2 years!

GUYS, GUESS WHAT TODAY IS?  MY BLOG'S SECOND BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!

Remember me two years ago on December 25, 2009?  I was sitting in the kitchen working on college application essays, and Mom had the window open even though it was super cold outside.  And then I decided I was tired of writing essays, so I started a blog.

You probably don't remember that because the only people that read my blog back then was my Mom and Robin.  And oh my goodness, how that number has grown!  Something I never, ever would have predicted!

I have 36 official followers on Google, but I know more people follow my blog than that.  As of this moment there have been 27,860 hits on my blog (and none of them from me).  My posts have gotten picked up by random sites on the web devoted to travel and backpacking and Italy and study abroad and living in the Arctic.  My blog ran on the UAF Sun Star page for a semester.  Tweets linking to some of my posts have been retweeted many times by a multitude of different people.

And this is cheesy, but it is all because of YOU.  Back when I was senior in high school, if no one had sat down and read my blog and told me they enjoyed it, I would have given up posting a long time ago.  All the comments, all the likes, all of the hey-Elika-I-read-your-blog-and-I-love-it!'s are 70% of what's kept this blog alive for the last two years.  The other 30% being my interest in practicing writing on a regular basis.

So THANK YOU!!!!!!  I know no one really cares right now because it's Christmas and you're all WEEEEEE CHRISTMAS PICNIC IN THE SNOW (wait, that's only one person I can think of).

We heart pizza!

Yesterday, Melanie and I went to Gusta Pizza.  It's supposedly the best pizza restaurant in Florence, and everyone I know raves about it so it was about time I knock it off my Florence bucket list.

We showed up at the restaurant, and immediately the owner leaned over the counter and kissed both of us on the cheek and wished us a "buon Natale!"  We happily ordered a spinach and ricotta cheese pizza (sounds weird, but it was really good) and two bottles of water and sat down.

A few minutes later, our pizza showed up in the shape of a heart!

We heart this pizza place!

Lazy Florentine Sundays

Today I walked to a grocery store really really far away from my apartment, just so I would have a better reason to walk around other than just aimlessly walking around.  Which is a great thing to do if you are in a wander-some mood.  But I needed some motivation to leave my apartment, and a 45 minute trip each way to buy milk managed to do the trick.

Also, I got lunch and sat on the curb of a sidewalk eating my panini and feeling all Italian.

And a random couple asked me how to get to Santa Croce, and I gave them directions in Italian.  And I was really proud of myself because I get left and right (sinistro e destra) mixed up all the time, but I didn't this time.

Then three hours later when I finally got home, I made peanut butter cookies.  I'm on my fifth one right now.  They're really good.  Also, I'm putting nutella and strawberries on top.  So, they're, like, REALLY good.

You know that part of Eat, Pray, Love where Julia Roberts sits on the floor of her apartment in Rome and eats asparagus?  That's kind of how I feel right now.  Except substitute cookies for asparagus, Florence for Rome, my bed for the floor, and me for Julia Roberts.

Next up: Jordan!

All of my semester friends here are going home next weekend.  Next weekend!  I feel like I'm never going home, to be honest.  But everyone around me is packing up and trying to fit four months worth of Europe into a suitcase.

This is a good time to mention that I'm leaving too.  The opportunity to spend second semester somewhere else presented itself back in October, and with the support of my super awesome parents and a lot of reflection, research, and consultation, I decided to take it.  Which is why instead of spending the whole year in Florence, I'm going to Amman, Jordan for spring semester.  At this point, I've had about a month and a half to get used to the idea, so it doesn't completely shock me any more.  But I realize all you lovely readers are probably like "WTF?" right now.

This is a picture from a children's atlas I discovered in the Bologna public library.  This is a WHIRLING DERVISH SAYING MERHABA!!!!  Which is hello in Arabic.  I will be learning Arabic.  I might also become a whirling dervish, even though technically they're more from Turkey than Jordan.

Before I go on, let me just say that I'm not leaving Italy because I don't like it here.  I love the cobblestones, I love Tutto 99 Cent-the Italian version of a dollar store, I love, love, love (cliche as it may be) the food.  I predict heart-brokenly watching Camera Con Vista in the future, and telling the unlucky soul next to me that I've been there and there and there and there, and look how beautiful it is.

But living overseas has afforded me a lot of time to think about what I want from studying abroad, college, life, etc in the context of a completely different environment.  And it took me a few months to figure this out, but I realized that I wanted more of a challenging experience from this year.

So, Elika, you crazy-wandering-gypsy-traveler-girl, why Jordan?

I was basically just aiming for anywhere I would experience really bad culture shock, and things with Jordan just fell into place really quickly.  The visa process there works really well for me.  Living in Jordan gives me the chance to learn Arabic.  It'll give me an awesome perspective on what's going on in the Middle East right now.  And as someone with Middle Eastern roots, it'll give me the chance to understand part of myself that I don't know too much about.  Although my Dad wants me to mention that Persian culture and Arab culture are not the same at all.

Anyway, as excited as I am, I'm trying to focus all my energy on my remaining time in Italy.  After all, I will never live in Florence again and I want to make sure I finish my Italy bucket list before I leave in February.  So that's why you haven't really heard too much about this big giant moving to the Middle East thing, and why you probably won't hear too much about it until I actually show up there.

But I have been asked a TON of questions by friends (i.e. will you have to wear a veil? are you scared? when exactly are you coming home? etc) and I was thinking of addressing them in an FAQ type post.  So if you have any questions post 'em in the comments and I'll get to them within the next week!  Or if you're shy you can ask them anonymously at the formspring for my bad advice column blog (which you should read, and ask advice-y questions so Denali and I can answer them).

Ho attraversato

Today I got together with a few other girls who are studying abroad here, and we watched Italian movies and ate panettone.  And it was sitting on a couch cushion watching La Vita é Bella and eating cake that I realized I no longer feel like a fish out of water.

I spend so much time frustrated with my incredibly basic Italian and feeling like an outsider to this culture that I've completely missed the fact that I've learned how to live here.

I can navigate this city like a pro.  Put me anywhere in Florence and I can find my way home.  I understand the trenitalia website, and no longer stress about getting anywhere by train.  I know that the café in San Lorenzo has a waiter everyone is in love with, but the food isn't actually all that great.  I know where to find cheap pomegranates, and after a semester of testing different places I know which kebab stand has the best kebab.

It's so easy to get frustrated when proud Florentine women breeze by you, never giving you the time of day, not even to move a little to the left on the sidewalk.  And I will never be Italian, I will never completely understand what's going on in this culture and country.  But I've come a long ways from the girl that got off the plane in August.

View of Florence from Piazzale Michaelangelo

I LOVE OPERA

I went to the opera tonight.  Again.

It was brilliant.  Again.

I think I have a future career as an opera singer.  Perhaps I will stay here forever, eating only pasta, singing only arias.

L’amour est enfant de Bohême,

Il n’a jamais jamais connu de loi.

Si tou ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime.

Si je t’aime, prends garde à toi! 

July 10, 2011

I found this in a file titled "All I Want To Do Is Be Above The Treeline" in a folder on my laptop earlier today.

July 10, 2011

This morning I woke up on a mountain. I woke up 5,000 feet in the air, above the tree line in a small, orange tent I borrowed from Dave. The wind was blowing at a million miles an hour, and fog was rolling across the valley.

But I was so happy, sitting there eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, soaked to the bone with bugspray and sweat, hair unbrushed for nearly a week.

And that’s what I like about Coldfoot. The fact that the simplest things make me happy here.   I’ve been sleeping in a tent for seven weeks now.

There was more to it.  But that was the best bit.  The part that brought me back to what seems like just a really weird, wonderful dream of a summer.

Midnight sun

"NOOOOO SCOOOOOOOOTERRRRRRRRR!!!!"

LCC4LYFE

Adorable Italian children are adorable

When I first showed up in Italy, I signed up to do some sort of volunteering at the school I attend here.  After a few weeks of filling out forms and doing interviews, I was assigned "teaching English to kids."  Which I was SUPER excited about.

Until I showed up, and found out "teaching English to kids" meant making sure a bunch of 4-year-olds don't hit each other.

But they're still really cute.

This is Flauvia.  If I had favorites, she would be my favorite, because she always hugs me when I show up, and she likes to send Tonka trucks down the slide.  The boy behind her is Leonardo, and if I had favorites he would be another one of my favorites, because he always pretends he is an airplane.  Also, he is best friends with Alex, who I call Little-Charlie-Bone in my head because he looks exactly like what I imagined Charlie Bone would look like at age 4.  Little-Charlie-Bone is another completely hypothetical favorite, by the way.

Also, Italian children say "mamma mia!" all the time.  Heart melt.

A weekend in the Tuscan countryside

In the last year and a half, I've gone from living at home, to living at school, to living in a tent, to living in Europe.  And lately, I've been filled with a whole lot of questions.

That's really why leaving home is hard.  Because when you're surrounded by your best friends and your favorite flannel pillowcase and the soccer field you've been playing frisbee on for a while, it's easy to know who you are.  You are exactly who you have been for as long as you can remember.

But in a new place, in a dorm room far from your bedroom, in a tent in the woods, in an apartment in a different country it's harder to know exactly how you fit into the fabric.  It's enough to make you reexamine a lot of basic things you thought you knew.  To pull up roots you thought were sure to stay firmly in the soil.

I spent my weekend in the countryside.  I miss leaves and grass and fresh air.

Pictures of Madrid

Pictures of dawn

Guys, I'm really sorry there's been a lack of blogging lately.  Like I mentioned before I'm sorting through this really big, potentially life-altering decision and its requiring a lot of research and time and effort.  And I've also been writing these long novel-length emails full of inquiries and intentions, and at the end of the day I just don't have it in me to write up blog posts about how cool Madrid was, even though I know you want to hear about it and see pictures.

Luckily, I have the best, most supportive family in the whole entire world.  When I send them emails full of crazy ideas, they don't just write me off.  They make me evaluate and question what I'm doing, and push me to look for more than just the easy route out.

Also, sometimes my Dad sends me pictures like this:

And then he says stuff like "I took this pic for you earlier today!  I was thinking how this is the dawn of your adulthood!"

I really miss dawn in Alaska.  And I really miss my Dad (also, you too, Mom!  And you too, Zayn).  But for the first time in two months, I don't feel like I would rather be in my mountainous winter wonderland state than here.  It's kind of a big shift in my perception of life this year.

I promise I will go back to my regular routine of blogging nearly everyday about things you couldn't possibly care about in a week or two.  But for now, I need this time for myself and my own thoughts.

Fiera di Scandicci

Today, Amy and I went to the fair!!!  It was SO MUCH FUN!!!!  Definitely the best day I've had since moving to Europe, but probably the best day of my whole entire life.  EEEEEeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee best day EVERRRRRR!!!

Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia

There is no future tense in Italian.

Here's an example of how this can get confusing.  Someone asks you che cosa fai?  And then you're like crap, do you mean what am I doing right now as you're asking me this or do you mean what am I doing in the future?

Sometimes I misunderstand the context, and say something a long the lines of um, I'm having a conversation with you, duh.  Except in my broken Italian it's more like che?  parlo con tu.  And then the other person is like, I meant tonight!  What are you doing later tonight?  Except in Italian it's more like, no!  Che cosa fai a notte?  It can get embarrassing.  But it turns out the whole process of learning a language is embarrassing.

As humans, we spend so much time planning for the future, wrapped up in its intricacies.  And I can't help but love a country that eschews that state of mind so thoroughly they've evicted it from their vocabulary.

Missing home, secret underground tunnels, and midnight adventures

This summer I got almost crushingly homesick.  It's sort of embarrassing to admit (so I'm posting it on the internet).  But since it was so bad this summer, I thought I'd used it all up.  I mean, I miss Fairbanks, sure.  But I'll be back next year.

But on Friday night it hit hard.  Living with a million girls can get to be sort of much, and at 1 a.m. I was sitting alone in the living room in tears wondering what on earth I was doing in Italy when everyone I love is in Alaska.  It took me ages to fall asleep, and when I woke up I was exhausted and dazed in a homesickness hangover.  My eyes had that dry, itchy feeling you get in the morning when you cry yourself to sleep while listening to spoken word poetry podcasts.

To make matters worse when I got on the computer, I immediately got a Skype call from my three best friends.  They were all "hi, we miss you so much!"  And I was pretty much on the verge of bursting into tears again.

But yesterday, I was in Orvieto which is filled with secret underground tunnels and ruins and hills overlooking the gorgeous Umbrian countryside.  And at some point mid-morning the chest-crushing feeling that I'd made a mistake leaving Alaska disappeared and was replaced with a whole lot of enthusiasm for secret underground ruins.

Yesterday?  It was perfect.  I got lunch in a trattoria, and we ate wild boar which is a specialty of Orvieto.  To be honest, it just tasted like lamb.  It was a magnificent fall day, with crisp, cool weather and leaves that had just started changing colors.  And last night, I went to Fiesole.  Six of us squeezed into a tiny European car, and tore through the dark city streets.  We climbed up to the top of the town, and stood quiet and awestruck before the sprawling, twinkling metropolis of Florence at midnight.

from Desh's tumblr

I don't claim to know the anatomy of missing someone.  But I think the cure is climbing to the very top of a hill and star gazing with arms stretched out wide enough to hug the night.

Chanting monks at sunset

Four times a day, there are monks chanting in San Miniato al Monte the basilica on top of Piazzale Michaelangelo.  So at sunset today, I climbed up the hill to listen to them.

The cemetery at San Miniato al Monte

It was this sort of ethereal religious experience.  Sitting in the basement of a church on top of a hill overlooking an ancient city of art listening to monks sing Gregorian chants.  There were beautiful painting on the ceilings, and Latin verses were carved into the marble on the floor.

But there was also this intangible human element to it.  One of the monks showed up late, rushing into the room, his robes lifting up just a little to expose the fact that he was wearing Birkenstocks and socks.  He kept rifling through the pages of his songbook looking for the particular page the other monks were on.

There was another monk who could not stop smiling, like the seed of the music had wormed its way deep inside his soul, and he could not stop the light from spilling out through his grin.  He was young, he had not yet learned to look somber while he sang.

This picture reminded me of some photography I'd seen on Dad's Tumblr

On the walk home, the sun was setting.  And there is nothing more beautiful than disappearing light and city and river all rolled into one.

Yumm :) A post monk chanting treat.

The city at sunset.

Hanging up pictures means I'm here to stay

Yesterday, I finally tracked down a cartoleria and bought some masking tape so I could hang up my pictures.

The other day, I was hanging up my laundry and I accidentally dropped a piece of underwear over the edge of our balcony.  And it's stuff like that, the mundane everyday things like buying my groceries and saying "no grazie" to the cashier when she holds up a bag and asks "borsa?" that make me feel like I really live here.

I just wanna blog about food

I live in Italy, the land that invented pizza.  So yeah, I'm eating well.

The produce at the market is enough to make any girl die of fresh fruit love.  But I'm from Alaska.  So that plus 900 million.  It's like everything I eat here is imbibed with some sort of magical Italian deliciousness.  Except bread, all the bread so far is really dry.

Anyway, here is some food photography of my creations.  Enjoy!

Strawberries, raspberries peaches, granola, nutella, and gelato.

Stracitella yogurt, my Italian obsession.

Stir frying eggplant and tomatoes for dinner

Stew beef, eggplant, tomatoes, and basil with bread, pesto, and brie cheese

Lemon yogurt, strawberries, nutella, granola, and basil

My least favorite market woman, and my favorite market man

My least favorite market woman is an old, grumpy German woman.  When I ask her how much raspberries are, she tells me €2, even though €1.50 is written right next to the berries.  And once, when I tried to buy basil from her, she kept talking to me in indecipherable Italian, and eventually took the basil and put it somewhere else so I could not buy it.

I ended up buying basil from a man who is now my second favorite basil selling vendor.  My first favorite basil selling vendor is out of basil a lot.

My favorite market man sells me peaches and sometimes strawberries, when he has them.  He's a middle-aged Indian man, and I point at the strawberries, and say "Cuanto cuesta?"  And then he tells me €1.50, and I tell him no, €1, and he says €1.25.  We go back and forth, and I don't always know what is happening because my Italian is molto male.  And I probably pay too much for my strawberries, but I feel better about it in the end.

Sometimes, my favorite market man smiles really wide and gives me a little banana for free.

Florence at night

If I think about it, I've never really enjoyed a city at night.  Anchorage in the summer is always daytime, and in the winter there's no outdoor nightlife (let's get real here).

So possibly because it's all so new to me, I am in love with Florence at night.  I could spend my whole entire life in the Piazza della Republica after sunset listening to the street performers and watching happy kids riding on the carousel.

Not to mention, Ponte Vecchio at night?  Beautiful, amazing, magical, and so many other descriptive words.

Tonight, two of my roommates and I went off in search of the Boboli Gardens around sunset, and ended taking a couple stops along the way.  Actually a lot of stops, we never ended up at the gardens.  But we did some good documenting!  Here's the products of our night:

 

I LOVE FLORENCE AT NIGHT.