10/30

Ok. So an overview since the last post-

On the 28^th I got up early to see the first group (Sam, David, Ellen and Carly) leave. They were on their way to Venice (yes, tears were shed as good-byes were shared). Josh, Anderson, Lauren and I left OGC at nine to catch two separate trains. Josh and Anderson were headed to Milan via Ancona and Lauren and I were headed to Rome. We got on the train only to notice that we hadn't validated our tickets (it is required). Luckily the conductor had seen us get on and had pity on us so he let it go. Three and a half hours later we were in Rome. Lauren was just passing through but needed to drop some things off at Anderson's friend's apartment. Her stuff was heavy and hard to lug around so I ran to drop my stuff at the YWCA (where I am staying) and ran back to help her out. We hopped onto the number 40 bus and were on our way. We passed the celebration of a church's saint day, which at the time we thought was really cool. We arrived at the friend's apartment and realized that we had no way to get in. The last few times that some of us have gone to visit there were people in and out all the time so we figured that we could just wait. We had plenty of time before Lauren's train was supposed to leave so we waited. Five minutes went by- nothing. Fifteen minutes- nothing. Twenty minutes- nothing. At this point Lauren is starting to freak out a little. He train was leaving in an hour and we had no idea what we were going to do with her things. There were some Italians standing nearby who spoke very good english and tried to help us but to no avail. We were down to 40 minutes before her train left and we were about to give up when the door opened. The look of relief that passed over Lauren's face was great. We left her things on the right floor and ran out to catch the next bus. We thought we were set but as we past by the spot where the celebration had been we noticed that it was over and there were at least 40 people waiting at the bus stop to get on our already full bus. People packed on and it took twice as much time at every stop to get anyone off let alone trying to get anyone new on and still be able to close the doors. She missed her train by almost 15 minutes. However, there was another, more expensive, train that was leaving in 20 minutes that she was able to get on so not all was lost.

This was the first of many bad luck experiences.

I left the train station in search of last minute souvenirs. I was almost done and about to head back when I got a call. I knew what it was about. My dad was calling to say that they had canceled my flight. A swear word or two may have escaped my lips. He told me that Hurricane Sandy was causing thousands of cancelations but he was going to try to figure something out. I headed back to my room and waited for the call that would tell me what to do. It came. I was to fly out in 36 hours at 6:30am today (the 30^th). I was going to spend the night at the airport (there is no public transportation going there that early) and then head to Zurich and then to Chicago. Too bad we didn't see the fine print that said there was going to be a stop over in Philly. I spent the 29^th just walking around Rome and ended up going back to the YWCA early to see if I could just wait there. As I was waiting there in the lobby, I got another call. It was my mom and this time I had no idea what was coming. My new flight was canceled. I broke down. I was sobbing while kids were leaving dance class with their moms. Yeah, I got some weird looks. My new flight was now going to be on Saturday, November 3^rd. It is the same itinerary just on a different day. I was a mess. I was so ready to go home and being told that I had to wait five more days was not what I wanted to here. I tried to pull it together and went up to the desk to find out if I could stay there until the 3^rd. The were so nice and helpful. One even gave me some of her bread. I could tell that they were truly worried and cared about me (my sobbing may have scared them a little too). I am able to stay here until I leave for home and they introduced me to a woman who is in the same situation. She had gone to the airport only to find out that her flight was canceled. Her new flight leaves on Friday. She is very nice and we talked for a while and tried to find out what was going on with the storm. I ended up going to bed early. The last 36 hours had been draining. I may have cried myself to sleep last night.... maybe. In the morning I woke up and was ready to buy a completely new ticket with my own money even if it was going to cost me and arm and a leg. I looked up some options. Either I could be traveling for 40 hours (and fly through Beijing) or I could pay 2000 dollar or more on a ticket. I don't have that kind of money and it was not worth $1000 dollars plus 40 hours of traveling. At that point I knew that I was going to be here for a while so I needed to go to the store to get some food so I wouldn't have to go out to eat all of the time. I went to the store and got some sandwich things and that was when everything sunk in and I accepted that fact that I was going to be here for another few days.

Neto, who came on the train a day after me, saw that I was still in Rome so he called me up and we went out and just walked for hours. Both of us have already seen what there is to see in Rome (I had even gone on one of those sightseeing bus tours on the 29^th) so we were content with just walking around. I have realized that if you want to find the truly cool parts of a city, you must just walk around with no destination in mind. Just walk and when you get tired take out your map, figure out where you are and walk back. I still want to go home like crazy, but I am more ok with staying here a little longer.

P.S.- It didn't hurt that we met some cute Canadians on our way back either :)

10/31

It is raining today so I hung out in the lobby and my room (not that I would have done anything else even if it wasn't raining). In the morning I finished my second book and worked on my knitting. I realized that this is going to be a long few days. I got another book, the new J.K. Rowling book, so I can read some tomorrow but this afternoon I watched movies. As of right now I have watched Despicable Me and Hercules and the Incredibles will probably be next (I kinda need the happy, funny ones right now). I am sure that I do not have enough movies for two more days but I can always watch some more than once. Neto went to the airport to catch his flight but when he got there they told him that it was canceled and they moved him to a flight on Tuesday. My plan for leaving has altered slightly but this time it was my doing so it is a good change. I was going to sleep in the airport on Friday night but instead I am going to arrange to have a taxi come and pick me up at around 4am and take me to the airport. This is probably the safer of the options. It will take about a half hour to get to the airport so that would leave 2 hours to check in and all of that jazz. During the day it would cost 48 euro to get me to the airport but the ladies, here, are not sure if it would be different in the middle of the night. They are going to help me figure it out so that I have enough money but I will book it on Friday. For now, though, I will just hang out, watch movies, knit, and do puzzles on my computer and maybe write some more even though nothing will get posted until I get home (no wifi here).

Ciao for now.

Once home-

The trip home went well. I woke up at 3am to catch a cab to the airport. The driver showed up on time and took me to the airport. I was 2 and a half hours early so the check-in desk had not even opened yet so I was second in line. I met some nice people from Green Bay and a family from England. The flight was great and I met a guy from California who had traveled all around Europe and was now heading to New York to bike around America. I felt the need to remind him that snow was on its way but he said that was the best part. We ended up walking through the Zurich airport together and it was nice not to be alone. Our gates were next to each other so we walked all the way there together. My flight was already boarding as was his so we split ways wishing each other safe travels. I sat in between two Swiss business men on my way to Philly. They worked together so at times they were talking over me (kind of annoying). After lots of reading and some knitting, I made it to the long awaited Philly airport. There I met a guy who had been living in Switzerland for 3 years. We talked quite a bit while waiting in line at immigration and I headed to my flight to Chicago. My face on the almost empty flight to Chicago must have been ridiculous. I had the goofiest smile on my face the whole time. We landed and I practically ran to the baggage claim. I saw my parents and tears of joy began running down my face. If I had not had a heavy backpack I would have ran but instead I walked the fastest I ever had. It was great. I had a great semester and am so glad that I went to Italy these last few months.

Well this is probably my last post from Italy. There will most likely be another post about getting home but this is the last from abroad. Yesterday we had our last dinner in the village. It was nice. We had a pizza party and we always have a good time just sitting around the pizza oven talking. It was nice and the pizza was good as usual. We realized pretty early, though, that there was going to be lots of wine drunk that night. We went through the most wine ever, fitting for our last dinner here. I did realize, however, that when our group gets drunk fights tend to happen and the fights generally centralize around politics-specifically feminism. I don't even remember what last night was about (probably because I tried to stay out of it). I know that part of it was about providing birth control for free but that was about the time I joined a different conversation.
Today we are spending our time cleaning and packing. Tonight we head to a restaurant for a good bye dinner. I am sure tears will be shed and then there is a birthday party for Max so there will be a bunch of 16/17 year old, drunk/high, italian kids running around. We will show up for the party for a little while but none of us are really all that excited to hang out there. Who knows what we may do. I heard rumors of beer pong but we have no ping-pongs or plastic cups.
For now, I will just lay here on my bed with Peepee (the cat) and take a nap. I have no idea what we are going to do to make the time go faster.
-Dinner was great but no tears were shed. Maybe tomorrow morning. For tonight, though, it is daylight savings (the good one) and we are just hanging out listening to music and laughing.

Ciao from Italy, I am sure I will be back again some day soon

(10/23) OLIVE PICKING DAY!!!!! Yeah, so in case you couldn't tell by that, this morning we picked olives. It was great. We went out and laid nets out underneath a few trees and descended on them like locusts. The first tree was pretty small so it was hard for all of us to work on it so some moved onto the next tree. We used little hand rakes and hand rakes on sticks to get most of the olives down and the rest we picked by hand. I soon moved to the larger tree and scaled it like a monkey. It was so much fun. I don't know if you have ever seen an olive tree but they have really thick foliage, at least these did. It felt like I was trying to bushwhack through the forest, only in a tree. It was amazingly hard to see where the branch that you were standing on was which made getting down kinda hard. I got every single olive that I could reach. In other words, I reached every single one on about a quarter of the tree. It felt really good to see my entire area clear of olives. As the morning progressed people got tired or bored and left. By the end Phil noticed that, even though most of our group is Minnesotan (or Wisconsinite), there were only Iowans and Illinoisans (with a person from Washington and one from East Timor). We got a good laugh about that because we knew that if any of them heard that the defensive words would have been flying. Tomorrow we go to press the olives and probably pick more because we only got about 100 kilos today and we probably need more in order to make it worth it.

Next day (10/24):

Pressed some olives today. It was really cool. When we got to the “factory” for lack of a better word, a truck had just pulled in and was unloading its olives. They unload them into shallow boxes so the olives do not bruise each other. We dumped our little boxes into one of the larger ones which was then dumped, along with some other olives (we didn't have quite enough) into a hopper that carried our olives through a sifter, which got rid of the leaves, and through a wash cycle. The olives then shot down into a grinder. Everything was ground up into a paste and the paste went into a centrifuge. The water/ juice and the oil separated and went their different ways. The oil continued on its way to another, smaller centrifuge which got out the rest of the water and pits. The pure oil poured out a spout. It was a beautiful green and smelled amazing (it smelled green if you know what I mean). We bottled it into our 5 liter bottles (to be distributed later) and were surprised to find that we had more oil than the 30 liters worth of containers could hold. I think we ended up with about 35 or so liters. At dinner tonight we had some of it with our bread and it is strong stuff, spicy even.

Next day (10/25):

We finished our project!!!!!!!! A full day of revising, asking the professor to look at it, and revising some more is all it took (it was really not fun). Tonight, however, we are having wild boar. Another odd food to add to my list. I will be home in four days and I can't wait. I love it here and will miss people, don't get me wrong, but I am so ready to see my parents. I don't care that travel plans were changed. I will be just as happy or even more happy to be going home rather than to Sicily. I am ready to go home.

11/17-
So today we started doing actual work on our project (going to buy the waters doesn't really count). We pretty much looked at the mineral contents of the water and looked at any patterns that we could immediately see. The first thing that we noticed was that the conductivity is directly linked to the amount of total dissolved solids. As one goes up the other goes up by pretty much the same amount. I guess I knew that they were linked but it was cool to see it actually in the data. I began to look up locations of the springs where the waters came from and came across a website with all of the information that we needed. It also had a rating system of the waters. Yes, there are people out there who rate the taste and other qualities of bottled mineral water. I think my favorite comment came from ItalianFoodTV.com. And I quote "The people that are comparing Panna to Evien are extremely uneducated in mineral waters as to the taste to the point that they are simple ignorant. Panna and Fiuggi are in totally different classes especially taste, not to mention the obvious mineral content; they have nothing in common except that they are water. Its like someone comparing a Sassicaia wine with a Chianti. I suggest they drink filtered water." Yeah, they are talking about water. Water, I say!! Crazy. For lunch dessert I made myself a "baked apple". I sliced an apple very thin and cooked the pieces in a pan with some cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar. It smelled like fall in a bowl. It was great. In the afternoon I quickly made some marshmallows for our campfire that night. They were actually very easy to make. Dinner consisted of chili and it was amazing; not quite hot enough to clear out my nose but it put in a solid effort. After dinner we started up the campfire and hung out just watching the flames, talking, and laughing. Oh, and of course, s'mores were made. They were not as good without hershey's but they did their best. The marshmallows were great though, much better than store bought.

11/18-
Another day of analysis. We learned that there will be more dissolved solids if the water is exposed to the bedrock for a longer time. We also looked at the nitrate levels in the water and compared them to the amount of farming done around the source. Turns out there is a pretty significant relationship. This also makes sense because nitrate is not really naturally found in bedrock.
The fly infestation continues but we now have fly paper. It is working. It is really kinda gross but amazing how well it works. While working on making maps for our project I listened to the presidential debate. It was very interesting but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I would have been actually watching it. Too bad I don't really have an hour and a half to burn.
I decided that I wanted to do random workouts during the day so while I was waiting for pages to load on the internet (it was crazy slow today) I decided that I had to do some kind of workout. I did planks, wall-sits, push ups, sit ups, all that jazz. I had to do as many as I could during the time it took for the page to load. Sometimes it took longer than I really wanted it to.
We went out for pizza today since we are down 5 people (they went out to do research) It has actually been really kinda nice to have fewer people. For lunches, if some people are out in the field, we all fit at one table. It has been much quieter and generally happier. Now, what this says about the people who aren't here I am not sure. Ok, well I have an idea but I am going to leave that for you, the reader, to decide for yourself.

11/19
Well we are pretty much done analyzing data. Almost all of our figures based on data are done so the next few days will be about putting everything together into a poster. This afternoon I hung out with Nile and Luca (ages 6 and 9) and we shot "arrows". Apparently, according to Luca, I still need to work on my form. We hung another fly tape today and caught probably 30 flies on it so far. We also hung a bag filled with water and some pennies above our door. In theory, it is supposed to keep them away. I think it worked. There were fewer flies flying around as the day went on.
Tonight we had wings for dinner and I had to do clean up. I think that is the closest I have come to throwing up on this trip. It was so gross. On a completely different note, I think there is something wrong with the battery on my computer. It works but is not actually charging fully. It says fully charged but I end up with only a few hours of battery life, sometimes even only an hour. I think it is the voltage that is messing with things. I looked at the battery info and it says that it needs service so I think I may end up bringing the battery in when I get home. Who knows. What I do know, though, is that it is time to hit the hay as they say. Night!

Such a good day. We washed our soil samples and did some analysis, very calm and easy since we have done it once already. We planned out who is going to do each part of the poster. Two of us, Josh and I, are the "project managers" which means that we basically go around to all of the groups and make sure that everyone knows what needs to get done and that everything is formatted the same. We also kinda jump between the groups depending on who needs the extra help. This morning we basically looked for images and read some papers to see if there was any extra information (like for an intro type thing) that we needed. In the afternoon, when our samples were dry, we weighed them, looked at them under a microscope, and did a few other things to find out what the composition of the soil was. For example, one of our samples was 92% clay and silt which helped explain why the amount of carbonate in the soil was so low. By looking under the microscope we were able to see the small metal grains that we had no idea were there, It was very interesting.
Tonight we had risotto (that I made, Rolf did the "recipe" part but I cooked it and did the final touches. Josh, who is also in my work crew, roasted some walnuts for the salad. This, of course, lead to many a joke about nuts. Tomorrow we put everything together into a poster and turn in our last project of these two classes. We are now down to our last "class", our independent/more like pair projects. In two weeks I will be done with the semester. This has gone amazingly fast.

Today was art show day. Yesterday was a complete work day. At the beginning of the day we gathered together to make sure everyone knew what they were going to do and then we split off. I had a quick project but I had done a bunch of work on it before the actual work day. The title of the show was before and after so we had to do something that connected to that as well as connecting to something that we had learned so far. As I was sitting on a train, thinking about different projects, I looked around and saw graffiti. That was when I thought about combining the cave paintings that we had learned about with the "cave" paintings of today. I did a bunch of drawings and research to figure out what I should do. I got my spray paint and found some rocks in the field to do a test run on (I had never spray painted on rock before). That turned out well so I found an even bigger rock (about 3ft x 2.5ft and about 200 pounds). One of the guys helped me get it out of the field and onto a wheelbarrow. We were not able to make it in one trip which was too bad but it was crazy heavy and we were walking through freshly plowed soil so there was pretty much no solid ground. After setting it down three or four times we finally made it. Wheels are a great thing (ps this was all done in rain). I was able to wheel it to one of the garages where I cleaned off the mud and dried it off so that the paint would actually stick. I did my spray-painting and was done by 10:30am. I came back to it throughout the day to make some edits and such but while everyone else was doing very detailed pieces I was done. It kinda made me uneasy but cave paintings were relatively simple and graffiti is meant to be quick (unless you want to get caught).
Everything turned out great and so it was time to bring everything together. We put everything into place in the gallery (only a little arguing with the teacher was needed... I won by the way). We had all afternoon free so we pretty much just hung out and did a gelato run (again, in the rain). Soon enough, we had to dress up and go down to the openning. Everything went well and the few people who came liked what they saw. It was indian night for dinner so we had turkey with a curry cream sauce along with coconut rice and dal. It was really good and even the picky eaters seemed to like it. It is that time of night again, where the eye lids droop and the bed is warm and inviting. Good night!

Our last fieldtrip is officially over. We got into port at 7:15 this morning after a wavey and therefore restless sleep. At this point I knew that I didn't feel as well as I should have. I believe I have caught the monster. However, I still had time to change some plans to do whatever I could to help my body fight this thing off. I decided that going to a concert and then staying up all night after very little sleep the night before was probably not the best idea. It would have been fun to hang out with everyone but I think that fun may wear off when it is 3am and I am surrounded by 8 very drunk people. I am sure the concert will be great but since I am not actually a huge fan (I was going to go just to hang out and have fun) of his music I am not to devistated or even really upset about missing it. A few other people who were planning on going to Rome decided to hang back as well. One (Rachel) is dying... ok not really but it sounds like she is coughing up organs or something. Another (Phil) didn't want to stay up all night (I think he didn't want to get drunk) and didn't think it was worth it to get a hostel. If there had been a train that left at midnight (which wouldn't get us back until 3) I may have gone but the last train out leaves a half-hour into the concert. In the end I think I chose the right thing. I had a great dinner-pesto caprese- I will get some reading in and I get to go to bed early!

-Next day-

I can not tell you how glad I am that I didn't go to Rome. I got 12 solid hours of sleep last night. I got up and had a great breakfast, uploaded photos without having internet problems (it has crashed since then). While I was adding captions to my photos Laura came by and I learned that the Rome group was still in Rome. At this point they should have been just about to get off the train. Apparently there were “group problems” and they missed the train. They won't be back until 2:45pm now. If they sleep it will be in the nasty Rome train station. We think that the “group problems” were more like drunk yelling/fighting. I am sure we will hear about it after they come back and get some sleep. We may even get some exhausted ranting out of the deal. Like I said, I am so glad to be here having gotten 12 hours of peaceful sleep.

Probably more to come later today. We will see.