Back in the U.S., back in the U.S., back in the U.S. of A.!
I flew back from Rome last night, and somehow it took nine and a half hours to get here. My mother met me at Newark airport and we took New Jersey Transit back to Manhattan, which was a mistake. Those trains are gross and depressing and no sooner had we entered the train with my massive suitcase than people started being rude and not letting us sit in their mostly-empty three-person seats with them. Wah. Obnoxious New Yorkers are no fun. When we got to Penn Station I was starving because I had hardly eaten all day, so I got a slice of pizza. It was WEIRD! Didn't taste like any pizza I know.
It's so strange to live with a group of people for six weeks in a foreign country, and then to say goodbye knowing that you'll probably never see them again. I'm sure I'll run into the NYU ones every once in a while, but other than that . . . this is it. And that feels very unsettling, especially because I got to know a bunch of people much better as late as Thursday night, the last night we were all there. But now it's time to do this in an orderly fashion, which means lots of LJ-cuts, in reverse chronological order!
At 8 am on Friday morning I hastily dumped the contents of my desk into my mostly-packed bag, said goodbye to my roommates, and took a cab to the Firenze Santa Maria Novella train station, where I bought a ticket for Perugia. Unfortunately I missed my connction in a tiny Tuscan (Umbrian?) village called Terontola, so I ended up staying there for almost two hours until the next train to Perugia. Now, all this time I'm running on absolutely no sleep from the night before, for reasons which will be explained (well, maybe) in the next section. So I kept drifting off to sleep but then freaxing out that I would miss my stop/connecting train, which made it hard to get any good naps in there. I finally got to Perugia at 1 pm, and was met at the station by a tall, dark-haired, gorgeous Italian boy who kissed me on both cheeks, took my suitcase, and led me to the car. This young man was in fact a certain Tommaso, who anghockey certainly knows and who other Trinity people may remember as well. I hadn't seen him since a few brief encounters in high school when he was 15, and before that at his older sister's communion when he was 11, and before that when he was about 3 and I had playdates at their house often. I didn't recognize him at first when I saw him at the station, because he's so much older and taller than I remembered. Heh. I'm telling you, if he weren't an old family friend . . . . ;p Anyway, he's a sweet kid and is thinking of applying to Swarthmore, even though he doesn't know the first thing about it. I can't believe he's already going to be a senior - everyone is growing up so fast! To get back on track, though, his friend's mother drove us out to the family's country house in the hills, because the people who were going to pick me up much earlier at 11 had to prepare lunch at home. It was still sunny on the drive up, and the views were absolutely amazing. When we got to the house I finally got to see my parents' friend Anna and her daughter Camilla, who used to be one of my best friends in preschool and who actually went to my high school, although we never hung out much. Shortly after I dropped my stuff off upstairs it was time for lunch, which was a lovely big Italian family affair, the company including a priest and a friar who were visiting for the day. We had a delicious pasta dish and lots of foccaccia and red wine, and then fruit for dessert and little shot-glasses filled with this yummy lemon liqueur Anna's sister made herself. It was extremely strong but unlike with most hard alcohol, the aftertaste was lovely and sweet and I actually enjoyed it.
After lunch Camilla and I both took naps, because I still hadn't slept in over a day and she wasn't feeling very well. We got up at 6 and by then it was kind of gray and cloudy (it had started raining pretty hard immediately after lunch), which was too bad because there would have been more to do if it had been nice out. We got to sit and chat for a while instead, which was nice. We caught up about Trinity people and confided in each other about our love lives, and I discovered that she had a crush on the same boy I liked in high school, a certain redhead who apparently was the object of many people's affections. Anyway, at around 7 or 8 we left for dinner with some of their friends who live further up in the hills, in a gorgeous old house with its own chapel attached to it. It wasn't a tiny chapel, either -- it was almost a good-sized church with pews and a confessional and everything. The main dining room of the house had these amazing windows looking down over the hill towns near Perugia, and that led out onto an outdoor patio which had similarly astounding views. Before dinner we had yummy hors d'oeuvres including cherry tomatoes with buffalo mozzarella (YUM), almonds (YUM), champagne (YUM), and probably some other things that wouldn't have been YUM but I didn't try, so it was all good. ;) Dinner was amazing, too. I didn't eat the main meat dish because it was pork and I'm not a fan, but there were roasted potatoes with rosemary and good salad and the most DELICIOUS mushrooms I have ever had. Those mushrooms were the highlight of my Italian culinary experience, and I wish I knew how they had prepared them (of course, Italian porcini mushrooms are probably better than whatever we have here, so bah). But YUM!
After dinner Camilla and I went outside for a cigarette (haha, she had a cigarette, I kept her company beacuse my tolerance of cigarette smoke has been forced to go up about 870% in the past six weeks) and chatter for a while, but then someone called us in saying "i vecchi stanno ballando!" (the old people are dancing), so we had to go in and see that! When we got in the door we were both immediately swept into dancing with the adults for a few minutes, but then we extracted ourselves and just watched for a while. The host was playing this gorgeous, nostalgic Italian music -- I don't know what kind exactly, but if you know "La Vie en Rose" it's that style. It made me miss the days I never even lived through, and Camilla and I both agreed that the world would be a better place if that was what dancing was like for young people today. Enough of this grinding and juking, swinging and waltzing and tango-ing is where it's at. There was much singing and dancing for at least an hour, and the atmosphere was just so sleepy and nostalgic and nice. We got back home at around midnight, and Camilla and I sat outside and talked about highschool a little more, exchanging rumours we had heard about each other's friends and reminding each other of people and things we hadn't thought about in almost a year. We talked about the musical-type show we did together too, which leads me to a burning question for anyone who was in the 50's and 60's Cabaret: how did the umbrella/hat song go? Camilla and I were trying to remember it on the drive back, but all we could remember was "drip drop slipsh splash pitter patter" and nothing else. It drove us crazy, so if anyone remembers how it actually went . . . tell me. or sing it to me when I next see you, which had better be soon!
I have to go get ready for breakfast now, but there'll be more updates later on, including an account of the crazy, wild last night in Florence that led me to get no sleep at all before I left on Friday morning. At least a partial account, anyway. ;)
It's so strange to live with a group of people for six weeks in a foreign country, and then to say goodbye knowing that you'll probably never see them again. I'm sure I'll run into the NYU ones every once in a while, but other than that . . . this is it. And that feels very unsettling, especially because I got to know a bunch of people much better as late as Thursday night, the last night we were all there. But now it's time to do this in an orderly fashion, which means lots of LJ-cuts, in reverse chronological order!
At 8 am on Friday morning I hastily dumped the contents of my desk into my mostly-packed bag, said goodbye to my roommates, and took a cab to the Firenze Santa Maria Novella train station, where I bought a ticket for Perugia. Unfortunately I missed my connction in a tiny Tuscan (Umbrian?) village called Terontola, so I ended up staying there for almost two hours until the next train to Perugia. Now, all this time I'm running on absolutely no sleep from the night before, for reasons which will be explained (well, maybe) in the next section. So I kept drifting off to sleep but then freaxing out that I would miss my stop/connecting train, which made it hard to get any good naps in there. I finally got to Perugia at 1 pm, and was met at the station by a tall, dark-haired, gorgeous Italian boy who kissed me on both cheeks, took my suitcase, and led me to the car. This young man was in fact a certain Tommaso, who anghockey certainly knows and who other Trinity people may remember as well. I hadn't seen him since a few brief encounters in high school when he was 15, and before that at his older sister's communion when he was 11, and before that when he was about 3 and I had playdates at their house often. I didn't recognize him at first when I saw him at the station, because he's so much older and taller than I remembered. Heh. I'm telling you, if he weren't an old family friend . . . . ;p Anyway, he's a sweet kid and is thinking of applying to Swarthmore, even though he doesn't know the first thing about it. I can't believe he's already going to be a senior - everyone is growing up so fast! To get back on track, though, his friend's mother drove us out to the family's country house in the hills, because the people who were going to pick me up much earlier at 11 had to prepare lunch at home. It was still sunny on the drive up, and the views were absolutely amazing. When we got to the house I finally got to see my parents' friend Anna and her daughter Camilla, who used to be one of my best friends in preschool and who actually went to my high school, although we never hung out much. Shortly after I dropped my stuff off upstairs it was time for lunch, which was a lovely big Italian family affair, the company including a priest and a friar who were visiting for the day. We had a delicious pasta dish and lots of foccaccia and red wine, and then fruit for dessert and little shot-glasses filled with this yummy lemon liqueur Anna's sister made herself. It was extremely strong but unlike with most hard alcohol, the aftertaste was lovely and sweet and I actually enjoyed it.
After lunch Camilla and I both took naps, because I still hadn't slept in over a day and she wasn't feeling very well. We got up at 6 and by then it was kind of gray and cloudy (it had started raining pretty hard immediately after lunch), which was too bad because there would have been more to do if it had been nice out. We got to sit and chat for a while instead, which was nice. We caught up about Trinity people and confided in each other about our love lives, and I discovered that she had a crush on the same boy I liked in high school, a certain redhead who apparently was the object of many people's affections. Anyway, at around 7 or 8 we left for dinner with some of their friends who live further up in the hills, in a gorgeous old house with its own chapel attached to it. It wasn't a tiny chapel, either -- it was almost a good-sized church with pews and a confessional and everything. The main dining room of the house had these amazing windows looking down over the hill towns near Perugia, and that led out onto an outdoor patio which had similarly astounding views. Before dinner we had yummy hors d'oeuvres including cherry tomatoes with buffalo mozzarella (YUM), almonds (YUM), champagne (YUM), and probably some other things that wouldn't have been YUM but I didn't try, so it was all good. ;) Dinner was amazing, too. I didn't eat the main meat dish because it was pork and I'm not a fan, but there were roasted potatoes with rosemary and good salad and the most DELICIOUS mushrooms I have ever had. Those mushrooms were the highlight of my Italian culinary experience, and I wish I knew how they had prepared them (of course, Italian porcini mushrooms are probably better than whatever we have here, so bah). But YUM!
After dinner Camilla and I went outside for a cigarette (haha, she had a cigarette, I kept her company beacuse my tolerance of cigarette smoke has been forced to go up about 870% in the past six weeks) and chatter for a while, but then someone called us in saying "i vecchi stanno ballando!" (the old people are dancing), so we had to go in and see that! When we got in the door we were both immediately swept into dancing with the adults for a few minutes, but then we extracted ourselves and just watched for a while. The host was playing this gorgeous, nostalgic Italian music -- I don't know what kind exactly, but if you know "La Vie en Rose" it's that style. It made me miss the days I never even lived through, and Camilla and I both agreed that the world would be a better place if that was what dancing was like for young people today. Enough of this grinding and juking, swinging and waltzing and tango-ing is where it's at. There was much singing and dancing for at least an hour, and the atmosphere was just so sleepy and nostalgic and nice. We got back home at around midnight, and Camilla and I sat outside and talked about highschool a little more, exchanging rumours we had heard about each other's friends and reminding each other of people and things we hadn't thought about in almost a year. We talked about the musical-type show we did together too, which leads me to a burning question for anyone who was in the 50's and 60's Cabaret: how did the umbrella/hat song go? Camilla and I were trying to remember it on the drive back, but all we could remember was "drip drop slipsh splash pitter patter" and nothing else. It drove us crazy, so if anyone remembers how it actually went . . . tell me. or sing it to me when I next see you, which had better be soon!
I have to go get ready for breakfast now, but there'll be more updates later on, including an account of the crazy, wild last night in Florence that led me to get no sleep at all before I left on Friday morning. At least a partial account, anyway. ;)