storytime

Summer School

Harry

Long story short, there's a guy on this trip who is identical to Harry Styles. Therefore, we're taking as many creepy pictures as possible just in case it's really him.

The Jungle Book

Sunday, when we were in the Villa Borghese, this group of teenage Italian boys walked up behind us throwing out super nice compliments.

they looked a lot like this:

mixed with this:

After luring us in with phrases such as “ohmygahhh so beautiful”, “your teeth ohmygahhh so white”, and “ohmygahhh, bella, what's your name?” by seventeen year olds wearing leopard skinny jeans toped off with Italy shaved into their heads, I heard Sydney say BACK OFF very firmly.

I turned to her to see her arms tucked behind her with a strange look on her face. One of the classy men then wrapped his arm around Syd and jokingly apologized while the rest of the hyenas began yelling “beautiful legs” from behind.

One mature child had flipped Sydney's dress up while his impressive friend snapped a picture.

My bestfriend is famous.

Single Men

You know what I'm talking about. When couples travel together, they have two options for saving memories: selfies or single pictures. Obviously, we're in an extremely touristic town, therefore we've seen a lot of these awkward incidents. To keep the memories alive, we've imitated the men and their famous poses.

Reasons Why You Don't Wear A Maxi On Windy Days

One Option

After Sydney's dress incident Sunday, it was time for us to conclude the day and head home. Being almost 4 miles from our apartment, we decided to figure out the public transportation for a free ride home.

Worst idea we've ever had.

Without knowing where it was headed, we hopped on a bus that took us a good extra mile from home. Frantically, we got off, looked around, and headed under the city to ride the subway somewhere. Anywhere. We just had to get out of the jungle park.

The subway took us to a place that looked close on the map, but we when got back above ground, it looked a lot like Mississippi. Again, we hopped on a random form of transportation, this one being a tram. As we passed the Colosseum, looking beautiful lit at night I might add, we knew we were getting close. Wrong. We ended up almost back where we started at the beginning of this adventure.

Unsuccessful, we jumped off that tram in an area that looked a lot like Kansas (7 wrong decisions don't make a right). As soon as our last tram left, it got extremely dark and we only had one light pole to read our one map and figure out what our next decision was. Our best idea was to run to the next thing with wheels that came our way and cross our fingers that it would take us home.

After riding to who knows where for about 20 minutes, we settled to using our well educated brains to ask someone that looked like they knew at least one sentence in English. As soon as we said our neighborhood, the man's eyes got extremely big and he stated very clearly “get off this tram”.
Oh snap. The angel the Lord sent us said move.

At the next stop, our sweet angel said for us to get on the opposite tram 14 and ride it back to the main terminal and then get on the H bus. 14. H. 14. H. 14. H. Got it. Only problem? It was 10:15 and the public transportation stops running at 11pm. Oh.

Why haven't we called a taxi yet? You don't call taxis in Rome, you just find them parked on the streets and slide in. Why haven't we found one yet? WE AREN'T EVEN IN THE CITY. We probably weren't even in Europe.

The driver of tram 14 was the second angel we encountered. He didn't speak a lick of English, but thankfully Anna had a small book with simple Italian words and they figured out what our plan of action was. We had one option: get off tram 14 at Termini and run on foot north to bus stop H.

Bus H brought us straight to our street where all four of us immediately laid on the ground and licked the super clean street.

Parade?

We've been pumped and planning for Republic Day ever since we found out it existed (last week). We wanted to wear all red, green, and white, paint up, have beads thrown at us, eat good food, and drink fun drinks.

Republic Day means nothing in Italy. Well, it means something but it doesn't mean anything like the Fourth of July does in America. Sydney best described it as Italy's Memorial Day. Thank goodness we didn't paint up because the locals didn't even wear their country's colors to their own parade.

NO FO TO

In my Arts and Gardens class, our teacher, Emilio, took us to the Musei In Comune to see the Michelangelo exhibit. It's against the rules to literally breathe there so I decided to go above and beyond and snap a picture for proof. Basically, I almost went to jail.

Tomorrow is my birthday and we're traveling to Ostia Antica, Italy with our drawing class. After class breaks, my roommates and I are staying at the beach for the afternoon then headed back to Rome to celebrate my twenty-first, first anniversary! 

This weekend, the whole group is going to Florence, Italy. Our professors scheduled tons of optional things to do and passed out sign up sheets to see how many are interested. Besides all of the major, must-see things in Florence, several of us signed up to do several studio visits, visit the Uffizi Gallery, and see the Gucci Museum (a museum based on branding - perfect for graphic designers!).  I can't wait to see what this upcoming weekend getaway has to offer.

I'll be twenty two next time I post, so maybe my writing topic will be more mature.

But probably not.