimated to catholicism, i have started going to church. Yikes! i was kind of scared but i did it! last sunday i went to the little church in Xlendi for mass. i was one of about 20 people and i just sat in the back. the service was all in malti so i couldn't understand it. but it was a great experiance!! and there were no tourists there!......so i have changed my project for the better. i am still very interested in coastal malta but i don't have the "passion" for it like i do for the catholicism. ha ha.
Hesper and Rika find cheap rent with Jesus' Supervision!
it started on friday evening, hesper and i had walked up to munxar again. we go there a lot, it is the only place to spend money and it was friday night so we decided that we needed a couple bottles of Cisk, the local beer. as we were walking there we heard this explosion that scared the shit out of us. so we looked around us to see where was coming from and we saw a little puff of smoke across the ravine above another little village. as we kept walking there were more and more of these explosions. we asked the first person we could what was going on over there and very told us that it was probably a festa. we kept walking cause this guy wasn't going to elaborate. the bombing was so loud it echoed off the cliffs and sounded like thunder storms as it raced across the island. we could tell that they were shooting these 'fireworks' up into the air because there was a small spark and a puff that acompanied each Ka-Boom! it felt like there should have been a shock wave that would have knocked all the birds out of the sky or something. it was really, really loud! by the time we got to the store it had stopped so we shopped in peace. but about a half hour latter as we were walking back home at dusk, it started back up again. this time i tried counting them to see if maybe there was a special catholic number behind them but it wasn't 7 or 12 and i quit counting after 17.
so began the precedings of the neighboring village of Kercem's Festa Day. Saturday morning we were awakened by more mortar shells, but i don't really know at what time. i am a very sound sleeper. i woke up enough to relize what it was but then imediatley went back to dreaming about bombs and loud noises. Saturday night we had more bombings. but by this time i had looked the event up in the travel guide. and actually it was perfect because the only festa day that was going to happen during our stay on the maltese islands was on Gozo. almost all the others happen during the summer months. we were already planning on going to this festa day but we though it was next weekend, cause it is supposed to happen the second week of march evey year. and we knew it was happening in this town called Kercem, but we didn't have any idea where it was on Gozo. i will have to wait to tell you more about the actual event cause the library is closing. but it was really cool! i got to see my first Cardinal, he was visiting from rome!
I had an interesting shopping experiance yesterday. Hesper and I had walked up the cliff to the neighboring village of Munxar to do a bit of shopping. After we had bought what we could from the two compeating hole-in-the-wall shops we were headed back home through the village when we heard very eerie music being played. It sounded like circus music that would be played in a Tim Burton movie. It was off key and going way too slow and very grating. The music was also reminicent of a broken ice cream truck song. We kept walking and we could tell we are getting closer to it because it is getting louder. So we walk around the corner and there is this white truck facing us with the words "Rabbit Breeders" painted in red across the front of it. At the top were paintings of chickens and a rabbit. and yes indeed it was a meat vending truck, set up just like the ice cream trucks I remember as a kid! the side opened up and little ladies were buying their rabbit and chicken meat from the guy inside. It was very bizare! I looked inside as we walked pass, it was very white and everything was very clean. So I decided I couldn't pass this up so I bought some chicken. It was much nicer quality than anything I had found in any of the local stores. I left thinking that it was pretty fun to buy meat from a passing truck. I think hesper thought I was crazy but oh well, my chicken alfredo tasted pretty damn good! Now i will have to keep my ears open for the sounds of the meat truck coming to town. So I can run out with my money and flag him down.
I am in the public library right now in the main city of Rabat also known as Victoria. I am so happy to finally have found free internet! Yippee! I am really amazed that so many of us have been able to have such success with public libraries around the world! They are really great! So to catch up, Hesper and I have settled nicely into the village of Xlendi. We really love our house, it has a beautiful view of the amazing cliffs that form the bay. We have a full sized kitchen with four burners and an oven, and even a toaster! There is a TV too! it gets kind of eratic chanels and programs. Hesper and I have been caught watching Miami Vice a few times. And Charmed is one all the time! but we can't bring ourselves to watch it even though it is in English. last night we were bombarded by cats. there was like 6 cats all around our house. we let one of them in,( i know shame on us) but it was a young pregnate mama. so we let her in and fed her cheese and hotdogs. she is so sweet. hesper is having day dreams of her having kittens before we leave. I think she wants to keep them all, if she does.
the weather has been kind of iffy this week. not nearly as nice as when we first got here but still very pleasant. it is sunny pretty much every morning, which i like a lot. it comes in through my window and shines across the bed till i get up. but that happens around 9:30 so it is a fine time to get up. hesper usually wakes up at the same time so we usually make our coffe and then head up to our rooftop. which we have dubbed "cafe hesper and rika". it is very nice up there all sunny and private with and even better veiw of the bay and the mediterranean. it is lovely!
so today we walked from Xlendi to Victoria it took about 40 minutes. it was a nice walk to come into town. we did it last sunday too, but everything was closed then. but we were able to scout out the library and movie theater. we have already been to see one movie. but it was so much fun we'd like to see another. it should be pretty intersting, we are going to see the Passion of the Christ. Malta is very catholic so i can't wait to see what kind of people will go see it and what their reaction will be to it. but the only problem is that the theater doesn't seem to show matinees. so movie only shows at 6pm and busses stop running at 4pm. we could walk it no problem but it gets dark too early and we'd have to walk home in the pitch dark. oh well, we'll figure something out. maybe i will finally get to rent a vespa!
well a sunny hello to all from wonderful Malta. yep we blew past Sardinia and didn't think twice about it. out of the original sardinian geogroup of 4 people not a one of them is going to set foot on the island. poor sad Sardinia. But let me tell you about Malta; this is the island to beat them all. i love it, love it, love it!!! it is warm and sunny everyday. when we open the curtains in the morning it is beautiful sunshine that greets us every day! it is so good for our mental health! we haven't gotten up early enough to know when the sun rises but it seems to set around 7pm. so there are plenty hours of sunlight to languish in. oh yes and the other great thing about malta, everyone speaks english! yippeee!!! we haven't met anyone yet that we couldn't comunicate with. in fact i have scored some good karma points by being a translator for some elderly german tourists that couldn't speak english or maltese. i never would have guessed that i would have had to use so much german on this trip. i really thought that spanish would have been the thing. spanish, italian it is all the same. buy not even! it helped some, i could understand much more than if i hadn't studied a romance language at all. but highschool german has been worth much, much more useful language. my theory is that germans go on vacation a lot more so all the vacation spots are set up to cater to them. elba certainly was. a lot of the signs were in german, brochures too. the rural area we were in was called lacona and i guess in the wintertime the population is around 300 but when summer comes and the tourists start arriving the population goes up to 10,000! i can't even imagine how different the area would be with that many people. i think that there is no good time to go to elba if you go in the winter months it is too cold and lonesome and during the summer it is jammed packed. but anyway we're not on elba anymore and that makes me so happy!
God i love malta so much! the water is the most incredible shade of greens and blues mixed together. it is still too cold to enjoy swimming in but hesper and i tried anyway. we are staying in a nice hotel, basiclly. it was kind of serendipitous the way we found it. we came into an internet place to write home real quick to let the mummies know we arrived safe. and we asked the guy working here if he knew of any apartments to rent by the week. and he sure did. he told us to go up to the fourth floor to reception and ask up there. so we have ended up in a very nice little studio apartment in downtown Paceville which is sprawl part of the main harbor of Valletta. there is supposed to be a little dot that goes above the "c" in Paceville, so it is pronouced like Pachavil. we have since discovered that Paciville is where the night life is. so all night long we hear the dance club music very loudly. and the laughing and hollering and cars with big engines racing eachother. it is very entertaining! we arrived on a friday so we learned that friday and saturday nights were popular times to go out. but sunday is also a good time. so pretty much we think every night is a good night to go out in paceville.... but you know what they say ' if you can't beat 'em join 'em!
ok so this just seems so perfect or terrrible. whichever. with the island of monte cristo in sight, hesper and i are planning our escape. i am not joking we really can see the famed island of monte cristo from the hill behind our hut. oh on that note after we wrote last time about our pink house we went home and mesured it 15' by 7 and a half feet. wow! but ok back to the escape. so things took a new bizare turn after we last blogged. our wwoof host went to milan on saturday leaving us in the care of his friend. who has a little more than a crush on hesper. he cooled it a little bit yesterday, but things were getting a little awkward for a while. especially since he speaks no english making our only comunicable language german. Which i understand ok but can't speak well. so i had to translate all his come ons and dirty little inuendos. yuck! yuck! so that was the last straw, we are getting the hell off this island! but now we have to come up with a story for why we need to leave early. we have a pretty complex one here is the story. we are at the internet point again because last night we called home and there was a message from our classmate on corsica who is in trouble. we didn't know exactly what her problem was but she said that she had emailed us the specifics. so today we had to get to the internet to find out what her problem is. so the story is that our classmate has been robbed or lost all her stuff, so she has no money and no passport. and she really, really needs us to come help her right away. so the plan is that we will pack up tonight and leave tomorrow morning. if all goes as planned.
we came up with this scheme yesterday, we put a lot of thought into it. if you can't tell. we got so into our story that we had to stop and relize that everything is ok with teagan. she is fine and doesn't really need us to come to her aid. we however were really wishing that ethan had come with us. no body fixes your problems like a nice big black man. oh well once we get off elba hopefully everything will go smoother.. this island is just so weird! oh oh i got bit by a dog last night!! yes just to top things off. we walked down in the dark about 7pm to a mini market to use the phones and try and buy chocolate. the store was closed so we kept on walking because we knew there were a few dogs that lived around there and we didn't want to back track past them. so we heard dog tags janggling behind us but we didn't stop or turn around we were just going to ignore them and keep on moving. and the shitten dog didn't bark, didn't growl just rushed up and bit me!! so we yelled at it and it kind of ran off. a guy came out and chased it off. but he didn't say anything to us, just silence not are you ok or have a good night . nothing he just walked off. so we took off at a brisk pace before any of the other dogs could come around. and we got about two blocks away on a different road and we heard a janngling sound again so this time we turned around and it was that same dog running right at us, silent. if it didn't have tags on we wouldn't even know it was there. so this time we yelled at it and tried to throw stuff at it. it worked, we got away unscathed. this island is so damn weird! but we have to go. Sirio is going to be looking for us..........yuck dirty old men. he is like 60 years old
we made it to Elba. i have been going stir crazy this island is pretty desolate. our wwooffing host (or as i fondly call him, our master) is very nice. it has been cold and rainy the whole time. so we haven't really been able to do much work for him. we feel kind of bad, i don't think we will be able to earn our keep. so far we have planted strawberries. and he, vitorrio, has shown us some small tasks we can do. but really there isn't much we can do this time of year. so i'm not sure if we will stay for two weeks or not. it is really, really boring here! the rain makes it a zillion times worse. we have our own house in the woods/fields, which is very nice. but it adds to the isolation. it is pink and is probably 25 feet by 10 feet. there is a bed, which hesper and i share, a wardrobe, a bookcase, a kitchen table and three chairs. and that is it! well there is a very tiny bathroom too. maybe 4 feet by 4 feet. in which there is a toilet, a sink and a bidet and no room to turn around. oh god just thinking about going back makes me want to run away. four days locked in there was too much!! luckly today it is sunny! thank you, thank you god!! i don't know if my sanity could handle it. we are in a very lonesome part of the island. there aren't very many houses. and we don't really even know where vitorio lives. and all the bussinesses are closed. this is a tourist island, and we are here in the winter. so everything is closed up, boarded up. it is like a ghost town. the only signs of life are the ocassional mangy dogs. who are not friendly!! yesterday hesper and i went for a walk to get out of the house for a bit. and we ran into a dog that i really thought was going to bite us. it was kind of scary! this damn island it so weird! i don't know if i like it or not! it feels like i am living that version of "the tempest" that we watched in class. it is very surreal! i wish there were at least some more people. vitorio just ignores us mostly, actually he left for milan yesterday and won't be back until wednesday. he told us on saturday that his friend Sirio would take us to the port today so that we could find internet access. so that is why you guys are gettting to hear from us. the part of the island that we are on is so dead that we couldn't even find a store to buy a phone card. so we couldn't even call home. blah, blah, blah...whine, whine, whine..... too many days locked up in a little house in the rain with a naked lightbulb. there is entirely too much time to think on this island. oh well, if the sun stays out, life will be a lot better!
here we sit waiting for the ferry to take us away to elba. yippee! roma was fun. it was pissing down rain this morning. god we got so soaked getting to the trainstation, especialllysince we tried to be smarties and go the quicker more direct route. which got us totally lost. man we just spent about the last hour wandering through this town of piombino trying to find the ferry dock, with our heavy bags! it was awful! damn near broke my back! the water is very beautiful here we can seel elba from the shore, it looks like a nice ferry ride! we just called the farm where we will be wwoofing. hesper did all the talking, yeah hesper. she has big balls. so hopefully we are being picked up on the other side. if all goes as planed. i am nervous, but very happy. city life was a little overwhelming. way too many scooters in rome. so a nice quiet farm sounds just perfect for a few weeks. well it is time to go catch the ferry ciao
We did it. We're here! this keyboard is a little funny so bear with me and my typing mistakes. so far today hesper and i landed no problems both our backpacks arived. so we were off to a good start. it cost ?9,50 to get from the airport into downtown rome. kinda sucks but it was a nice trainride. so we found our hostel without much complication. Hesper says she packed way to much stuff and is going to have to lighten her load tonight. i did all right. i guess my weekend spent packing payed off, i wouldn't want to carry it all day but if is pretty comfortable. so anyway we droped our stuff off at a very nice hostel that stu recomended to us. it is called gulliver's house and there is this funny mural when you walk in of Gulliver and all the lillyputins(?). but it seems very nice i am happy to have it. so we got there like at 11:30am and the lockout time starts at noon so we pretty much just had time to drop our bags, brush our teeth and head out. i wanted to find the colosseum so we headed off in that general direction. it was so great just to wander down whatever street looked the most intesting. god it is gorgeous here. it is just what italy is supposed to look like. except that it is kind of cloudy and rainy today. but it was sunny earlier. so we just were walking and then suddenly turned the corner and there is was. it was incredible! the angle we came from you could see it and the old roman forum area at the same time. it kind of took my breath away. it was just so overwhelming. but maybe lack of sleep adds to the intensity of emotions. it sure was neat though. not too many tourists though, which was nice. quiet a few vendors though. we stoped to look at one guys watercolors and ended up getting kisses on both cheeks before we could leave. it's kind of funny, we have only been in italy for 3 hours and those italian men are living up to their reputations. i guess everything you hear about the men and the arcitecture is absolutly true. so after that we headed out in search of the spanish steps. we still haven't found them. i dont know well they are kept. we did find a big museum that i think mussolini had built, it was very impressive! and we found a foutain just a few blocks ago. it is really famous but i dont know what it is called either. i am really having a good time just walking around aimlesslyand finding all this great stuff around each corner. but my feet are tired now. my mind is too. i am starting to get that whiring feeling from being up too long. it kind of feels like when you get off a boat but it still feels like the ground is moving. so i think it is time for me to get some sleep soon. but first we have to find our way back to our hostel.
sheesh, so here i sit. just waiting......i am all done packing finally, it feels like all i have done this weekend is pack and then unpack everything and repack it. a little be of nervous tension i think? so tonight at about 7pm i decided i needed to take a totally different backpack. thus i unpacked everything back onto my bed and tried to new arrangements in the new backpack. so now i am done, i quit, i have exhausted myself. all that is left now is to wait, try and sleep for the few hours before i have to get ready to drive to the airport in the dark. i wonder if i will see anyone from class there. well besides hesper, i sincerely hope she shows up there! but i would really like to see another familiar face as i leave. in my heart it feels like we should have had our bon voyage party at the airport so we could have waved to each other as we all went to our different gates. i guess that is why friday felt anticlimactic. i wanted to hear us all say "good-bye, good-bye. have fun in the south pacific, i'll see you in two months , bye".. and then leave, get on our airplanes and be off. rather than go home being intermittently antsy and bored and began to pack and pack and pack............
I title it,
Self Portrait of a Girl
whew it is finally starting to feel like this is really going to happen. i really will be going away again. i visited my extended family this weekend. i had a nice visit with them. i think they are always a little extra nice to me when i am going to be leaving for any period of time. my grandma got a little tearsy when it came time to say goodbye. i think that in her heart she always thinks that something bad is going to happen to me like an airplane crash or something. either that or she is worried that i just won't come home, which is probably a lilttle closer to reality.
this morning i have been pondering my money issues. i finally did the final count to see what it is that i really have to work with. it looked really great for a few moments but then i remembered the few bills that i haven't payed yet. ugh! i think it is a smart move on my part to pay all my bills up through april. but wow it really hurts to pay three months worth of cell phone bills and car insurance all at once. especially when i won't even be using the damn things! it makes me stop and kind of relize how much money i spend on them in a whole year. it is stagering! oh well, i don't care, i still get to go to a sunny island.
here we sit in class learning how to use "blogs" i hope i will learn how to put pictures up because that would be nice.