Not all men should wear kilts...

Hello from Scotland! Quick 5 minute synopisis of my life before I get charged more money to be on the internet: I started in Edinburgh where my hostel was surprisingly awesome. It was right next to the castle, so fun views. I went on a free walking tour and learned all about spitting in the street and the inspirations for Harry Potter. I also went to the cafe where J. K. Rowling wrote created Harry Potter (it was really effing good, too). I heard about public hangings and walked along the street where there are tons of bars still making money off of such tourist attractions as public execution. I went museum hopping and saw the cloned sheep Dolly. She is now stuffed and spinning in circles in a glass case. I feel like they could have picked a more dignified way to honor her. I also went to the art gallery and saw tons of Italian paintings. Because Rome is stalking me. I jumped on a bus and came to Glasgow yesterday and hid out inside a movie theater since it was pouring rain and everything was closed because it was a bank holiday. I went to see Coraline. It was delightful. Movie theaters in Europe are SO MUCH BETTER than ones in America. Today I've been museuming. Thanks to the bus drivers who apparently are taking pity on me and telling me when to get off the bus I have been able to find my way around quite easily. The weather has been a bit less cold here (knock on wood) and I have missed most of the rain storms because I've been inside. Hopefully it will be decent tomorrow because I'm walking about half an hour to the main cathedral that is supposed to be gorgeous. Wish me good weather luck! The next stop on the trip is Galway- I fly into Dublin on Thursday and then take a bus, so again, I promise to try to keep you updated. That is, if anyone checks this anymore. I wouldn't blame you if you had given up on there ever being anything on here again.

I am fully aware that I am a liar and can't keep up with my blog

Greetings from Athens! Sorry it's been so long once again. In fact, I have more bad news: there can be no pictures because I'm on a shared computer in the middle of a hostel. I know, you all are so envious of my life right now. The Rome program ended on April 29th and we all parted ways. Well, most of us parted ways. Danielle and I went to Paris together for 5 days. We saw the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Basilique Sacre Cour, Moulin Rouge, the Louvre, Musee d'Orsay, Versailles and of course, ate some amazing French food. It was a good trip and I'm glad we went. We were quite entertaining to watch, though since we both had 4 bags apiece. Entertaining for other people, we were somewhat less than amused. After Paris, Danielle flew back to Rome to go home and I flew to Germany to visit the German family. My cousin Susanne and her friends took good care of me- we went into Munich for a day, we went to their regular pub every night and good times were had by all. I'm looking forward to going back for a week before I fly home. So I flew to Athens on Friday morning, and after the joy of standing up with my backpack for over an hour on the crowded bus going into the city, I got lost finding my hostel and finally arrived in Athens. I was not impressed. However, the city has grown on me within the week I've been here (the hostel still hasn't). The people are amazing, the food is fantastic, and the ruins are delightful to see. And totally better than Rome's. I'm going to try to go to the beach today before I go to my favorite restaurant for dinner to get more Souvlaki. I'll try to write again when I get to Scotland. It's okay if you don't believe me, I partially don't believe me either.

Tryk her for at åbne/ There's something rotten in the state of Denmark/ Mussolini was a flute-chipper

Once again, dearly beloved blog followers, we have a lot to catch up on. I apologize. Be relieved to know that a week or so of my life was completely wasted on midterms. After the R&B midterm, we had a day with Paul in Assisi which was both good/awful. Recently I have been to Copenhagen, but before we get there, here's some background hilights:

#1: I passed all my midterms. We didn't think that was going to happen. Especially not when the Italian teacher told us how disappointed she was in our tests. Oh well. Passing is passing.

#2: Assisi is gorgeous. It is also built on the worst series of hills I've ever seen in my entire life. Everything is steep and it's uphill like everywhere. But it's gorgeous. We went into several churches (something new and different) and down into the crypt of St. Francis. We saw tons of frescoes by Giotto. Sadly, cameras were not allowed in the church, so here are pictures of Assisi for you.

The view of the valley from the city. Paul made fun of us for taking these because they're all like industrial buildings. But they're pretty industrial buildings!!

This was a building that I thought had a pretty ladder while we walked back to the bus. Longest walk EVER. And also the only part of the day that was downhill. I stand corrected.
View of Assisi from the walk up to it. Yes, I walked into the middle of that flipping city. I was genuinely sore for like 3 days afterward.

After walking around Assisi, we went to dinner at a place near Anagnina- which is scary, but the restaurant was amazing. We ate in threes and I'm pretty sure Paul tried to get me drunk. Everytime my wine glass was half empty he filled it up. Whatev. I did not get trashed in front of the program director, try as he might. So, dinner: three pastas, carbonara, canelloni and ravioli. Tons of meat dishes for the second course, we had a chicken thigh, some sort of thinly filled meat with sauce, other meats that I can't remember along with salads and fries. And then, we had dessert of Tiramisu and then we had hazelnut cookies that you dunk in sweet bubbly desert wine. We couldn't move.
#3: We found the coolest building ever to draw for class, it had faces with open mouths that created the doors and windows. However, it was being restored and therefore, we could not draw it. So we went to the Medici house which is now a museum. Yay! I was drawing the door (which you shall see in a second) and these official looking vans pulled up and parked right in front of me. While I was chanelling my upsetness into glares and a bad attitude, the driver of one asked me what I was drawing and then moved his car so I could see my door. He asked me how I was and I said good and then asked him how he was (in the polite form, so as not to be an ignorant tourist) and it was a good moment in my life.

Fountain outside the Medici-ness

I attempted to draw this cut off door. It was disasterous.
After the drawing portion of the class we went to get new sketchbooks because ours were full and we amused ourselves in the art store by unintentionally blocking every aisle in that place and also drawing on Terrance's hands. (Artwork by Danielle)

The only two words you need to know in Italy!!!

#4: St. Patrick's Day we had a Vertical Wine Tasting- one type of wine that you try different years of. The 1999 changed my life. Afterwards, the other girls went out and I went back to the residence where I ran into Alex. We dyed his hair.

The before picture

The after picture. He now has jet-black hair.

We stayed up late and baked cookies and watched "The Guardian". Depressing and weird movie, yo.

Alright, moving on.

Danmark!!!!

Danish is the strangest language I've ever heard in my life. Way stranger than Portugese. I rescind the comments in the earlier blog.

We flew to Kobenhavn on Saturday (Imagine that the "o" has a slash through it and you pronounce it "coo-behn-how-n") and left the next Saturday. We stayed the first 5 nights in a B&B, only the second B wasn't actually included, so it was just a B.

Bed of the B. Warmest comforter I've ever come in contact with. It was like 2 degrees outside and we were burning up at night.

Plantish area. By my bed.

Quick overview of the rest of Danmark, because I don't want to take forever to post anything anymore and I'm afraid if I don't halfway catch up now, I never will.
X Factor!!!!!!! Lindsey and I accidentally stumbled into a concert in the main square in Denmark only to find out later that X Factor is Denmark's American Idol. We saw the rehersal for the live concert that they gave before the final voting and the winner was announced. Fun fact: In Denmark, groups can enter into X Factor instead of just solo singers. Also, in case you were wondering, Linda won.

Viking Museum! Really fun to try and pronounce the name of this town and try to buy bus tickets. We eventually had to pull out a pamphlet and point.

More Viking ships. These are, by the way 5 ships that were intentionally skulled back in the day and they found them and took like 20 years jigsawing them back together.

More X Factor. Everything is out of order here, in case you couldn't tell. Sorry.

Fun building with umbrellas that I liked across from Central Station.

More Vikings. In the summer you can actually sail in the Viking ships. We would have frozen to our deaths.

The super pretty train. Things are so CLEAN in Denmark!!!!!

Pretty park that we walked by.

More parkness.

More Vikings. I got the greatest keychain ever in the gift shop, by the way. You all shall be SO jealous.

The metro. You can see out the windows! There's no driver! I made Lindsey inch forward with me until we were in the front of the train!

Der Lille Havfrue! Don't want to say that my father was right and it was small and slightly unimpressive but....

Guess where these ships came from?

Pimped out Hearse that was driving along the streets of Copenhagen.

The Glyptotek. Where I finally got my subject for my Ancient paper. Yay, me!

Cool building. Don't know what it was.

Statues that I think were gagged for some political protest. Don't know what we were protesting though. Don't really know what the statues are either.

Me with the WORLD'S GREATEST truffle!!! It had caramel amazingness inside!

Denmark has Mexican food! This was Lindsey's burrito.

More of the park. They have pretty parks.

Crazy colored building. I think it's secretly a movie theater. Oh! Lindsey and I went to see a movie (not here) and we discovered that Denmark has the prettiest movie theaters ever (giant red leather seats that are like the most comfortable things I have ever sat in) not to mention that they gave us giftbags with flavored water, candy and a magazine! They assign seats too. We didn't know that until we got kicked out of the seats we had picked. And I also made the awesome faux pas of asking if the movie was in Dutch or English. Pretty sure they don't speak Dutch in Danmark....

This is crazy out of order. This is one of the buildings next to the Spanish steps. Terrance and I sat here and waited for our wine tasting to start before spring break. I think Shelley lived here.

The Carlsberg Brewery! Probably the best beer in the world. (No, that's literally their slogan). We took a brewery tour and got 2 free beers (Kris got 3 because Lindsey only drank 1). Good times! They have Clydesdales too! (I don't know if that's spelled correctly and I'm not checking. Deal.)

We ducked into a lot of stores when we were walking to warm up. This was one of them. I was thoroughly amused.

Crazy Borat suit that I saw in a window!!!

Bay outside of the Viking museum.

They have bagels in Denmark too. I know you all aren't jealous because you have access to them all the time, but oh, the other members of Rome 2009 totally were.

And they have Ben and Jerry's.

So... Early in the wee hours of Monday morning we all got woken up to some significant shaking. Well, everyone else did. I had a dream that I was riding the metro and it went off the tracks. And then I couldn't understand why I couldn't get a hold of my cell phone to check the time. There was an earthquake in Abruzzo, about 60 miles east of here. So far the death toll is over 200 and thousands of people have lost their homes. Sad times. However, just so you know, I have totally survived a natural disaster and all is well in Rome. This is the region that our favorite wine grape comes from though and we have had no update on how the vineyards have fared. On a rare and serious note, aftershocks are still going on and it's a bit creepy. I miss you all and hope you are well and safe in America. I'll try hard to keep you better posted from Rome.

The Fantastic Adventures of Grace and Daniel

Mi dispiace, blog followers! The past couple weeks have been insane. I shall try and recap them for you before I pass out from exhaustion- I had all of about 20 minutes of sleep last night, but that story is not nearly as exciting as it sounds and comes much later.

Belated picture of the Ecstacy of St. Teresa from Santa Maria della Vittoria from drawing on Wednesday.

So... Friday we awoke bright and early and went to Sicily. We had a shuttle which was nice- we got to avoid the lovely process of calling a cab. After navigating the airport we got on the shortest flight I've ever been on- literally about half an hour.

We got to Sicilia and had to take a bus to Palermo, which was shockingly less difficult than I thought it would be. We found a nice English speaking man who helped give us directions to our hostel and told us that we could easily walk right in front of the cab driver who was trying to get us to pay 3 Euro per person to take us to our hostel (he did not speak English). It was pretty much a 5 minute walk down the street. Darn taxi drivers and their taking advantage of Americans who don't speak Italiano. So we found our Hostel- Ai Quatro Canti. GHETTO. And completely unmarked from the street. Hooray. But the hostel owner Guiseppe (or something that is spelled correctly) spent like ten minutes going over a map of Palermo with us and gave us some good recommendations of places to go. Our room wasn't ready so we dropped off our bags and went out exploring. Guess what? Palermo = like 1/3 the price of Rome. It was magical. We found a really cute cafe and got sandwiches for brunch as well as a thing called an Arancina (ball of saffron rice stuffed with ham/cheese or salsiccia or fish and then deep fried) and finished it off with Sicilian cannoli. Flipping amazing that Sicilian cannoli. Anyway, then we walked around the city for a bit. We went to the Teatro Massimo, the second largest opera house in Europe and bought tickets for the opera on Saturday night Adrianna Levaconteur (or yet again, something that I didn't butcher the spelling of. Use your imaginations)

Huge church in Palermo that was about a 2 minute walk from the hostel. You can't beat the convenience of small towns, you know.

Fish netting! I liked the colors. I didn't like the smell.

Harbor on the edge of the city

Danielle, Stacey, Christina and me. Don't look at my hair. We don't talk about it.
Church.

Edge of the church. Grouping pictures together logically makes me tired.

Um. Cool building on the edge of town near the water. I have no idea its real function other than to give me something to take pictures of. I shot like a roll and a half of film this day, by the way.

So... the weird thing about Palermo is that half of it looks historic and gorgeous and the other half looks like a nuclear explosion just wiped out half the buildings. Can't figure it out.

Anyway, after wandering for a bit, we went back to the hostel:

The hostel. My bed is not pictured. I was sitting on it. It was lighter than this too. First day we were in Palermo was the coldest I have been in Italy thus far. Not good times.

Prettiest part of the hostel: the ceiling.

That night we went to dinner with two boys that we met at the hostel named Brian and Kenny (we found out their names at dinner after we had already talked to them for a few hours. No that's not weird) at this place Guiseppe recommended. Not bad, for like 11 Euro per person we all got a pasta course and a main dish and split a bottle of red wine. I had mushroom and cheese ravioli and then goulash, in case you were wondering. I know you were. After dinner since we had been up since 4 am to catch our flight, we wanted to go crash out at the hostel. Sadly, everyone else in the living room which was of course right next to our room wanted to play crazy loud card games, play the guitar and sing loudly and drunkenly. Not the best night's sleep I've ever had. They finally passed out at like 3:45. Not that I remember this. Or still hate them for it.

The next day, we ate breakfast at the hostel (fake toast with butter and jam, coffee and tea and cookies that smelled like fish- they kind of tasted like them too. Oh, the hostel smelled like fish, did I mention that? It did) and then decided to go be warm for the day so we found a bus stop and jumped on a bus to Mondello, which equals beach.

Bus graffiti which made me happy. It made me lol, if you will.

Anyway, it was the last day of Carnivale so all these small children were dressed up in costumes and walking around throwing giant handfuls of confetti on people. Thankfully we avoided most of that. We got lunch and walked along the beach eating gelato. It was really flipping good.

Mediterranean- the most GORGEOUS water I've ever seen in my life. This picture doesn't do it justice. Don't worry, the super low speed film that I shot will totally do justice. Be excited.

Christina, Lindsey, Danielle and Stacey in front of the Mediterranean. PRETTIEST WATER EVER!!!

I may have touched the Mediterranean and had a near death experience where I almost fell in. We don't talk about that either. We walked around and bartered with fake gypsies for souvineers. I dropped the parents a postcard, because I am an awesome child.
We came back from the beach and went to a magical place called Cappello- home of Sicily's famous 7 layer chocolate cake. We're pretty sure it was located in the middle of the mob's central headquarters, but it was SO worth it:

Mmmmmm.

This place had crazy marzipan designs- including fish. Big thing in Sicily apparently.

After this we went back to the hostel and got ready to go to the Opera. We brought a Finnish girl with us that we met at the hostel. It was good times. We went to eat at a pizza place right by the opera house first and then went to our seats in the nosebleed section. No, really. Usually there are student discounts, but because it was opening night of this opera, there was nothing. So we got distainful looks when we showed the people our tickets and they had to tell us where to sit. There was seriously like no one else in our section. We had to lean over the railing to see the stage. But, we got to walk up the red carpet into the theater which was pretty exciting.

Opera house. Our chairs were not this nice. They were wooden. And painful.

More Opera housing.

Pillar at Opera house

Ceiling of Opera house

Curtain. This was seriously like... our best view

Stacey, Christina and Finnish girl (still don't know her name)

Danielle and me. You can look at my hair here, but not my smile. It's a trade off, people.

Anyway, the opera was really fun. Although 4 hours long. We had considered going out with the people at the hostel before we got out of the opera at 12:30. On the way back to the hostel we got lovely catcalls from the Palermo boys. In Rome they honk horns because of the driving, in Palermo, they honk horns because they think you're cute. Remember this.

Sunday we ate breakfast at the hostel again and then walked around a bit and found a flea market where I made an amazing find! I bought a medium format camera in GORGEOUS condition!!!!!! It looks like it's never been used and it's Russian, so maybe it never will be used, but I own one! Yay! Then we got back on the bus to go to the airport. We thought that our flight left at like 4:05, but it turned out that it didn't leave until 4:55, so we had a lot of airport time. Danielle got her contact lens solution confiscated, but other than that, it was a fairly uneventful trip. We were able to catch the train and metro back to the apartment, so that was nice and money saving.

Monday was Politics and make up drawing day from missing class to go to Palermo. We went to Piazza del Popolo and I drew some AMAZING fish. That's right. Amazing. And I got a flower from a fake gypsy. He told me that I was pretty and then talked to Danielle and me for like 10 minutes about how he liked America. He had a picture of Bill Clinton in his wallet and told us that he liked George Bush, The Father, not The W. Whatev. Free flower. Paulina liked my fish too, she told me that even as I get more academic about my drawing that I should try really hard to never lose my expressive style. Woot!

Tuesday we went to the forums of Augustus and Caesar, which was actually really cool. We got special permission to go down into the forum, so we got to touch ancient columns and see human bones.

Exciting, I know.

That night Alex got home! He had been stuck in Berlin trying to get to Sweden for the weekend. He never made it to Sweden and had to buy extra clothing in Berlin, but had fun. We like having him home though.

Wednesday was also uneventful. Sorry, I know you expected grand things. I decided to make lasagna for dinner though and for some reason, we decided to dye Terrance's hair. I don't know why. He wanted to have brown hair. Now he does. He thinks it's way too dark though and continually calls it jet black. It is not.

Thursday we went to several different churches for R&B, including San Pietro in Vincoli. Tomb of Julius II, it was cool. But a very long class. After that, we went to Italian and then decided to dye Danielle's hair. It's a trend now. I don't know how these things start.

Yes, that is me in the background

I don't know why there isn't a picture of it finished, but it looks good.

Friday we went to drawing at Piazza Bernini and drew the fountain like 17 times.

After that, we went to a museum and drew the outside of it. Well, everyone else drew the outside, I drew like... a window. Kris= drawing special ed.
Weird staircase somewhere in the museum

Wall at the museum. No, I have no idea what the museum was called.

This is what I got to draw while everyone else drew the building.

More museum stuff. Ooh, perspective.

Creepy cabin-looking thing at the museum.

Danielle and I went home and passed out soon after drawing. Why, you ask? Portugal! Oh, I went to Lisbon last weekend. We woke up at 3am to get to our flight at 6. Never doing that again. But Portugal.... It was AMAZING. I'm moving there. We got off the plane and grabbed breakfast- Portugese Fanta and an amazing pastry for me. And then we took a bus to the city center, took a metro to the bus station and took a bus to Faro. Which is 4 hours away. And we booked our return trip for 3 hours after we arrived. Basically, Saturday was my day of transporting myself. But it was amazing.

Danielle and me in Faro. See the brown hair?
Scary tiger shrimp dinner. After we walked around for a while, we grabbed dinner on the balcony of a restaurant that I'm sure is a tourist trap when the weather is nice. As it was, they thought we were insane to be sitting on the balcony. It was really flipping cold. But we had bread with scary Faro cheese (we were not going to try the fish pate, although that too, was an option) and carrots with garlic and olive oil and then the shrimp cooked in olive oil, garlic and sea salt and French fries. Something about seafood requires them, I think. The shrimp were freaky and they looked like they could come to life at any moment and crawl off of our plates. They didn't! And they tasted good...

Faro beach

These are the signs they keep in the airport and all around Portugal in general. Not no smoking, no smokers. Anyone else amused?

Faro beach. Start booking your tickets to come visit me there. Because I'm moving. Like now.

Faroan fishermen. They thought we were crazy too.

Still Faro.

More of the scary Faro dinner.

We left Faro at 8:30 and got back to Lisbon at about midnight. Why not stay in Faro, you ask? Good question. Because we already booked a room at the Poets' Hostel in Lisbon at the recommendation of a friend from high school who backpacked around last summer and recommended it very highly. So we had to find our hostel at like midnight thirty and we discovered that the cool thing to do in Lisbon is to like stand around on the streets and just talk. That's it. But anyway, found the hostel. SO MUCH BETTER THAN PALERMO!

Window in the Whitman room.
Beds that were not mine.

Ditto above caption.

Lisbon sidewalks! Gorgeous, right? The correct answer is yes.

Right around here is where we met Richard. Richard came up to me and asked me for money and I said no and he asked if my friend had money and I told him no. But he waited to ask her anyway. And so Danielle gives him a cigarette and tries to light it for him and he gets mad and says that women never light men's cigarettes. She was just trying to hide the fact that we labelled everything in our apartment with Italian vocabulary last week so her lighter says il accendino on it. Anyway, Richard says he's going to take us around all day and that he can take us out for a really great breakfast, but we're paying. And we tell him we came here from Italy so he's crazy impressed by our English. He tells us he only speaks English to the people he likes. We're so priviledged. And so we try to lose Richard in a crowd, but he's persisitant. And then Danielle sees a metro stop and goes "oh look, Kris! Our metro, we found it!" and Richard follows us into the metro until I tell him that we have to go to the airport and then he tries to get a minimum of 5 Euro from Danielle. Sigh. We said no, jumped on the metro, went in an unnecessary loop and got out by the Hard Rock Cafe. It sounded like a good time for lunch and a t-shirt.

After that, we walked around and tried to shop, but all the stores are closed in Portugal on Sunday. We stumbled on a little flea market (apparently those are popular on Sundays) and found some amazing souvineers. So amazing, in fact, that we had to go get more cash. And while I'm using the ATM, some guy comes up to Danielle and tries to sell her Hash. And then when I turn around he tries to sell me hash. And I yell "no!" and we walk down the alley. And then while I'm saying "I can't believe that guy just came up and tried to sell us marijuana" this guy says "you want marijuana?" and pulls this GIANT bag out of his pocket. And I yell "No!" again and Danielle and I flee down the alley. Sigh. Anyway, bought things and then it started raining so we went to our bus stop to wait for our bus. Which took almost an hour so it's a good thing we went when we did. Catastrophe if we had missed it. We went to the airport and got on our flight. Came home and took the train to Termini, the main metro/bus station. The metros were closed so we had to take a night bus. Don't do that! Take a cab! We're standing by the stop waiting for the bus and this guy comes up with his hand outstretched in the classic "give me money" pose so before he can even say anything, I'm like "No." And he stares at me in confusion for like 30 seconds and then leans in and says "You have such pretty eyes, so why are you such a nasty bitch?" Why, God, why? Anyway, he left and I didn't have to beat him off with my umbrella, so whatev. Caught a night bus and then waited like 40 minutes for the connecting one. Seriously, cab. But, I am home and alive from Portugal. Which is exciting. I suppose. I really did like it there.

Monday I had the day off because Politics was rescheduled (it's now tomorrow which is a bit of a bummer) so I went to an R&B review session to prepare for the midterm which was today (hence the 20 minutes of sleep). Tuesday we went to Palazzo Massimo and the museum there.

Statue from Museum
Discus throwing statue from Museum

Aphrodite

Baths of Diocletian. This is where we went for drawing yesterday. Well, there was a museum involved too. Paulina specifically found me a piece of marble with fish on it to draw because I so rocked the fish last week. Anyway, after this, I came home and made awesome fried rice- first kind of Chinese food in 2 months. And then Alex and I began studying. And proceeded to do so for the next 13 hours. No, really. I am so flipping exhausted. I came back to my apartment at 6:15, showered and set the alarm for 7. And then woke up, took a 2 1/2 hour exam and then thankfully, because it was raining we stayed in the classroom for most of the rest of the class. And now I'm going to sleep. I promise it won't be two weeks again before the next post!