So long, Farewell...

Well, we've reached the end.  Somehow, amidst all the smelly cheese, strange men, cultural barriers, and embarrassing moments, three and a half months came and went.  Thanks for joining me on this once-in-a-lifetime journey.

This is it though.  I'm home.

For me this means that there are no more security checkpoints, no more French boys to avoid, no more weird showers, no more public transportation, no more sleeping in hostels, no more "regular" beaches,  definitely no more nude beaches, and no more embarrassing moments...every time I open my mouth.

For you this means that you'll just have to ask me if you want to hear the dozens of other embarrassing stories I have.  I hope to talk to you soon!

Now that I'm back, I'm reminded of the most important thing I learned this semester:  I'm not stupid.  I'm American.  And it is GOOD to be home.

Au revoir!

The Doorbell Killer

(Special thanks goes out to co-author and star of this blog, Heidi.)

In our first hostel in Italy, each shower had its own cord hanging from some sort of button.  Because the lights were on a timer, I assumed the button was just another light switch since they looked about the same.  My sister once asked me about it and told me she had thought it was to turn on a fan.  We thought it wouldn’t matter so we never bothered to find out what it was for.  Unfortunately, our ignorance would prove to be problematic for us later on…

In the second town, my sister and I had the luxury of staying in a private apartment. After taking the first shower, Heidi noted that the bathroom had been unusually steamy and suggested that I try turning on the “fan.”

“That’s a great idea!  I’ll try pulling it once to see if the bathroom is just as steamy,” I planned out with my sister.

Just a few minutes into my shower, I decide it’s time to put our hypothesis to the test and I give the cord a swift tug.  Nothing happens.

Meanwhile, Heidi is enjoying Italian television and tending to her sunburned feet when, all of a sudden, the doorbell rings. 

Thankfully, our mother had spent the past three weeks forwarding emails about the dangers of Italy.  Answering doors in foreign countries?  Definitely not a good idea.

Being the intelligent woman that she is, Heidi freezes in her bed and hopes the Doorbell Killer will think nobody is home.

Meanwhile, back in the shower, I realize the steam is really starting to build up so I do the only thing I can: I pull on the cord two quick times.  Nothing happens.

Back in the room, just as Heidi has regained use of her limbs, the Doorbell Killer rings again.  Twice.

Back in the bathroom, thinking I had pulled the chord too quickly the other times, I give it one long yank.  Nothing happens. 

Heidi hears the Doorbell Killer ring again, this time demanding his admittance into our loft.

Now at the end of my shower, in a last-ditch attempt to avoid the dreaded post-shower mirror fog, I tug on the cord in a morse-code pattern, hoping to unlock the secret fan password.  Nothing happens.

Heidi, realizing the danger she is in, panics as the Doorbell Killer feverishly pushes the buzzer.

“Kate.  Katie.  Kate, “ I hear being whispered after I turn off the shower.

“WHAT?” I call back with a tone reserved only for my sisters.

“Someone keeps ringing the doorbell.  It happened four times while you were in the shower,” Heidi tells me.

“Ok, well I’m gonna go ahead and dry off now,” I answer, nonchalant about our impending murders.

“Hurry up,” Heidi begs me in a whisper.  Little did she know my company would not shield her from the mysterious Doorbell Killer but rather would bring her face-to-face with the murderer herself.

At this point, you might be asking yourself any number of these questions:

Who would be visiting you in Italy?

What made you think a visitor must be a murderer?

When would a killer ever ring a doorbell?

Where did you get the idea that fans were so hard to turn on?

Why is the doorbell in your shower?

The answer to all of these is simply that I don’t know.  At the time, it made sense.  In fact, it wasn’t until the next night when I took my shower and the Doorbell Killer returned that Heidi and I realized I was the Doorbell Killer.

Muriel

For our upcoming Easter break, I will be spending two weeks in Italy with my sister.

Or so I thought.

Because I knew I’d be doing a good bit of traveling by train while in Italy, I purchased a railpass to use for the trip.  My sister had set up all of our hostel reservations and our itinerary so all I had to do was get there.   Literally, my only responsibility was getting to Rome.

Now, I’ve done enough traveling to know that there’s no need to make train reservations.  There are trains constantly going places and all the trains I’ve ever been on have had plenty of empty seats.  So when my friends told me they were going to the train station two weeks before their departure to reserve tickets, I wasn’t concerned.

And then they came back.

“Muriel said we can’t go,” they told me.  

First of all, who is Muriel?  Why is she telling you this?  And go where?  To Italy?  Of course you can go to Italy.  There are like five different trains a day.

“Muriel from the train station.  We finally got her to understand what we wanted to do and she looked it up and said we couldn’t get on any of the trains.  They’re all booked.  We’re just going in May but I don’t know what you’re going to do.”

Oh.  No.  I have to get to Italy.  I guess I could find a flight but they’re probably all booked.  My mom has already sent me at least a dozen emails about how dangerous Italy can be.  I can’t leave my sister there alone!  She’s only 26!

The next day, I prepared myself for disappointing news as I gathered my railpass and a few other papers.  As I waited in line, I squinted to read the nametag of the woman working: Muriel.  Great.  I’m going to end up talking to her and she’s not even going to understand my French and she’s going to tell me the same news.  

But then, I saw another employee returning from her break.  Maybe I would get to talk to her.  She would just have to open her window before Muriel finished talking to her current customer.  I watched the new girl as she painstakingly straightened her papers and turned on her computer. 

Hurry up!  I’m gonna get stuck with Muriel!

She fixed her nametag and applied chapstick as I watched Muriel’s customer hand her some money.

“Open your window!!!” my eyes yelled at her while I continued to smile at the new girl.

Then, she slowly switched her sign to “Open” and called me to the window.  I ran up to her window, just in case Muriel tried to stop me, and explained to the new girl what I needed, all the while preparing myself for the inevitable bad news.  How would I explain to her in French that I had to go to Italy because my sister would be there alone and would get pick-pocketed unless I went?  (You see, while everyone working at McDonald’s refuses to speak anything but English with me, it never fails that every time I have to do something important the person doesn’t speak any English.) 

I’ve got it!  She might not be able to understand my French but I do know a universal language:  Crying Teenage American Girl.  CTAG has had impressive results in Europe, including getting me through Spanish customs…the opposite direction.  Spain should probably look into their security measures.

“Ok which train would you like?” the woman asked me in French.  In less than five minutes I had my tickets in my hand without shedding a tear.

“That’s it?” I asked her with a big smile on my face.

Laughing, she shooed me away from her window.

The next day my friends went back to the train station to get their tickets…unsuccessfully.  Like she’d said before, all the trains to Italy were booked.  

I just wanted some rice...

All I wanted was some white rice.  I didn’t even want anything special.  I didn’t want anything else in it.  Just white rice.  As we walked around London’s Chinatown, Megan and I picked out a lovely place to eat so that I could get white rice.

After looking at the menu, I decided I should order something else with white rice so the waiter wouldn't think it was a strange order.  When he came to ask us what we wanted, I ordered some noodles and white rice.

“So you want them both?  Two orders?” he said as he judged me.

“Yes,” I answered him, a bit embarrassed that he would call me out on that and flattered that he thought I wouldn't be able to eat that much.  That's sweet of you.  Really.  But just bring me the rice anyway.  They are both sides.  I'm not even trying to have two full meals…and even if I wanted two meals, one is just plain rice! 

“OK.  And for you?” he asked Megan, still hesitant about my order.

As Megan ordered a dish of chicken, a side of rice, and an order of spring rolls, I waited for the waiter to judge the quantity of food she ordered.  Instead, the young man looked at me, took his pen, and crossed something off on his notepad.

“You don’t need the rice,” he said to me.

This, of course, was not the first time I’ve been faced with the stereotype that Americans (or even that I) eat too much while I’ve been abroad.  And while I can agree with that sometimes, I still don’t even think this was one of those cases.  It was rice and noodles!  Rice.  And.  Noodles.  Megan got to have chicken and a whole order of spring rolls and rice without even being questioned.  Why did she get to have all of that food and I could only have noodles? 

As I looked at him, slightly offended, I laughed and told him that he could bring the rice anyway.  Really, I’m the one paying for it.  I don’t know why you care.  Bring me some rice, buddy.

With a very serious face, the waiter answered me, “No.  You can have it at the end if you need it.” 

When my “meal” finally came, I pushed aside Megan’s three plates to make room for my plate of noodles.  Determined I would show him I should have been allowed to get the rice, I finished my meal and waited for him to ask me if I’d like my rice now.

Instead, he brought us the check.

In an act of defiance, I marched across the street and ordered two big pastries .

And now my pants are too small.  I hope you're happy now, waiter.

Happy Birthday, Megan!

When I previewed the picture I had just taken, I told Megan we would have to retake it.

“Why?” she asked me, obviously not happy to have to pose for yet another of my pictures.

 “Well for starters,” I tried to explain to her, “there’s a naked woman on the beach down there.”

For Megan’s birthday we had decided to go to a beach not far from our campus.  After a short hike on a beautiful path through the woods we came to an opening right at the beach.  We were sure "our" beach had to be very close, since our directions had taken us right to this spot.  Assuming that the picture-ruining woman was simply on the nude part of the beach, we decided we were probably supposed to walk through the nude beach to get to the regular beach.

After some convincing and a few moments to get over the shock of it all, I had Megan courageously lead us through the beach.  As I watched each step she took, careful not to see anything but her feet in front of me, I was hopeful that we would soon reach a spot where I could perhaps look around and enjoy the beach instead of Megan's feet.  When I saw her feet stop moving, I somehow knew that we hadn’t walked far enough to be out of the nude beach.

“We’re trapped.  There’s nothing on the other side of that rock.  We have to stay here,” she told me.

Perfect.  All I'm trying to do is go somewhere with clothed people and now we can't even do that.  Trying not to make the situation more awkward than a nude beach is to begin with, we decided we could just stay there and mind our own business.  After finding two rocks to use as blinders and wedging ourselves far out of view of anything, I realized the nude beach wasn’t so bad.  But I also figured it wouldn't hurt anything to pretend to be asleep the whole time I was there...you know, just in case.

“Do you know what this beach is?” we heard a man ask us, the only clothed people on the beach, about an hour later.

Wanting to seem like we weren’t just some Americans who had somehow stumbled upon a nude beach, Megan simply told him we did.  (I’m not sure what he was expecting us to say at this point.  Oh, this is a nude beach?  I hadn’t noticed that everyone around me wasn’t wearing clothes but now that you mention it... )

“So, umm, your clothes…Why?” he tried to ask us.

Now, I’ve never been asked this question before so I had no good answer as to why I was wearing clothes.  “I don’t know…because that’s what I do every day?  I get up and put on clothes,” was the best I could come up with.  Luckily I was “asleep” and left Megan to answer it.

Megan, understanding that he was actually asking us if we would be partaking in the -uhhh- culture, told him, “Not today,” and laughed as if we were simply not in the mood to be naked in the middle of a beach. 

Right, Megan.  Not today.

March? Let's hit the beach!

Sometimes, no matter how many times people may tell you about something, you can just never be prepared for the situation.

This is how I feel about the beaches here…

As we passed by her, Megan and I struggled not to giggle.  I know, I know.   I am 21 years old.  I should be more mature than this.  I just can’t help it.  I laugh when I feel uncomfortable.  And right now, I was feeling really uncomfortable. I’ve just never seen it happen before.  But that woman was just on the beach…in public…like it was no big deal.

“That was definitely her underwear, right?” I asked Megan just to verify that’s what I had just seen.

Appalled, Megan and I ranted about how offensive it was that someone would just be out on the beach in underwear and a shirt.  The woman, probably in her fifties, and her underwear, appearing to be just as old, just didn't care who might be passing by.  If she had been wearing the bottoms to a swimsuit it wouldn’t have been a problem.  Or even if she'd had on underwear that resembled a swimsuit I maybe could have understood.  This, however, was simply inappropriate for a public beach.

(I really never expected what would happen next.  If I had, we would have sat somewhere else.  We could have walked down the beach a little more.  Or we could have positioned ourselves around the big rock.  But we didn’t think it could get worse.)

As the sun came out, Megan and I smiled as we thought about how we were spending the day at the beach…in March!  Our lives were so wonderful.  We had a nice blanket to sit on, books to read, music to listen to, and cookies to share.  Life simply could not be any better.

And that’s when it happened.

It only took seconds for us to change our I-can’t-believe-she’s-in-underwear attitude to an I’m-so-thankful-she’s-still-wearing-underwear attitude.  As we saw her shirt on the ground beside her, Megan and I realized that we certainly were not in America anymore.   

And this was a "regular" beach.  Check back for our next beach adventure!

Escargot (A Picture Guide)

Escargot in six easy steps.

Step 1: Be convinced by friends that it's a good idea to order snails.

Step 2: Observe the brightly-colored substance.

(various methods are acceptable for Step 2)

Step 4: Decide you'd rather not test the flavor.

Step 3: Test the flavor.

Step 5: Realize you just ate a snail!!!

              

Step 6: Then realize it just tasted like garlic butter.