Sicily

Ok, so... a bit overdue, but here's the deets on my past weekend in Sicily (Sept. 18-21st)

In short, it was awesome.

Friday:
I *deep breath* hoped on a bus to the metro station, then took the metro to Termini (Rome's central train station), where I grabbed a train to the airport, then waited at the airport for two hours, got on my flight, and then upon arriving in Sicily hoped on another bus into the city of Palermo to meet up with Jasmine. *exhale*

[Backstory: Jasmine and I went to middle school/high school together, and have known each other since we were about 12. I don't think I've seen her since we graduated, and we've kept in very loose contact since then, mostly just though facebook, etc. Needless to say, I was very much looking forward to seeing her agian and catching up. Since January she has been attending an international hospitality school in Switzerland, and since June had been in Palermo doing a required internship with a hotel for said school. That's what brought me to Palermo.]

Anyway, it's always interesting to discover just how little the passage of time changes the essential nature of an established friendship. Upon seeing each other we immediately fell into old habits, talking and catching up as if two and a half years of new friends, boyfriends, and countries could never change the basics of who we were, even if we are different people now.

After grabbing a pizza from around the corner and some talk, we got dressed up and I was introduced to all of her Italian co-workers who proceeded to take us out for a night on the town. And it was awesome. Driving around Palermo speaking broken English and broken Italian, picking up new phrases, joking together in two different languages but essentially understanding everything, meeting new people from the city, having wonderful conversations, being the "exotic American from Los Angeles/San Francisco"... it was incredible. [To the left, from L-R = Jasmine, Francie (one of Jasmine's co-workers), and Fabrizio, a friend of Francie's]

For the first time I think I felt fully immersed in the culture I'm living in. Living in an American school, traveling with Americans and taking all english courses, while certainly a comfort, I've found also makes immersion in Italy a bit difficult. For the first time since I've been here I didn't have that. I was on their turf, and I was loving it. All of them spoke much more English than we did Italian so we mostly communicated in that, but I listened intently and tried to practice when I could. They were always pleased when I got something right.

Saturday
Walked around the town with Alessio (a friend of Jasmine who is from Rome but is working in Palermo at the moment) and had a relaxing day. Got sick in the evening, which carried through to Sunday. Didn't let it stop me having fun though!

Sunday
Jasmine and I took a 30 minute bus ride to gorgeous gorgeous Mondello beach. We went in the water, had lunch in the town, and relaxed on the sand. Pictures will do this day more justice than words ever could.

[As always, click on the images to see bigger versions of them :) ]

That night we went out again with the gang again for a couple drinks and some good mellow conversation. Met more awesome Italians... a couple who moved to Dublin and was about to get married, a woman who spoke Spanish/Italian/French only and was trying to talk to us in Spanish (which was a real mindwarp, trying to speak in Spanish/Italian/English at the same time. I didn't even know what language I was speaking anymore.) Jasmine knew much more Spanish than I did so she was mostly talking to her, and while I could generally understand I couldn't speak back. Her boyfriend sat down and practiced Italian with me for 20 minutes which was really sweet of him. He asked me all the basics, but in Italian instead of English so I was really forced to try and practice. It was tough, but so necessary. And so so so so fun.

Monday
Still sick, I began the journey home. The plane flight is only 45min. long, but I left at 11am and didn't get back to my room till 5:30pm. Whew.

Anyway, all in all it was an incredible weekend and I'm so glad I went. I have new Italian friends, I got to see a beautiful beach, and I got a much deeper understanding of young Italian culture. This is definitely a weekend I'll remember for a while.

An American Tale: Sarah Goes East

My second airport adventure was, thankfully, not nearly as stressful as my first. Anne (the woman I was staying with) dropped me off at the International Terminal at about 12:30pm (after I had gotten virtually no sleep the night before), I checked in for my flight, ate my last meal on American Soil (an apple salad from Panera, yum), had some lotion thrown away at security (only issue of the day) and made it to my gate.

The flight itself was for the most part uninteresting. Highlights include watching Star Trek in Italian, a few hilariously inaccurate historical and political conversations with the girl sitting next to me which are better described in conversation, and a couple kids sitting in front of me who decided to be obnoxious Americans and actually get drunk on the plane and block the entire freaking isle because they legally could and because wine was complementary with the meals.

By far though, the best part was this:

What followed after that was a rush of exhaustion (after having about two nights with no sleep and then arriving in Rome at about 8am with a full day ahead of me) and insane heat. I lugged my bags around for a couple hours for move-in, ran up and down stairs a kajillion times (there’s no elevators), had to for some reason take a picture for an ID that day, signed papers, tried to move in, passed out for an hour in the afternoon, took a long cold shower, and finally explored the neighborhood a bit in the evening.

(To the right is actually a view from outside my bedroom window. That huge round thing is Rinaldo’s café in the basement of the school, owned by this adorable Italian couple and a place in which I know I’ll be spending lots of time.)

Despite all of that though: the heat, the sleep deprivation, the heavy lifting… my first sight of Rome was, well, simply incredible. I don’t know if I can describe it fully – all I know was that as soon as I was on that bus away from the airport I couldn’t stop grinning. It could be because something I’ve been dreaming about since I was 12 is finally happening, or maybe because I was finally under some air-conditioning. But I think more than anything it was getting the undeniable feeling that this is exactly where I’m meant to be right now, and I can’t imagine it any other way.

My Airport Adventure

So let me begin by saying generally I’m very lucky with airports. I’ve flown quite a bit in these past few years, and every time I get short lines, no hassle, and no stress.

Of course, that all changed today. The plan was to fly to Chicago today, see a bit of the area and stay with a friend of my mom's for the night, and then get on the group flight to Rome (with a majority of the other students I'll be going to school with) the next morning. While it all did work out eventually, there were some... issues. Needless to say, my tale of woe is outlined below. Enjoy.

1. Woke up late. Good start.
2. 20-minute line at skycap to check in my luggage. Damn. 1 hour till my plane leaves. Uh-oh.
3. Halfway to the front, and AARRG, I realized I left my wallet in my mom’s car.

• “Hey mom I’m really sorry, I left my wallet in the car. Can you drive back and get it to me?"
• “*sigh* Yes I’m coming back now”
• She arrives, runs up to me with the wallet, we hug, say goodbye again, she runs back to her car to avoid getting a ticket, I look down at my bags; are you SERIOUS, where is my wallet?!
• Mom and I look at each other from across the way, she’s still holding the wallet in her hand.
• We run back towards each other again, this time I actually TAKE the wallet from her. Hugs, goodbyes, etc. Crisis #1 averted.

4. “I’m sorry ma’am, the computer’s not letting me check you in. You’ll need to go inside to area 1 and maybe they can put in an override for you."
5. Crap crap crap. I can’t miss this flight. I also can’t carry all four bags inside with me. I start freaking out, ask the woman in front of the check in line if I can leave my carry-on bags with her while I run to see if I can get on my flight. She rolls her eyes and agrees. Good enough for me.
6. I run over with my giant suit case and massive backpack to special area 6 instead for “additional services”, looking like this:

(Only with blond hair and glasses. And not being a middle-aged woman. Use your imagination.)

7. “I need to speak to someone now. I can’t check in outside, my flight’s leaving at 8:30am for Chicago, can you put in an override, or something? Please help me”
8. “I’m sorry, there’s no flight leaving at 8:30am for Chicago. There’s one leaving at 8:16am, but it’s too late to get on that one”
9. FUUUUUUCCKKKKKKK
10. “We can put you on standby for the 9:55am flight, but there’s no guarantees.” Great.
11. Run back to get my carry-on bags, terrified of not getting to Chicago on time to catch my flight to Rome. The woman has left, but the bags are still there.
12. “I’m sorry miss, but because you left your bags here we need to have security check them. Someone could have put something in them, and you'd be responsible for that.”
13. Really?
14. But she saw me looking like a crazy person and so sighed and said: “ok you can just go.” Good enough for me. Crisis #2 averted.
15. At this time, after finally getting through security and feeling rather frazzled, I purchased some food for the low cost of my soul (that’s what they’re charging these days in airports) and made it to my gate.
16. The universe decided I had had enough stress for one day and let me on the 9:55am flight. Crisis #3 averted.

Anyway, didn’t get to spend as much time in Chicago as I wanted. But life goes on. Arrived around 4pm and had delicious pizza with the wonderful people I was staying with who had this amazing backyard (seriously, it was a golf course!) Chicago is (or at least the part that I'm in) ridiculously green. It almost reminds me of Connecticut and my Aunt and Uncle's house in some weird way. It's very comforting, and refreshing. And now tomorrow I'm finally flying to Rome. I'm a little sick of airports and planes at the moment, but at least this one will be taking me somewhere fun. Anyway... here we go!