packed.

just packed. am sad. BUT - christmas soon and jessie in 2 :)

merry christmas!

puppy

boys!

greg, joel, frederik, taras

taras, spencer, joel, matt

mo pics!

Me and Amanda in Catania, Sicily. Wearing large jackets.

Making friends with stray puppies in Sicily.

View from the top of the Eiffel Tower

pretty pretty

CHRISTMAS at the mall in Paris!

Moulin Rouge. So underwhelming, sadly.

Eiffel!!

rainbow

Rainbow outside of our apartment today!

"look! the most glorious rainbow!"

-anchorman.

pictures and stuff!

Papa Dick - I made olive salad!! Its nowhere near as good as yours (and I may have overloaded the vinegar) but its still delicious!!
So I just put up all of my pictures from

Dublin here! I'm still working on pictures from Paris - I need to get a few more from some people (because I forgot to bring my camera! Not smart). I"ll start with Paris - I absolutely loved it! I didn't go with my usual really close friends (Cate and Amanda) but it was really nice getting to go with people I didn't know as well. I feel like I made a lot of close friends. The first day there we did all of the usual tourist stuff - saw all the sights. We went to the Eiffel Tower that night and saw the light show which was AWESOME. We went to the top as well - very scary but so worth it at the top. The next day I hung out with the boys which was nice. Sometimes its good to get away from girls for a while (haha). We went to the Louvre and the Musee D'orsay. Not my favorite places but I can see how people like them. I would love to go back to Paris someday and maybe stay for a few weeks. I don't know how I'll pull that off but we'll see...

Dublin was amazing! We had such a great time. Just me, Cate, and Amanda went to we just did our own thing. We walked around the

first day, toured the Guinness Factory (amaaazing!!), ate some Irish food (which I absolutely love - Irish stew is my new favorite food. After cheeseburgers, obviously). The second day we toured the Irish countryside, which was beautiful. We met a lot of friends in pubs, Irish people are SO friendly and fun! I have to admit it was nice to be able to speak english all weekend. On sunday Cate and Amanda went to church and I read in Starbucks - which I really missed, weirdly. Had an eggnog latte, its Christmas season :)

It is nice to be back in Rome and I'm looking forward to relaxing this weekend after 3 weeks of traveling. Nicole is coming!!!!! I can not WAIT to see her. It'll be so nice to have her here!

So I head home in 18 days, which I'm really confused about. I don't feel like I've been here for 3 months already! It will be weird to go back to my normal life and have it feel, well, not-normal. I'm going to be extremely sad to leave Rome and all of my friends but I'm very excited to see Jessie after not being able to for 3 months :( It's been hard without that little diva I really miss her.

All of my papers and midterms

are done so now I can just relax until finals! That'll be nice. I hope everyone has a great thanksgiving and is excited for it to be over so we can all finally listen to Christmas music :)

Here's a puppy for your enjoyment.

DUBLIN!!!!

heres a few pictures from the Guinness factory while i work on getting the rest up :)

PARIS! :)

I LOVE PARIS!

Most amazing city! It was sad to leave. We got there on friday night and got back last (monday) night. What a beautiful place! The eiffel tower was incredible. I went to the top twice - scary but worth it. I'll put up pictures soon, but here's one just to show how beautiful it was! I'm leaving for Dublin in 2 days already, 3rd straight weekend of traveling. Tiring but so much fun!

NIC!

So here are my next few weekends!

this weekend (13-16): PARIS

next weekend (19-22): DUBLIN

(27-30): NICOLE IN ROME

sounds pretty good to me!! :)

happy dogs.

i bought a 1 euro box of dog treats at the grocery store and gave them to homeless dogs on my way home from school today. it made me very happy. i was like santa!!

paris in 2 days!

its been a while!!

sheep at the zoo!

italian art

dad eating meat!

trevi fountain!

walking to the colusseum. or trying to.

giraffes at the rome zoo!

in sezze seeing the quattrini roots!

for parker and jamie!

dad pointing to their rooftop apartment

dad in sezze!

vatican

first dinner!


SO SORRY about the lack of updates! it has been a whirlwind - with the parents coming, midterms, sicily, paris next week and dublin the next! here are a few pictures from when mom and dad were here :)

tribute.

my two favorite little divas :)

some more pictures! friends!

Me and Cate! She's becoming a really great friend!

Kaitlin and Amy - from UCSB

Me, Amanda, Ashley (San Francisco) and Anna (Chicago)

A picture from Pompeii that's not of a dog!

Not much news - I wrote a mythology paper today. Other than that it's been pretty slow around Roma! I'm going to make some olive salad tomorrow (with the lovely directions from dear Papa Dick - thank you!!!) so I'll take pictures. Because it's always funny when I'm trying to make food that doesn't go in a microwave.

Amanda is now 21 and all grown up. We all went out to celebrate on Saturday - very fun! On her actual birthday, the 18th, we watched T.V. all day and then got chinese food. So basically what we do at home :) It was nice to slow things down a bit. Doesn't happen often anymore!

Tomorrow I'm going to the Italian parliament with my Italian Society class, I believe we're going to sit in on a gay rights debate. Too bad I don't speak Italian well enough to be able to understand what they're talking about, because that sounds interesting.

Mom you'll like this one - I cleaned my room today. Swept the floors and everything. I think working at the zoo made me really aware of dirty floors and how much I dislike them (no, parents, my room doesn't count).

For the daily cute dog update, I saw a weenie dog today in a flower market in Campo de Fiori who was taking a little nap on its back amongst the flowers.

adorable.

pup

meeeeeeeeeee likey!

just an update!

Showing our excitement after having found KETCHUP AND MUSTARD!!!! Can't find it anywhere here!

Another picture from Capri!

So I have some exciting news regarding a restaurant that we've become regulars at - it's totally run by the mafia. I'm 100% positive. We were there last night and having applied what I've learned in class and from the Sopranos....I'm positive. So that's really cool! The owner really likes us so that's relieving (Mom & Dad - we're going there when you come so I can prove it).

We're not going to Cinque Terre this weekend anymore. Amanda decided she would rather stay here and spend it with all of our friends, which I understand. So that'll be fun! We'll probably have everyone meet at this American restaurant because they have wings and happy hour (WINGS!!!!!!) and than head over to Campo de Fiori, which is where all the younger people go. There are a lot of bars and restaurants so it's become the hangout!!

Only 9 DAYS until my parents come!!!! Single digits!!! I could not be more excited. It'll be fun to show them all the places I've found and feel like I live in Rome!

OH - an update from Iowa! I got a spring internship (I think it's just volunteering, but they're calling it an internship cause I'm a student) at the Animal Rescue League of Iowa! I'm going to be a "dog companion." Which is like my dream. I'm basically going to be loving them and making sure they're emotionally ready to be adopted. I think I can handle that :)

I"m still really missing Jessie but it helps that there are a TON of dogs here to play with! And Italians are so friendly so they always let you.

Have to go to class (Italian Society), but I'll be back with updates from the weekend!!

what a weekend!

Woah - sorry about the delay in posting! It has been a really hectic few days!

I'll start from the beginning.

So on friday we left at 7am for pompeii - I was definitely excited to see the ruins! All in all it was pretty cool to see. There were SO many stray dogs, though. I think I saw about 25. They were all so friendly and would follow us around because we gave them attention. It was nice :)

After the ruins we drove to our hotel, which was in a little town between Naples and Sorrento (I can't remember what it was called...). It was BEAUTIFUL. It was a little town among cliffs - it looked a lot like Laguna Beach. I loved it. Our hotel was extremely nice, too.

Saturday was one of the best days so far. We drove 40 minutes to Naples to take an hour long boat ride to Capri. Seasickness aside, it wasn't that bad.

Capri.........was the most beautiful place I have ever seen. I can't even describe it. We arrived at about 10am and me, Cate, and Amanda layed on the beach until about noon. We ate lunch (pizza and pasta of course) and then took a private boat tour around the island. IT WAS AMAZING! It was about an hour long and we got an awesome tour of the most beautiful parts of the island.

So to the bad news. About an hour into the tour, we got a brilliant idea to go cliff jumping. We got to a cliff that our boat driver told us people jumped off of all the time - it was 20 meters. Amanda went first - jumped - hit the water - aaaaaaand ended up dislocating her shoulder. We had to go to the Capri hospital. It was not good. She has to basically wear a body cast until she goes to the doctor in Rome on wednesday.

BUT besides that questionable situation it was a great weekend! I posted pictures here and will be updating alot more now since this weekend should just be a laid-back time in Roma!

19 days until my parents come :) :) :)

pretty pretty

have decided that i must go to austria. driving through it wasn't nearly enough.