Lil' Bit

I give this post my nickname here at StubHub, or at least my nickname according to Sheena, as I'm furtively typing this in the morning before I clock in and am technically owned by the company...I bought Ligabue's Nome e Cognome CD on ebay last week and am now eagerly anticipating its arrival...ahhhhhhhhh love that music!

Summer's rolling on, and we've passed the halfway mark. Last weekend Sean got the inimitable experience of joining my mother and me on a visit to my grandfather in Massachusetts, crazy old bird that he is. I was happy to see that Sean simply found most of his antics amusing, and my grandfather loved him--he invited him to return anytime, with or without me.

Other updates: TJ returns to the States in a couple of weeks, poor Carla has the mono, Anna destroyed yet another of my copies of Lamb, and Sara has a sort-of-Italian "friend" named Antonio. The adventures continue.

Carnival, Pirates, Oh My

Sean was here again this weekend, teasing my cats with his presence since he's unable to pet them. Sapphire he originally re-named "Fatty Lumpkin", due to her constant begging and piteous claims of near-starvation, plus the fact that she rarely stirs from the food bowl, outside or in. This weekend, however, Fatty's title was shortened to a command: "Feed Me!" uttered in this horrible voice that puts one in mind of a very large butch lesbian. Heehee. Makes me smile just thinking about it. Fatty herself seems to be taking the insults quite well, since Sean has also been careful to ply her with milk.

We went to a carnival Friday, and I had the exciting idea of buying these $15 bracelets that let you ride the rides all night. However, I hadn't banked on the weakness of my own stomach, which Sean claims is due to a lack of extensive carnival rides as a child (it's true, we were much more of a games family than a rides family). So I wind up terribly nauseous after our second ride, the appropriately named Flying Bob. Bah. The upshot was the fireworks later in the evening, which we watched from the trunk of the Tahoe.

We also saw Pirates 2 on Saturday with Melissa and Heather, their boyfriends, and Charles. I didn't really like it. It was nowhere near as funny and original as the first one, it was much more of a basic action/adventure with a couple of funny lines and mannerisms thrown in. However, we lacked a consensus on the issue, as Heather considered it as good or better than the original, and Melissa liked it a lot too. The nature of the ending was such as to force you to pay an ever-higher price of admission next summer to watch the finale. I tell myself that I'll resist, that I'll wait for it to go to video, or at least for someone to get an illegal copy, but I'll probably just fork over the cash next summer too. Hollywood.

Ah, but did I mention that I cooked this weekend? Twice? I made my spaghetti pie, sinfully delicious, along with hushweii, the remains of which I'm still feasting on after sending Sean home with his own tupperware container. Suzy homemaker, that's me.

I must not forget to mention that Friday was our 1.5 year anniversary. Beyond all jokes about how it seems to have been forever, it's been a wonderful time with the best of men. Meow.

1.5 Years

Today marks one-and-a-half years since Sean and I started dating! Tonight to celebrate we're going to go eat fried dough and watch shiny lights explode in the sky. Heehee.

It Was Vacation While It Lasted

Four glorious days of doing next to nothing, which is just about as close as I've come to a vacation this summer. This year I didn't see any real fireworks, beyond what the Richardson clan was setting off in their driveway, nor did I eat any barbequed food items, but it was still a great four days--time with Sean, the family, and even the girls plus Cody last night. I feel relaxed--or rather I would feel relaxed if I weren't so tired my eyes keep closing at my desk. Not even ten AM and I've already downed a Diet Coke, eep!

Oh, and we saw Superman Returns this weekend, which was good by my standards, even though I knew nothing about the Superman mythology besides what I saw in an A&E special on its history. The actor who played him--delicious. However, move aside Brandon Routh because this upcoming weekend will witness my reunion with the true on-screen love of my life, Johnny Depp, as we triumphantly return to theaters to see Pirates 2! I'll be the first to admit that my interest in Johnny Depp is completely shallow. I don't even like to hear him speak in interviews--he's simply not that interesting. Men that beautiful should be seen and not heard, lest they ruin my rose-colored vision of them by realistic flaws.

The final bit of movie excitement is that tomorrow evening, Sara and I will indulge a years-old passion for a certain spiky-haired video game character by renting Final Fantasy: Advent Children, which stars none other than Squall and Sephiroth, those old dears. Be still my beating heart.

After this weekend, my summer is alarmingly planned out. Sean, my mother and I will make the pilgrimage to Massachusetts in a couple of weeks to initiate him into the mysterious insanity that is my grandfather. The weekend after that we're trying to plan a Fairfield gathering in New Haven, and the last weekend is both Our Lady of Pompeii carnival and our putative trip to Lovely Lollipop Lesbian Land, aka Wellesley (lol sorry Rae but alliteration, so tempting!) The first weekend in August is of course TJ's triumphant return-to-the-States party in Pennsylvania, and then the next couple of weekends feature Shakespeare performances and craft fairs. I suppose the good news is that I'm still free the 26th, the last weekend in August, haha. It's quite the change from last summer, when it felt ike there was too much time and too little to do in it. Now the reverse is true, and I find myself wondering how I'll fit in everything I had planned for this summer. But I'm having fun, and that's what counts.

Also, can I just note what a freakishly accurate memory Sean has? Last night he told me what we both ate on our first date, which was January 7th 2005. Hey, I'm excited when I can remember the name of the restaurant we were at (Geppi's). He's just unnatural. Coincidentally, this Friday will mark a year and a half of being together. Meow!

Music Makes My Mind Dance

At work lately I've been using a website called live365.com, which has gazillions of little radio stations with everything a heart could desire. The two I listen to most frequently are, believe it or not, stations that play "Sean's music"--big band and swing. I used to complain that it's too perky, but amid the dullness of an office it's entirely welcome. Today I found a station from France that plays gypsy music, and a Spanish station that plays flamenco--they're such vibrant rhythms, so different from the hollowness that permeates a lot of pop music here.

And I've been monitoring an Italian station, waiting for it to play Ligabue...Zero Assoluto...Negramaro? Anyone? Sigh. I kind of wish I'd paid the 20 euro for Ligabue's new CD before I left. I miss listening to "Le donne ha sanno" as I walked down Borgo San Lorenzo to wander yet again through the warren of back streets around the Duomo.

On my lunch breaks I'm rereading "Rise and Fall of the House of Medici", wishing I were one of them. To go back, to see the Palazzo Medici Riccardi when it was just Lorenzo's house, when Savonarola was at San Marco just down the block, when Italy was full of counts and condottiere! What a dramatic world to be a part of, even as a peasant; how much more amazing to be a Medici. When I was younger, the name Medici had an echo faintly like that of Borgia--sinister, surrounded by poison and intrigue, not a good thing to be compared to. Unholy. How different I found them to be!

Vacation Day

Yesterday, after being mysteriously sick at 5am and blearily sending Sheena a text message saying I wasn't coming in, I found myself magically gifted with a vacation day, not to mention the only day in the week when it did't rain. I felt perfectly fine when I woke up again, and my mom wasn't working, so we spent the day together--gasp! It wasn't the kind of day that plays in montage while sappy mother-daughter music fills the background, but it was still a really good day...we went shopping together, something almost unheard of. She even bought me a new bra at the Vicky's semi-annual sale, and that after agreeing to get a Vicky's credit card because she "felt bad" for the shopgirl who was hawking them. The $15 bra I appreciated but the card I thought was a bit much; after all, I only shop there when there's a sale on, and she's never consented to actually pay for anything there before, but she claims she enjoys the fragrance section. *shrug*

However, the fun didn't stop there--she had to go to her nail salon to get a nail repaired (yes, my mom is one of those who hates having her fake nails break, although at least hers are very short and natural looking) and I half-jokingly suggested she buy me a pedicure. And she did. If you know my mom you know that such magnanimity might almost seem suspicious, but apparently she was simply in a friendly mood that day. She didn't seem to think anything of it, almost as if she lavished such treatment on me every week, which is far from the case. Perhaps it's best enjoyed in such small sips.

Rainy Day

The world is marvelously wet today, and there's nothing to do except maybe work on the Italy scrapbook which is thus far only in my mind--but it's a wonderful day, too, because Sean is here with me, eating the muffins I made, working on his German, scrupulously avoiding the cats to which he is allergic and generally being the love of my life. Rainy days aren't so bad when you have a Sean to share them with.

Today

A funny thing happened at work today--not humorous but in the sense that for the first time at StubHub I felt uncomfortable about something someone wanted me to do. I was working on emails all day since about 600 had piled up over the weekend, and a ticket broker emailed in to say that because of the incredibly rude treatment he had experienced at the hands of one of our representatives, Brent, he was removing all his hundreds of listings from our site and putting them up on Ebay. This is of course bad--bad enough to lose one of the guys who basically makes all our money for us, doubly so if we lost him because one rep was rude. This guy Brent is our age, recent college grad, the brash and kind of obnoxious guy who loves sports and heavy metal bands and has a picture of Slash as his computer background. I've seen complaints about his brusque manner before. So I of course send this guy back a very apologetic email trying to keep his business, and inviting him to call in to discuss this with management.

As I usually do in sticky situations where you want to know exactly what each party said, I copied and pasted the text of his email into the notes on his user account and forwarded all of this to Sheena, my manager. The text of the email of course had Brent's name in it--a mistake, apparently, as Sheena immediately IMed me "bad, bad, bad!" She told me I should have paraphrased the seller's email rather than putting Brent's name in. I was immediately suspicious of this, because I ALWAYS copy/paste on something like this, and so does Sharlene, who oversees the emails. Did I mention that Brent is one of Sheena's favorites in the office? I went to Sheena's office a little while later and asked her about it, why I shouldn't have had the name of the rep who was specifically mentioned in a complaint. She said it was because the next person who looked at the account would 'connect' the name too much to the email and be prejudiced against that rep, and I, annoyed, replied, "That's pretty much just covering someone's ass for them, isn't it." And she nodded. Sigh. I like Sheena, but I seriously lost a little respect for her in that moment. I did tell her that I wouldn't do that, and that I would always copy/paste. That's not to say I "took a stand" against my boss or anything; I just said it, and she shrugged, and I walked away.

Even if it does make someone annoyed to put a name in there, I'm not too concerned. I'm one of the best reps they have, and they know it--even the new HR lady told me she'd heard how excited the management got when they heard I was coming back. Daily stats for the past couple of weeks, I average about 94 "contacts", or calls and emails, per day, while the rest of my dear team is struggling and failing to meet the required average of 60. So I'm not worried about getting in trouble, really, it's just sad to think that a person I like would compromise themselves, even in so minor a way, to save someone else from being censured for their error.

Father's Day

In honor of the holiday, this is something I found while cleaning out a file cabinet that contained all of the cards and letters we received after my father's death. I don't know the man who wrote it, although his name rings familiarly in my ears; I do believe he sent it to my father's email address after he died, as I remember printing a number of condolence letters from friends of his who lived at a distance. This is what it says:

Although I worked closely with Joe only a relatively short period of time, maybe three years or so, I quickly began to admire his dedication, honesty and core values. After working 23 years in the industry, I have only met a handful of people with standards approaching what Joe demonstrated day in and day out. His efforts made all my efforts worthwhile as we shared a common bond to do things right, in spite of all the artificial management and subordinates around us claiming to do likewise. Joe always "told it the way it was" regardless of its content. What a refreshing and inspiring trait! Although Joe was sometimes a bit rough on the edges, he wasa role model to me in many ways, and to many others--that I am sure. I am glad we crossed paths but saddened to hear of his passing. Feel comforted that part of him lives on in the many others he has affected.

Sincerely,
Al Cizek"

I think that's the best thing I could do on Father's Day--to read that and remember my dad the way others remember him, as a good man.

StubHub Half Day....Almost

The power died almost as soon as I got into work this morning, phones and all, meaning for a couple of hours everyone in the call center was outside lounging and playing softball. I opened up the back doors of the Tahoe and curled up to read the book Sara lent me last night, "The Secret of Staying in Love", which we once read for HILL class. Written by a Jesuit--go figure!

Unfortunately, the power resumed right before they were going to send us all home, so now we have 15 calls in queue and a whole lot of angry people who think "sorry, the power was out" is NOT an acceptable excuse for having to wait on hold for twenty minutes. Why am I blogging, you ask? Because it seems like every other person is putting me on hold for some reason or another. What's wrong with these people? You don't put Customer Service on hold, they put YOU on hold! I have to say I greatly enjoy doing that, especially to angry people. Let them stew in it for a few minutes and maybe they'll be less rude.

June presses on, and it hasn't even been terribly hot and humid yet--knock on wood. I've already accomplished one of my "summer goals", climb Sleeping Giant, and will now move on to other tasks, like creating my Italy scrapbook. GRE studying has taken up a good deal of my time, as just reading through the word lists alone is lengthy. Per Sara's request I will insert the word "contumacious" here. It means disobedient, did you know that? I didn't. As much as I love words, sometimes there's just so much redundancy, little words we don't use or care about and that have no particular aesthetic value. Emendment, for example, means correction, but who would bother using it?

I'm glad I have a job that occupies me forty hours a week, even though it can be terribly dull at some times and depressingly cruel at others. I do prefer to have something to do rather than a lot of free time during the week. Luckily, I also manage to incorporate a lot of non-work into work, such as reading, studying for the GREs, email correspondence etc etc.

In terms of reading I've been glutting myself on all the joys of the recently refurbished Windor Public library. I re-read the massive "Duchess of Milan" in two consecutive evenings, both because it's a familiar read and also because for once, I had an extremely lucid understanding of all the Italian courts involved, which as you may guess made me really excited--like when they mentioned in passing the giant equestrian statue Leonardo was going to make for the Duke--not only did we write an essay on the final on that horse and its political significance, the Leonardo exhibition at the Uffizi made a cast of the legs and chest of this thing, and it was monstrously huge. Sadly, the Florentines only made a passing appearance, in the ignominious surrender of Piero the Gouty to the French King's forces when he was passing through Italy, effectively turning the city into an unwilling barracks for the entire French army for several weeks. Could you tell Piero was none too popular with Florence after that little debacle?

Now I'm reading a book on the mystery of the two princes in the Tower, and whether Richard III was really responsible for their deaths as later historians made him out to be. It's written by a lawyer and very interesting. The new library is absolutely delicious but I do have pangs of nostalgia for the library I grew up with, which is now almost completely renovated. Ah, well.

June 6th

At work today everyone was talking about today being 666 and the re-release of "The Omen". No one mentioned that today is D-Day, too. Maybe I was just thinking about it because I'd watched "The Longest Day" for Memorial Day. As with every time I watch it, I was amused by the near-melodramatic pathos imparted to the German officers-- especially the way their characters repeat certain key lines that the real men probably wouldn't have, like the field marshal who comments about his wife's birthday being "tomorrow, the sixth of june. the sixth of june" as he leaves Paris and the command of the army in someone else's hands. So it's easy for me to remember which day D-Day took place. There won't be a D-Day in the war we're fighting now. No one in the future will ever look back on this and feel the surge of pride that Americans felt, and still feel (I certainly do) when thinking of the vast array of forces that assaulted the Normandy beaches six decades ago. Instead we will look back on episodes like Haditha and feel shame that other Americans perpetrated such acts of violence.

The other day Sara told me that the twin brother of a girl we were friends with in high school, Sandy, died in Iraq recently. I looked it up on Yahoo, and he was a Marine, enlisted right out of high school. I never met him, but in his photo he looked so much like her. The article quoted their father on his pride in his son's actions, and for his sake I'm glad he's proud of his child, but I could only think how enormously betrayed and bereft I would feel, not only to lose my son but to lose him fighting a war with seemingly no end and, two years into it, no more good cause. The death of someone close by, even someone removed a couple degrees of separation as he was, made all this a million times more real to me. He made his choice, of course; at least he wasn't drafted. No one who thinks of those who died in Normandy can say that they died in vain. I wish I could think of the same of him, but I can't.

Update

Right now I'm stuffed full of chocolate cake and Sailor Moon love. Sara and I just spent probably six hours watching some of the 30-plus hours of SM delicious she recently purchased, including two full seasons and all three movies *drool* We intended to make a Luna-version of my mom's famous Halloween catcake but this plan floundered when the cake stuck to the pan and fell apart. Whatevs, it was still a joyous time which we've only been dreaming of since, oh, 8th grade or so. So glad I had another dork to share it with!

Things have been pretty hectic since I got back. Work has begun, and I'm glad to be able to say that Stubhub is even more fun now than it was before. The atmosphere is still really chill, and most of the new hires are younger people in their mid to late 20s, so there's so much of the time spent cracking jokes and having a good time, which the powers that be don't seem to mind since everything gets done. My former supervisor Sheena is now a manager and my boss (no more Maritza for me, who was much more formal), and her friend Jen, who was in my training class way back when, is my supervisor. It's fun to have a boss who you can argue with and poke fun at on AIM! I do miss Rob as a manager, but he's probably happier back in SF. Oh, and the hammock remains, and I returned to it lovingly. I was even lucky enough to get a cube right next to my old one, so it doesn't have the high walls that the newer ones do. I personally like to be able to see and chat with the people around me over the walls. In addition to the requisite picture of Sean in his sexy black suit, I added a postcard of the Cinque Terra to brighten up my little work spot.

I can't wait to get paid! Gas is so expensive, bleh. However, I don't have many other expenses, so I really shouldn't complain. If I had to tack a mortgage and some younguns onto this car's wallet-draining capabilities, I think I'd be sunk.

Rae is gone once again for the summer, back in the labs at Wellesley. This summer I'm determined we're going up to visit her. I WILL see Wellesley before we all graduate! Speaking of, turns out our graduation day, May 20th, is the same as my sister's from law school. My mom therefore has the joy of seeing two kids graduate from higher education on the same day, and the issue of deciding which one to attend! Luckily my sister told her outright to go to mine, since she would just probably be grumpy about going into New York anyway. Jen did say, however, that she expects us to come into the city after my graduation to celebrate. She can't come home, because her bar review class begins the very next day. I'm not excited about the idea of leaving everyone right after we graduate to run into New York, but we'll have to work it out. I do feel bad that she got screwed out of her college graduation due to rain and Simmons College being so stupid as to not have a backup plan, and now we can't attend her second one.

Missing Italy is somewhat of a given, I suppose. Food prices are really frustrating, when even a lemon costs double what it did there, and tastes worse! Sara and I had some fresh mozz today and it was terrible, absolutely flavorless, where in Italy even cheapie Conad mozzarella was so delicious I could almost eat an entire ball before dinner. Today at celebrate West Hartford, there was a craft fair, and booth after booth was offering matted photographs of exotic European locales, mainly Tuscany and Provence, and Sara and I just flipped through them sighing. But we were comforted by other photos showing the beauty of New England in the fall and winter. Every region has its charm, and I do so love the fall when the leaves are changing, when they skip and skitter through the streets like lost kites. Everything is radiant and full of promise, everywhere I look.

I'm trying to retain some of the lessons I think I learned abroad, especially when it comes to not wanting so many things. Going to Sara's I thought about the mall, where I haven't been in a long time, and I realized there's really no point in going there unless I specifically need something. The mall is entirely designed to make you covet things and to make you certain you'll never be a happy person until you have them. I don't want to be like that. Conspicuous consumerism invades every aspect of daily life, and I don't like it.

Home Again

I'm back now, and have been for a few days, despite already having contrived to spend two nights at Sean's house. It feels good to be back, although at first it was crazy, especially since in Italy I had huge open spaces and 20 foot ceilings with very little stuff to occupy it, and here I have much smaller rooms, especially mine, with so much stuff in them. I already started throwing out as many things as I can bear to part with.

Yesterday I had an internship interview at Greenwood Publishing Group in Westport, CT, and I got the job as an intern for the fall semester! I'm really excited. The women I met were very friendly, not even fake friendly, actually nice, and they gave me a ton of stuff, including bobblehead dolls of Jane Austen and Chaucer which they use as marketing promos. Last night was our pot roast/sailor moon extravaganza, even if we only watched three hours of the five Sara had brought with her. It was still deliciously wonderful to be back with the girls again. Everything just seems so complete, and yet still so hysterically funny, when we're together.

But the best thing about being back, besides seeing my mom, blah de blah, is being with Sean again, and having him be REAL and not just a voice over the telephone. It's like I didn't really understand how much I missed him until I was with him again.

Almost There

Oh god, just got the latest cell phone bill and it's 170 bucks. Dear god, my mom is not going to be pleased. Although technically she's just sapping my account for the money anyway. Well, I've spent 460 dollars this semester on the phone...HOLY CRAP.

So here I am just about two days from home! All packed, ready to go. The weather has gotten even warmer, you don't need a jacket even in the shady areas anymore. The Americans have begun to hit the city full force, and the summer classes are already here, we passed several of them in groups today. Tomorrow's going to be long, so long, since I'm not planning on getting any actual sleep, though I am going to try to nap in the evening. In the morning I'm getting up early to go take photos, we have to clean the apartment and the other girls need to finish packing, and then at night we're going to eat at ZaZas one last time around 10 or so. At midnight we already have a showering schedule worked out--I got dibs on first, muahaha--and then we're going to read our favorite sections of Lamb aloud to each other until the bus picks us up circa 445 am. And, by 1230 pm on Sunday, I will be in JFK, 14 hours of travel after I leave the apartment. Crazy. BUT I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!

Italy, I love you, and Florence you will always be my favorite city-that's-barely-a-city, but it's time we went our separate ways. So this is my last post from Florence, from the four months that have been one of the experiences I will always cherish. I'll be back someday, but never to live here, so in a way this is truly goodbye to a way of life that I feel very lucky to have had a chance to live. Let me never forget it, any of it.

Ciao, arrivederci, buonasera, goodbye!

Countdown

Just six days and I'm going crazy. I can't wait to be back in America now, especially since I'm starting finals tomorrow and I don't really care about the dates of stupid Baroque artists, I just want to get on that plane and be HOME already. I've already packed the largest of my suitcases, I could leave tonight, if only...

Ironically, Europe has been really good to me. I haven't been robbed or harassed, never gotten sick or lost anything valuable. Knock on wood, of course. I've really loved it here, I have, and once I'm back in America I know I'll long for parts of Italy, like the ease and cheapness of the grocery stores, having fresh mozz with every meal, and the deliciousness of even brand name ricotta...etc etc, I could make a list a mile long. But now I'm ready for home. Bah. Or, as Italians say, boh.

Leaving Party

Tonight is our final program dinner, which I suppose should be filling me with feelings of sadness and despair, but it's not...really, I'm saddest that Sara and Heather aren't here! Heather is back in gay Paris and Sara is currently pilgrimaging her way through Spain and Portugal towards Santiago de Compostela.

Yesterday I took the bus up to Settingnano, a tiny village perched above Florence with a great view of the valley. It had been raining in the morning but by afternoon was gorgeous; still, when I got to the "punto panoramico" so kindly indicated by street signs, I could see the black clouds settling over Florence from the mountains, so I made the visit a short one and caught the next bus. Naturally, we're five minutes down the hill and the sky just lets loose with a flood of water.

Last night Anna and I were at the internet place while briefly toying with the idea of going to the 3-euro porn shop on Guelfa and picking up some entertainment for the evening, but it started to pour AGAIN, so we thought better of it. Plus we were having Teresa over for one of Carla's fabulous meals, and that's really the kind of thing you need to share with those you know and love. Surprisingly enough, dinner began at 730 and she didn't leave till almost 10--she's hilarious, I had no idea! Then we sat around bullshitting for a while and wound up in one of our serious debates, once again on abortion and the death penalty, and finally we called it a night in favor of some Milka and Ever After. This movie, ps, is awesome and I had forgotten entirely how sexy Dougray Scott is. Ironically enough he's actually scottish, too.

Now I'm going to Piazzale Michelangelo for one last visit, although I'm cheating and taking the bus up there because I don't feel like sweating the whole way. I'll walk down because the famous rose garden should be open today. It's weird that I have to make time to "say goodbye" to all my favorite things in Florence, but so it goes.

Cinque Terra

Yesterday Sara, Meredith and I embarked on our final excursion from Florence, to the famous Cinque Terra along the Mediterranean coast. Some people hike all five towns, but we decided to do the less difficult ones. We took the train to the furthest village, Monterosso, and then a smaller train down to a lower village, Corniglia. From there we hiked about an hour and a half along the most gorgeous coastline I have ever beheld until we reached Manarola, and then it was only a half hour walk along the Via dell'Amore to get to the final town. The towns themselves aren't anything special, it's the views that people come to see--sweeping panoramas of sea and sky, water so clear and green you can see the rocks at the bottom ten feet out in the water, flora and fauna quite different from the rest of the countryside (Cinque Terra is a UNESCO site and a protected maritime wildlife area because it has so many species). I enjoyed it so much, it was so beautiful and I felt rather accomplished for having hiked a bit in my time in Italy, even if it wasn't the hardest of the trails. Click on the title for my webshots page, the new one.

We ate lunch in Corniglia, grabbing amazing pizza from this place, La Gatta Flora, which turned out to be in the guidebooks as the best pizza place in town (it was actually my best pizza experience in Italy, no lie) and then chowing down sitting on this staircase overlooking a massive valley. On the way between Corniglia and Manarola, there was a staircase going down hundreds of feet to the water, and we climbed down; at the bottom was a four foot drop and a thick rope to rappel down with! I stayed on the steps since I'm rather afraid of heights, and the girls climbed down onto the rocks. It was still beautiful to be that close to the water, and we met a nice couple from Victoria Island, Canada who were traveling in Europe for a month.

The only minor snafu in the whole day was while we were waiting for the train in the last town. We wanted to catch a train that went to Florence direct instead of having to switch in Pisa, but we noticed that suddenly every train was showing half hour and hour delays, to the abject terror of many American tourists who were crowding around and had no idea how to function without the train system. Also, there were no public buses and not really any room for taxis in this place, so their concern is somewhat understandable. Anyway, we managed to circumvent disaster (I could not imagine being trapped there all night, but we didn't have our real passports, just copies, so we couldnt even have stayed in a hostel) by hopping on the first train going towards Pisa, and we managed, despite delays, to make it home just ten minutes after our original ETA. We were pleased, except for Sara, who abhors Trenitalia for the number of times it has screwed her over. My days on Trenitalia are now officially over, which is sad in a way because it's so inexpensive compared to US trains. Besides Sardegna, pretty much everywhere I've been i nItaly has been on a train.

However, when my mom asked me two nights ago if I regret leaving Italy or if I'm excited to return, I could honestly say that I'm excited. My time in Italy has been amazing and I will never forget it, but I'm ready to come back. Carla is very upset because leaving, for her, means something so different than what it means for me and Heather; we're going back to the men we've been missing, and she has to leave her boyfriend behind. She has a determination to live in Italy again, however, which I can't claim to share. I could never really move here permanently for so many reasons--I couldn't leave my family behind, Sean would never want to live here, and my friends would be so far away. Not to mention that as much as I love Florence and consider it another home, Windsor will always really be home. It saddens me to think that I'll only probably ever come back as just another tourist, but I know very well how little reason I have to complain. I'm so grateful for the time I had here. None of us have or ever had a right to any of this. I try to keep that in mind.

Cemetery

Carla and I went to Sta. Maria del Carmine this morning to see the Brancacci Chapel, which was rather impressive. I especially enjoyed the fresco of St Peter Healing with His Shadow, which is from the Golden Legend so probably not really true, but still cool. Then we hit up La Specola, which is the natural history museum with specimens of thousands of animals, which was so amazing--as Carla put it, you forget half of these animals exist until you see them in a case! All my favorites were present, including tiger, meerkat, raccoon, penguin, and assorted furry animals. The walrus was frightening, it looked bigger than most cars.

After lunch, having nothing much to do and despairing of writing my paper because it's simply too beautiful out today to be talking about Bernini's statues, I went to find the English Cemetery of Florence, which is also called the Island of the Dead due to its location, perched on what has basically become a giant traffic island with large avenues that completely surround it (click on the title of this post for the Wikipedia article). Getting across the street was an adventure in itself, let me tell you. There was a nun at the gate who asked me to sign a guest book--most of the visitors seemed to have been Americans, and there had been only a handful over the last couple of days--and advised me not to leave the paths, as the graves are dangerous to walk around.

Everything you imagine of the mystery and poignancy of the Romantic era is manifested in this cemetery, right down to the cypress trees, broken tombs and shattered columns covered in moss. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is buried there, and I had ostensibly come to see her tomb which was designed by her husband and doesn't even say her same, simply E.B.B. (although it does have lyres engraved on it, which I considered a nice touch). Her tomb didn't interest me half as much as some of the others I saw there; though she is the most famous of the island's inhabitants, there are countesses and barons buried there, as well as English generals and officers, an English ambassador to the court of Italy, and many artists, sculptors, writers etc.

Although there are many nationalities represented in the cemetery, and while every cemetery has its sad stories to tell, I felt a strange sense of connection when seeing the tombs of people who had come from Kentucky, Philadelphia, Boston, who had died thousands of miles away from the world they grew up in, surrounded perhaps by family, or perhaps by strangers. Then I wondered if these people, many of whom never even saw the outcome of the civil war and for whom black rights or women's rights would simply be a contradiction in terms, would have been able to feel any more connection to me than they might be able to feel towards, say, a Russian of their own period.

At the center of the cemetery is a huge column dedicated to one of the kings of Prussia, Frederick William. There was some morbid amusement to see carved there the same Bible verse I read for my dad's funeral, just in French: "Je suis la resurrection e la vie..." Very popular words, those.

There was another, smaller column dedicated thus:

To the Sacred Memory of Ann Murray
Spinster
Died May 6 1815

Tomorrow will be Ann Murray's anniversary, but who will there be to remember her? I'm sure it wasn't meant cruelly, but just putting "spinster" on the tombstone, not sister, not daughter, not friend...perhaps no one liked her, or perhaps she was alone here, and no one knew who she was friend or sister or daughter of. If it's true that we only die when memories of us have faded, then most of the people in this cemetery have been condemned to die another death.

Farewell, Flan

What a hectic day this has been. Heather and I dragged ourselves up early, aka 830, to have some final adventures before my class at 1130 and her departure, namely, going to the Ponte Vecchio to take photos of the padlocks we sneakily attached to the side of the bridge last night before running from the carabinieri! Some backstory: the Ponte Vecchio is home to a statue of Benvenuto Cellini, master Renaissance goldsmith. There's some legend, which I'm not clear on, which says that if you put a gold lock with you and your lover's names on it on his statue, or near it, you'll stay together forever. So naturally Heather and I picked up some padlocks yesterday and took part in this ancient ritual, which is technically illegal and they used to have this big wire fence around Cellini because he'd been covered with locks, except then the fence got covered in locks too so they took it down. Heather and I chose to put our locks on the side of the bridge where there was also one huge lock so we clipped ours onto that one.

This morning we get there and some young boys are actually poking our locks and laughing or whatever, so we wait for the junior douchebags to depart before taking stalkerish photos with our individual locks. Then we go over to the over side of the bridge for some more photo ops, and while taking a photo of Heather I look up and see this man with a blowtorch cutting our locks off the side of the bridge!! The horror!! So apparently the adjacent shop does not look kindly on youthful lovers, hence why there were so few locks there but a million on the other side. Grrr. Argh. But how amusing the timing of this event--if we'd been ten minutes later our locks would have been gone already! Naturally I'm going to get another lock before I leave and do it again. I demand permanence! Heather, since she had limited time in Florence, simply decided she didn't need a lock to ensure domestic felicity with the Codest, and that is that.

When next I saw the Flan, post class, she was bent double under the weight of a backpack that must have weighed 25 pounds and was full to bursting, as well as 10 pounds of extra baggage, and very hot and bothered. I hauled this gigantic load of crqp to the Oil Shoppe, deciding along the way that she needed to get a piece of luggage cause no way could she survive London with this monstrosity. On our way to the station we bought a 20 euro suitcase and then were frantically repacking in the foyer of my school building, being observed by this nice girl from my Romanesque class from Sweden. Heather's shady Croat liquor had broken open so her backpack was gross anyway, so we threw it out--not before finding a freshman year, 1st semester lunch pass inside from Mrs Williamson, lol. Then we go to the station and buy a ticket for a train leaving in three minutes so we ran to the train and flung her onboard and then she was gone. She said this week was the best week of her semester, and honestly, I think it was my favorite as well besides the week with Sean. I'm so glad I got to share Florence with her and Sara.

May

It's May now and my program is less than three weeks from its completion. With every day I get more excited to be home and be with Sean, so I haven't had any real moments of despair at leaving the city--yet. Heather and Sara's presence I think help to obscure the passage of time, especially when I think that Heather has actually been with us since Thursday and it's Tuesday, how did that happen? Tomorrow Sara flies to London, then Heather leaves Thursday. This weekend we're visiting the Cinque Terra on what will probably be my last excursion from Florence. That's ok with me, though, because as much as part of me wishes I had traveled all of Europe to see the great museums while I was here, another part of me is very happy that I explored Italy, that I feel like I really know it and belong to it, and not like I'm still living out of a suitcase every weekend.

I will come back someday, I know I will. We've talked about how amazing it would be for us girls to rent an house in Tuscany, which is possible through what they call agriturismo, aka, people living in farmhouses in Tuscany fix up an apartment and rent it out. I would love to be back here basking in Tuscany with friends. Sean, too, if I could manage it, but he didn't seem as keen on the idea. We're very different in our ideas of relaxation, I know: he likes a lot of actual relaxing and sitting on beaches, etc, while I like to be seeing things and doing things. Most places I go my first thoughts are about what museums there will be, not where I can park myself for the longest amount of time. When Sara and I talked about Greece the same thing came up--I would just have wanted to see the Acropolis, the museums, and go home, but she wanted to spend some time on the islands. It's not that I don't like relaxing, I do, but I get really bored really fast with just sitting around, especially if I'm in a place I've never been. I mean, I can sit on the beach in Connecticut if I want to, why would I want to do it in Europe?

Carla and I have joked that Sean and I will simply have to take separate vacations, and that every other year one of us will get stuck with the kids and one of us gets to jet off with their friends. It's an amusing thought, but in the end I think most people like to vacation with their spouse, if only for the "sex in new and strange places" thing, hahaha. I certainly look forward to taking a vacation with Sara and Heather and Rae when we're older, though!