Ah! Paris! C'est la vie!

Bonjour!
So I have been in Paris since yesterday evening. My hostel is right next to the Moulin Rouge and about a million places to eat, so it has a very good location. Right now it's almost  midnight, and I am exhausted after walking around for 12 hours straight today. I woke up very early to start my day. I was going to go to the Louvre, but it ended up that it's closed on Tuesdays! So I went on to the Jardin des Tuileries - The Royal Garden. It was beautiful! I also walked to Pont Neuf, Pont des Arts, Saint Germain Cathedral, the Obelisque, the Hotel des Invalides, Parc du Champs de Mars (in front of the Eiffel Tower), the Eiffel Tower, Jardins du Trocadero, the Arc de Triomphe. I love it here. There is so much to see and do with a ton of wonderful sights. There was an amazing market, in front of the Eiffel Tower on the Jardins du Trocadero. It had all kinds products from purses to scarves to jewelry and of food from sausages to cheese to crepes to hot wine! I ate chicken Paella for dinner as I sat in front of the Eiffel Tower, and then I had hot wine (or vino brulé as it is in Italy which I had for the first time this past Sunday, and it's incredible!), vin chaud as it's called here.

The worst things about Paris so far as I have seen are, of course, the excessive smoking of cigarettes which I despise, the annoying vendors that walk around trying to sell you the same thing over and over, and the petitioners (I don't really know what they're doing, but they go around asking people for signatures and donations for something I don't even know of). Like when I went to the Locks of Love bridge (Pont des Arts), I was literally harassed by five people at the same time as they tried to get me to sign something and give them money. They were pushing me and shoving their papers in my face... No. Not a fan. Other than that, I love Paris. The architecture is spectacular of course. I still have 2 more full days of Paris until I leave on Friday for my next destination. Tomorrow I plan I using my ticket for the Louvre that I already bought last night online, going to see Notre Dame, the opera house and the Sacree Couer which is a 10 minute walk from my hostel. Then on Thursday... Versailles maybe? I would like to see it. I can't believe that I've only been here for a little more than 24 hours and I have already taken almost 400 pictures! Poor Raul (my camera for those of you who don't know)... he will be so exhausted by the end of this month.

I'm going to sleep now. so my already sore body can rest for another long day of touristy adventures tomorrow. Bonne nuit mes amis!
 

Sanctuary

The last week of school is this week. I have 3 finals to take, and I really need to study for every single of one of them. The internet that usually appears at our apartment as decided to not let us on anymore... so whenever I need to access one of my books, which is entirely online, I have to go to school. Considering how much I hate the school, that was obviously not an option. So today, after doing a Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban workout that I made myself, I decided to venture out of my apartment on a blind search for a cafe, that is open on Sundays, has free wifi, a bathroom, and good coffee and food. After trekking up and around and down and across the Porto Nuova area... Alas! I find a place called Exki Cafe, and it fits every single one of my criteria. Here I shall stay until I complete i miei compiti italiani (my Italian homework) as well as an extensive amount of  Business Law and E-commerce. I am so happy that I have found this place. It is no Starbucks, but it will surely do. 
I wanted to send a couple of packages to America for a few special people, but I found out it will cost me 60 euro to send a package that is 5 kilo! Che cazzo!? Sorry guys... but I still have things to buy before I leave on the 17th! I got the majority of them when I went shopping Friday with Jillian. She showed me a store on Via Roma that doesn't cost you an arm and a leg to buy something. After shopping we ran into some USAC girls, and we all went to dinner. Once I got home, I had to leave again, because I was invited to my Brazilian friend's birthday party. It was really fun! There were so many people, though and the majority of them were Brazilian and Argentinian! So to speak, I had to use my broken Italian or my rusty Spanish, but it's good because i got to practice :) I'm getting better at it, but there are still a lot of words that I don't know. By the end of the night, I was mixing my Italian and Spanish into multilingual sentences. Talent.
Alright, now that I have updated all of my goings-on, I really do need to do homework. Ciao! 

School -_-

I just finished a powerpoint for my European Union class tomorrow. My all time faaaaavorite class. And today I just had my presentation for E-commerce which went pretty well I think. Our professor really liked ours for what I could tell, and next week we have our finals... 3 for me since I'm auditing Elementary Italian 2. And once I finish my finals, I leave on the 17th for... well, I'm going to wait until after I've been :) I cannot wait to be out of school for a whole month.
So I babysat on Monday and Tuesday as per usual, and I bought Matteo two new books in English, The Hobbit and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He loves them! We used to read this one book in English of his, but we both reeally hate it, so I got him ones that we'll both like. Also, his parents, Angela and Georgio, invited me to go with them to their cabin in the mountains! How cool is that? Pretty cool I'd say. I've never actually been to the mountains when there's snow. I hope I can go with them. Tuesday night I ate dinner with them. We had soup, salad, fish, fruit and wine, course. 

This is a short one, because I'm exhausted and I have to wake up early in the morning for Italian, again.

Buonanotte! I will try to write a longer, more informative one next time.

Mi dispiace!

I  am so sorry everyone! I didn't even realize it has been almost a month since I last posted! I have been up to the usual thing. Traveling, food, and fun. And school, I guess, which I am beginning to like less and less and the year progresses. I'm not a fan of the professors besides my Italian one, and the school is just so boring in itself. I still babysit Matteo on Mondays and some Tuesdays. It's so much fun babysitting him. We had a leaf fight in the park the other day, and he was all smiles, and he always tries to race me everywhere! I always let him win, of course. Well, usually. Until he began to cheat. Haha. I forgot how much I like kids. I'm glad I started babysitting him. I haven't done anything like it since I tutored Spanish to Elementary kids when I was in high school.

Halloween was a fun night. It was my friend Jillian's birthday, so we all went out to dinner at Amicimiei and then to a couple of clubs. It was a late night, so I'm glad there was no school the next day because it was All Saint's Day. We had stopped going out as much for a little while, but after Halloween, we tried some new places that we hadn't been to before. There are some really nice clubs in Torino that play some great music.

On November 9-12 we were in Amsterdam. I loved it so much! The architecture was beautiful. Every apartment was completely different than the one next to it. I can't believe how much detail was put into each building. There are cyclists EVERYWHERE! They run the city. There are definitely more people on bicycles than in cars. I almost got run over multiple times because I kept accidentally walking the bike lane, and the only difference between the bike lane the pedestrian sidewalk is the color of the brick, so...no buona. Our hostel was okay. The security was good and so were the rooms, but one thing that was completely unhelpful was the fact that we could only buy a towel for 4,50 euro! Which was all amounts of ridiculous, because why would we want to carry to around with us after we buy it? We don't have room for that nonsense. Christina and I refused to buy them because we're cheap, so we just used our scarves as towels which worked out pretty well because they are so big.
Of course, we went to the red light district when we were there. I can't believe that it's really so provocative like that! I mean, I heard that there were women everywhere doing that, but I didn't really know how true it was. Christina and I felt awkward as we walked through the allies flooded with red light and men. Haha. Besides the red light district, I could definitely live there, but I'm not  a big fan of Dutch. It's not that pretty of a language, and I don't really care to learn it... Saturday, we were wondering around the city going in no particular direction and we happened upon an open market which had everything we could have needed. It was a huge market and Christina and I couldn't resist buying some things for ourselves :) Including some nice, cheap watches that they guy fitted to our wrists and replaced the old batteries for us. We got a delicious waffle with cinnamon and powdered sugar from Wally's Waffles in the market. It was incredible! So fresh, he made it right in front of us. We went to Madame Tussaud's the day we were leaving. We had a whole lot of fun in there. I completely forgot that I had already been to a Madam Tussaud's in New York City, but nevertheless, it was still a whole lot of fun.

On Sunday, we went from Amsterdam to Brussels for our school field trip. I was actually pretty excited about it, until we got there and experienced it. I thought we were going to be getting exclusive tours around Parliament and having discussions with multiple influencers, but nooooo. It was basically a total of 6 hours of 3 different people talking to us about the EU. Talk about bo-ring. It was like I was sitting in class, except that I had to dress up. Since we were in Belgium, We (be prepared Marcus...) ate a lot of waffles and drank a lot of beer. We went to this really cool pub called Delirium. It was huge and had a plethora of beer! I only drank dark beer though (because you taught me right, dad). But the bartender picked out some really good, inexpensive ones for me. Another really popular thing in Belgium in french fries. I wouldn't have thought that. And they eat them with mayonnaise.... interesting. They speak Dutch as well as French in Belgium. Not was I expected, but when you think about it, it makes sense. It was very dreary when we went. There was no sun through Wednesday when we left, but Belgium does have some beautiful aspects just like most cities. Some of the architecture is still from the 1600s and the churches and parks are always spectacular.
When we got back to Torino on Wednesday, I had to go straight to school for 4 hours. It was not fun. I was particularly exhausted from traveling.

Today, I just got back from London. I really enjoyed it! There is so much to do and see, and all of the Christmas lights and other decorations were so beautiful! I love Christmas decorations, and they were all over London. There were a couple of things I wasn't too jazzed about... one is that there are way way way too many people. It's a bit vexing. Two is the amount of trash there was in some areas. Pretty gross and pungent at times. I saw all of the necessary London sights. I went to Big Ben, the London Bridge, the Tower Bridge (SO pretty at night), the London Eye, the Peter Pan Statue Platform 9 3/4 (it was really disappointing, but it was cool to be at Kings Cross Station), the Millennium Footpath (the bridge that is destroyed by Death Eaters in the Harry Potter 5 movie), Buckingham Palace, the National Portrait Museum, Westminster Abbey and Shakespeare's Globe. But since all of us are running low on funds, we didn't get to do a couple of things such as going inside of Westminster Abbey (where Elizabeth I had her funeral and where Harry and Kate were married). We couldn't go on the Tower Dungeon tour or in the London eye. We were supposed to pay for the museum of the Globe Theater, but we found a way around that. It was pretty lame anyway, so it wouldn't have been worth the 13 pounds for an admission ticket. The Globe is now only a replica anyway. I would have payed if it were real. I would like to go back to London another time and do more when I have more to spend.
The weather was freezing! On Thursday, it was cold and started raining at night. We had a wonderfully delicious dinner of french fries (or chips) and hot chocolate. Haha. We were all missing our family, but we made the best of being in London for thanksgiving. Friday, the weather was pretty good, so we got to see a lot including the changing of the guards. It probably seems stupid, but I really thought the guards would have been like they look in the movies. Wearing red uniforms, massive, black, furry hats and standing on the outside of the gates so I could try to make them laugh. Nope. I could not even try to converse with them, but the changing of the guards was still cool to watch. Saturday the weather was terrible! It was raining, super windy and freezing air.
Even though the weather was bad, I loved London. It was also nice to have Starbucks again. I haven't had it in 3 months! I will be uploading pictures soon.

Una Nuova Citta!

This weekend Christina, Jillian and I went to Lisbon, Portugal! It was so much fun and such a beautiful city! To me, Portuguese sounds like German.... but it's basically Spanish with extremely different pronunciations! We didn't get to spend as much time there as we would have liked to, but we can always go back, and it was just a last minute trip considering we bought the tickets on Thursday! Our plane left at 8:00 pm Friday, or it was supposed to, it was delayed 2 hours so we had to wait at the airport, and we didn't get to Lisbon until past midnight! So that was a little upsetting. After climbing a mountain of stairs from the metro, we went straight to our hostel (Old Town Hostel). It was so nice and very cute. Right after we put our stuff in our room that we shared with 5 other girls, we left to go out. The guy that worked at the front desk was just getting off work, so he took us to a bar to try a traditional Portuguese drink which was very nice of him. Then he introduced us to a lot of his friends and they showed us around that night to some a popular club called Jamaica. They had such a good musical selection. I was impressed. While there I met some sweet guys from Belgium and Scotland.We got back home VERY late. We only got 2 hours of sleep that night because we wanted to wake up early and see the city.

We got a complimentary breakfast of bread, cheese, butter (seriously the best butter I ever had), jam, cereal, coffee, juice and anything else we could find in the kitchen. Then we went on a walking tour of the city, where we were taken to a huge market at the end. It was super cool and had a lot of interesting objects to buy. After the tour was over, we went to find a restaurant for lunch and chose the worst place ever! We all hated our food. It was terrible, but at least our server was nice. We found a Starbucks on our way back to the hostel, so that gave us some more energy to get all the way back. There are so many hills in Lisbon! It was exhausting. Once we got back, we passed out for 2 more hours before we went to dinner at 8:30 which was made by the people who worked at our hostel. It was WAY better than our lunch. There were about 30 people at the dinner sitting around one big table, one small table and a couple of couches (which is where we sat). We met so many nice people at dinner! 2 Italians, a German, a Spaniard, a girl from California, a guy from Lisbon, and a Montenegrin. After dinner we were taken on a pub crawl sponsored by the hostel by a guy named Tiago... haha. He was awesome. There ended up being about 40 people on the pub crawl, and we met so many people!

We left the pub crawl early because we had to make it to our flight back that was leaving at 6:50 AM on Sunday.... terrible, but we figured we would sleep on the plane. Right after we got on the plane, all of us were out like a light. Haha. We arrived back in Torino at about 10:30. Christina and I ate lunch, and passed out super early (sorry I couldn't skype with you, mom and dad). It was a very exciting and eventful weekend. I definitely loved Portugal and hope to go back. I will stay in the same hostel because it was so cheap and nice!

Relaxing Sundays

Big news! Thursday, Christina and I booked tickets to go to London for Thanksgiving! We're going with a few others from USAC, and we all have a big dinner of Chipotle and Starbucks for our Thanksgiving dinner. It's going to be so much fun!
This weekend was a lot of fun. Nothing too crazy. Friday night, I went out with some friends to get some sushi. It was really good! After dinner we went to a hookah lounge, then to a place called Barz8 for some really fruity and pretty drinks that took the bartender about 30 minutes to make because of how articulate they were, and then we went to Murazzi for about an hour, and we saw people lighting lanterns to float into the sky!

Saturday USAC took us to the Alba Truffle festival. They had told us that we would either love the truffles or hate them because of how potent they are. Aloooot of people hated them, but I liked them, maybe it's because I really like mushrooms, but it was still really except the smell of them was a little too pungent for me. There was so many samples of incredible cheese and wine and chocolate and oils and bread and truffle creams to try! We couldn't have free samples of actual truffles by themselves because they're so expensive. It costs 3,000 euro for one kilo of truffles.... so I obviously didn't buy any truffles. Haha. They're so expensive because truffles are grown underground and are very hard to find, so pigs and dogs are usually used to find them. Pigs because they are naturally attracted to truffles and love to eat them, but dogs are more commonly trained and used these days because pigs would eat them, too much! 

We were going to go to Ikea today to get a comforter for Christina, but that didn't happen. We're generally too lazy on Sundays, but we still might go.

Well, make sure to keep checking on my picture pages because I do upload new ones onto some of the pages or create new ones every once in a while!

Ciao ciao.

Brrrrrrrr!

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted. Not having internet access all the time makes it difficult! I might have to buy an internet stick soon because Skyping is next to impossible. I don't have e-commerce today so that's 3 hours of my life that I don't have to spend sitting in a classroom :)
Babysitting is going really well. I love Matteo! He is adorable and such a smarty. I pick him up from school every Monday, then I take him home, make him dinner and I show him some movies in English that he needs to see... and they help his English. So far I've only showed him The Lion King and the first half of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. He loves them both! I think it's important to pass on such great films to the next generation.
Thursday I met up with my language partner. Her name is Sara and she's very sweet. Her English isn't bad at all. Two other girls from USAC also have language partners, but one of theirs ditched, so we all just hang out together instead. It's Layla and Oana, Jillian and Marco (no more) and of course Sara and I. Saturday night, Sara, Matteo (Sara's boyfriend) and Oana took us out to Karaoke at a place called Luca's Pub. It was a lot of fun! We met up with a bunch of their friends, and I'm quite proud of myself that I remember the majority of their names. When we went on stage, Sara, Matteo, Nicolas, Oana, Jillian and I all sang Barbie Girl and Baby One More Time. I'm pretty sure the crowd fell in love with us... no big deal.
I haven't been traveling as much as I would like, but I hope to do a lot more of that in the near future. I have written out all of my plans, and now I just have to execute them. This weekend we're going to Alba for a truffle festival -- truffle as in the mushroom, not chocolate -- and Christina and I might hit up Milan on Saturday night when we get back form Alba. It should be a good weekend.
I've been looking into my Christmas break destinations since I have a whole month! Many places are being considered, and they will all be very exciting, but I know I can't wait to go back to Sweden for Christmas :) I'm sad that I can't be in my home for Christmas, but even though I can't be with one family for Christmas, I am lucky enough to have another one to go to.
It's been getting really cold at night and pretty chilly during the day, as well. If it's this cold to me in the fall... I'm scared to imagine how I'm going to be feeling when winter actually hits! I hope I survive. Living in Texas my whole life has not properly prepared me for this! I wish we had a bigger fireplace in our apartment, or one that we knew how to work. Ah well.
I finally got my glasses in the mail! So I was excited about that (thanks mom and dad for sending them!), even though I had to pay 53 euros to pick them up from the post office. They work great, but I can definitely only wear them when I read because otherwise they make me dizzy.
I have two exams tomorrow, one in Italian and one in European Union (ugh). The Italian one is a final because it's the end of Italian 1, so next week I start Italian 2. Should be interesting.
Ho fame! Time to go eat. Ciao ciao!