Letizia and her sister had a dinner for me with for me Tuesday-it was so Italian and fantastic.
Mie amici, just in case you thought I was making them up this whole time:
We spent a large part of the night filming a video for "Call Me Maybe" (because no one else has had the same idea, ever). I've made it clear I'm against this, but somehow I ended be the girl Mattia is trying to call. How did that happen? Anyways no matter how bad I am at acting and no matter how ridiculous I feel the whole time it's a lot of fun. After that I learned a new card game that I don't know the name so let's just call it "A Quarter of a Pig". It's hard to explain, but basically it's a combination of Go Fish, Spoons, Kemps, and B.S.-needless to say-ah-may-zing. I didn't get home until past 12 Tuesday night and had to wake up at 6:30 to get to go Venice (in italian Venezia) but I was too excited to sleep so I played around on the computer and headed to bed around one and then woke up at 6 on my own-thank you circadian rhythms for just having fun with me.
AAAAAND THEN, I left for Venice at 8 with Mattia and Letizia. The train ride was 2 hours and went by quickly. About half way through a man from Holland sat down in the seat in front of me (on Italian trains two seats face two other seats, you're never staring at the back of someones head). His name was Franco and he spoke perfect English. We talked about art, history, Italy, the places he's been in the U.S., architecture, operas, who's going to win in November and why, everything. He is retired and travels now with his wife (she has hip problems and had to stay in Verona that day) but he used to serve in the Navy for Holland and then worked at a university doing statistical research. He was really interesting and really easy to talk to. After we got off the train he turned to all of us, shook our hands, said "It was a pleasure meeting you all" and then we went different ways, he was really cool.
And now for Venice: it is gorgeous. I wish I had read up on the city before I went because I had so many questions about it. The architecture is so interesting and I'm dying to know the history behind it so I've started reading up on it, but I won't bore you with a history lesson. So some facts on Venice: There isn't a single car on any of the islands by law, I'm pretty sure there's about a bajillion churches, and gondolas are real and really expensive. One ride nears 100 euros and they don't even sing like in the movies. But it's beautiful. People own their own boats to get around the city and to different islands and I even saw two guys kayaking down one of the bigger canals. Instead of having an underground system, because if you dug underneath the city it would collapse, they have boats that function like a metro-you can buy a ticket and ride to specific areas in the city-clever solution, right? Mattia, Letizia and I discussed it and we all decided none of us could actually live there. The city doesn't seem livable, if that makes any sense. There's barely any grass or trees and it all seems too touristy, too much like a destination rather than a place to make a home...I don't know I think you just have to go there.
I'LL BE HOME IN TWO DAYS
At the beginning of the week it didn't feel possible that I'd be home by the end of the week but now it feels alright. Is it weird that I'm more nervous to fly back home than I was to fly here? I think it's because I have so many answered questions facing me when I get home. I mean here, it's been vacation, but there it's the real world and that requires putting on big girl pants and starting to deal with the world outside of high school, which for me just seems odd. Like, how am I already old enough to be out of high school? But I'll figure it out on way or the other, everybody does, plus I'll make sure to laugh a lot along the way. I already have a lunch date at Cal Tort on Sunday with Cecilia and Beth and those two goons always make me laugh until I can't breath anymore so it'll be good to go home.
I've got one more post coming from Italy and then I'll be State side so stick around. (And I know you're all super curious if I'm going to keep posting there-okay, let's be honest, just my mom is curious-so, yea Ma I'm going to keep posting). This blog thing is super lame but I like it and it'll be nice to look back one day on all these crazy adventures.
Ciao amici see you in about 30 hours!