I Waited Too Long and Now I Don't Remember What I Was Going To Write About

Edit: This was supposed to be posted before the Switzerland post, but I forgot, so now it's awkwardly published after. So just know that everything you read was written like a week ago. Okay, carry on...

I know that I've been planning a blog post for this week but now I can't remember what I wanted to say. I know that on Sunday I went to mass for the first time in a long time (aside from Christmas and my grandma's memorial) and it was something that I really needed. Our priest said, and I quote, "there is nothing you can do to make God love you less." Meaning that God loves all people, and gives the same amount of love to everyone, no matter who you are. He, also, and I quote, said, "God has the same amount of love for the Virgin Mary as he did for Hitler." The point is that God loves literally every single person on earth with the same amount of love. And I think that we should too (or at least show the same amount of compassion). There's a certain comfort knowing that you are receive infinite amount of love just for being you and for making mistakes. Obviously some people would take this as being able to do whatever they want because it won't change God's love, but in a way, it makes me want to be an even better person.

Moving on from the cheese...

My roommate and I used to have another roommate here in Florence but she had to go home, so now we have three beds. Naturally, we put all three of them to make the ultimate bed! See below...it's awesome. 

We've also been super paranoid because we have been told about bed bugs recently because there has been quite an epidemic and they are a REAL THING. One night I found a couple bug bites on my shoulder and I started scratching even though they didn't feel itchy, I just knew they were there so I was always thinking about them. Then I would look around my bed, in my sheets, and under my mattress just constantly searching for bed bugs, but seeing nothing, but also not entirely sure what I was looking for. So both my roommate and I were freaking out, totally joking about it, but just unsettled. Fortunately (and you know bed bugs are bad when I say what I'm about to say) we found that we had a mosquito in our room! yesssss

Again, wasn't sure what I was going to write about before. I think I was going to talk about classes. Some of them are good. English is great because we started out by reading Greek mythology and it's so interesting! All of the Gods are completely ridiculous and horny buttt it makes the stories entertaining for sure! 

Sorry this post is boring, but Switzerland and Rome are much more interesting. Read those! Or read a book! Why are you reading this anyways? 

Chocolate!!!!!!!

This past weekend I was lucky enough to visit Switzerland, the chocolate capital of the world. That's all you need to know really.

Literally the entire weekend I felt like the character from Spongebob that freaks out about chocolate. See picture below.

No exaggeration.

Let's back up a bit though to travel day. On Thursday night we were supposed to leave for Switzerland from Florence at 6:30 pm, but the schedule got moved back to 8:15 because the bus was coming from Rome and for some reason they were late. No problem. However, we didn't actually get on the bus until almost 10 at night, and we still had to stop for dinner. I was also told that the bus got lost (not sure if this was true) so we arrived in Interlaken, Switzerland at 6am. But with a curse comes a blessing! The program that we went on is called "Florence for Fun". The people who were coming from Rome on the bus were on a different program called "Euro Adventures". Our program felt so bad about the delays that they offered to give us a 50% discount to a trip to the Venice Carnival. Hell. Yeah. So I will most definitely be taking advantage of that! Both program leaders were very nice, but the people who were attending Euro Adventures on our bus were probably the most obnoxious, rude people we've encountered in a while. I won't go into detail, but there is definitely a difference between the people who attend the Florence for Fun program and the Euro Adventure program. It's no wonder they have the reputation that they do. 

Okay, just needed to get that boring stuff out of the way so we could move on to the good stuff!!

So after sleeping for two hours (we woke up at 8), we went downstairs so some of my friends could sign up for Canyon jumping! I didn't sign up as it wasn't on my list of things to do and not exactly in my price range. However, for those who did do it, it seemed absolutely worth it because Interlaken is one out of two places in the entire world where people can Canyon jump. Incredible! 

Friday was a pretty relaxed day. We walked to Lake Brienz (again, pictures below), and the view was stunning. Even on the walk there, I could not stop thinking about how beautiful Switzerland is. It felt unreal. I had never seen water so blue and never felt air so fresh. Coming from Florence, known for its pollution, being able to breathe absolute pure freshness was well....a breath of fresh air. I don't think I've said the word "fresh" enough times. 

Oh yeah, I promised you pictures...

Unreal, right?!

Later that night we went to what we had all came to Switzerland for...the Swiss chocolate tasting. Oh yessss.

It was all amazing of course. I also learned that the more chocolate snaps when it breaks, rather than bends or folds (I'm looking at you, Hershey), the better the chocolate is. At the end, we tried an alcoholic chocolate piece that you bite into and then down like a shot. It was very minimal, of course, but still fun to do! I have a video of me doing so, but the Internet is so poor here, I won't be able to share it until after I get back from "studying" abroad. 

As I said, Friday was very relaxed as we were all very tired. We turned in early, after eating at this great Irish pub with our AWESOME waiter named Sheppy (or that's what his friends called him) from New Zealand. 

Saturday morning, during breakfast (which consisted of jam and bread) I noticed a man with pink satin bell bottom pants. Later on we started to notice more people with the same outfit and painted faces. It was odd....but more on that later. So we headed off to the federal city of Switzerland (whatever that means, kinda like a capital), Bern. The view overlooking the town was absolutely gorgeous. I didn't take very good pictures but just Google image it. In Bern we passed this stand that was serving free melted Swiss cheese on warm bread. My mouth is watering just thinking about it! It was so yummy!! My tour guide also bought this warm wine with cinnamon, it sounded like the perfect winter drink! I didn't get a chance to try it, but I'd really like to some time (but actually, friends...let's try it sometime!). There wasn't as much to do in Bern as I thought there would be, but it was still cool walking around a city we had never been to before. However, Switzerland's pricing is high! There was a Starbucks in Bern and the price for a grande was 9 Swiss franc which is basically the same currency as the US dollar. I don't buy Starbucks often anyways, but there was no way in hell I was trying any this time! Oddly enough, I think my favorite part of Bern, aside from the cheese and bread, was watching this street performer play bagpipes. I'm not sure what it was, but I just really enjoyed hearing music that we don't get to listen to often in the United States. 

After we got back to Interlaken, we were exhausted so a few of us decided to take a nap while the others decided to go out. We had the room key, so we just left the door cracked open for the others when they came back. Well, that idea backfired. The nap was unsuccessful to say the least. Remember those people with the weird pink outfits and face paint I was talking about earlier? Well, there were over a hundred of them staying in our hostel with absolutely ridiculous outfits, each with different themes. We saw tiger costumes, jesters, outer space theme, and even outfits with lights on them! It almost felt like we were the ones out of place. Apparently they go from place to place playing their drum line music, which is not at all quiet. During our nap we heard someone attempting to play the trumpet and then all of a sudden just a ton of drums outside out window. That didn't last too long so fortunately we started to drift off again. But just as I was drifting off, (half asleep, half awake) in my dream someone had screamed, which then caused me to scream....but instead of screaming in my dream, I actually screamed. Sooooo I woke up my roommates again! For our third round of drifting off we started to hear whistling. "Well, that's fine", we thought. It's just someone passing our door in the hallway! But the whistling was louder than we expected. We then remembered that we had left the door cracked open, so our reasoning was that it was just louder because the door was open. Nope. Two guys from the drum line crazy outfit party had decided to enter our room. They were being difficult and claimed that they had used their room key to get in our room but we knew that we had kept the door open, but long story short, after some yelling and shoving them out they eventually went away and our night continued nicely!

After all of that we went to dinner and then back to our Irish pub where we saw Sheppy again! It was nice to just sit at a table and drink, again, just keeping it relaxed. We had a stressful day!

On Sunday, a couple of my friends hadn't been to the lake that we went to on Friday, so we revisited that and took some gorgeous pictures and then we left back for Florence (but not before buying some chocolate first!)

The Infamous Su Crew Dinner

Readers be warned: This probably won't be as interesting to you as the actual dinner was to me and this is going to be the weirdest post I am ever going to make (maybe). So it's probably best if you just skip this one because it's more for me because this is like...you know, my blog.

It was Saturday, January 11th 2014. A night to remember. Wine was on our table, and we were ready to drink.

First course: Grilled vegetables for daysss and another thing that I don't know what it was but it was really good, and it's been a week but I know we were given other things...like cheese and salami (great description, Nicole).

Second Course: Pasta on pasta

At this point, we thought it was over and much of the wine had been consumed. Gang signs were thrown up and silly giggling following the phrase "if my legs could talk". "Peace sign" turned to "pizza" and deep dish was created.

(yeah I know this doesn't make sense to any of you)

 The night went on and our wine was gone :( but we were searching for more, not giving up .

BOTH tables next to us generously shared their wine and we, so so greedy, took it graciously.

Then, there was talk of dessert. What could be the options?

Claire, though, she had a plan. A fool proof plan. She would pray for....Tiramisu. Her prayer went:
"Dear God, if you are real, please let there be Tiramisu"

And there was.

However, we did not know that this ordering of dessert was in between courses. First, the salad came out and we thought, "okay..this is light...that's not that bad". But then, a fourth course. Meat and potatoes. I had to turn it down because I was so full and I wanted dessert.

Speaking of dessert:

I, a simple being, asked for chocolate cake. However the Lord was on my side that night. He blessed me with not only chocolate cake, no. He blessed me with chocolate cake, cheesecake, and...oh yes...and....lemon cake. Score.

After our bellies were full (and I mean full) of food and wine, we decided to continue our night in Rome never forgetting the Su Crew or Deep Dish.

Roaming Roma

This past weekend, my school took us on an opening tour in Rome! Some of us were still a bit jet-lagged, but we somehow (yet barely) managed to keep up with the busy schedule that we were provided.

Thursday, January 9th
On Thursday we took a bus from Florence to Rome which lasted approximately 4 hours. Although I brought a book onto the bus, I didn't manage to open it once. For the first two hours I talked to the people around me where we shared stories and laughed. When the conversations died down and throughout the second part of the trip, I looked out the window taking in the thought that I was in Europe. It hadn't really settled in my mind that I was just taking a bus ride to Rome....no big deal...The landscape was beautiful of course. The hills are so lush and the buildings are built so differently than in the United States. One person I was sitting with stated something that I agreed with. She said that it seemed that the architecture and buildings were constructed the way they were because people took the time to put in this extra effort into the architecture. In the United States it always seems like buildings are being mass produced and everything is so fast paced. Europe is different; it's very much about taking the time to appreciate what's around and slowing down a bit. Other conversations I may or may not have listened in on consisted of what people were passionate about. Getting to know peoples' passions is actually really interesting because it's as if they are sharing this really personal thing about themselves without revealing something secret. It's just something they really love and enjoy. There was also talk of shows that I watched and I wanted to jump in on the conversation but it was really nice just listening to what people had to say without participating.

Once we got to the hotel, we checked it out and soon after we took a three hour tour around the city of Rome. It was beautiful and I took many pictures, which you can access here. We visited the place were St. Ignatius resided (we even saw his clothes and books), the Trevi fountain (my favorite place in all of Rome! Side note: would definitely be okay with getting proposed there. So gorgeous!), among other places around the city. The streets and architecture are truly gorgeous. My only complaint about the city of Rome was how many street vendors there were trying to sell flowers by shoving them in your face. There were also these men that would flash lights to try and distract you in order to pick pocket you. Although the city itself was beautiful, unfortunately because of its popularity, tourism had taken something away from it.

After the tour, the whole program went to dinner where a place was rented out for us. There we ate way too much food, and we even had entertainment! There was a man who was nicely playing the piano for a good portion of the night, and he later transitioned into playing American songs such as New York, New York and YMCA. He was such a great highlight of the dinner and made all of us laugh when he did ridiculous things such as using a whistle for part of his act. During the dinner I talked to a group of girls whom I didn't know, which was great because making friends is part of this amazing experience! Afterwards we decided to go on a bar crawl because well..."When in Rome!".

We ended up only going to one bar, but it was absolutely not a dud. At first, I was a bit hesitant because it seemed like we were the only Americans there and I had not quite gotten used to the idea of being in a place without many Americans. We ended up staying and being the only females and Americans in the bar so that called a bit of attention to us...

When we decided it was time to go home, my friend and I went ahead of the group we came with and went by ourselves. We knew the way in a general sense, but not specifically...what I'm trying to say is that weeeee got lost. Woops!

So we went around 98% of the route correctly and when it came to turn to our street, which we had been unfamiliar with being there for only half a day, we didn't turn and we kept going. Somehow we just kept on walking and that got us pretty far from our hotel. We asked multiple people (including the police) where we were supposed to go but there were just so many ally ways it was too difficult to tell if we were going the right way. Eventually we entered this plaza where there were many drunk italians. Even though we had been down some sketchy ally ways, for some reason this plaza made me feel the most uncomfortable. We approached one group of Italians for directions but the directions one gentleman gave us we knew for sure was just not right. Finally, I found a group that looked like Americans and shouted, "okay, are you American?!" so frustrated with our situation. They smiled nicely and excitedly said yes! Thank God. We asked them if they knew where our hotel was, which they didn't, but two of the guys in the group offered to help us find it. They seemed, and were, absolutely trustworthy and I am so glad we found them that night. It took a while but they helped us find our way back and we made it safely to our hotel. Quick note: Don't ever go to Hotel Navona in Rome. They were rude and disrespectful. I understand that handling a group of college students is a hard task, but this is customer service. Apparently some other students arrived around 3am (we arrived around 1:45) and were locked out of the hotel because the staff kept our keys and didn't tell us. Great service...

On a lighter note, it was a funny adventure to look back and laugh on!

Friday, January 10th

Friday morning started with a visit to the Roman Forum and the Colosseum! It was incredibly interesting looking at what used to be the heart of Rome. I couldn't comprehend the fact that these were ruined governmental buildings and an actual part of a city. People lived here many years ago in an age that is significantly different than our own. This architecture was built by such talented individuals. My only wish was to see what it was really like back then and see the city come to life. Obviously, that wish didn't come true, but one can dream! This tour was nice because we had complete control over how much time we spent in both the Roman Forum and the Colosseum, and then we were free to get lunch on our own until we had to meet back at our hotel to go on another tour! Let me just say that the  pair of shoes I chose for that day was not a good choice...cute!... but not a good choice...

Our next visit was to the Villa Borghese, which was the Borghese museum that held many sculptures and paintings from famous artists such as Bernini. Before this trip, I'd probably say that I wasn't very fond of museums (holla, I'm becoming more cultured!). However, Rome started to change my mind. I really do enjoy art, but in order for me to really appreciate it, I need context. Fortunately for my learning experience, we were given a tour guide (and these awesome head pieces that he spoke into so he didn't have to speak loudly and we could hear him! MAGIC!) and he knows EVERYTHING! Like, we had this tour guide three separate times: Thursday, when touring the city of Rome (so like, that's already a lot), Friday, when visiting the Borghese, and Saturday, which you will see below, when we visited the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica. So basically his extended knowledge really helped me enjoy the art and architecture because it was so interesting learning about the stories and meanings behind the statues and paintings! For example: The statue of Daphne and Apollo is inspired by the mythological story of...you guessed it....Daphne and Apollo. The signature scene of the story where Daphne just barely escapes Apollo's lust by turning into a tree is what the statue shows. Many mythological stories were shaped into sculptures and although they are already crafted so beautifully, hearing the stories adds another dimension to the experience.

Something else that I learned is how nudity was actually a symbol of purity and spirituality rather than being scandalous. Of course many people viewed nude paintings as scandalous, but in one particular painting, it was quite the opposite! In the painting, Sacred and Profane Love, there is one woman who is clothed and another naked. One is supposed to symbolize sacred love, and the other profane. At first, I thought the naked one was profane love. However, I was told by my tour guide that the naked woman was actually Sacred Love. I posted a picture below so you could see what I'm referring to. I don't normally like traditional paintings, but again, context is key. So in the background behind the clothed woman, there is a castle behind her. This, along with her clothing, is meant to show materialism. Behind the nude woman is a lake and what seems to be a steeple. This tends to be more pure and innocent, sacred. I just found it very interesting that I could oversee so many details and miss the idea entirely, which probably is very common.

What really captured my attention is just how beautiful the sculptures around the whole city of Rome are! There is so much detail and they all look so powerful and graceful. It totally brought out my inner Goddess!

Well before I was in the museum my feet were killing me, so I think you can imagine how much my feet hated me AFTER the museum. Every time my group entered a room with a seat we all scrambled to get a seat because we were all just so exhausted.

Night time, I had a BLAST! I met up with a few girls, some who I just met, and a couple I already knew, and we bonded instantly! In italy, it is typical to eat carbs on carbs on carbs. Endless. So needless to say I was craving a big ol' salad. To be perfectly honest I've been craving a smoothie since we got here but we can't have everything. Anywho, my salad was awesome. It had lettuce (obvi), brie (the best cheese because brie), walnuts, pears, and honey! Yum. Also, someone didn't want their mojito so guess who got that? This girl! Never turn down free alcohol. It's just a simple rule of life. We then went to have a very low key evening at a nice, hipster-looking bar where we had wine. The cover charge was 1 euro, which was no problem because we got chips (again, hollaaaa). For some reason we decided to roam around the city, I think we just wanted to become familiar with it and see it at night time (even though I had my lovely, unexpected tour the night before). We went down under a bridge by the water, which looked absolutely sketch, but we were aware of our surroundings. It was fun exploring! We then headed to our hotel, but got distracted by a street that had lights hung around it (as many did) and a lot of people were walking around as well. We decided to go over there and check it. Best idea of the night. We stumbled (not literally. Please, we're classy ladies) upon this bar that had all drinks for 5 euro. There were a ton of people there, so obviously it was a popular place! I got a Sex on the Beach, which was great! There, two very nice (non-agressive...shocker) Italian guys talked to us and we talked about the stereotypes for Italians and Americans. It was a really light hearted and fun night with a lot of good laughs and we safely left to be back in our hotel for our 1 am curfew.

Saturday, January 11th

Saturday is the day we toured St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican. I'm not going to lie, after all of the walking done the day before, this tour was a bit of a drag. I had one favorite thing and that was learning how much of a freaking rebel Michelangelo was when the Church asked him to paint the sistine chapel. He was not keen on doing this, so he left a few presents in the painting, my favorite being God's butt.

Gotta love sassy Michelangelo.

The Sistine Chapel, in my opinion (along with others), was a bit of a let down. I was expecting it to be as tall and grand as St. Peter's Basilica, yet it was not. Plus, we had seen plenty of other paintings on the ceilings so it just didn't make the Sistine Chapel feel any more special. I think what also took away from the experience was the fact that the room was so packed with people pushing that it didn't give the calm atmosphere I was expecting. It was very hard to enjoy. 

The tour was down in the morning so we had the entire afternoon until dinner to do whatever we wanted. My friends and I went to my favorite place, the Trevi Fountain! We took the cliche pictures and got out of all the tourism. 

Now I was going to post our grand finale dinner experience in this post, but it really deserves its own (most likely short) post because it was probably the best dinner experience I've had. If you have made it this far, you are a trooper. And thanks for reading! 

In Europe, At Last

Let me just start out by saying that I am extremely exhausted (but I can't sleep) so this is going to be one terribly written blog post. Please don't judge me. Okay, just needed to get that out of the way.

 On January 6th, I left San Francisco and began my journey to Europe. My sister, Ashley, dropped me off at the airport and I was so close to tears! I've flown by myself of course, but this was International!! Things run a little differently flying abroad. I went to check my massive load that was my luggage and of course...it was overweight. Bam. $100 fee. I had been at the airport for 10 minutes (I wasn't even abroad yet!!) and I managed to pay a big expense. Nevertheless, I managed to shuffle along through security and all the way to my gate just fine. Let me also just say that the International terminal has so many beautiful people. Like, somehow Europeans are inherently good looking and the rejects were sent to the United States. I don't know how they do it. And everyone dresses so nicely too, which I already knew, but like....American men really need to step up their dressing game....because they don't have any. 

Anyways, the flight to Paris was fine. It was long, and I didn't sleep but they provided us with movies and shows to choose from. I watched Monsters University, some of the Hangover, some of The Heat, Friends, Modern Family, and The Office. I also tweeted about my experience (people I observed and the airline food. Classic.) so you can look at that on my twitter. 

God, this is written so poorly. I am so sorry. 

When I got off of the plane at the airport in Paris (which by the way is enormous) I finally bumped into some familiar faces from Gonzaga. Thank. God. I'm glad I don't have any pictures because I was one hot, sweaty mess. My God. Anyways, so our plane was delayed, which I didn't mind because again...hot sweaty mess...so it was just nice to sit down, relax, and catch up with some people. The ride from Paris to Florence was where things really got exciting, though. I was blessed to get window seat (which I never get) where I gazed at the scenery below. It. Was. Beautiful. Honestly, I don't think I could have flown at a better time. First, we flew over these gorgeous mountains (I believe it was the French Alps). None of the pictures I took did any of the views justice, but I wish they had because I couldn't look away. There were these light blue pools that glistened in the mountaintops and the mountains were jagged yet so wondrous. After the Alps, there some sort of fog or smoke that laid across some hills which created this eerie look that I was totally digging. As the plane ride went on, the orange from the sunset caused these bodies of water to sparkle with gold, and the sky looked like a painting. I was literally just sitting taking pictures totally nerding out at how marvelous everything looked! Then, we hit Florence. Everything was so lush and the buildings looked nothing like they do in the United States. They are much more beautiful but in a more quaint and modest way. At this point, I couldn't take my camera away from the window because I didn't want to miss a moment. 

Sidenote: During the cab ride to my "pensione", I was instantly reminded of The Lizzie McGuire Movie (I know, I know...). I didn't think so many people actually ride mopeds, I thought it was just a stereotype. No, they are literally everywhere! 

The thing that got me most excited was the cobblestoned streets. I don't know what it is, but the right touch of that and the architecture is what really, to me, differentiates Europe from the United States. 

The Fear of Being Naive

In approximately two weeks I will be traveling to the beautiful continent of Europe (specifically the country of Italy) where I will be studying abroad for a semester. My sister just came back from this program and clearly had the time of her life. 2013 in general has been a roller coaster ride, so the idea of wandering different countries, let alone a whole new continent, is just what I need. During my summer I was working two jobs (and a little bit of school) and my time in school can turn into months of monotony. So I think it's time for a splash of adventure! 2014 has started out a bit rough as I had caught the cold (perfect for traveling!). However as I learned in a recent Vlogbrothers video (which you can watch here), we, as humans, tend to look at things in a negative light. If something good happens, we might counteract that nice thought with a bad one. According to Hank Green, in this video, we need about twice as many good things to happen as bad to seem like things are going well. If the amount of good things that we see are about equal to the bad things, then we tend to view that as more bad things are happening. So, learning this, I've decided to try to look at things a bit differently during 2014. Yes, I may have a cold while I'm flying thousands of miles away....but....I am studying abroad in Europe! This is an opportunity that not everybody gets to experience.

So basically none of what I have written has to do with the title. That may or may not be because I wrote this title about a week ago and I continued writing this post today. What I'm saying is...I forgot what this was going to be about. Since it was originally being written in 2013, I'm assuming it was about a bunch of fears that I had going into this whole experience. Obviously, I need to be careful about things that I do in Europe. I'm going to be working there doing a video project for my school, so a lot of times I am going to be having a camera in my hand, looking like a tourist. This will most likely make me a target in some circumstances, so I need to keep that in mind. Although it is important to be cautious and aware when traveling in a different place, it's also important to enjoy your surroundings. Being too cautious might take away from the adventure.

Well, this is just some pre-travel jargon that I felt necessary to write. I'm a little rusty at writing, so give me some time. I know this is probably absolute shit, but hey, it's my blog. I'll grow and stuff.