Art history for dessert.

March 12, 2011

So this morning I set my alarm clock to make sure I didn’t sleep in too late because I had a lot that I wanted to get done today. But surprisingly I woke up before my alarm and remembered that I had promised Marissa last night that before we started doing work we would go to this one store over on Nazionale, which is just one street over from our apartment to look at these shoes. I didn’t even shower or put contacts in to go to the store because I wasn’t planning on doing much of anything for the rest of the day, so Marissa and I headed out for a quick shopping adventure. I found these shoes in there that I really liked because they had a tennis shoe bottom with arch support, but they looked like normal flats that could be casual or dressy. They had them in this tanish grey or black, but I’m not really a fan of black shoes, so I asked to try on the tanish ones. I tried them on in a size 39 which I think is close to a 9, but they felt just a smidge too tight, so I asked if they had a 40, but they only had the 40 in the black. I was then contemplating getting the black because I tried the black 40’s on for size which felt much better, but I knew I would wear them as much as the tan, so I said no because if I didn’t find anything over spring break I could come back and get them later if absolutely necessary. I also tried on this one dress that I have been eyeing up at this store on the corner that has a hot pink bottom with this huge face on it…it’s super funky, but right up my alley. Of course the dress didn’t fit right…clearly I wasn’t meant to buy anything this weekend, but I suppose that’s a good thing. That just means I have more money to shop with in London!

Marissa and I came back from shopping, both ready to crack down on studying! Her and Danielle headed to the school because they thought it would be easier to concentrate and study, and plus they had a couple things that they wanted to print out. I stayed here because I think I would be more distracted being with them because we would end up talking or something. I made a really good dent in my powerpoint that I’m making of my art history notes before my parents started calling me on skype. I talked to them for a little while; dad cracking jokes of/with me like always, and mom telling me all about her Las Vegas trip that she’s getting so excited for. I was happy to talk to them for a little while, but was also ready to jump back into studying when our connection got really bad.

Before too long I realized that it had gotten awfully dark in the room I was sitting in because it was getting late, and I looked at the time on my computer really quick to make sure that Danielle and I hadn’t missed mass at the Duomo! We had about half an hour to get ready to go to church, but since it’s absolutely freezing inside of the Duomo, which means you keep your coat on the whole time, I didn’t really change my outfit or necessarily “get ready.” We headed out and had to wait in line outside of the Duomo before we got inside because people are always wanting to go inside just to look and take pictures, but guards won’t let you in if that is your intention, so we have learned that you go up and immediately tell the guards “per misa” (that you are here for mass) and they let you right in. During the priest’s homily he read this LONG letter that was asked by the Bishop to be read at every mass, which was a letter written by a man who was murdered by Muslims because he professed himself as a Catholic Christian. I thought it was interesting that the Bishop would ask all of the priests to read this letter at every mass because I feel like they don’t necessarily do that in the States, but nothing in Italy is quite like the States.

After church was over, which was about 15ish minutes later than usual and people for the next mass were already piling in, we stepped outside to discover it was about 15 or 20 degrees warmer than it was inside the Duomo. When we came home I started to make dinner for myself. For some reason I was in the mood for pasta and normal red sauce (not like we don’t have pasta enough here), so I boiled up the rest of the rigatoni noodles I had and put an entire little jar of Bolognese sauce (meat sauce) in with them once they were done. I swear I always think I’m not making enough noodles so I throw in just a few more, and then it ends up being enough pasta for two people...by the time I leave here I hope I’ll figure it out! I was also hungry for carrots so I boiled up a couple carrots to have on the side…a perfect little dinner! And for dessert I had some more studying with my art history notes, which ended up lasting until 1 a.m.  when I finally finished my powerpoint! Now that my powerpoint of 77 slides is finished I just have to memorize it all by Wednesday…that’s do-able, right? :]

Worst shopping day ever!

March 11, 2011

This morning I got to sleep in, which was beyond wonderful! And to make the day even better, today was the day I was going to buy my shoes!!! I have been eyeing and contemplating buying these shoes at Foot Locker for such a long time, and mom told me she would give me birthday money that I could put towards them, so…they were going to be mine! Once Marissa, Danielle, and I were all up and ready we headed out for an afternoon of shopping. We went through San Lorenzo first so Marissa could try and find a little bag that she wanted, but she wasn’t really feeling any of them, so we continued on to Foot Locker. I grabbed the shoe off the shelf as soon as I walked in the store, asked for a women’s 9.5 (American size) and the lady ventured off and came back with an 8.5. She handed it to me and I was like um…I think this is going to be too small, I asked for a 9.5. But she told me to try it on anyways because it was the largest size they had. I SQUEEZED my foot into the shoe and could barely stand in them because they were so tight…like I said, I knew they would be too small. She tried convincing me to get another style, but I didn’t want any other style, I wanted THAT shoe. I knew the other Foot Locker near school had the same shoes because that’s where I tried them on before, so we headed over towards the main street by school.

I walked into the Foot Locker by school and the adorable girl working in there who got me my shoes the last time when I tried them on remembered me and was like “ohhh you came back!” And I told her that the last time I thought I tried on a 9 because they didn’t have a 9.5, so I asked if I could try on a 9.5 in a style similar to just see which size felt better. After a couple times of explaining to her what I wanted (her English isn’t that great) she headed off into the back, but when she appeared with boxes in her hands her face wasn’t pleasing. She told me that the highest size of that shoe that they had was an 8, but she could look on the computer to see if any nearby stores had my size. After looking in the computer system she came back and told me that nowhere near here sells my size…fantastic. I was so bummed out and hated all European women for having such small feet. But Danielle told me that she was looking on the European Foot Locker site and saw my shoes on there, so there was still a glimmer of hope that I could order them or something.

Our next stop on the shopping agenda was H&M because I’m in some desperate need of jeans because my one pair of jeans (that I have had since freshman year of high school) has formed a small hole in them, and I’m afraid the hole is just going to get bigger. One problem about buying jeans in H&M is that their sizes go by the length and waist numbers, and I have no clue what my sizes are because I never buy jeans like that. I ended up grabbing 3 pairs of jeans to test out sizes, and headed into the dressing room. The one size was a tad tight, but the next size up was falling off of me…I guess I need an inbetween size if that actually exists? So I went back out into the store in search of this “inbetween” size to discover only one pair in the entire store, which happened to be the grossest wash in a pair of jeans that I have ever seen. Clearly today was not my day to shop! I was ready to go home!

We ended up walking along the Arno on our way back home, and made a pit stop at this ancient perfume and herbal store that Marissa looked up and had been wanting to go to for a while now. We really wanted to smell their perfumes, so we started walking around the different rooms in there, and I realized I was in here during orientation week with my small group! I didn’t realize it was so close to our apartment, nor did I really put the two pieces together when Marissa was talking to me about this “Farmacia di Santa Maria Novella.” We went over to this counter where we saw bottles and started smelling them…they smelled so good, so Marissa had me spray one on her. We ended up realizing that those bottles we just smelt were room fragrances, not perfume! Haha. But they smelled so good and agreed that we would still use them as perfume! We ended up finding the perfumes, which are on this wall and you have to ask to smell them, but there are like 50 scents, and we had no clue which ones to even choose, so we grabbed this huge list of all of the products and decided we would come back another day.

Back in our apartment I was super worn out because even though I slept in I still went to bed really late, so I was worn out, and disappointed, so I felt like a little nap would be a good choice. I was laying down with my book and Marissa and I were talking, and I partially remember saying something to her about this lip balm that the farmacia had, but before I knew it I must have passed out. Marissa told me that I just like stopped responding to her mid-sentence, so she realized I had fallen asleep. I woke up about a half an hour later to discover Chris walking down our hallway with apples, I totally forgot we were making breakfast for dinner tonight and invited him to come over. On the menu was french toast accompanied by cinnamon apples, scrambled eggs, and hashbrowns… a.k.a. the perfect meal ever! The only problem we ran into was that we only have one non-stick skillet, and everything we were cooking kinda needed a non-stick skillet. We started off trying to cook the hashbrowns in this metal skillet, but 3 minutes into frying they were already sticking like crazy. So what we ended up doing was frying things in the skillet, placing them into other containers and into the oven to keep them warm…it was the best we could do; it only took like 2 HOURS! But the time we waited was definitely worth it! By the end of the meal we were all stuffed to the brim and there was no food left; that’s how you know it was good!

Once all of the dishes were thrown into the other girls’ dish washer (they were gone for the weekend on a school business field trip), Lauren asked if we would want to all watch a movie before everyone split off and did their own thing studying or sleeping or whatever they had planned. We haven’t really watched any movies since we have been here, so I caved in and said I would, especially since we were going to watch Remember Me, which I have never seen before. The movie ended up being really good, except for the ending which I’m still a little unsure about. I think maybe I just need to watch it again or something, but overall I’d say it was a great movie! After that they started Love Actually, but about 12 minutes into the movie I think the British accents took over and I fell asleep curled up in a ball on top of Lauren’s bed and woke up with about 30 minutes left of the movie…it had a great ending if that counts! I clearly couldn’t handle my exhaustion anymore and hit the sack…tomorrow would be a better day!

A race to the Brancacci Chapel!

March 10, 2011

Today in Roman Achievement we continued learning about the Roman Empire in preparation for our Emperor’s quiz. I’m starting to think that this class will be the least of my worries because today and the past couple classes Erika has given us the information about the one Emperor or Dynasty we are talking about for the day, and once we are finished (even if it is 20 minutes before class ends) she lets us leave if we don’t have any questions. I feel like the information isn’t stacking up like my other classes, so this quiz that’s after spring break should be a breeze! And speaking of spring break…we leave in ONE week! 7 days! I’m getting so excited! But every time I have an art history class I remind myself that I can’t get TOO excited, because I still have two midterms next Wednesday before I’m free!

For art history today we had to walk all the way over to this church on the other side of the Arno, so we had to book it to be there on time. Rocky warned us that it would be about a 20ish minute walk, so make sure we were prompt! Me and my roommates, Chris, and the comm. girls decided to group together and head over there, which would hopefully make it easier to find the place since we would have many eyes on maps. It got to one point when we were across the Arno that Ivy claimed we should go one way, and Kate thought we should go a different way…what to do? I knew that once Ivy tried getting to our house from the school (which is pretty easy) and it took her 45 minutes instead of 10, so I sided with Kate on this one and we told the other group we would see who got there first! Kate knew exactly where we were going and before we knew it we were in front of Santa Maria Carmine, with the other group arriving just a couple minutes after us..we won, but I’m glad they still made it on time. The only problem was that the comm. girls said they saw architect kids from our class heading out of the school and making their way over here before we started to make the trip to the church, so…where were they? Were we at the right church?

We finally saw two architecture boys heading over our way who confirmed that we were at the right church, but it was already a couple minutes after class was supposed to start, where was Rocky? And the rest of our class who started to walk here before us? We finally saw Rocky heading over who told us that he was standing at the church of Santa Maria Novella and wondered where all of us were until he realized we were at Santa Maria Carmine today. Ha. He told us that he knew people would get lost coming here, that’s why he warned us ahead of time, but we couldn’t wait forever or else we would never get in all of the information, so we got hooked up to our head sets, sat on the steps outside the church, and got started. We talked outside on the steps for a while because Rocky had to make a reservation for us to get into the Brancacci Chapel, which he made for a little later than our class was supposed to start because he knew people would be late, and eventually our whole class made it to the site. Inside the Brancacci Chapel we only had an allotted amount of time to cover all of the frescoes we had to know for our midterm, so Rocky tried to get through them quickly. Although he told us before we went inside that the frescoes were painted by 3 different artists (Masaccio, Masolino, and Lippi) and he would make us try and figure out which artist painted which frescoes once we were inside, which I actually found pretty interesting and fun (although I got all of them wrong except for two).

Once our time was up we were free to go, and Lauren and I decided we just wanted to go back home, but decided we didn’t want to go all the way back towards the school and then back home because that was too complicated, and we were actually closer to home being at the church anyways. We walked across the Ponte Vecchio on the way there, but when we turned a street from the church we discovered we were right in front of the bridge that was two over from the Ponte. We walked across it, just continued straight, and we walked straight into the church of Santa Maria Novella within like 5 minutes…I can’t believe we were so stinking close to that church, but yet from the school it took us 20 minutes to get there! Definitely a pleasant surprise! I was able to come home and skype with my mom, which was lovely, and I was able to start typing up some blogs since it was quiet and I had the internet. I promised mom that I would have all of my blogs up before I went to bed tonight because I was like two weeks behind, it was ridiculous.

When Marissa and Danielle came home from shopping around with Chris, they told me that we were going out for dinner at the steak place, and was not about to argue with that! When the time rolled around for us to meet Chris at the restaurant (which isn’t called La Galleria I guess, but I have no clue what it is actually called) we headed that direction and discovered Chris who said he had already talked to Tony, who is the guy who gave us all of the free alcohol the last time. We looked at a couple different menu specials outside before walking in and being happily greeted by Tony, he loves us! I ended up getting this menu special where I got baked lasagna (soooo good!), this meat dish that Tony recommended which ended up being a piece of pork in a Chianti red wine sauce with potatoes, and then a dessert. At first I wasn’t sure if I was very fond of the red wine sauce, but it started to grow on me and I ended up liking the dish. Marissa got gnocchi with crap which she let me try, and I thought it was out of this world! But the dessert on the other hand…it was some caramel custard which tasted really egg-y and I wasn’t the biggest fan on the planet earth. Marissa and Danielle ended up getting this dessert sampler which had chocolate drizzled all over the plate, so I would get chocolate on my spoon with a piece of the custard, which made it go down much easier! The like 3 pitchers of free wine that Tony gave us made it go down much easier as well. Haha.

We left the restaurant thanking Tony and told him he would definitely see us again, most likely soon! I came back home and started to crank out my blogs which took me so much longer than I was hoping, because the picture uploader on the site I used has changed, and you can only upload one photo at a time. Do you know how crazy that is when I’m trying to upload like 70 pictures per night in Rome? Yeah, it’s nuts, but I think it’s definitely worth it, and I’m sure everyone who is reading this would agree. I finally finished uploading everything around 1:30/2:00 a.m. and chatted with a couple friends from back home for a bit before heading to bed, excited that I could sleep in tomorrow morning!

Class is cancelled!?

March 9, 2011

So even though I was up really late last night, I didn’t have class til 10:45 this morning, so I set my alarm for like the latest time possible where I could still ready enough to be presentable. We went to Italian class and Marissa had the great idea to ask Gloria if we could take a class field trip to the central market, because there were different things in the market that we had questions about, and knew it would be easier to ask Gloria in person than try to explain it to her. So, when Gloria walked in the room Marissa presented her idea and asked nicely in Italian, but we didn’t even have to do much convincing. Gloria looked at us and told us that we never go out for class, so she was more than willing to go! We made our way to the market and Gloria described different things around the market and was willing to be dragged to any counter and answer any question we had. We have seen these hunks of meat that look like pre-pared roasts with spices and vegetables already tied inside or outside of the meat, which Gloria said are really good. She told us that this one partially prepared meat was filled on the inside with cheese and bread, and was basically the Italian version of meatloaf…yum!

We made our way to the seafood section of the market because Marissa has been dying to make fish here, and wanted Gloria to tell her what kind of fish to make and how to ask for it/cook it. But once we got to the counter Jesse took over with questions because he really wanted to buy a little mini octopus that was sitting on the ice…gross! Jesse, Gloria, and the guy behind the counter talked and explained to Jesse how to cook it for quite a while before he finally caved in and bought the octopus…he is one crazy he boy…he even cooked horse a couple weeks ago! Marissa was finally able to steal Gloria away and get her questions answered before we headed outside to the fruit and vegetable tent. We did a little browsing around there, and it was getting close to the time class was over, so Gloria took us to a little place nearby that she said sold the best rice in bulk. I had asked her earlier in the day how she buys rice, and she told me that this place was the cheapest and best place to get rice and they had TONS of different types of rice as well as tons of spices, and beans. I didn’t really have any dinner ideas to make with rice at the moment, so I didn’t buy any rice, but I will definitely be going back there sometime in the near future!

From the rice store we were able to venture off on our own, and we just headed back to our apartment since we were closer to the apartment than to school. I really wanted to come back, eat lunch, and focus on my presentation which was in just a few hours! I started looking through my powerpoint, but realized I couldn’t get on the internet and didn’t feel like asking someone to get offline, so I headed to the school which I figured would be a place that would be easier to focus anyways. I got to the school and started reading a lot of articles and background information because I had no clue what the person who I was presenting with had researched, nor did I know if he actually did his end of the deal, so I wanted to have all of the information stored in my head in case of emergency, or in case someone asked me a question to clarify something. I had changed a few things in my powerpoint and was re-saving it onto my flashdrive with about 30 minutes to spare before class when I heard “class is cancelled!” I walked over to the area where I could peak down to the lower levels and screamed “what!?” Here my roommates had arrived at the school to find a sign that said our European Issues teacher was sick and class was cancelled. NOOOO! I was so ready to present now! I was beyond bummed because now I have to wait practically an entire week before I can present and will probably have to re-read everything to re-store the information in my head. I was not a happy camper.

We all walked back home and chilled out for a while before we started to get really hungry and I wanted to make dinner early enough so Danielle and I could go to mass for Ash Wednesday at 7 o’clock. I had an idea for dinner and Danielle and Marissa said they would eat whatever I made, so I went to the kitchen to be Chef Kala and started to cook. Danielle and I couldn’t have meat since it was Ash Wednesday, so I fried up some spinach and boiled some water for these neat little pasta discs that I found at the store. Once the pasta and spinach were done I drained the pasta, put it back into the pan, and dumped all of the spinach into the pasta as well as a little jar of pesto. Once everything was incorporated I yelled to the girls that dinner was ready! We had some rolls to have with dinner and before I could even get my camera to take a picture the girls were ranting and raving at how delicious it was, and how it reminded them of the pesto pasta that we had in Rome. Apparently I should open up my own restaurant because all of my dinner ideas lately are hits!

After dinner we had a little time for school work before we had to head off to church for mass. Danielle had a flyer for an English Ash Wednesday mass at this little church by the Duomo, but the only difficult part would be finding the church. We had to stop in this little shop and ask for help, but we realized we were only two buildings down from where we needed to be. The reason we probably didn’t see the church was because the town ambulances park right in front of it, and there is also this enormous construction zone directly in front of the church and you have to walk around it in order to get into the door. We walked in and discovered this really little, but adorable church that could maybe seat 60 people. Our priest ended up being the priest who held the English masses in the Duomo, so we assumed that this church was used probably only for special occasions. It was really frustrating though because the construction workers were digging and drilling and pounding almost the entire mass, so it was really hard to hear and focus. But the thing I found most interesting was that when we were about to get up to get our ashes, the priest commented that we were probably curious why didn’t see anyone today walking around with ashes on their forehead, which was true! I saw a group of people coming out of a church on my way to school this afternoon and figured that maybe the church just wasn’t Catholic, and that was the reason why they didn’t have ashes. But the priest preceded to tell us that in Italy it is tradition to put the ashes on the crown of a person’s head instead of the forehead. So, as we went up to the altar to receive our ashes we had to bow our head and the priest would sprinkle ashes on the crown of our heads. One funny thing however, was that I was wearing my hair in a bump, so who knows where my ashes ended up! Danielle and I came back home happy that we found the church, happy that the church was 12 times warmer than the Duomo, and happy to try and start challenging ourselves with our Lenten promises. 

My crazy delicious pesto pasta with spinach and rolls!

Fat Tuesday!

March 8, 2011

This morning in Roman Achievement we got our midterms back and I was so excited to see what I got! I ended up getting a 91 out of 104, which she considers an A-. Yay!! I was really happy with how I did on the test, and all of the questions that I was on the fence about I ended up getting wrong, but it didn’t matter, I still got an A! Our next test in there is going to be the Roman Emperors Quiz which will only be over the lectures that we are starting now up until the quiz, which hopefully won’t be too much information because it isn’t very many lectures. Once class was over it was now time to knock out another test…I was officially ready for the Italian Quiz!

Before Gloria handed out our quizzes she first wanted to hand back the last quizzes we took, which we all knew we failed. But before she handed them to us she started giggling and said that she didn’t realize she put a ton of verbs on there that we didn’t know, so she didn’t count that section of the quiz, and she apologized for worrying us…shewww! Without the verbs I got an A- on the quiz, which made me extremely relieved. And when we got our quiz to take I was even more relieved because I flew right through it…it was so easy and was exactly what she told us it was going to be. When I turned in my quiz I realized that it was so early and that I had enough time to go home and eat lunch because we were meeting at Santa Maria Novella for art history, which is right down the street from our apartment. Jackie and I went back to the apartment together and she ate a plate of tomatoes and mozzarella with balsamic vinegar (a typical Jackie dish), while I threw a mini pizza in the oven and ate an apple with Nutella while it cooked…it was fat Tuesday, I had to do it up!

When I got to Santa Maria Novella for class Danielle, Marissa, and Lauren were already there and I saw Marissa was holding a shopping bag, and it was shoes! This week is Marissa’s shopping week where she is going shopping every single day and buying whatever she wants because her mom basically told her she would only be in Italy once, so if she wants something, just buy it. She showed me her shoes which were adorable brown boots that rose up to mid-calf and buttoned on the side…so so cute! After admiring her boots we actually went into the cathedral for class and looked at only one fresco for the entire class: The Holy Trinity by Masaccio. This painting was the first to use linear perspective, which means basically means the painting is 3-D, and was the first Renaissance painting. Rocky said he could teach an entire semester solely on this painting, but I think I was content having a full class period on it.

After class I came back to the apartment to do my powerpoint presentation on Erdogan for European Issues tomorrow. I had all of my research already finished and had gone through and highlighted the stuff I wanted to use, all I had to do was throw it all into a powerpoint and prepare what I was going to say. I was almost finished with my powerpoint when I realized I was STARVING and if I were giving up sweets in Florence for Lent, I HAD to get a waffle with Nutella one last time. So I walked across the street to Very Good and got myself a waffle sandwich filled with Nutella...YUM! This was such a great fat Tuesday!

And to make fat Tuesday even better, Meghan asked us girls to come to dinner at Tijuana tonight because her mom, grandpa, and brother were visiting from the States, and it was her mom’s birthday. We definitely didn’t want to be party poopers, and whenever we have a reason to get margaritas, we bask in the opportunity! So after finishing my presentation it was practically time to meet up for dinner, so we headed towards Tijuana and met everyone there. I ended up getting chimichangas and oven baked nachos with spicy ground beef. The chimichangas were filled with rice, cheese and meet and were just little squares…definitely not like how they are in the U.S….and they had a side of lettuce topped with tomatoes and sour cream and cheese. The nachos had white cheese poured over the top with peppers and tomatoes and the spicy ground beef and oven baked…they were HEAVENLY! The cheese was melted all throughout the nachos and it was definitely plenty to fill me up without the chimichangas…why did the girls tell me that having only one of them was not enough food? And on top of that I had a passion fruit margarita. Clearly we are not on these girls’ level with eating out places because we cook at home like every single night. We had a fabulous dinner and I had a fun time meeting Meghan’s family (although it did make me wish that my family was here), but we headed home after wishing Meghan’s mom Happy Birthday for the last time.

Once at home I did a little bit more of schoolwork before it was time for my skype date with mom and dad. But as a nice surprise my Aunt Jeannie was calling me on skype before I started skypeing with my mom. Today is Joshua’s birthday and they were going out to dinner to celebrate, but wanted to talk to me for a few minutes before they left. Josh was so excited to show me all of his little LEGO guys that my mom sent him in the mail for his birthday, and he showed me every single weapon that came with it, as well as the front and the back of this little jester hat for the clown that came with the LEGO set as well. I think they just really enjoy the fact that they can show me things over the camera, and I just really enjoy watching them…they’re too cute. I got to see Cassie and Brianna as well as Alex, who was helping Josh show me all of the little weapons. But it didn’t take long before time was up and they had to go meet Uncle Brian at the restaurant for Josh’s birthday, but the time I got to talk to them was awesome…I miss my family!

And right after I was done talking to them my mom called me on skype and we got to talk for a little bit before dad came home, and then the 3 of us were skypeing. I told them all about how we have a dryer in our apartment now and how it has this huge plastic container that pulls out and collects all of the water from your clothes, so when you go to empty the lint which is inside of the door, you also have to empty the water since there is no vent to the outside for the dryer. It also is the most basic machine of my life with only three buttons, and it takes up so much electricity that whenever it’s in use it blows the fuses (or breakers as dad told me) all the time. And of course right after I told my parents that it the breakers blow all the time, my internet went out and my computer screen went dark and the dryer stopped…yeppp the fuse blew! I went and flipped the switch and after like 10 minutes was able to get back on and at least say goodbye before the breaker blew again.

After I talk on skype at night I feel like since it’s not that late at home, it’s not late here, even though it’s like 1 or 2 in the morning. So I ended up talking to my friend Max from Kent til really early in the morning before I comprehended what time it actually was here in Italy and freaked out, got a shower, and forced myself to go to bed. I just miss everyone back home and whenever I get the opportunity to talk to them I always want to take advantage of it, even if that means sacrificing an hour, two hours, or even three hours of sleep…it’s worth it! :]