italians like it strong.

their alcohol that is.

milano is quite expensive. i knew this going in, but oh my. i think i am going to not eat lunch for a few weeks and maybe ill be able to live until i come back in june.

We left friday afternoon, i bought a massive dark chocolate bar from this lindt store that is in the cntral station in pisa and that was very jolly. was going with kenny and sarah. sarah has a crppled knee, an important aspect.

on the train we spent like 20 minutes searching for a damn seat, cause clearly we are antisocial and wanted a car to ourselves, finally we gave up, and asked this guy that was laying across three seats if three seats were open. There were actually two other people in that car with him, whom we thought were his friends until we switched trains in genova and he came with us towards milan and they stayed on the train to torino. we learned the "italian slide" right off the bat. when the two others came back, they were young students from rome, (the other guy was in graphic desgn school after dropping out of schol at sixteen and now is 27) they were bf and gf, we learned that the girl was riding free as they bought one ticket between the two of them. So, whenever the ticket puncher people came by her bf who was loud and annoyng as it was, yelled brace and we all lifted our legs and she rolled under the seat. she injured herself several times on the trash can by the window (simlar to the one tht contained puke on our train from rome to pisa which i accdentally knocked open and spilled over this girl emily, i make great first mpressions) on the way down. her bf was insane, very funny, but slightly over the top. he tried to tell us good strip joints in milan, or "sexy bars" as he called them, he felt the need to demonstrate what a sexy bar is with his own body. that was certainly not the highlight of the trip. the other guy was from milan but lives in london, so he had this italian-english accent when speaking english. a strange but good thing i must say. he taught us a lot of younger expressions, he was entertaining. he had a very large thorn through his ear. but other than that i suppose he was normal. he transferrred trains with us to milan, where we just talked and talked... there was this other italian girl in the car with us and when davide started teaching kenny vulgar langauge we think we may have offended her. i didnt really care. he texted us on saturday night to invite us to the club he was going to, and yadda yadda, we ddnt go. he was our first italian friend of the trip.
when we arrived in milan we were all giddy like two year olds, it was SO nice to see commercialism and tall buildings and what not... pisa is beautiful, but so damn small and
historical and not capitaliastic. not sure what that means. our hotel was very close to central station, which was indeed convenient, but we were totally in the center of the indian rose selling and african sunglass selling capital of italy. our hotel was amazingly not sketchy, surprisingly nice, in fact above and beyond anything we could have expected. this was
when we all discovered i am an idiot. i left my
passport in pisa. The guy at the front desk wasn't too friendly about it. I had to have it to register. so, this started our venture to experience italian bureacracy. we spent an hour at the questura. t was not all bad, as everything you've ever heard about italian policeman is true, they were also very helpful,
indeed. so i got thsi stamp and am now forever in the italian government system, they know a lot about me, ncluding name and addresses of all of my immediate family members. then we went to the duomo. big famous church. it was amazing, i cant even describe how amazing it
was. so we walked around a bit, looked in some
windows of prada, gucci, armani, etc. took a picture or two with ronnie mcdonnie and we went back to the hostel, so kenny and i could go back out after dropping the old cripple woman
off. Kenny and I took a cab to Corso Como, a
trendy flashy area of milan with all sorts of clubs and bars. it rocked. everyone was so damn good looking and well dressed. we ended up going into this bar called pitbull and we met
there two english women, mid twenties, one was a writer and the other was a tv producer. i kept aying "dodgy" to them. soon after we met this guy who was some sort of invesent banker i think (TOTAL weirdo from the states), and his friend, the fashion designer. it was sooo cool, i have all his contact stuff cause we talked about me doing an internship. he invited us both, kenny and i, but i will alreayd be
back in the states, to the summer milan and paris fashion shows, which are apparently invite only. he was very cool.
that place was crazy full of rich people (very unlke us). we ended up just talking to these people all night, and then when it closed we
took a taxi home after walking around the street some more.
we went all over the world on saturday. spent plenty of money, saw lots of churches, art, blah blah blah. i wore heels by the end of the day i was in as bad of walking shape as the cripple. we shopped at gucci and prada, and
louis v. and all those places, like kenny actually s intending to buy stuff. it was insane. who pays 435 euro for a bag? agh.
saturday night we drank some and ate at this restaurant next to our hotel... let's paint a picture: it was cuban, mexican, italian restaurant, run by chinese people. there was a very large black woman breastfeeding her baby (who looked like a corpse or doll) out in the open. two couples making out at their repective tables, three waiters with mullets and faces that looked like they had been repeatedly hit by cars, and a couple that kept going into teh
bathroom together. Everypone else in teh restaurant was normal and fine, and it was very good food, and certainly not cheap. oh you cant forget the indian rose selling picture takers that were for some reason allowed in teh reatsurant to harass us (we think it was a gang thing) while eating. think finding nemo "mine! mine! mine!" but with "foto! foto! foto!" the pope died while we were eating.
i killed kenny on sunday. no i didnt, but i almost. t went both ways clearly. at lunch we were attacked my a bee the size of my
fist. the train ride hoem was without lights. and dark choclate filled with very strong alcohol that i wasnot expecting. and an old italian couple that kenny felt the need to discuss the beauty of tuscany with.i felt the need to walk all teh way home, it was delighful, except for the car that thought i was a prostitute, and the arno river at 10 pm
is beautful. so is pisa. when i got home my family was asleep. so i went wthout dinner, this was sad. sadder than the pope.
oh dear, im sure ive offended.
just ate at teh mensa, the dining hall here. we sat with a nice guy, but i think he was shy.
ugh, class is going to start... i really enjoy writing and readng italian, not so much talking. its culturl actvty time... sarah and mght intervew the lngere lady in one of the markets. haha, who knows.

blah blah blah. someday i wll uplod pctures that actually matter, but am struggling wth my camera. have 200 piuctures but no way of gettng them off my camera.

AG