greetings from aix-en-provence...and happy thanksgiving!

*i wrote this on thanksgiving but never finished it, or published it, but here it is...


woke up this morning and my first thought was that i wish i was waking up in nanas old house. thats where i woke up on so many a thanksgiving morning. id always wake up in aunt kathis bed, and then go upstairs for scrambled eggs and bacon, and watch the thanksgiving day parade. then the rest of you would start to show up, my litle cousins, the lights of my life.
when we did grant family thanksgiving i always woke up in my old house. id be sleeping and would hear people start to come in. i would know mimi had arrived just by intuition, and then id hear aunt alice, and then hogan and grant would be running all up and down the hall. then a little later when the robertsons arrived alice ann would usually come and wake me up officially. id go downstairs and the house would be full and familiar. i love thanksgiving. i miss all of you so much.
so, oh my god, paris. am thrilled i survived. think i seriously came down with pnemonia for a couple of days. twice we were out walking, once in montmarte, one at a christmas market in the champs-elysses, and the sky opened up and poured. freezing weather plus rain plus converse does not mix. could not feel my feet and my lungs were rattly and full of water and i thought i had trench foot. angela gave me some theraflu and for an entire day i was blowing out what seemed to be live tadpoles. i feel better now but poor quinny is sick.

paris!

oh, where to begin? quinn is here, and angela is here, and we are having a fantastic time.
got into paris late friday night, really late, like, checked into my hotel at 1am. i flew into beauvais airport, which i learned after the fact is the airport for tourists who use discount airliners, and that, similar to treviso airport "in venice", it is over an hour away from the city. after a long, dark bus ride the city began to loom up, lights and traffic and twinkles from the seine, and then at the crest of a hill we could see it, the eiffel tower, lit up in blue and tinkling in the last throws of its on-the-hour laser show.
got to my weird, weird hotel, and was in my room long enough to throw on an outfit, and then burst out into the streets of paris. met up with frederic and two of his friends at a metro station down the road. as it was 1:30 in the morning, the subways were closed, so after deciding that we wanted to go to a club (dancing!), we had to figure out how to get there. no subways, taxis are too expensive, and paris is huge so walking is out of the question. so frederics friend vincent asked, "do you fancy cycling?", and i clapped my hands and cried "yes!!".
we rented bikes from these little bike keyosks, where you can insert your credit card and agree to a $150 fee if you dont return the bike within 24 hours, and you're off! we rode through the streets of paris, 2am, lights and cars and couples holding hands and 24 hour bakerys sending out fresh baked croissant signals into the night air. we rode over the seine, and all the boys simultaneously looked at me and pointed out onto the river and cried, "look! notre dame!". was breathtaking. after fourty five minutes or so (some of which i am thinking was sightseeing i.e. taking the long way) we reached our destination. danced and sang into the wee hours, and at 6am we went back to pascals apartment to sleep. 8 am frederic came into the living room and tapped me on the temple. "um, ele. stay calm. its 8". literally flew out the door in a fit of panic, trying desperately to create a plan for getting to the airport in a timely fashion. frederic walked me quickly to the subway, got me a ticket, rode with me to the connecting station, and sent me on my way. found quinn after a long interlude of running through the airport in my high heels and having her paged on the intercom. she was sitting slumped and worn out at a table in the airport cafe. hugged and kissed her and squeeled a bit, and we rode home, and slept till 6pm...when we woke up, refreshed and ready for france...all has been just perfect...
to be continued (when im not paying 3 euro an hour for internet)

PARIS!

hoorah! have made it safely and in a timely fashion to the treviso airport. remember last time i tried to take a flight form here, to rome, was the time i missed my plane and had a nervous breakdown out in the parking lot and then was forced to take the overnight train to rome in a tiny smelly cabin with 3 women from napoli. so planned ahead and have succeed in making my flight (almost, shouldnt jinx it...).
QUINN is arriving at 7:45am. she wants me to meet her at the airport. which i am glad to do, but i fear i will be smelly and possibly still drunk from tonights festivities i.e. dancing in paris with frederic and his friends.
in october, blake came to udine to stay with me for a night. we were told by everyone that udine is boring, there is nothing to do, nowhere to go, goodluck having fun. we decided to prove everyone wrong, and went out with a bang through the streets of my quiet old city. at the beginning of the night i was all sad because the boys in udine are super fancy and wear tight jeans and dont speak english and are not very easy to meet or become friends with. so i was on the hunt for a cute boy to talk to. had finally given up, as there was no one, and was all sad, and since alot of time cute boys dictate the amount of fun that i can have (is sad but true to an extent) i was like, ok well udine is a bust. again. but then out of this bar came this adorable boy with eyes so green i could see them in the dark and a scraggly 5o'clock shadow and a sweet smile and i said, thats him! i went up and asked for a cigarette in italian ("tu hai un sigarette?"...a good conversation starter) and the boy replied, "no, because i dont speak italian. but if you ask me in english i might" and i said, "oh, you..?" and he said, "oh, you...!" and then the rest was history...was frederic, my beautiful sweet french friend, totally fate. we spent the entire night talking, seriously, we were glued to each others side until 7am when blake and i wandered home. the enxt night we hung out again, and then we have messaged and chatted online since then. hes wonderful and kind and so easy to talk to and well read. he has been a lifesaver during this trip, helping us find hotels, book train tickets, giving me maps and directions. this weekend he is going to paris to visit his friend, and we will be there too, and then on wednesday Q and Angela and i are going to stay with him in Aix-En-Provence, and then to Montpellier, where he grew up, for the weekend. so anyway, hes all friendly and nice and i was all excited because i am positively sure that any romance we had is over and we are just good friends now, which is fantastic. however, he called me on the train earlier, to tell me that he checked with my hotel and it is infact ok that i dont get in till midnight, and the sound of his voice almost knocked me flat...soft and quiet french accent, a slight slur, but throaty from getting over a cold and a few too many french cigarettes. almost collapsed. and am now nervous that when i see him face to face ill freak and melt or something. when we call home on thanksgiving ill put him on the phone and all the ladies in the family can swoon...
ok, am so excited i might explode
head is feeling better just knowing i am closer to paris.
i love you all!

aunt kelli, with you its not a scent thing, its image. when i see women who are cute, petit, brunette, and wear red and hunter green (i dont know, for some reason i associate these colors with you) i.e. resemble you i tend to automatically trust them more and feel at ease. the most recent example is when last year or so i was applying for a job in an office at UGA, and a woman named danielle richards was interviewing me. i remember my first thought i had when i saw her was that she looked alot like you, and it made me happy. i even came home and told john, "i dont know if ill get that job, but the lady looked alot like aunt kelli, so i calmed down and i think the interview went well". not really sure how to put it into words, but i definitely relate you with good, safe, lovely things as well.
gah, ok, is travel day. have mild fever and my throat is swolen shut. seems like everyone in europe is sick right now, has been in the past week, or feels something coming on. feel like i have a rare disease or something, is awful. and paris is freezing cold so maybe will only get worse. good thing im going to montpellier where they make these special little candies which my friend frederic says are really only eaten when you have a "sick throat". will be in good hands.
ok, have alot to do, have to get going and stop watching youtube. ugh, might throw up.
i love you all!

oh, my god, aunt kathi, did i tel you that i do that? spray izzy, i mean? there is a profumeria in downtown udine, on my walk to school. i stop in there from time to time and spray that perfume onto the little sampling strips, and i keep them in my wallet, and whenever i feel sad or lonely or scared or nostalgic i take them out and smell your perfume. it is one of the strongest sensory-tied-to-memory-tied-to-emotion things i have; when i smell that perfume you wear i remember being small and loved and safe and in nanas kitchen eating goldfish or in your bed waiting for you to come home from chattanooga, or even more recent memories, its all just wonderful. and so when i smell it now it physically calms me and makes me happy. how funny.
so...oh my god, week of hell. have an incredible, incredible amount of things to do before i go to france, and its just like trying to swim underwater in a dream. not working. but, i did finally mail off my permit of stay:
...went to the "permit of stay" office yesterday, two weeks after my inital meeting with the lady. the first time she gave me all these forms and instructions and sent me on my way. then went to the university to tell the lady "in charge" of me that i had the forms ready to mail, and she freaked and psyched me out and was convinced that the info was not right. ended up taking 2 weeks for her to give me the "necessary info", and then she told me to return to the permit office and have them retype the forms. got to the office yesterday and the lady listened to me explain why i was back and what i thought i needed. she stared at me and explained that she already knew this and that all i needed was exactly what she gave me the first time, that, as i expected and was yelled at for supposing, the other info was not, at all, necessary. but the package she gave me was dated...it was suppose to have gone into a datebase...it is now very very late. "why didnt you mail it when i told you to mail it??" she asked ernestly, with a frightened look in her eye, in manner of a doctor leaning over a dying patient, writhing in pain, asking, "why didnt you take your appendix out when i told you to take it out?" and all the patient can scream is "because my chiropractor told me not to?". was scared i had messed up bad, but she told me it was ok, and today i mailed and got it verified, so i should be a-ok.
today the wonderful, life-saving angel who is simone translated a gigantic stack of course descriptions so that i can mail in my Credit Approval Form to UGA TOMORROW (MANDATORY!!!). UGA asks for a list of courses you want to take and descriptions of them, so that they can best match them up with UGA courses and give you credit. is all fine except was all in italian and there were lots of big words and i just couldnt take 10 hours out of my day to flip through my dictionary. went to simone, pleading, "please, simone, i need you!" (he lives for this kind of thing). took an hour for him to translate all the art history, molecular biology, and mathematic terms, but i think he liked the vocabulary exercise and he laughed alot when he got to use the term "lord of the lands". could not think of the english word for these people anyway, so it stays.
still have not begun my paper, will have to write it in france, but is ok as have lots of research hoorah.

other then majormassivestress work, all is very well. have made a new friend at my dorm in cormons, a v sweet and intelligent (and terribly attractive) boy from serbia who was some kind of child-prodigy in the club (spinning records, DJ, etc) scene in prague where he lived for 15 or some odd years. now his dad owns the best winery in serbia and he is studying viticulture. showed me pictures on his computer of wine related things, and in one photo it is him and a bunch of older men on a hill overlooking a winery. he pointed and said, "and thats the guy who started Slow Foods, you know" and i almost CHOKED on my non-alcoholic beer (an accident, i did not understand the term "analcoholic" and i thought "zero" meant it was diet, and i have too much pride to admit my mistake, so i just peeled off the labels...)because the GUY WHO STARTED SLOW FOOD IS MY IDOL and i screamed and was like, oh my god, hes why im here, i want to go to his university blahblah hes a hero you know him!!!! etc. also he knows the princess of tuscany, the guy who started the revolution against Milosevic, and like everyone else who is awesome. and he has lots of desperate housewives on his computer, which we watch, and we can agree that bree is the best, edie deserves more air time, lynette is horrid and cruisin for a bruisin, and susan should just be...killed.
so last night i made potato soup and the sweet serbian came over and after he went home and the tv was off i started hearing louds hoops and chants from upstairs. the chants turned into songs, loud rousing songs, a chrus of voices. so of course im thinking, oh god, theyre at it again, they must really be smashed tonight. so i followed the sound to go spy on the italians, to witness their maddness, and the singing grew louder and louder until i found the dorm room where they were, 3 FLOOR UP. went in to find about 20 italians, sitting around, lounging, singing as loud as they could some wonderful italian classics, and in their hands...hot chocolate. they were sitting around drinking hot chocolate, a pot of melted nutella over the stove was being spooned into big cups, and the italians were drinking their melted chocolate and eating cookies and singing and laughing. it was incredible. they are just really incredible. was handed a piping cup and i "drank" (spooned) it into my mouth and smiled and watched and was just so greatful to be around such happy people.
hm, ok, i think thats about all for now. is freezing cold outside and am avoiding having to venture out to make the long journey home.
love

ok, official announcement:
will not be making it home for christmas. just cannot be done. dont really want to talk about it as it is heartbreaking. but i will be ok, i will go to marions, where i am sure everything will be warm and cozy and perfect. and i will think of all of you and probobly cry a little bit, but marion has this thing where i can call the states for cheap, so maybe i can still hear some voices...can someone mail me cooper and parker and annabelle, though? and maybe nana? would LOVE to open a package christmas morning and find nana. ahahahahaha. ahaha.
ok.
gah! still have so much to do, i just cannot seem to get everything done (perche...i am blogging?).
so much is happening and so much is about to happen. over this next week, it being thanskgiving and all, i am going to begin to compile a list of gratitudes, thank you letters, and things for which i feel blessed.
stay tuned.

a small, wonderful thing just happened. i was walking through Udine, through the center of the old town, in the dying sunlight, on my way home from work toward the train station. in one of the piazzas i spotted in a 3rd floor window of a bank (the building dated 1722) a handsome, blond italian man in a business suit leaning against the floor to ceiling window, watching the people on the street. he looked so very dapper in his nicely cut navy blue suit, and he was leaning in such an enduringly italian way- careless, exhausted, pensively watching, seemingly smoking a cigarette just with his expression, rapt attention toward the crowd- and the setting sunlight cast a pink glow through the window which seemd to work as backlighting, creating such an incredible silhouette of this man that i could not take my eyes off of him. i just walked and stared and was awestruck. he saw me watching him, and smiled down at me, and mouthed "ciao", and waved his hand. i blushed and smiled and waved back and walked on, grinning from ear to ear about the small, simple, beautiful things that you can catch if youre not afraid to look at people, and you take a second to notice their pink backlighting.
i love it here so much sometimes i cant breath. today on the train into town, the sun was still rising and the train seemed to be floating through mist. it has rained for the past 4 days, heavy, freezing rain that has inhibited late night walks and shooting-star counting of any kind. but this morning i awoke to a white-blue sky, and bitter cold wind coming in off the mountains. the train traveled through the mist, and when at last it broke, i looked out the window and saw with crisp, clear glass-like vision the alps rising up around me on all sides. they were blue and grey and looked like metal, and the tops were blindingly white with fresh snow. its so cold here now, but i found a coffee shop in cormons where they serve hot chocolate so thick they serve it with a spoon.
am not sure exactly what ill do this weekend, but i know i have a ton of work. i have to finish my final anthropology paper before i leave for france. this is a big one, an aculmination of everything that i have observed and learned about viticulture and italian terroir, and there is alot of research to do and she wants me to illustrate a map of friuli and all sorts of stuff.
yesterday i sat in on my friend gabriele's class in cormons. he drives in a few days a week to teach a class on genetics to the viticulture and enology students, and the classroom he uses happens to be the one right outside my bedroom door. so yesterday i rolled out of bed at 9am and brushed my teeth and popped next door for the lecture. the lecture is of course on a subject that would make no sense to me even if it was in english, but i like to listen and try to undertsand the senetences, and i bring my dictionary and make notes of new words i learn. actually, was kind of funny...at one point, as far as i could gather, he was talking about a gene and he used the word "lungo" which i thought meant "long" (it does...) but in the context i didnt think it made much sense (i'm not a scientist, but a long gene?) so i looked up the word. "lungo" also means "weak". when i read that i smacked myself on the forhead in a homer simpson type "doh!", because every single day, multiple times perhaps, i go to these great little automated coffee machines in my dorm/college and get a cafe "lungo"...i thought the lungo meant long i.e. double the coffee. now i know it means long i.e. weak. learn something new every day.
so anyway, after the class, gabriele gave me a ride into cormons. i had him explain the whole "pucitare" thing to me, which i now know is a verb, the verb for the killing of the pig in friulian culture. he told me all about the pucitare, all about having to wake up when it is still dark to get a big pot of water boiling, all about having to kill the pig (which is very hard and slightly inhumane), about cleaning it and using every usable part for something. he said that it is best to do it when it is very cold, because the air helps to cure the meat, but that you cant wait too late, or the blood will freeze and the taste will be bad. apparently pucitare happen through february, so me and the anthropologist i met (also named eleanor) will try and find one to go to...is tricky because they are private, small family ceremonies, so i have to know someone...if all else fails simone has his in january...
simone, btw, has broken his foot and has left me at the mercy of the other scientists in the lab, which is lonely because they dont talk to me very much...
anyway, gabriele also told me on our ride back to town, that apparently the drunk italians in my dorm have cause quite a scandal as of late. he said that a few weeks ago the deen of the whole university came out to cormons to talk to them about their behavior, becuase things get broken and people complain about the insane noise and someone started a fire in the quad or something. too funny...insanity and recklessness...thats what happens when you stick a bunch of boys out in the country...that has been proven for ages now...

Tu Vuo'fa L'americano!

oh, my god. have come to the conclusion that italians are hardly more then mildly domesticated wild animals.
monday morning i woke up 45 minutes late, leaving me less then 20 to make it to the train station. i threw on a dress and my prada slingbacks and ran hell for leather all the 1.5 miles into town. arrived with one minute to spare, and sat crumpled on the cold concrete examining my feet: slingbacks had demolished them, as such shoes are not made for 8 minute miles. blisters, bruises, was terrible. after 10 minutes of agonizing pain and inspection, i realised that my train had not come. went inside the station and had a calming cappucino, as have become use to such things as trains-just-not-showing-up. one hour later, when the next train was suppose to come, i went and waited again. did not show. finally some maintenance man came over and kindly explained to me in italian that there was a strike on the trains and busses for the day. "well then why the hell is the train station even open?" i wanted to ask. but could not, as feet in pain and brain had stopped working from lack of comprehension at why in the world italians do the things they do, and was not even worth the attempt to put together a gramatically correct sentence. hobbled home mumbling to myself, but secretly glad that i was given a good excuse to miss class (clearly, was not my fault). in an effort to salvage what i could of my poor feet, i decided to take a moment to sit in the warm sunshine and paint my toenails. as i explained earlier, my apartment opens up into a lawn, and directly nextdoor to me is a classroom. so i sat out in the grass in shorts and a tanktop (was maybe 60', but i am very warm blooded) and proceded to paint. suddenly had the feeling i was being watched. looked up toward the classroom and saw the entire room full of italian boys staring at me, mouths agape. "oh my god, a girl, with feet, and she is coloring them!" they seemed to cry. for the next 15 minutes or so, they watched in awe. some guy even took a picture. finally the professor came over and gave me a dirty look and shut the door.
later the evening, around 11:45 actually, kind of late, i was in my apartment watching Grease in Italian and eating a banana, and there was a loud bang on my door. before i could even get off the couch, the door flew open, and in burst 2 of the argentinians and one of the boys from rome. "there is a beautiful dance party on the secondo piano! arrivi!!"
went to investigate this beautiful dance party for myself, as i was under the impression that...there was no secondo piano? apparently i have been such a hermit in my little ground floor apartment, that i had no idea that there was an actual dormatory in my building, and that there were maybe 100 kids who lived there. startling. anyway, i followed the noise and pounding base up to the thrid floor (secondo piano), pushed through a big heavy door, and was greeting by a chorus of shouts and cheers, all for little old me. was all the kids who go to those classes outside my door, i just had no idea that they lived here! so i walked in, and was immediately swarmed by italians, all shouting "americana! lei arriva!". there was house music and cigarette smoke and hoops and hollars, people dancing in the hallways, people spilling out of various doorways, bottles of wine being passed above our heads. suddenly, as though there was someone standing on high conducting a choir, the boys, in unison, burst into song: Tu Vuo'fa l'americano, the amazing song jude and matt sang in The Talented Mr. Ripley and a napolian classic. was dumbstruck. have seriously, seriously always wanted that to happen to me, was one of my lifes dreams: to be serenaded with tu vuo'fa l'americano. by a room (hallway?) full of italians. that is the magical thing about these people, they will sing at the drop of a hat, at the first utterance of a chorus line, just because they are moved to sing. one guy kicks it off, and the rest follow suit, at the top of their voices. football chants, napolian classics, "po'porno" (a new favorite)...italian boys sing, loudly and boldly.
so i made some friends of course. i imagine that its easy to dance the night away when your classroom is 2 floors down from your bedroom. i, however, have to travel a great distance in order to reach my school, so i think im going to take it easy for a while and let the italians have their fun. the good thing, at least, is that since i obviously didnt know they were there because they are so sequestered, their insane partying wont keep me awake at night.
oh, so much other good stuff is happening, and i want to write, but i have to go catch my train. oh, pictures of cormons (which is an incredible place!):
www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2452772&l=598ed&id=4913936

i love you all.

ok, im feeling a little bit better now that i have the "knocked up" song playing on youtube...also, i just listened to mariah careys "all i want for christmas is you", which is possibly my favorite song ever, and that made me feel better too. the only thing is, my headphones arent very good so everyone can hear what i am listening to, and about the 4th time i pressed play on mariah carey the italian boy next to me seriously turned and stared at me with his mouth open, like he deifnitely thought i was crazy.
am having a case of what i have dubbed the Gruesome Purples, an evil, vicious mixture of the mean reds and the blues. i dont know what it is, but the thought of having another weekend strething ahead with no friends and nothing to do, mixed with my overall frustration with myself for not being able to speak stupid italian, plus my fear that i wont be able to stay for next semester and my whole life will dissolve in a burst of sad, sulferic flames like what happens to howlers after the message is conveyed...i dont know. i just feel really bad right now. miley cyrus is helping though...
worried that the slight depression that i have entered is causing me to eat more then my fair share of sweet things...cappucinnos, gelato, kinder chocolates...kinder chocolates are the WORST because they are a) small, b) come with a toy, c) sold at the check out counters at the grocery store, so when you are standing there with an armload of groceries and considering how sad it is that you are going to go home and cook dinner for yourself, and eat by yourself, in the aparmtent where you live by yourself, it is just too easy and d) have sentimental value now so they are DOUBLE dangerous when considering loneliness. anyway. just had two. and will not go back to grocery store anytime soon as am stocked up so not a problem.
went into school to finish up the first part of my grape assignment (thank heaven!). got it all typed up and formatted and analyzed. simone came into the office, looking terribly adorable with his collared shirt and sweater and 5 o'clock shadow, read over my papers, and gave his customary "good work, parker, good work". as a reward (since i am his slave) he admitted that professor zerbi came in to see him earlier today, asking if he was finished with me, and if i would be able to move onto another department (prosciutteria). simone was nice enough to tell him yes. so after next week, when i am done processing grape skins to (hopefully, good christ) find a correlation between the skin color and the sugars, i will be set free.
my roomate, btw, the sweet girl from argentina, has moved out, leaving me the whole place to myself, which is kind of nice. i ripped up my italian vogues and decorated the walls in various collages, so it looks fun and homey now. last night after i was done with dinner, i went outside to investigate the howling that was going on outside my door. the other argentinian kids, and the few italians who are from the south and therefore considered second class citizens, were all outside in the lawn drinking wine and celebrating the end of the rain. "vai, stiamo facendo una festa!" one of them cried. we all sat out in the wet grass and took turns butchering the italian, english, and spanish languages in our quest to communicate with one another. eventually one of the sweet argentinian boys brought out his guitar, and we sang rolling stones, nirvanna, led zeppelin, and aerosmith songs. i was MORTIFIED to relaize that i dont remember the words to the most obvious of songs, and i blame whitney for ruining "stairway to heaven" for me forever...anyway, it was a blast and a really fun night and i couldnt believe that i was actually singing outloud to these people, which i would never usually do. was fun, and maybe i need to remember these fun times with my fellow cormons-outcast friends before i walk around all day in a fog of loneliness.
anyway, am feeling better now. not sure what i will do this weekend, maybe explore cormons, or take the train out to the ocean at trieste...
oh, got to go catch my train...
ich liebe dich!!

oh my god i am absolutely in a state of hysteria.
i want this election to be over! then we can all nurse our collective stomach ulsers and start to beath again.
DAJE AMERICA!!!

ugh, just spent 6 hours in the lab listening to the girl with my least-favorite italian voice yack away about god knows what to simone, while i had to get up every 10 minutes to change my gloves dues to the copious amount of sugar that is in those tiny grapes and now i finally get the chance to break away and blog and the stupid keyboard is sticky...so glad to be back...
the only problem with going away somewhere and having a fantastic time is that you are sad when you have to come home. literally thought i was going to cry on the flight home from berlin. which is odd because it was the first time ever that i didnt want to go back to italy...i think im just tired of not having any good friends around and people to laugh with and it was so nice to be with billy and his friends. and one specific friend. am ok now, though, and is warm feeling when i realised that i refered to going back to italy as "going home" in my journal. when i was walking home from the train station last night, through beautiful spooky cormons, i went into an old grave yard. i dont know if it was because it was sunday or what, and i have no idea who did it, but every single grave had candles, either in red or white glass. since cormons is pitch balck except for starlight usually, the effect was haunting and surreal. as soon as i saw that i had a rush of love and devotion to all things italian again, and it gave me some peace. i walked the rest of the way home making a list of gratitudes in my head, adding up and aknowledging the things that i am thankful for. like how wednesday morning when i was leaving for berlin, i was at the cormons train station and i was rushed and worried about my flight and also broke because there isnt an atm in comons. the man who works the train station cafe came over with an espresso and a croissant (brioche, in italiano), and gave it to me for free, because i get an espresso every morning while i wait for the train and he just assumed that since i didnt ask for one that morning i was poor, but he guessed quite rightly that i needed one badly. so kind. love italians.
so berlin was just wonderful. hell will freeze over as soon as i say this, but i have to: billy is my favorite kunzler boy. and the cutest. yes, i said it, because its true. stephan who?
the "wondker fountain" party at the rich russian artists flat was so fantastic, one of the best parties i have ever been to. the people were all wonderful and engaging, young and old. the wodker was top notch russian quality, but dont worry mama, i didnt drink that much. the food was cavair and other fantastic treats. the art was pretty astounding. there was dancing, laughing, a real fight outside that left one of billys friends faces smashed but he seemed fine...best non-halloween ever! the best part was that i looked absolutely divine in my french silk dress. old ladies kept coming over and grabbing at it and feeling the material then babbling to me in german about how bautiful it was and asking "what is it?", and the german boys loved it too, if i do say so (unfortunately i have no pictures of the dress, but ill find a way to post it. finding that dress was on my list of gratitudes as well!). billy and i made quite a smashing entrance, him in his suit and my lovely self. we stayed and danced with the russians till 4am. billy is absolutely an angel to me, and we have taken the idea of "in a way adopted brother and sister" to just "shes kinder my sister". billy was adorably protective of me with his friends, and there was even a conference of sorts on the dance floor between him and his cutest friend who has eyes the color of grey ice water when billy thought his friend was getting a little too close...i just watched and giggled at how silly boys are and how sweet it was for billy to take such good care of me, and how sweet it was that, in the end, after a very boyish discussion and some reassurances made between them, billy relented and said ok.
saturday was the "most beautiful day ever"...thats all ill say. except that night we made fresh pumpkin soup, and it was wonderful!
billy told me hilarious stories about grant boy too, and sometime when the keyboard isnt sticky i will relate them.
anyway, tonight i am going to go have pizza with benji and mia and then go to cormons to hang out with my roomate...
pictures!!!
www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2448618&l=da76e&id=4913936
ich liebe dich!