One week, not that I'm counting

I'm totally counting.

This is the last week of my extremely long winter break that I have been pretending is not just a countdown until moving to Jordan.  It hasn't been a countdown to Jordan because I've been traveling through Turkey and Israel with Valerie, and saying my goodbyes to Florence, and bumming around Budapest. 

But as much as I have tried to adopt the live-in-the-moment motto of every 20-something I've met this year, I am just not a live-in-the-moment person.  At least not in a make-out-with-boys-and-refuse-to-label-it-a-relationship-drink-your-life-away-smoke-too-much-pot-travel-every-weekend-while-only-checking-your-bank-account-balance-every-two-or-three-weeks-and-that's-what-living-in-the-moment-is way.

I am a countdown person.  A make-sure-you-know-what-you're-doing-in-three-months person.  A write-down-every-penny-you-spend-and-on-what-because-summer-job-money-can-only-get-you-so-far person.

I have tried showing up with no plan, and it's stressful and annoying and you never get as much done as you think you will and more often than not you don't have fabulous adventures you just get lost and it makes me want to find a place with wifi so I can pull out my iTouch and look up basic facts about where I am and what I'm doing.

Point being that I've spent the last three months reading and researching Amman, Jordan, and the suspense, at this point, is killing me.  And I'm trying to be sentimental and preemptively nostalgic about this being my last week in Italy.  But, to be honest, I'm just ready to go.

When I knew that I was going to be living abroad, I wanted to accurately represent what that was like on this blog.  I wanted to cover the highs and the lows.  But the truth is that when it gets bad, I don't want to post because I don't want it to seem like I'm using this time to feel any emotion but wonder.  And when it's good, I don't want to write because I'd rather be off laughing and enjoying whatever it is that's making me happy.  As a result, I've mostly filled those empty spaces on this blog with pictures and hoped no one has noticed.

There is a reason that I decided not to stay in Italy for a year, and instead spend second semester in Jordan.  And that reason is that I don't quite belong here.  It is as simple as the girl who picked the wrong college and decided to transfer.  I've met wonderful people.  I've had fabulous adventures.  I will be sad to see Florence go.  But.  There is no denying that being in Italy just wasn't right for me, Elika Roohi.

And this is all a really long winded way of saying that I have one week left.  And it seems like it will last forever.

I just really like suspension bridges

I spent the last week in Budapest, Hungary with my (former) roommate Deshani.  We had a faaaaaabulous time experiencing central Europe, climbing up hills, being cold, eating bland German-esque food, hanging out with the super cool couchsurfing community from Budapest and Debrecen, and walking back and forth over several of the many suspension bridges that connect Buda and Pest over the Danube River.

And through this trip I discovered that 1. couchsurfing is so. awesome. and 2. I just really like suspension bridges.  Here are a handful of the 200-odd pics I took of bridges in Budapest:

Arrivederci, San Gallo

I moved out of the apartment yesterday.

I have now started the stage of my winter break where I'm living out a backpack while my suitcase with a year's worth of stuff in it hangs out in the corners of living rooms of friends.

It was a good five months on Via San Gallo.  There were so many good times and laughs in that apartment, and I think I will really miss the pizza place downstairs and the proximity to Il Centro. 

But it's time to move on.  Next week, Deshani and I are going to Budapest.  And then I come back to Florence for a few more days.  And after that I start life in Jordan.  I really can't wait for next semester to start!!!

The not-so-great moments

In the grand scheme of things, my trip with Valerie went really well.  No one stole anything from us, I got a super cheap really cute haircut, we didn't miss any planes, we both bought these really awesome harem pants from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.  But.  Traveling is full of these moments that you have to embrace with an open, flexible mindset.  So, without further ado, a list!

1.  Ending up in some sketchy alleys on our first night in Istanbul.  We got into Istanbul in the afternoon, and made it to our hostel by the evening, and then we decided to go out to dinner.  On the way home from our okay and sort of pricey meal (re: 12 lira/$6, we were in the tourist part of town) we managed to get hopelessly lost and end up in some sort of sketchy looking alleys.  Neither of us had slept in the last 36 hours (Valerie because she was flying for 36 hours, and me because I had spent the night before sitting alone and freezing outside the Roma Termini-but that's a different story), and we didn't have a map.  Eventually we flagged down a taxi, and told him to take us to the Mavi Guesthouse (a GREAT hostel).  But he didn't know where it was.  He also didn't know where the Blue Mosque or the Four Seasons was.  So we ended up in a 15 lira ($7.50) taxi ride where the driver pulled over every so often to ask for directions.  Of course we managed to find the tadi driver who didn't know where he was going.

2.  Pamukkale, or not.  Going to Pamukkale wasn't an original part of our travel plan.  But when we stayed in Cappadocia, we met several people who told us we had to go there, and they made it sound really appealing.  We had been planning on spending two days in Konya, but truthfully there's not much there besides Rumi's grave and the accompanying museum.  So we decided to get up super early the next morning and take a bus to Denizli and then a shuttle to Pamukkale.  Firstly, we barely caught the bus.  The man we bought the bus tickets from told us (or so we thought... language barriers) to wait in front of the office at 7 a.m.  So we were there... until 7:20... with no bus.  So then we booked it to the otogar and barely made the bus.  Which was supposed to take five or six hours to get to Denizli.  But it took more like eight and a half.  So we didn't arrive until mid-to-late afternoon.  But we figured we might as well take advantage of the little sunlight we had left, and take a shuttle to Pamukkale.  The guidebook said they would take about 20-30 minutes.  It was more like an hour.  And on top of everything, we missed our stop.  We ended up at the end of the road in quickly fading twilight.  Valerie and I came really close to stealing a dolmus.  But we didn't, and we made it back to the otogar in Denizli and caught a night bus back to Istanbul.

the one pic taken that day: "WHERE ARE WE?"

3.  Staying at the Marom Hotel.  When Val and I were making plans for accommodations we ran into some problems about where to stay in Haifa.  On the one hand, we could stay at a hostel down in the port, but that would mean a lot of time spent traveling back and forth between our hostel and the gardens.  Or on the other hand, we could stay at a hotel up on the mountain, but that would be pretty pricey.  We ended up at a sort of middle ground, picking a really cheap hotel that advertised itself as "close to the Baha'i gardens."  It wasn't.  I mean, yes, it's closer than Florence, Italy or Fairbanks, Alaska.  But we still had a lot of problems getting to and from there by bus, and sometimes that trip took us more than two hours... which leads us to...

4.  That time it took us more than two hours to get from the ITC building to our hotel.  The previous night, Valerie and I had made it from the Pilgrim Center to our hotel no problem on bus 23.  Brimming with success, we were excited to try it again now that we knew what we were doing.  So we got on bus 23, and waited patiently for it to get to Palmach Street, following its progress diligently on our map of Haifa.  We were happily anticipating our arrival at the stop next to our hotel, when suddenly our bus made an unexpected turn and we ended up traveling through this mysterious tunnel for several minutes!  We ended up at a bus depot in the port, and when we tried to ask the bus driver where we were and what had happened he opened the door and shooed us off impatiently telling us he only spoke Hebrew without even glancing at our map.  We ended up waiting for a bus back up the mountain for about half and hour, and when we finally got off that bus it was still a twenty minute walk to where we were staying.  We had left the World Centre property a little after nine, and didn't make it back to our hotel room until a little before midnight.

These were the biggest problems we encountered on our trip.  Although, we spent a lot of our time lost.  No so much because either of us is horrifically bad at directions, but because we were too impatient to use a map.  And there was the portion of our trip where Valerie only had one pair of socks.  Or the number of times we ended up stranded in pouring rain.  Overall though, I think we managed alright.

Visiting Haifa

On our travels, Valerie and I had the blessing to visit the Baha'i World Centre in Haifa, Israel.  And it was wonderful!  Even though we were only there for a short time, I went away feeling radiant.

Earlier this week wasn't the first time I was ever in Haifa though.  The picture on the left was taken when I was four years old, and my family went to go visit my Grandma who was working at the World Centre at the time.

Being a Baha'i is this huge monumental part of who I am, and it always has been.  I mean, my parents met because of the Faith, so without I wouldn't even exist!  Not to mention every single Sunday of my childhood that was spent driving back and forth to Baha'i school (sometimes a really long drive) or every Baha'i book night at home or going through intensives during high school or years and years of attending feast.

I think one of the things I miss most this year is living in a place with a decent sized Baha'i community.  There aren't that many Baha'is in Florence and only one other youth (who I've only met once).  So seeing Valerie and getting to go Haifa was completely wonderful.  Even though three days in Haifa is far, far, far too short.

I don't talk about religion that much on this blog.  But one of my goals for this new year and new semester is to write more about faith.  And also to read a Baha'i book and remember to say my obligatory prayers on a more consistent basis and learn all the names of the members of the Universal House of Justice and also the American National Spiritual Assembly and in general to understand Baha'i administration better.

I bear witness that he who hath known Thee hath known God, and he who hath attained unto Thy presence hath attained unto the presence of God.  Great, therefore, is the blessedness of him who hath believed in Thee, and in Thy signs, and hath humbled himself before Thy sovereignty, and hath been honoured with meeting Thee, and hath attained the good pleasure of Thy will, and circled around Thee, and stood before Thy throne.

- Bahá'u'lláh