another weekend gone… im getting really sad about the program ending. i mean.. i was sad from the start just thinking about the fact that it would have to end at some point.. but we have passed the halfway point.. and that makes it even more sad. jessica and i talk about it all the time. courtney and emily get mad at us though and say we need to live in the now. but i am living in the now.. im just enjoying it even more because i know its going to end so soon
yep, so there’s that…

other than me being so crazy/sad/happy/excited… lets see… last weekend was our long weekend. we left on friday.. took a night train to nice, france… in the french riviera! it was great. we got there at like 9.30 or 10 in the morning, ate an omlett which was amazing because i havent had one in sooo long, and found our hotel. most of the weekend was spent walking around nice, monaco/monte carlo, and cannes. the beach in nice is supposed to be this amazing thing.. but it wasnt even sandy.. its not like you could go out there and comfortably lay on the beach and run around… it was all rocks. but the beach at cannes was really nice. it was sandy and beautiful and we saw the most adorable dogs there in the world. haha. i took pictures of them.. lounging under umbrellas and out in the sand. so cute. but anyway, yea.. so it was halloween on what day was that.. saturday.

we didn’t have anything to wear for halloween so first we thought.. ok.. we will dress in all black and go goth. but then i realized i didnt have any black. so then we thought.. ok maybe we will all just wear mathcing outfits.. but we didn’t really have enough stuff that looked similar so we almost gave up on the whole dressing up idea. then courtney suggested wearing our bathing suits over our clothes.. so yep.. thats what we did. wore our normal cute going out clothes… with our bathing suits… we were california girls in the winter or something like that. not too exciting, but at least we didn’t look normal. lets see.. last year was skittles, the year before butterflies.. then we had powerpuff girls, kisses, and all that awesome stuff back in the day. i just couldn’t go out on halloween without looking somewhat retarded! we did get a lot of strange looks though… and comments. there were some people dressed up once we got near the bars but just walking down the street to get there was intersting with no one dressed up except for a few kids. it was a good night though. oh.. and beforehand.. emily and courtney came up with a little ‘making halloween’ dance which was awesome and i got it on video! ha

and oh yea.. how could i have almost forgotten.. i fell in love over the weekend! yep.. i gave in and bought a pair of european style boots and i am absolutely in love. they are brown and tall (no not tall like they make me taller because i dont need to be taller.. no they are flat and tall) umm but yea.. i wore them out on halloween and did the whole wear your boots over your jeans thing.. it was quite interesting, i cant say i have done that one before. you know.. im not usually one to fall into the current fashions and all that cause i am just too lazy to figure it all out and attempt to be cute all the time.. but being here in italy (well then i was in france but ya know) i had to try it. courtney made fun of me and said that i looked like robin hood.. which is what whe always says about boots over jeans and just most of the boots here in general (and its true.. most of the time they do kinda have that look.. but hey.. whats so wrong with robin hood? hes a nice guy.. why shouldnt we all be a little more like robin hood?) lol jk.. but yea.. the sad part was that i was dumb and had been wearing them around our room and then i wasn’t paying attention when i put them on to go out and i forgot to put my socks on!! so sad.. now i have huge blisters. the first time i go out with my new loves and they hurt me! lol thats alright though.. i still love them. i just have to wait a little while before i wear them again.

we got back form our trip on wednesday morning at 7.30 with just enough time to run back to our place, take a shower, and go to school! now the week is already over! only three days! woo.. yea lets see. what else.. last night we went to sobs. its a way cool pub i guess you would call it here in siena that we go to. as emily said “they have free internet at the sobs” lol our one teacher went too. she is hilarious. so she was trying to set up for us to go to the disco (an actual disco where the italian students go, unlike the pubs and places we go around here that are completely full of italian guys and then us..) but yea, we were in opera class and she was telling us the info for saturday but she had to write it down so the other teachers or other people from the program couldn’t hear.. it was really funny.

questa fine settimana non abbiamo anywhere perche siamo just too lazy to plan anything e too stanco from all the traveling we did tre giorni fa… but i think courtney e io are going to plan a phase 10 party in our building so that should be molte divertente.. no lo so quando abbiamo to do it but we hope to get tutti i ragazzi hooked on phase 10! woo!

alright well im bored of writing … we are going to go home and clean.. how exciting.

ciao for now!

Currently listening to: Courtney… trying to be an opera singer! ha .. the sad result of our opera culture class … jk actually she is wonderful

its not much to complain about i know… but here’s what i’ve got:

complaint #1

enrollment times came out for next quarter… and because of the time change I can’t enroll at my time!… it will be 5:40 in the morning here!

complaint #2

all of my spam mail goes straight into my inbox while all of the emails sent from actual people go into my ‘possible spam’ box! why!? lol

other than that.. life is just peachy  

ok, so courtney figured it out… they are playing gangster’s paradise… but its a crazy slow version… that is soooo weird

yes… i am listening to zero 7 and the shins because z is awesome and sent us cds and a la jolla postcard that is soon to go up on my wall!

this last weekend was awesome!!! it was one of our trips that are already planned by the school, so we didn’t have to worry about anything. i think thats part of why it was so wonderful. we just had to be on the bus at the right time and from there we were good to go. they even had 3 meals (3 lunches and a dinner) at amazing restaurants planned for us. it was all about experiencing the culture!

on friday we left at 7am! in la mattina… we went to bologna and had a tour of the city. that was the day that we had a huge lunch and a huge dinner. course after course of food with dessert and wine at everything. mmm… yes.. i think i came back 10 or so lbs heavier, but its all good lol. in our free time we went shopping at some outdoor markets in bologna… and courtney and i found the most awesome shoes in the world. haha, well they aren’t really shoes.. they are more like slippers.. or boots.. knitted boots and they keep my feet warm and i love them. but so yea, that night when we finally got out of the restaurant because they took about an hour between each course.. we walked around bologna for a while. good times.

saturday morning… we went over to Parma and of course went to see a parmesan cheese factory (yep… parmesan is from parma.. crazy). so we did that… we went on a tour of the city, and also to a prosciutto factory. that wasn’t that awesome actually… rooms full of pig legs hanging everywhere… kinda just made me sad.. and although prosciutto is just about all they eat here and it is everywhere… i dont like it. oh well. but the cheese factory was insane. a little smelly (or a lot smelly) but there was soooo much cheese. i was in awe. in the end they gave us “all you can eat” parmesan. not that you can really eat that much of it by itself… but it was still good. lol that night we went back to bologna to our hotel (yes, we actually got to stay in a hotel.. it was great). we went out and tried to find a place to dance but most of the discotecas charge too much (especially for the guys) so we finally made it to this bar called Transylvannia. it was the goth bar.. and it looked like some sort of strange haunted house type place.. but they had dancing in the bottom floor. from random 80s music to linkin park to grease.. they played it all. it was a very strange mix of songs… but it was way fun. we got a little lost on the way back.. but it was fun to see more of bologna at night. the city is full of students so the streets were completely filled with people everywhere we went. walking by the university there were soooo many people you could barely even walk through. music was playing.. and just walking through you could smell just about any and every possible drug that you can smoke. ha.

oh yea, almost forgot… we also went to a mexican restaurant for dinner that night… so amazing. they dont really believe in mexican food over here so i haven’t had it at all. even though it may not be the best… it was pretty darn good if you ask me… made me happy. i had enchiladas. mmm…

sunday we got up and headed off to San Marino. it was the most beautiful place ever! being there it looked like you were sitting on top of the world! because its up on this huge mountain away from everything else and i guess on a clear day you can see all the way to venice and the sea. but it wasn’t clear.. there were some clouds.. not too many not to be beautiful though! lol. we went on a tour there too and got to walk around for a while. san marino is actually not even part of italy. it’s its own republic with its own government and everything! .. and its only about the size (population) of ucsd. crazy. oh, and also.. on the way there we stopped at the ferrari museum! all of these completely original and one of a kind cars that cost millions and millions of dollars! it was really exciting to see. and we got to see the museus they are opening next to it that actually wont open to the public for another year or so. but, yea.. beautiful cars… that was fun. then, after san marino we headed back home to siena. it was sad though… courtney, jessica, emily and i held up the bus. we got a little lost on our way back and were about a half hour late! oops.

its crazy how happy we feel when we get back to siena. it really does feel like home. and its such a small peaceful place compared to some of the cities we visit.. it just makes me so happy to get back here every sunday night!

next weekend I am off to france!!!! yay! a new country! we are going to Nice, France. the real Nice. im soooo excited. should be fun… on the beach in the French Riviera… maybe cruising on over to Monaco or Cannes for the day…

oh my gosh… the music they are playing right now is sooo weird. it’s like super slowed down and its kinda scaring me! lol ok.. i think i have to get out of here… ciao

so i guess i haven’t written in a while…

well brief update on the weekend before last… we went to florence on saturday for the day to go shopping and we ate at the best gelato place in italy (according to the travel book). that night we went to an awesome free dance show in siena where we got to sit in our own little private box and everything… after that was the Torre party. Torre is one of the contradas that won in last summer’s palio, so they had a crazy party that took over their entire section of siena! it was awesome. every street/area had a different theme with people dressed up everywhere and it went on late into the night. good times!

this last weekend though was the crazy one. we went to napoli, sorrento, positano (on the Amalfi coast), pompeii, and capri! it was definately one of our best trips yet.. but we didn’t get back until this morning just a few hours before class. lol. we haven’t yet had an overnight trip that goes without problems. after capri yesterday we went to the train station in the afternoon in napoli, and they told us they didn’t have anything for siena that day. well.. we had to get back.. because we have class that we can’t miss… at that point it was just 6 of us girls (we started the trip out with 18 and spit up different directions…) but, yea.. we got tickets to Rome instead and figured we could do something else from there. while we were waiting for the train we got something to eat and ran into the guys.. they had the same problem and had tickets for the same train to rome.. so now there was a group of 12 of us. all not sure if we were going to make it back for class the next day. so we made it to rome alright. we then figured out that if we took a train to chiusi we could take one from there to siena. but, once we got on our train to chiusi, we were delayed for about two hours because of a flea. no joke… i guess they found a flea on the train and it took that long to fix the situation because the train was eventually going to germany and they didn’t want to bring any diseases or anything from the flea over the border… lol… seriously… but, yea.. after waiting for the flea dilemma to get fixed.. we finally were on our way. we made it to chiusi and then had to wait about 3 or 4 hours there because the train to siena didn’t leave until 4:30 in the morning! a few of us ended up wandering around the town.. which was small and looked like a ghost town (or maybe just like lakeport after 9pm) because it was sooo empty. it was the weirdest thing though. we found this little cafe that was still open and the guy that worked there had an aussie accent! he was really cool and gave us some leftover food while we sat and drank our hot chocolate. lol.. then he told us about some strip club that was supposably still open. so we went wandering around this little random town that didn’t even look very italian looking for a strip club at 2 or so in the morning. never did find it.. but we explored the town anyway. when we went back to the station, i finished up my homework for today, emily and i ran down the train tracks, we talked to the train station guy for a while, and our train finally came. we made it home at 6 something stamattina… had to walk from the train station back home since the busses dont run at that time.. i took a shower… slept for not even an hour… got up and went to class. ahhh.. yea.. good times

but yea.. back a bit… friday we left after school for napoli. we heard that we shouldn’t stay there so we already had a place reserved in sorrento. we caught another train/subway thing to sorrento from napoli and made it there alright. at night, sorrento looked a lot like the gaslight district in SD.. way cute.. i fell in love with the town right away. the view was amazing on our long walk up to the hostel which was way up the mountain. we had a really cute cabin too.. with two bedrooms (6 beds) and a little kitchen. we got up in the morning and went on to pompeii which was sooo awesome. courtney and i wandered around aimlessly for a while.. followed a random kitten that was walking around the ruins.. it was so exciting. right outside of the ruins they also had the best orange juice in the world… maybe it was just because i haven’t had good juice in a while.. but ya know.. either way, it was good. after the ruins we caught the train over to positano. you know the city in under the tuscan sun where she goes with that guy on the coast… that is positano! it’s the first town along the amalfi coast, and it was so beautiful. we sat on the beach for a while, ate some food, and headed back up the hill to the bus.

that night back at the campground/hostel was an interesting one. we were going to go out.. but the town was too far down the hill.. instead we just found the other people from our program and others from a florence program that we met on the beach in positano.. all who happen to be at the same place! anyway though, before we even went out of out cabin… it became a night of many pictures… the girls were trying to teach me how to be sexy. but.. no matter how hard i try.. i fail miserably. it just doesn’t work.. i can’t be sexy.. i just end up looking half retarded… oh well though.. i will have to keep working on that. lol but yea.. we went on and found the others… and for some reason people were in the mood for pictures i guess.. and we had a bunch of little photo shoots.. making stories with our pictues. they are hilarious! then we played games… involving a bottle.. hmm, yea.. i think i’ll leave it at that…

then on sunday we took a boat out to capri from sorrento, went to the beach and swam in the ocean/sea..whatever it is there… and layed out in the sun. it was such nice weather… we were really lucky with that. we went on a boat to the grotto azzuro which was really exciting. emily and i got soaked though when we were coming back out of the cave and a huge wave came over the boat. from there… we took the boat back to naples and you know the rest of our adventure home… lol

good times tho. in just a little bit, courtney and i are going out to dinner with some friends of courtney’s mom that are here in siena. then we have to go study for our language test tomorrow! ahhh.. not another one!!… and somewhere in there.. i have to get some sleep!

hope all is well for whoever may be reading this… luv u all.

xoxo ~Ky

to the gattons. i love you all so much and i wish i could be there to give you lots of hugs and to be a shoulder to cry on. all of my heart and my sympathies are with you right now. i love you.

well, this last weekend was pretty crazy. i was kind of a mess during parts of it, but overall it was a pretty good trip. we rented a car and drove to germany for the oktoberfest. there were ten of us in two cars.. and that’s where we stayed for the weekend. we found a nice place to park the cars, and that was home! we went to the train station to use the bathroom to brush our teeth when we didn’t do it in the street. but, yea. the drive wasn’t too bad. oktoberfest was pretty crazy.. i can’t even imagine how much beer they must go through in a day there! munich was a pretty cool place too. a few of us walked around the city for a while. it’s sooo different than here in italy where a lot of the cities look so similar.

time to study.. scary.. our first language test is tomorrow! so they say.. each level when we take a test it’s like finishing a quarter of the language. ahh.

so we have named out apartment “The Burrow” because thats exactly what it is! our little hole where, no matter that time of day it is, its always dark. we wake up in the morning, and there is no morning light. we come home from school in the middle of the day, and it looks like night. we turn on the lights and all they do is add a little bit of glow to the room. its like one of those restaurants where they lower the so-called “mood” lights so much that you cant even see your food!

so lets see… what have we been up to… our trip to pisa and lucca went well. other than a little mix up with the bus in the morning when we ended up in some town outside of siena, the bus stopped, and we had to take a few different busses to finally get back to siena and to the train station. (im still not sure how these things happen to us..we try so hard and it just never works out) lol

but yea, so we got there an hour later than planned. we walked on over to the leaning tower. it was way cool. some people were dissapointed with the tower because its actually not that tall… but hey, i thought it was exciting. we took some cool pictures. courtney hurt herself doing a kartwheel in front of it, but the picture came out awesome! lol then we went into the Duomo, which is right by the tower, and it was amazing! yep, i was walking around in awe. then… we had pizza in pisa! ha.

we didn’t really stay all that long because we left for lucca, which was soooo pretty. lots of trees and grass and cool buildings. we rented bikes and rode around the wall of the city, which was soo much fun. we rode around in the city too. the weather luckily was perfect. it was sunny and hot all day!

yesterday was fun too. we had an excursion to Arezzo and the Hot Springs with school. we went on a guided tour of Arezzo, which was kinda like siena, only smaller. we then went on to the warm, smelly pools of sulfur. they said it was natural hot springs, so i think i was expecting different… it was really cool though.

once we got back to siena, we went to a dinner one of the contradas was putting on. that was pretty exciting. they have dinners every week with people from the contrada. well… its getting late… and i am going running! .. jessica is waiting for me! … ciao!

haha… i just read a bulletin thing on myspace that was one of those you know you are from 2005 when… yea… it is so true.. and i fell for it all   lol

but anyway…

so we are finally meeting some italians. its exciting. these guys that we met the night before last wanted to make us dinner. they ended up just bringing pizza.. but we were attempting to speak italian all night.. and they helped us with our homework (more like just did some of it.. but hey.. they thought it was fun lol)

tonight we are meeting with some other guys that Virginia knows from her hospital internship. it really is a lot better actually talking to italians because they may laugh but they can correct you when you say things wrong. lol

plans for the weekend: a group of us are taking a day trip to Pisa and Lucca tomorrow

oh yea.. and i forgot.. i changed my phone message before i left.. so if you havent called me recently … you should..lol. courtney and i were in the airport and we changed our messages..

and i dont know how expensive it is for you guys, but if you want to call us.. courtney and i have a phone and incoming calls are free for us .. woo

xoxo, ky

Currently watching: nothing.. we don’t have tv

so we had or first real adventure this last weekend! …we had plans to go to Cinque Terre on friday and spend saturday there and go to Pisa on Sunday… but that didn’t exactly work out. so, we finally got to the train station thinking we were going to miss our train.. but we made it with about a minute to spare. our ticket said to get off at Riomaggiore, which is one of the towns in Cinque Terre (aka “5 lands”) … on the coast of the Ligurian Sea. So, even though all of the other eap people that were trying to go to the same area got off at La Spezia… we thought, no, they told us to get off at Riomaggiore.. so that’s what we are going to do (all the other people were going to different towns, so we figured it was okay). ha.. but then after sitting on the train a little longer than we thought we needed to, Joje saw a sign that said Genova. hmm… well, we thought maybe that was just an ad for something in Genova. but then we started to see more and more things that said genova.. so we asked a guy on the train in our broken italian.. and yep.. sure enough. the train hadn’t stopped at all since La Spezia… but the next stop was Genova. So.. plans changed. It ended up being a blessing in disguise. If we hadn’t stayed on the train then, we probably wouldn’t have ended up going back up through the same area to go to Genova. So, we stayed there friday and saturday night.

on saturday we walked somewhere between 5 and 10 miles around the city. Genova (Genoa) is an old port town, so it’s right on the ocean. they have an aquarium that we didn’t go into, but we saw the outside. we went to a beautiful church on Via San Lorenzo I believe it was, and a bunch of other beautiful buildings and castles, etc etc…so cool! we took pictues with lots of cool statues and went to the market where we found our aweseome 2 euro pants! ha. oh.. and also Genova is where pesto was created.. so of course we had to eat some pasta with pesto.. which was also amazing! oh, and courtney lost her purple umbrella… that was sad. it only rained a little bit on saturday night (it was supposed to rain the whole weekend, but we were lucky!).

so, we got up on sunday morning and caught a train to Cinque Terre. This time it was a stop train so we could actually get off at Riomaggiore. But, since we wanted to walk between the towns, we got off at Vernazza since it came first. the hike took about an hour and fifteen minutes but it was one of the most amazing things i have ever done. it was a trail along the hillside of the ocean (going from Vernazza to Corniglia) where if you stepped too far to the right you would have literally fallen off a cliff into the ocean! ha.. or at least you might have tumbled down a very steep hill and landed on some rocks… courtney wanted to jump into the ocean but we wouldn’t let her. ha. all of my pictures from that walk look like amazing postcards! once we reached corniglia the next part of the trail to Manarola was closed so we had to hop on the train and then walk form Manarola to Riomaggiore (Via del’Amore) which was a shorter, easier walk. Once there, we tried to take a train home… but of course nothing with us goes as planned… we got on and there were some of the other eap people on the same train so we figured we were good. we reached La Spezia.. the train sat there for a little while… and then started going back the other direction… yes, i know.. we need to figure out this stupid train system! haha

well, nevertheless… we finally ended up back in siena sunday night. but, along the way on the train we were sitting by these italian guys… it was so funny. “siena.. time out” one of them said.. trying to say that the train stopped in siena. then, he was trying to give my friend jessica a compliment.. so he kept saying “compliment… compliment” lol. we almost felt bad for laughing at them.. but im sure we sounded the same way trying to talk to them! lol

well, other than that our next plan is to try to go to the octoberfest in germany.. but i don’t know if that will happen.. it is going on the next two weekends. and… im so excited.. there is a chocolate festival in Perugia! we aren’t sure when it is yet.. but it’s gonna be great! ha

we had our welcome dinner last wednesday with a four course meal at an awesome restaurant! it was so pretty.. and everyone dressed up and all that good stuff. then they had a welcome night for the uc students at cafe del corso… where all the smelly guys are where we go dancing… haha

hmm… what else… we went to the winery last week, and then to enoteca today (another cool wine place).. we had some sweet wine today that was amazing… i actually really liked it! our wine class is already over though .. our first culture test is on wednesday! i can’t believe it’s going so fast already!.. we start the Palio section of culture next week. but, yea.. i need to go make some dinner and actually do some homework (actually learn some italian so i can communicate!)

ciao!

xoxoxo, ky

“No breakfast?… Nutella! No dessert?… Nutella!” -Courtney and I

“The wind waits for no one.” -Jessica

im excited… JoJe brought her computer and we have wireless at the school so we may actually be able to put pictures up online! that would be cool…

yea, but anyway, we had out second day of school today. it was pretty exciting! there are about 12 or so people in the class and my teacher’s name is Antonella. She is italian.. obviously.. but yea, she doesn’t speak much english at all so we will ask what something means and sometimes she doesn’t even know what we are saying. it’s amazing though how it doesn’t really matter..i still feel like i am learning so much already. full immersion! yes!

so, courtney and I have successfully cooked dinner 3 times now. the first time was a little scary.. but i think we might be getting better already. since we dont have an oven, we cook everything on the stove. but, of course…we didn’t have a lighter to light the stove, so we borrowed one from a guy down the hall. but, with us, it couldn’t be that easy. so, after trying a few times and almost burning ourselves… we had to go back and get anthony to start the burner! …so sad ..yes, we have troubles, i know! but… mi madre would be proud of me.. i have been eating vegetables! we had green beans, and salad, etc.!

yesterday we went for a run (awww…i didn’t have my ashie :( with me *tear*) around siena. we went outside the walls and found some roads with absolutely beautiful views. we didn’t know where we were going though, so we are going to try again in another direction. but, yea, we could see rolling hillsides with gorgeous houses everywhere and only got honked at a couple of times. everything is so green here. i love it.

the other day we layed out in the piazza del campo. we wrote some postcards and took a nap. it is like the beach of siena, except there is no sand or water. but, everyone just sits out there in the sun (and at night it’s a place to hang out too… we were walking around there at like 2 in the morning and soo many people were still out there just hanging out). the night life amazes me.. soo many people out at all hours. i guess that’s why they need siesta!

we went out there today to do some homework, but i ended up just sitting there and watching all of the people walk around. lots of tourists with their italy travel books speaking all different languages, all of the happy people eating gelato, a few locals, and a lot of pigeons (annoying pigeons! lol)

on thursday, for our wine culture class, we go on a trip to a winery, with a tour and all that. and this weekend i think we are going to plan a trip to Pisa! and some other towns around that area. yay!