"Today I don't feel like doing anything...

...I just wanna lay in my bedddd" -The Lazy Song, Bruno Mars

Yes, today has been one of my favorite kinds of days - a real, true lazy day. I thought about getting up when my roommate's alarm went off at 8:30, but then I realized what an absurd idea that was and went back to sleep until 11, at which point I showered and emerged to find raspberry and mascarpone crepes with strawberry and basil topping and banana bread awaiting me! Today was our giant American-style brunch. Rachel, Greta and Sebastian handled the cooking, which meant all I had to do was sleep in and eat - I am so spoiled. As I waited for the second course - eggs and homefries with tomatoes and garlic and general yumminess, I basked out in the gorgeously bright (and hot!) sun on our balcony for a little, and I'm glad I took advantage of that opportunity because it's now completely gray and overcast and I think it may rain soon! :(

After the eggs and fries and some more banana bread (made from scratch by Rachel... she even made her own sour cream because they don't sell it in this country, like WHAT?!) I came back into my bed and spent a while catching up on this blog. At 5, I headed over to Creta Rossa (the clay laboratory) to pick up ornaments I had ordered... well, at least, that's what I thought I was doing. It turns out that those of us who had ordered ornaments thinking that Giuseppe and Michela were going to paint them FOR us and we'd BUY them, were instead going to be painting them *ourselves*. Uh oh. I tried to mimic my favorite design of theirs (a beach kinda scene with trabocchi, these apparatuses used for fishing), which went fine for my initial sketch but terribly wrong when I had to transfer it to the actual pallina (ornament). Painting them was even harder because the paint for clay is unlike anything I'd used before, plus I do not have a steady hand when it comes to making thin lines, and trabocchi require MANY thin lines. We'll see how it turns out, hopefully it will be better when it comes out of the oven!

After wrapping up work on my ornament, I left for mass at 7. I've decided to do one of my Living Language Journals on the differences I've noticed between mass here and mass at home because I've found them so fascinating, and because I'm somewhat surprised by how much I prefer mass in America. (I'm also just looking forward to hearing mass in English and knowing all the right responses and when to say them again!) 


I returned to Creta Rossa after mass and did a second ornament, this one in a dripped paint kind of design that will hopefully turn out somewhat like the awesome vases Michela and Giuseppe had made that it was modeled after. Again, we'll just have to wait and see how it turns out. Anna, Brittanie and I stayed and talked with them for a little bit - they are SO nice and such talented artists. Then the three of us took a bus down to the Marina and ate at a pizzeria Michela and Giuseppe had recommended called Ippocampo. We split a pizza for 3, half tomato and prosciutto and half broccoli and sausage (both white pizzas). I admittedly do not like anything on my pizzas but I ate it all except the sausage and it really wasn't bad at all, just different! Don't expect me to do it again though. :P


I had never been to Vasto Marina at night before, so we walked around on the boardwalk and the pier afterward. It's all set up like a giant carnival at night, with rides and games and food and tons of street vendors, and there were a tonnn of people of all ages walking around in spite of the fact that it was midnight on a Sunday. It was all really cute, and there were definitely a lot of characters to meet there; I hope I get to go back again one night before we leave.


And now I am back in bed ready to enjoy my six hours of sleep before getting up bright and early to rehearse our third and final fable, Le tre melangole d'amore, which we are putting on for the kiddies at 5:30pm.


Buona notte!
Michelina

Rain, rain, go away! :(

Rain makes me sad :(

Waking up early makes me very sad :(

So today was a kinda sad day, because we got up early AND it rained. Things are really starting to wind down here in Vasto, which is CRAZY. I don't know how time goes so fast! I should probably keep that in mind and be glad to start the day early and make the most out of the time I have left, but yet I just can't bring myself to be happy getting out of bed to go for ... a hike. Yup, that's the second hike in THREE days for this nature girl. LOL. 

Yesterday morning at our "book club" our professor asked us how we enjoyed the trip to Lettomanopello and we mentioned how we really enjoy having any type of excursion and that we'd definitely recommend doing more of them on next year's program ... apparently she took that to mean that we want to go on more hikes in the here-and-now. So today we set off for an early morning trip to Punta Derci, a scenic beach site that's up above Punta Penna. I'm pretty sure that actually each and every one of us fell asleep during the bus ride! Cinzia and her husband and son met us there and helped lead us on the hike. It wasn't strenuous but it was a bit challenging since a lot of it was on all the pebbles and rocks along the coast which are hard to walk on. I kinda ruined my shoes (the NB black ones, Mom, so sad!) because they got all this wet sand in them, yuck!


The view was just stunning when we got to the top though, and we all sat/laid down and relaxed for a good while. We dug into the yummy crostata (Italian fruit pie) that Paola had made for us while we looked out over the water from way up high - so gorgeous and relaxing. :)


Afterward we went back down to the gazebo and rehearsed Giovannino e i tre cani, the fable we'll be presenting tomorrow for the kiddies, a few times through. (I'm part of the group specifically working on this one so hopefully it goes well!) The weather wasn't looking so great so instead of sticking around at the beach we headed back to the B&B - good call, since Paola got a call from Cinzia while we were on the bus telling us that it was pouring in town; fortunately by the time we got off it had let up a bit. 

Once back in my room, I took a nap to try to ward off my headache. When I woke up it had just about stopped raining altogether, so I essentially pretended it was morning: I ate cereal and "toast" and jam and got dressed again and showered. Then I went shopping with Hannah. We checked out all the little stores and boutiques around the center of Vasto, but I didn't have any success (Hannah had some, fortunately!).

One lesson I learned today was that the way to peoples' hearts really is through their stomachs! Rachel made dinner, and it was FANTASTIC. Breaded chicken cutlets with mushrooms and spinach and a side of rosemary potatoes (SO yummy!), and I'm not sure if I've ever seen 11 more thrilled people! :)

I've just been relaxing since then, and am probably going to hit the hay soon. I'm tired, as usual, and even though we have nothing as a class until our Favolare presentation at 6, I have book club with Anna, Brittanie and our professor at 9am. We do get free cappuccinos and cornetti though, and I really enjoy talking about the book, so it's all good minus those miserable four or five minutes right after my alarm goes off! :P


Buona notte!

Lasciare fare a Dio

So it's not even 11pm here yet and I'm already in bed... yup, clearly I'm not feeling well. :( My throat is really hurting me, along with my entire neck region. And my head, every time I change positions. And I generally feel lethargic and sickly. Will probably go to a pharmacy tomorrow to see what they can give me. Hopefully I'll be well enough to go to Napoli with Luciana in a couple days!

I'm writing this post as I take a break from working on my Living Language Journals. They're one of the assignments we do for this program and we do 9 of the 12 here in Vasto, with the first 3 due this Friday. For these three we're working with the Vasto students that are doing theater with us; there are 6 of them and 12 of us so it works out evenly for discussion groups with 3 people each, but we all met today for lunch and for the most part ended up talking as a big group, which was great and really interesting. Oh, and by the way, we all came back to the meeting with our homemade panini... the Italian kids came back with McDonalds. Go figure :P

The subject of the first journal is the presence of dialects in Italy, and in Vasto in particular (YAY!). The vastesi students told us that only their grandparents really speak in dialect, and that many of theirs only went to school for two or three years and don't actually know standard Italian so they prefer to speak in dialect. Their parents don't really know it though, and use it only to speak to their own parents, and they themselves use it very rarely, and mostly just when joking around amongst themselves. When we asked them to tell us about the dialect, they described it as "vecchio" - "old" :( This makes me suuuper sad because it kinda seems like the dialect is a dying art. :( Apparently in Naples there's like a law that the dialect has to be protected. I hope a lot of other regions follow suit and really appreciate the beauty of their own dialects and take measures to protect and promote pride in them. :)

And as a closing note, the title of this post? The standard Italian for the title of yesterday's post. Yup, 'Ssa fa' dde' = 'Lasciare fare a Dio." Dialects FTW! 

Lasciare fare a Dio (leave it to God :)!),
Michelina

Ssa' fa' dde'

Today I woke up really not feeling well again - Vasto and my body are just not getting along. I have constant headaches and my throat has been killing me :( But fortunately I didn't have to be in class until 11 so I could sleep in a little. Class today was the 3rd theater workshop with Sergio; 2 hours of prep for our performance of Masaniello in a couple weeks. Since I missed the last class because I was sick and wasn't about to volunteer to be a ballerina today, I currently have no lines of my own, but hopefully that will change as the acts continue to be added! :)

After theater we came back, ate, and went to the beach for the afternoon. It was my first time going to Vasto Marina, which is less than 10 minutes away as opposed to the 25+ to get to Punta Penna. Vasto Marina is different because most of it is private beaches, so you have to rent an umbrella/chair and can't just lay out on a towel. There were 9 of us so the man gave us a little discount, and all in all it was worth $5.50 to be able to lay out on a chair and not have to deal with your entire body being covered in sand :P The water was nice and perfectly blue and clear as I've come to expect here, buuut I'm still partial to Punta Penna because I just like the nice, small, public (read: free) feel and it's just more aesthetically pleasing without all the ombrellone and beach chairs! But the Marina is soo much more convenient for when we only have 3-4 hours between classes so I'm sure I'll grow to love it!

I had a meeting with my professor at 6, so I wanted to catch the 4:40 bus back so I'd have enough time to shower and review what we were going to talk about beforehand. I got to the bus stop at 4:24 but the bus never came :( So I hopped on another line that seemed to be headed in the right direction at like 5:15ish, and the driver gave me a really hard time about my little bus card that the program gave us so we can take the public transportation for free. It clearly says on the card that it's valid from 7 luglio (July) to 6 agosto (August), but he was adamant about the fact that these cards are ONLY issued in monthly allowances, so if it says August on it, it can ONLY be used in August. (I pointed out that it also said July on it, but he wasn't very pleased with that idea!) In the end since I was already on the bus and really wanted to get back to the hotel, I coughed up the 1 euro for the ticket. Still. I object! :P

My meeting went really well; we got to talk about the book I read a little, as well as some translations I'd been working on and some basic theories of translation and dialects based on the books she gave us yesterday, so that was cool. My roommate Rachel and I are both super interested in the regional dialects of Italy so we went to this theater production IN the Abruzzese dialect tonight! Our professor was there too, with her husband, who is from Abruzzo, so he probably understood more than I did... okay, a LOT more, since I understood pretty much nothing. (To give you an idea, the title of the play was Ssa' fa' dde' (the title of this post) ... yeah. Not so easy.) It was so fascinating to see the audience's reactions and interactions to/with the dialect though - there were mostly elderly people in attendance (which made me and Rachel scared that it was a sign that dialects are 'dying' - SAD!), and many of them shouted out lines before the actors or sang along or shouted out commentary. I heard a man in front of me ask the couple sitting next to me, "But the dialects of Vasto and Vasto Marina are different, no?" and they responded that they are. Isn't that crazy - Vasto is a tiny town and they speak their own LANGUAGE! Can you imagine if like, Rhode Island spoke a totally different language than Massachusetts? So crazy!

Anyway, at 11:00 it seemed like it was all coming to a close; the main character was carried out, having just won a large sum of money, the curtains were drawn, and people in the bleachers began to talk and move about a bit. But no one in the seated section where we were was moving so we waited... and waited... and waited. Then came the announcement: "if during this change of scenery, you'd like to ...) Yup, it wasn't over. (This is probably partially due to the fact that it takes Italians 23947 minutes to stop greeting/kissing/talking to each other as they arrive, so the play had to start later than scheduled, but I won't dare mention that.) We sneaked out anyway though, because it was getting late and we were really tired plus we didn't exactly know what the heck was going on in the play to begin with!

We did decide to do our own type of dialect project though. Using the books from our professor plus the internet and our observations, we're each going to study two dialects a little bit over the next two weeks and teach each other the patterns we've learned; then we'll both look at Sicilian together because it's (I think?) the most interesting to both of us - Sicily is a fascinating region because, being in the center of the Mediterranean, SO many societies/countries/languages/cultures have passed through it and influenced the dialect's development. French, Spanish, North African, Arabic, Greek, Italian, etc. etc. etc. ALL have impacted the Sicilian dialect. SO COOL!


Now I'm off to sleep because I have a headache and it's raining and we're taking our professors to our fruttivendolo in the morning (yes, OUR fruttivendolo, hehe!) and because I'm just plain TIRED, which is reason enough sometimes!


Baci,
Michelina

Andiamo al mare! Let's go to the beach!

No time to rest today, as we had to be out and about exploring Vasto at the ripe hour of 8am. Our first activity was to wander around in pairs to different food vendors and write down our observations. Shopping is done differently in Italy - rather than going to one big supermarket and buying it all in one place, you go to several small specialty shops. For instance, the fruttivendolo sells fruits and veggies, the panificio sells bread, the salumeria sells deli meats, and so forth, and on weekends there's always a big mercato all'aperto (open market). So our assignment was to go around in pairs (I was with Anna) and listen to what went on around us, noting the ways in which transactions were made and the like. Basically this required standing awkwardly and looking very foreign in the doorways of shops and frantically scribbling notes as we listened in on other peoples' conversations. And this activity was meant to HELP us with the immersion process and feeling like we belong here. Riiiiight...

We checked out a lot of the booths at the open market too. Italians do most of their shopping there, be it for clothes, shoes, trinkets, vegetables or whatnot. It's like having a big flea market that's open every single weekend, and sometimes during the week as well. We divied up the weekly funds and did the necessary shopping for pranzo. I also bought a beach towel for 5 euro, which came in handy because after lunch we went to... the beach!

Vasto Marina is the closest beach, about 7 minutes by bus, but it's private so you have to rent an umbrella and beach chairs, and on a recommendation from our TF Paola,  Hannah, Luciana and I decided to go to Punta Penna instead. In addition to being an incredibly beautiful beach, it is also a nature reserve, so it's free. The trip took about a half hour by bus and it was SWELTERING hot (as I've come to expect from Vasto) but well worth it! When we were about to scendere dall'autobus - get off the bus - a woman and her son stopped us and asked where we were going. When we told them, they recommended that we stay on with them until the next stop and they'd show us a better way to get there, and we agreed and had a nice conversation with them. Turns out if we had gotten off at the original stop we would have had to descend down a mountain to get to the beach - thank goodness for the kindness of Italians! The woman and her son walked and talked with us until we arrived at the beach, and I was awestruck by everything about it.

The water of the Adriatic (my first time ever in a body of water other than the Atlantic Ocean!) was crystal clear and WARM; every once in a while you'd hit a little wave of cool water, but it was always a refreshing cool, and it was warm enough to walk right in without a second's hesitation-inducing shiver (now THAT'S never happened at Jones Beach! :P), and you could walk and walk without it even hitting your waist (and I'm referencing my waist in particular, which is only something like 4 inches off the ground, so you can really tell how shallow the water is!). It was calm and there weren't many waves, which is just the way I like it because I get knocked over easily in the ocean. The water was such a gorgeous shade of blue, and you could look way out into the distance and see it continuing and darkening in color until it reached the horizon line, where it blended seamlessly into the blue of the sky, as smooth and hazy as the brushstrokes in a watercolor painting. Even the sand was perfect, and as you lay out on it and look up you see not just the beautiful cerulean sky and the puffiest, fluffiest, clearest clouds but also this grass-covered mountain rising up along the side of the water, with a nature trail leading steeply up its side (the very one we would have had to walk down had we not had the good fortune to meet the woman and her son on the bus!). On the side opposite the mountain you see the boardwalk, which is surrounded by cement blocks (literally, square blocks) and on which you can see three or four trabocchi - essentially little fishing huts off of which extend the rods so that you can fish from an altitude; they've come to be a familiar symbol of Vasto and are found on a lot of postcards and local artigian craftwork.

Day's Recap:
Weird looks received from Italians who realized Anna and I were listening to their conversations and recording their every word: ~37
Time spent on bus: 1 hour, round trip
Number of Italian men seen wearing speedos who should really NOT be seen wearing speedos: ~49
Number of times my friends had to hear me exclaim "OMG this is just SO beautiful!": upwards of 50 :)

Abbronzata e allegra (tanned (at least a little!) and happy),
Michelina

Benvenuti a Vasto!

So we set off this morning on the five(ish) hour bus ride from Perugia, and the first thing I saw when I took my first step onto the land of Vasto was... palm trees. Palm trees, just chillin' in the center of the piazza. (Apparently this isn't as crazy to everyone else, but it still baffles me. We don't have palm trees in New York.) Other than that first glance though, I was much too exhausted (and feeling a little bus sick) to do anything other than go inside and plop my suitcases down on the floor and my body down on the bed.

The bed and breakfast we're staying at is super nice. The main gate is directly across from Piazza Rossetti, the center of town, and it leads into a courtyard which leads to another locked door which leads to a staircase which leads to our rooms, which take up all of floors 1 and 2. I'm living on the first floor with Rachel; we have a double with our own bathroom, and the communal kitchen for the 12 of us is on our floor. Hannah and Luciana have the room directly next door to us, and we managed to move around all the furniture and figure out how to unlock the door that adjoins our rooms, so now it's kinda like I'm in a big suite with my 3 best friends here :) Yay!

I rested for a bit and then Hannah and I went for a little walk around Vasto. It was afternoon at the time so everything was closed up for pranzo, but we walked to where Vasto overlooks the beach and it was SO GORGEOUS that it prompted my last post declaring Vasto as heaven. I can't wait to go to the beach (I've never been to one that wasn't connected to the Atlantic Ocean!) now, although at present the weather is not exactly perfect for the beach. At 95+ degrees and at least 257% humidity right now (by my own estimations), it's more of a day to stay inside and relax under our air conditioning vent (we have AC here!!!!!!). :P

We also met Cinzia, the coordinator for this branch of the program, today upon our arrival, and in the evening she led us on a practical walking tour of Vasto, throwing in some fun historical facts. She has taught at Harvard in the past and her husband, now a professor at the University of Birmingham in England, got a PhD there as well. They live in England for much of the year now but Cinzia is native to Vasto and everyone here knows her and her family well, so seeing the reactions of those she encountered on the street really reinforced my view of the classic "small-town" feel of the city.

After the tour it was time for dinner at a restaurant that the landlord of the B&B, Nicola, has some kind of connection to. It's called Lo Scudo and is right down the block from the B&B... andddd its menu is predominantly (read: entirely) seafood. My favorite... :-/ It turns out a lot of others on this trip aren't huge seafood fans either, and many asked to have anything but all the fish dishes that kept being carried out from the kitchen. I, however, ate (read: tried) almost ALL the fish that was served to me. I had smoked salmon and fried calamari and shrimp (though not the one that still had its eyeballs intact...) and so forth, and it wasn't all bad! Still not my forte though, but I think I'll have to learn because they don't really eat meat here in the summer, and it's a coastal fishing town to begin with. We'll see how that goes!


Getting up early for another tour of Vasto, this one with Paola, so I'm off to sleep. Visions of the *octopus* on my plate earlier - fully intact with some limbs and creepy, non-blinking eyes - (couldn't bring myself to eat that one... I'm a work in progress at the whole fish thing) will probably be dancing in my head tonight! :P

PS- Hannah and I had our first Vasto gelato today, and were NOT impressed. We'll have to do some exploring and find our gelateria of choice soon.

I'm in Vasto!

...Read: I'm in heaven!!!!!!
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) 

Summer's here and the time is right, for dancin' in the street :)

WOW! I am so floating on cloud numero nove right now. I just spent a couple hours literally *DANCING IN THE STREETS* of Perugia with a bunch of strangers and that is not the kind of thing I usually do, but it was SO much fun!!!


Backtracking... so tomorrow (well, today, since it's after 2am my time) starts Umbria Jazz 2011, which is this huge and awesome jazz festival that takes place every year in Perugia. They've been setting up the main stage for it next to the fountain all this past week, which has been an epic tease because we're leaving *the very day it starts* and won't get to partake in any of the fun. Apparently this is because the hotel prices skyrocket once the festival starts and we couldn't afford to stick around (boo Harvard). The atmosphere started to change around here in the past couple days because more and more people and musicians were arriving to get ready for Umbria Jazz, and tonight was the eve of it so things kicked off with a bang.


As soon as we got onto Corso Vannucci, there was a fairly big crowd of people watching this one group of jazz musicians playing in the street. We stopped by for a little but there was really loud noise and lots of lights coming from the center by the fountain/steps, so we headed over to check it out. Everything was all done being set up and there was this crazy huge light show, with all these colored lights and designs being projected onto the wall of the Palazzo dei Priori (the wall behind the fountain in the picture below, so you can finally get an idea of what it looks like in the center of the Piazza IV Novembre here!)

I keep typing and backspacing my descriptions of the light show and there really aren't words to describe it besides "really really mesmerizingly cool!" so I'm just gonna go with that for now and put up some pictures soon!


Anyway, the (really loud) music got kinda scary after a while, so we headed back to see what was going on down the street, and the crowd around the jazz band we'd seen earlier had grown and some people had just started dancing around them. I was with Hannah, Luciana and Rachel and Luciana, ever making friends, started dancing too and introducing herself to everyone. The energy of the place was just ELECTRIC and the musicians were SO good and so before long me, Rachel, and Hannah all joined in too, clapping and dancing along in the center of this giant group of people we'd never seen before and would never see again to the music of this random Belgian jazz group we'd never heard before and will probably never hear again, in the early hours of the morning in this beautiful city filled with people and musicians from all over the world. As I finally gave in to the random people who'd been persistently trying to pull me into their dancing train and began circling the group of onlookers with them and pulling in others to join, I was filled with such utter happiness and excitement and smiley-loving-life-ness and really reminded that the whole dancing-in-the-street-with-total-abandon-on-the-last-night-of-being-in-a-foreign-city thing is absolutely NOT something to be overlooked or shied away from as overly-ambitious-Harvard-kids like myself sometimes tend to do because it's FUN and AMAZING and PERFECT and most importantly it's *LIFE*


And I am absolutely in loveee with life, especially on FUN and AMAZING and PERFECT nights like tonight. 

AND I AM ABSOLUTELY IN LOVE WITH PERUGIA WHY ARE WE LEAVING TODAYYYY?!?!?

Il Cenacolo - The Last Supper :(

So here we are, the last night in Perugia :( I am definitely excited for Vasto, but SO sad to be leaving. We didn't have our morning class today but I still got up fairly early so as to make the most of the final day here. After breakfast, Hannah and I went shopping at the local boutiques, and by shopping I really mean walking in and out of stores unable to make any kind of decision. I ended up getting a watch from Coccinelle as my goodbye present to myself from Perugia :) Yay!

Then I went over to the Institute just to spend some final time there. It was practically empty so Rachel, Hannah and I spread out all our stuff and took over a whole room in the library and split our time between half-trying to read the Italo Calvino excerpts we were assigned for our final class and just whining about how much we adore Perugia and never want to leave.

Our last lecture was with the professor who did the presentation on dialects a few days ago. He's really cool but also suuuper intense, very into being in touch with your senses and emotions and finding your passion in life. The Calvino reading he assigned was about these Italians on vacation in Mexico and had all this crazy (and somewhat disturbing... think ancient Mayan human sacrifices) food symbolism, so it was an interesting but challenging read. The professor really just used it as a jumping off point for a conversation about the importance of consciously using each one of your senses in everything you do because doing so is crucial to truly experiencing your experiences as well as enhancing the memories you retain from them. He ended it with a note about how very very very important it is to find something you truly love to do and embrace it, which always makes me happy to hear because I like to think that's what I'm doing here in Italia. :)

For our farewell dinner, we went to Al Mangiar Bene, the same restaurant I took Anna to for her birthday. The food was good but not quiteee as good as last time because we didn't get to choose anything we ate. There were still like six wonderful courses though, so I'm certainly not complaining! After dinner we went for our final Perugian gelato (biscottino for me, as has become the usual) and ate them on the steps by the fountain surrounded by everyone out and about for the evening passeggiata. By the way, 'the steps' I keep referring to have their own Facebook page. And over *12,000* Facebook users have "liked" them, including me. (You can check out some pictures at this link if you'd like!)


We're probably going to go out now and walk around for a while tonight, just to take in Perugia for the final time before shipping off on a 9:30am bus to Vasto tomorrow! 

La Perugina Adottata (the adopted Perugian),
Michelina

Umbra Loveeee!

Sooo it's currently my lunch break before our last lecture with Zach/Luke/Blake, but I figured I had to write now and get out all this pent up excitement I have gushing around in my head right now :) 

So my roommate Rachel and I just went to talk with Elgin about potential for term-time or J-term study in Perugia with the Umbra Institute because we're both kind of obsessed with Perugia and never want to leave. We talked for a long time about all the options, including direct enrollment with the University of Perugia - you can stay in Umbra apartment style housing but take classes directly at the University with matriculated Italian students, ahhhhhhh!!!

We also got to talk to Elgin about her doctoral dissertation (it's her *third* degree from Harvard, like WHAT?!) which is on this Sicilian mystery author whose books Rachel just happened to buy the other day at Feltrinelli that I plan to start reading too! Apparently he's really famous and has written a tonnn of gialli (mystery novels) which have also been made into a TV series andddd the books are set near Sciacca!!!! :) :) :)

I want her to be my thesis adviserrrr!! And I want to come back and go to school here, and I've *never* thought about doing term-time study abroad before but I love it here sososo much! Eeek life choices!!! (I know my parents are probably freaking out right now... financial aid transfers, if that's any consolation. And let's face it, this probably won't end up happening because I'd miss being on campus too much. But still, I'm just gonna let myself bask in my current state of language nerd happy happy joy joy -ness for now!)


Gelato of the day was... biscotto. Again. We have a winner, folks!


BACI E UMBRA ABBRACCI,
Michelina :)