ria_oaks | Entries tagged with study abroad italy

Eee, the next Harry Potter conference by the group that did Nimbus 2003 is going to be in Toronto next year! Except... it's going to be in August, by which point I'm going to be back in Vancouver. That makes me cry. ;_; Maybe I'll end up going out anyway, as an excuse to visit any friends I assume I'll make while I'm studying there next year. Why couldn't it be during the school year?? Still, it's awesome that it's going to be in Canada. :) And quite possibly soon after book 7 comes out, if it comes out in summer '07.

Anyway... last weekend in Rome. ;_; Working hard on my journals, which I had wanted to get done by this morning. Hahaha, yeah right. -_- Have 2 and a half left. Going to get the half one done soon, then do as much as I can on the next one tonight. Needless to say, going to Ostia/the Mediterranean today didn't happen. Still hoping to go to Mass tomorrow, though, and I'd like to go into town early to walk around the Colloseum/Forum when it's empty. Then will get back in the afternoon and power through the rest of my work. Preferably not overnight again, since I want to be alive on Monday to go shopping after I hand everything in. Planning on buying a nice dress to wear to the goodbye party on Monday night, since we're supposed to dress up. :)

Weather's better today. Still windy, but sunny at least... hopefully it'll be nice again tomorrow.

Current Mood: content
Current Location: Roma

Lesse, what's happened since last post... Sunday I just relaxed (and slept) all day to recover from the all-nighter I pulled Saturday to finish my assignment. Monday was the Vatican, which was exciting though I was still pretty tired so I couldn't enjoy it as much as I wanted. Walked like a zombie through a good portion of it... plus the room with the School of Athens is incredibly hot, so I was tired and I wanted to faint from the heat. At least the Sistine Chapel was air conditioned, or at least it was cool. I think I was more overpowered by it when I came before, though; maybe I've just seen it too many times. Though I don't think 3 or 4 really counts as too many times. It was still amazing, of course, but I hate being squished in with a ton of other people, trying to crane my neck up to see, while the guards yell out to be quiet every 5 minutes (which is frankly more annoying, since people talking is just background noise...).

I barely even recall what we did the other two days... umm. -_- Oh yeah, we went to various churches on Tuesday and Wednesday to look at Caravaggios and Berninis - I loved the Caravaggio paintings. His work is so different from everything else we've been looking at (it's 17th century/Baroque, instead of Renaissance), it's really dark and dramatic. Today we had off, which was great since we weren't expecting it... Bruce decided to give us the day off because he says we've been working so hard, though I think the fact that he and his wife are both sick now has something to do with it as well. ^^ Anyway, I'm not complaining. Been sitting around inside working all day, since our journals are due on Monday and today's actually been cold of all things. Last night was a big thunder and lightening storm (purple lightening! Scary.), and it's still pretty gross out today. Chilly, windy, and it's starting to rain... bleh. Plus I'm not feeling that great myself; the stomach virus or whatever it is that's been getting to people seems to be getting to me, too. Oh joy. ;_;

Tomorrow's our last day of class; we're going to the Villa Borghese. I'm hoping to get my journals done soon so I can have fun all weekend, but that doesn't look promising right now. ^^; Ideally, though, I want to go to Ostia (beach...) on Saturday and Mass on Sunday. Plus I'm planning on going shopping tomorrow afternoon for last minute souvenirs and to finally buy some clothing. If anyone wants anything, let me know now. :)

Only a few days left now - we leave Tuesday evening, and arrive in Vancouver on Wednesday morning. Then have to find a job. :( But I suppose I'm looking forward to getting home, at least to see you guys and to watch the final episodes of Lost. XD It's been a great trip, though, and it's going to be strange to come back for my not-particularly-exciting life. But we're planning to get together and do stuff, which I'm looking forward to. And of course I want to see all of you. *glomp* Even if

rainbowpegacorn is going to be gone by the time I get back (and I hope you have a great time! ^_^ Drop me an email or comment when you get to Montreal.)

I'm probably going to head for dinner soon, then do more work... I've almost finished one entry, but I have three left. *cough* Definitely don't want to be working all night again. ^^;

Just a very quick update while I'm at the Internet point... I'm rapidly falling asleep right now because I've been up all night finishing a damned assignment that was due this morning. Finished at 7:30am, and it was due at 9. ^^; Three of us were up working on it all night, first in my cabin and then outside when my roommate came back to go to sleep and all three of us were stuck with sleeping roommates so we sat outside... well, they sat outside and I worked in bed with the bedside light on for awhile, but I didn't want to wake Sarah so I joined them outside around 5 or something... when it started getting light.

Brain's not working coherently enough for detailed update... umm... went to St. Peter's Friday which was amazing; some of us climbed to the top. Very cool. Now only one week left! :( It's gone by very quickly... but I think I'll be looking forward to getting home.

Okay, I can't stay awake anymore. o.o Back up to my cabin to go to bed. Mmm, bed...

Well, we're in Rome now! We got here Thursday afternoon and have now spent a few days in town and several messing around at the campsite. The campsite's not nearly as nice as in Florence (much much smaller, both the rooms and the actual campsite... our rooms are now only a single room with 2 small beds in it, and a bathroom.), but it's a lot closer to town. We're about a 20 minute bus ride from the Vatican, then we can take the Metro anywhere. In Florence, we were out in the countryside and could only get in via train or by our bus, so basically we had to come and go with the group unless we wanted to figure out the train. It's nice having a lot more freedom here. Plus, it was mostly families in Florence, whereas here there are a lot of people our own age, many from North America (and quite a few from Canada, which is nice).

Rome is amazing, of course. Huge compared to Florence - Florence is fairly self-contained, whereas Rome is a big sprawling city. Pretty nuts. ^^ But we were down at the Colosseum today which was great - I love walking around ancient Rome! We walked around the Palatine (sp?) Hill after, which is where the emperors lived. Tons of ruins; it's so cool imagining what it would've been like, even though I've been here a few times before.

Everything else is going pretty well. We don't have cooking facilities here so we bought a small barbecue - had hamburgers tonight. :) Spend quite a bit of time sitting around outside our cabins drinking and chatting. I still don't drink much, though I'm sitting here in the Internet point at the campsite with an open bottle of Bacardi next to me. XD They haven't said anything, either... eh, it's barely even alcohol, anyway. Tastes like fruit juice. ^^ But I don't particularly want to be out at the bar getting wasted every night anyway, like a lot of people here are. I prefer to wander around Rome minus a hangover. XD

Anyway, this place closes in a few minutes so I'd better go. Nothing much else to report that I can think of, or at least I don't have time to write up a detailed day by day report. Didn't do much over the weekend, anyway - sat around, "studied", slept, sat in the shade at the pool and watched everyone else get roasted (seriously, some of the others are reaaally burnt). Tomorrow's the Forum, which is exciting. :) Anyway, hope everything's going well at home. Drop me a comment and let me know how you guys are all doing. ^_^

PS3 pricing=$499 USD. Dear god. ;_;

And speaking of spending too much money, I just got assessed $44 by fucking UBC Housing for missing stuff and common room cleaning. Dammit. -_- I could've sworn that at least one of the 'missing' items was there when I left. And I left about a week before everyone else, so it was pretty much up to them to clean, but obviously they didn't. They even had a picture up of our dirty fridge, which obviously no one bothered to clean out. *siigh*

Anyway, today's our last day in Florence. Tomorrow we have one final day at the campsite (going horseback riding!) then we leave for Rome on Thursday morning. Still have to finish my journal - one last assingment due tomorrow morning, and I have no clue what to write. Joy. But I'm going to get together with some of the others and we'll work on it. Other than that, not much happening these last few days. I've been sick (everyone's been getting sick...), so I stayed home yesterday and working on my journal. Mostly just been hanging around all weekend working and sitting at the pool. :)

Update time! Hmm, where to start... I'll just go day by day.

Monday (after my last post)

Pretty crazy night. Won't go into the details, but I was up most of the night because I somehow managed to find myself caught in the middle of relationship drama between two of the others. And while all this drama was going on, we were also in the middle of creating a big poster of Playboy images as a present for James (one of the guys) whose birthday was Tuesday... so we had to wait bloody hours for him to go to bed so we could tape it up on his window. XD And it took forever for him and his roomate to go to bed because they were creating drunken 'art' with paint and food. -_- So yeah, kinda nuts. I think I ended up getting about 1 hour of sleep that night... ^^;

Tuesday

Spent most of the day in a daze because I was so tired from the previous night... barely know what we saw, and took crappy notes. A group of us had dinner out to celebrate James's birthday, then I was supposed to go to bed early, except that minutes after I arrived at the top of the hill (our cabins are at the top, everything else is at the bottom...) Yvonne runs up to me and asks if I want to play pool, and I'm like 'hell yeah' even though it's almost 12am at that point. So back down the hill, played one game of pool, and sat outside chatting with her and Doug for about an hour before trudging back up the hill to go to bed. Probably not the smartest idea, but it was fun. :)

Wednesday

Siena and San Giminano! Both are big tourist traps, but San Gimignano is still a beautiful little town. I did some shopping and wandered around, not much else. Siena's nice, but also crowded. Didn't have a chance to climb the tower, because we only had about an hour break and we used it to eat. As usual. XD We always just use our breaks to eat, it's kinda funny... Tried to get some work done in the evening, but not that successful, heh.

Thursday

The Academia, at last. Wandered around for about an hour and a half (inc. lecture), watched others in my group sneaking pictures of the David, got creeped out by the 'workshop' room with all the head busts staring down (so many heads, and they're all waaatching you... eek.), and of course admired David and the unfinished Slaves (which are really cool, since they're sort of emerging out of the stone... lots of energy and movement, and it's amazing how Michelangelo could just sculpt them from one side to the other without doing a basic outline first. The side that's not sculpted is still just plain rock, he didn't do any kind of rough outline.)

Thursday was also Yvonne's birthday (2 in one week, go figure...), so we bought her pizza and cakes and ate it outside her trailer in the evening. Lots of fun. :) Then actually went to bed early, yay.

Friday (today)

Today was the Uffizi Gallery, which was of course amazing. We almost accidentally skipped the room with the Botticellis though, oops. XD Had a lecture for about 2 hours, then wandered around a bit, went to the gift shop, and left. Took off on my own to have lunch, then ended up here. As usual. ^^;

This weekend is relaxation time, yay! Hopefully a group of us are going horseback riding, but other than that we're just going to hang out around the pool and work on our journals.

Anyway, that's about it. Hope everything's good at home. :)

Some more quick updates while I'm in an Internet cafe again... lesse. Had a fun weekend. We had Saturday off, but had to finish the first two entries of our journals so we spent most of the day sitting around by the pool and outside our trailers writing our journals and gluing postcards and stuff into them. Didn't do that great on them, either - she's a hard marker. ;_; We got them in by 6, though, then had a great evening. Almost all of us got together and had a big potluck dinner - we pulled together a few tables in front of our trailers and tossed some sheets over them for table cloths... Had a ton of food, and it was all really good. One of the girls bought speakers the other day so we had iPods and CD players hooked up and had music playing. Though we got yelled at by the security guard at least 4-5 times, heh. I don't really blame him - we were being pretty loud, especially after we finished dinner and just sat around drinking and chatting (and listening to loud music). We were up until about 1am, when he finally got fed up and made us shut up. XD Some of the others stuck around to talk quietly, but I went to bed. It was lots of fun, though. I don't exactly drink much, but I managed to drink a bit of beer, and I had a good time talking to some of the others. Didn't get involved in the crazy drinking game that was happening in one of the trailers though, heh.

Yesterday we went to Lucca and Pisa, which was lots of fun. Lucca's a really nice little town - it was a nice change of pace from Florence. Quiet, calm, not overrun by tourists... we wandered around and went to a few churches (really liked the architecture there... there were some really nice churches and such), then had something to eat. Pisa was insane, though, at least around the tower. It was just as I remembered it from last time I was there, which I think was in '99: a long line of tacky souvenir stands, and packed with tourists (and pickpockets). I just got a few postcards - I still have the tacky light-up tower that I bought last time. XD After taking the requisite tacky tourists shots of ourselves holding up the tower, a group of us took off to explore the rest of the city. Didn't really find much, but outside of the tower area it's a lot quieter and nicer. We just wandered around, had something to drink, and sat around in a small square chatting and playing with our cameras. It was fun. :)

Today was back to the typical classes and whatnot. Walked around to the various family palaces (ie. the Medici palace) and took notes, then took off for a few hours. A group of us took off with one of the guys, who's super rich, down to the expensive shopping district... went in to Gucci, Prada, Verscace, etc. He bought a 150 Euro purse for someone. o.o And almost bought 1000 Euro earrings... eek. It was cool being in there, though, especially with someone who can actually afford the stuff. XD The other girls then took off to go buy shoes, and I escaped to find an international bookstore that we'd passed cause I'm a geek. XD Then wandered towards the internet cafe, got lost, finally found it, and here I am. ;p

So, not much else to say... it's been fun. Not much time to relax, but oh well. Nothing to do when I relax, anyway, except read, draw, or watch weird Italian TV. We're going to Siena on Wednesday, which I'm looking forward to. Anyway, that's it for now. My back and wrists are killing me from using the computer. ^^; Hope everyone's doing well at home!

I'm in Florence now. Left Edinburgh yesterday morning really early and flew back to London Gatwick, then met up with my group and flew to Florence. Got here in the evening, had some orientation and dinner, wandered around seeking the internet (only to learn that we need our passports and we didn't have them on us...), then went to bed. This morning we had a brief lesson then did nothing all afternoon. It's beautiful here. We're staying in a campsite (more like a mini town) about 30 min out of Florence. It's huge - several restaurants, pools, stores... we're staying in small trailers, 2 to each. And it's really pretty - we have a nice view of the countryside. The weather's not great yet - it's nice, pretty warm, but not very hot. Anyway, I have to make this post short - only have a few minutes left on the computer. Tomorrow's our first day in Florence itself; I'm looking forward to it! It's so nice to be back in Italy again; it's been almost 5 years since I was here last. The people in my group are nice, and I'm getting to know everyone's names slowly.

Okay, got to go now, only 2 min left. Hope you guys are all doing well back in Vancouver! :)

...I think my brain just exploded. This show is trying to kill me, I know it is. O.O Seriously, it has the most evil cliffhangers ever. Evil, utterly evil. This show is evil.

Though I mean that in the most complimentary way, of course.

Only 2 episodes and the PK Wars miniseries left... I'm not sure how long I'll be able to go before I need to see what happens after this episode, but since I have an exam on Tuesday that I really need to study for, I guess it'll have to wait.

Anyway, on the update front...

( Italy stuff )

( School stuff )

( More Farscape stuff, aka On Watching the Premiere with a Newbie. No real spoilers. )

Okay, um, should really go study. Shit, when did it get to be 6:30? Where did the last 5 hours since I got home go??

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Tori Amos - A Sorta Fairytale