Hello all!
Guess what?? I’m in a Venice hotel right now. Eek!
To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to Italy. I mean, compared to these other, non-cliché European countries to go to, Italy wasn’t high on my list. Plus it means that our European portion is OVER and I so, so, so don’t want it to be over!! The passage of time is so weird, you guys. Every day feels like a week, and all these weeks add up to about ten minutes. There’s weird things that show time passing, like all the guys are needing haircuts now, the warm summer light of August has turned into the more intense, direct light of fall. The little yellow cards that have our itineraries on them have checkmarks from England to Austria, and now we’re flipping the card over to the back side!
I’m not homesick, per se, but I’m missing a lot of things about home. I miss family and friends, I miss playing guitar, I miss baking and coming down to breakfast and pouring coffee out of our random coffee pot that sits next to the stove under the cereal cupboard. I miss fall decorations, and baked pumpkin things, I miss seeing the mountains in the distance, and having a laundry machine readily available!
But, at the same time,
I love the people of our group: Colby makes friends with everyone, waitresses, gas-station cashiers, palace guards, our old-lady tour guides…, Shanon takes pictures of people sleeping on the bus, Joanna’s laugh can always be heard from anywhere and she’s always available for deep conversations, Alex likes windowsills, Jenny likes fat jokes, Gabe, Nif, and the Kihlstroms are the best and laugh so loud at dinner! We just had a night of cabaret, which shows how well we know each other, each of our groups did a skit making fun of something about our trip, like our leaders loading homework on us, grumpy museum people, people being impersonated… it was great, Gabe says that he would wake up giggling during the night, and it’s we did too! I’m sure our performances will make facebook, at some point, you should watch them. J
Also, we hear that there’s crazy high security at Westmont now?? It seems like a world away and now we have to worry about rooming and classes and what?? And who knows what’s going on with the DC. We have rumors circling our group but no one really knows what’s going on. And we’re kind of okay with it.
Anyway.
Now we’re in Venice!! Guys, we had to take a WATER TAXI to get to our hotel, and we were giggly, squeely, picture-taking tourist girls and didn’t care. Even the guys, because after you’ve been cooped up in a castle library loaded down with homework, cooped up in a bus for six hours, and then put on a water taxi and on canals between mossy-footed stone buildings, you going to freak out at just about anything remotely exciting, not to mention water taxis squeezing between gondoliers in small canals between beautiful old stone buildings! So we arrived at our hotel and went out to explore and find food. Venice is a dizzying maze of small alleyways lined with glittering windows of glass vases and leather shoes which open to small bridges crossing the canals into another small alleyway. We’re only a five minutes walk from St. Marcos Square, so we made a quick visit and picked an alley to explore and found about 20 US military guys hanging out at a bar, so we talked with them for a little bit. There plane broke down on the way to Afghanistan so they’re staying at the Aviano (eh, family??!) base and enjoying Venice…or at least it’s bars… They were great though and loved talking to us college kids, plus it turned out they were high up officers in the 102 Airborne division, which had a big roll in WWII and we learned all about them and visited the town they jumped in on DDAY and went to the museum and all that! They’re the only jumping airborne division left, apparently. So we talked with them for a while, and then we went and got--
ITALIAN FOOD. Guys, I forgot that garlic existed. Seriously. With all our food pounded into shnitzel, drowned in vinegar, or rolled into sausage I forgot that tomatoes and basil and garlic and flatbread pizza existed in this good world and it was absolutely amazing. Appreciate your garlic, people.
Today we have class and free time, free time I will fill with homework and probably museums, knowing us J
I’m feeling better, pink eye is still hanging on a little but I think I quit the medicine too soon, and after our lovely break in Mittersill (I miss the mountians!) I’m feeling much refreshed.
I love you!
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