Home

I'm home. :)

And it is blissful.

I am officially patriotic. The list of things I missed and of which I am now indescribably appreciative keeps getting longer and longer. I'll give you that list after I describe my getting-home process.

The day before my flight, it snowed. In Florence. For the first time in 3 years, 10 years, 18 years, depending on who you ask. In any case we were told it would not snow. Or get colder than the low 40s. FALSE. That morning I went to the Uffizi Library with two other Smith girls to begin research for my art history paper. Despite a hilariously awkward and drawn-out signing-up procedure with this old man who was trying to speak English to me because he thought my Italian sucked (not untrue), the library was unbelievable. And I found books that were ENTIRELY devoted to my painting. Ideal, yo. And the coolest part was that you had to turn one of those heavy old-fashioned keys to pull back this elaborate towering wooden gate to access the books. Soo Harry Potter right now. We researched until 1, then stopped for lunch in a restaurant where I accidentally ordered SQUID. Don't get me wrong, I like calamari as much as the next guy, but this was not little breaded rings of deliciousness--it was slimy tentacles and the sauce was very very mediocre so it was totally not worth forcing down. After that we went to a different library (that's two more libraries than I had been to all year) where we stopped in a cafe and lamented about the inhumane amount of work we have to do over break (don't even get me started. The professors are trying to make us take them so seriously it's almost comical. And it's not like they don't know the other work we have because THEY ALL INTIMATELY KNOW ONE ANOTHER. And everything's in Italian so it takes twice as long. Oops I got started...). Then Camilla came and we left to do some Christmas shopping. After we left the store where I got my sister's present there were big fat flakes falling from the sky (aka snow) and I would have been all enchanted and stuff if I didn't have my flight to worry about.

Then we got ingredients for the tiramisu we had been planning to make the entire year since we first learned how to make it during Orientation. And we ACTUALLY FINALLY MADE IT. By hand. Literally we whipped the egg whites and egg yolks by hand and grated the chocolate with a thimble-sized grater (the lack of kitchen appliances here indicative of our host mom's lack of cooking skills). Was it worth it? ABSO-FREAKIN-LUTELY. It was the second best tiramisu I'd ever had in my life (first being the one our cooking teacher made during Orientation) if I do say so myself. And the family loved it too. That was our Christmas present to them.

That night I tried (er, I had Camilla try) to call a taxi to take me to the airport the next day. What a SILLY idea. All three lines gave us a few disconcerting beeps and then disconnected. Every single one of the 800 times we tried. Mildly infuriating. So we decided to try in the morning. Same thing. FINALLY Camilla got put on hold (HOPE!!) and just as she was about to hang up because it was probably costing a ton of money, someone ANSWERED! And informed her that they could either send a taxi "now or never." Ah, the customer service caliber in this country is unparalleled. We waited and the taxi obviously never showed up. (I'm not even gonna drag out the story because it's just so TYPICAL). So we transferred to a street where taxis sometimes go by. Or else the bus that goes to the station. 5 minutes and we dropped that idea and decided to go try by the railway station instead. No taxis, but the bus came, praise Allah, so we ran to get on that. It took us to the station where there turned out to be a taxi queue. A lengthy one but at least there was a fairly steady stream of taxis. So Camilla waited with me until I finally got a taxi of my own. And then, I was on my own. I had never flown by myself before so I was pretty nervous. Luckily I had the entire Fairfield University returning from their semester abroad in Florence to accompany me. After waiting in uncertainty, my flight ended up being delayed by only one hour, which is a MIRACLE when you consider all the other flights that were canceled or the people that had to be bussed to different airports in Italy or gahhh I was so lucky. This gave me time to purchase a 7.50 euro piece of pizza, soda, and acid bath aka "fruit cup." Throughout the journey there were returning college students DAPPERTUTTO (everywhere). I made sure to keep the ones going to Boston in sight to reassure myself that I was going to the right places. Because our flight to Zurich was delayed we had to SPRINT to make our connecting flight. I was surprisingly not stressed because I had that group of 20 or so girls from other schools with me and, as it turned out, about 50 passengers were missing so they had no choice but to hold our flight (um THANK YOU). The flight was smooth. I watched Julie & Julia and ate a meal that was better than most of the meals I had had with my host family in Italy. And I was sitting next to one of the college students and she turned out to be very nice. The only bad part was that we were in literally the last row of seats in the plane. I was about 5 inches from the toilets. And had absolutely no access to a view out any window. Oh and then there was that terrifying part where someone asked if there was a doctor on board over the speakers and about 2 minutes later flight attendants were carrying an unconscious girl down the aisle. Ahhh! But other than that, my luggage came, my dad picked me up, and everything has been perfect since.

Here's that list:

1) Ok well obviously I have to put my family, and friends, first. And my dog who I missed so so much and seemed especially big to me after having been around a cat all the time.
2) Effective indoor heating
3) My cozy room. The rug on the floor. When I got into bed the first night I felt like a queen.
4) Soft toilet paper
5) Normal-sized washcloths and big fluffy towels
6) Premium water pressure
7) A shower in which there is space for movement and in which you do not have to do a squat-thrust if you drop the soap and in which you do not have to worry about flooding the bathroom or getting cold when the curtain brushes aside. Related to this, my hair feels fantastic. Something about the water.
8) Being able to eat breakfast in my pajamas and being able to walk around the house in socks/bare feet without having to worry about getting frostbite
9) Real orange juice with pulp (not some HI-C imitation brand)
10) PANCAKES WITH SYRUP (my dad made blueberry pancakes the first morning!)
11) My nice pink phone (ok if you could SEE my hilarious dinosaur/cell phone prototype that I use in Italy you would understand) and being able to text my friends here
12) Christmas decorations inside and outside houses, Christmas tree
13) Hot apple cider. Also root beer
14) Food. Real, filling food.
15) Speedy internet
16) High-definition, high-quality TV (this one I realize makes me seem a little spoiled but really there's something about the Italian TV that makes every movement the characters in movies or shows make seem fake, animated, distorted somehow. Also their shows, even commercials, are just not as good on any level. Here, this is a snippet from the game show that's on every single night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S7EoZUERdE)
17) Being able to drive a car again is kind of nice
18) And on that note: wide open winding roads, drivers that obey the rules of the road
19) Cheerful customer service employees. The woman working the tollbooth we passed through leaving the airport was friendlier than the vast majority of the customer service employees I had to interact with in Italy
20) PANDORA RADIO
21) Washing machine that actually leaves your clothes smelling nice. And a DRIER.
22) Here, the mosquitoes are dead like they should be. They are not immortal and infinite, they do not buzz in your ear the second before you're about to fall asleep in the dead of winter. They do not bite you, they do not irritate you beyond human comprehension, they are good and DEAD.
23) No cigarette smoke--whether faint or overpowering--to breathe in.
24) Beautiful piano
25) Home. Just the feeling of being home.

THE CLIMB

I hate to name this post after a Miley Cyrus song but really it's the most appropriate title I could think of. Ahem. Hello ye faithful readers. Some significant things have transpired in my life as of late. I shall begin with Friday. We had to get up at the crack of dawn (ok, like 7:10) for a very special and much-anticipated occasion: going to the police headquarters of Florence to get fingerprinted! I didn't really understand all the logistics but it had something to do with the fact that we now won't get kicked out of Italy anytime soon. It was gross and rainy and windy and cold that morning. But we were motivated by sheer excitement! Naaaaht. There was molto traffico so the bus wasn't coming and we had one of those wonderful moments in which we had to decide within the next negative two minutes if we should wait for the bus to show or start walking. We started walking. We were late, but we found the place. When I say "we found" anything, just insert "we" with "Camilla" because I have the sense of direction of a rock and therefore completely and utterly rely on her at all times. It's bad. Anyhow we were all prepared for the worst because Italy is notorious for being heinously disorganized and ridiculous in all aspects of everything. But everything went smoothly and it didn't end up taking more than 2 hours! (apparently the year before it took EIGHT). I suppose I could have been proactive and diligent and all that stuff and gone to my internship at the library but my boss was already under the impression that I wasn't coming (let it be known that I did not TELL her I wasn't coming. I described the interference and she said, 'So you're not coming then'--wow but it sounded way nicer in Italian--and I tried to continue telling her that I just didn't know how long the whole thing would take but before long not going at all started to sound nice so I just let her think what she thought) so I decided instead to go home. For lunch I got Chinese food and the nice woman there called me "Rossina" (little red). I nearly perished on the 1 minute walk back because it was so cold and windy and rainy and godforsaken. That night we went to the ballet! We were late again and I made a very very bad decision in wearing heels. The whole thing was a Christmas present from Giovanna and Monica :). The ballet was an abbreviated version of Carmen and much to my delight I recognized one of the songs because we played it in orchestra in high school. And I recognized all the others because they're extremely famous. Overall I preferred the music. The dancing, from what I could devise, was not all that impressive. I thought the Boston Ballet could have done a much better job, but my sister would have been a better judge of that. It ended and Camilla and I were all ready to go but a curious thing happened: nobody moved. Ever. APPARENTLY there was an intermission and then a second act! Even though Carmen had just died. The second act turned out to be an opera (or, as our host mom rather briskly corrected us, an OPERETTA) called Il Campanello by Donizetti (I had to Google it later). I thought it was MUCH better than the ballet. It was funny and cheerful and I think I was smiling throughout. Afterwords the whole group of us went on an epic quest for food (it was epic for me because my shoes were trying to murder me and I prevailed). We found a little snack place in the middle of bar/club central where about 534890 youngsters were loitering. I tried to order a sandwich and the dimwit girl behind the counter just looked at me as if she was trying to use her brain for the very first time. We hadn't had dinner because we had to leave for the ballet by 7:40 and by then it was maybe midnight so I was FAMISHED. I ended up succeeding in ordering a piece of pizza. By then it was the coldest it had ever been in Florence so 7 of us decided to split a taxi home. Best decision ever.
On Saturday I expected my legs/feet would be screaming in pain, but they miraculously weren't. So I made sure they would be the next day. Allow me to explain. Camilla and I took the train to Cortona. Allow me to be more specific. We took the train to CAMUCIA. Cortona is the next town over. Although the word "next" seems slightly misleading. As we pulled into the station we were granted a sprawling view of Cortona--all the white sunshiney houses and ancient Etruscan palaces and walls distributed among a dark green hill in the far off distance, like a model. We laughed and said "Well I guess we'll be needing to take a bus." There seemed to be a bus station right outside the station but we couldn't figure out where to buy tickets, and the schedule seemed to indicate that we had just missed a bus and would have to wait quite a while for the next one. We decided to start walking, figuring we'd find another stop along the way. Also food. Umm, we found neither. We stopped to ask people in some arts-n-craftz store but they proved useless. We continued walking. Always up a slight incline, always. Always there were outstretching roads leading endlessly towards where? Cortona? WELL WE HOPED. I ate a clementine on the way. That clementine probably saved my life. That and the magnificent views that helped us forget our exhaustion and hunger. I couldn't describe them. Just green and trees and horizon and blue and clouds and buildings just as ancient and natural as the nature around them. When I realized there were no sidewalks and not another human being in sight for miles, I realized there was a REASON for that. People don't usually walk from Camuica to Cortona. Probably haven't since Etruscan times. The streets never ever flattened out. I was thirsty, I was hungry, I was exhausted, but what else was there to do but keep walking? Camilla said she would have considered hitch-hiking. But then there were no more cars. Just us and slopes. I think I foresaw my death. Not to be melodramatic or anything. haha. Honestly though it was a nightmare. Not even the heavenly views could distract me anymore from the SHEER RAW DESIRE TO REST AND BE FED. I'm truly surprised I didn't at least faint. We stopped to sit on some wall of someone's beautiful driveway until a pick-up truck pulled in. I had the last sip of Camilla's water. Around winding bends there were more winding bends and bending winds and inclines and hills and slopes and steepness and I can't comprehend even now what was keeping me going. We began seeing a dog here, a person there, which gave me hope. And then finally. And I mean finally. We reached a fairly level clearing that included a semblance of a parking lot. With a sign that had a map with a label that read "Cortona." And a great stone gate leading into the city. I was deliriously relieved. The first restaurant we saw we entered. I literally couldn't move or speak until the food came. It was the most delicious bruschetta of my life--fresh tomatoes, olive oil, pine nuts and pepper. I felt like a man who hadn't eaten in 3 days. Then we were still hungry (obviously) so we ordered something else that may have been the most delicious thing I have ever eaten in my life: warm fresh bread with melted cheese and truffle sauce and olive oil and pepper. I could have eaten 15 of them. Holy JESUS. Then we were literally refueled and had enough energy to conquer the giant hill that is Cortona. There were beautiful churches and sweet cute dogs and stunning views. At one point we saw two little old women slowly creeping arm in arm down the giant hill that is Cortona and then we wondered how the HELL CAN ANYONE OVER THE AGE OF 65 LIVE THERE. Then we cracked up imagining that they must be built like pro wrestlers under their shawls. As it happened, we were growing nearer and nearer to the top of Cortona, to that church that I had seen a few hours ago as if from a telescope down at ground 0. There was a service going on when we got there but we poked our heads in and it looked spectacular. The winding road kept going so we kept following. By that point the sun was starting to set. A man had stopped his car to set up his tripod and take pictures of the expanse of Tuscany lying below us. We kept going. There was a fortress. The road turned into a dirt path and we followed it to a perfect hill that had three massive stones with inscriptions from another time. It was the top of the world and we could see everything. It was the most explicit metaphor for accomplishment that I could imagine, let alone experience. Looking out into the mountains whose boundaries blurred and faded in the extreme distance that they were at, at the pinks and purples of the sky, I felt like I could have fallen into infinity, consumed by beauty. Or something. I doubt I'll ever forget it.
When we finally tore ourselves away we found the ONE FLAT AREA OF CORTONA. Where obviously all the stores are. So we got gelato. On the way back we asked people at a gas station if they knew where a bus station was. They knew. We found it. And the bus came. And we didn't have tickets but that wasn't a problem. It was warm and comfortable and fast-moving and bus-like and it was BLISS. Especially realizing then exactly how far we had walked. It was at least a 7 minute bus ride! We calculated the distance that night. It was 2 miles. I don't know if that's impressive or not because I don't do physical activity but maybe you can understand from this post that it was.