My favorite video!

My friend/roommate in Orvieto, Becky, put this together this video of our semester! I could watch it over and over again because it really shows what our life was like in the monastery - along with all of our picnics, hikes, and more. I love it. I'm not sure if the link works yet but hopefully it does... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuVc2WzEYLo

One of Tim's photos :)

Day #5 in California

November 17, 2013 – Sunday

On Sunday morning, we went swing dancing in the park. This was almost as scary as Saturday’s trolley ride but swing dancing was more awkward. Apparently in the park every Sunday, they teach you how to swing dance for the first 45 minutes or so and then it’s just a free-for-all of people asking you to dance for the next two hours. It’s safe to say that I was pretty darn anxious about this because dancing with strangers is definitely not on my top 100 list of fun things to do. Sara loves dancing, though, and she was so excited to bring us. Anyways, it was 90% fun and 10% awkward so it was a success. Definitely some serious awkward moments though. Some of Ed’s friends were there, which was nice, because then there were a few more boys to dance with that weren’t COMPLETELY random. At the end of the morning, the announcer woman then asked who was visiting from out of town. She was like “and please welcome Megan and Laura from Boston!” Apparently Sara gave her our names and then we had to go to the middle of the circle with 8 other visitors and then boys would take turns dancing with us in front of every else! So. Awkward. But I don’t regret it because now it’s funny.

After swing dancing, we had to say bye to Sara because she had to make the drive back to Santa Barbara and beat the traffic. It was sad to say bye to her because it was just a few days ago that we met her in the train station! After she left, Laura and I went to the Butterfly Museum and Plant Conservatory (not sure if this is the real name but there were lots of plants and butterflies). You weren’t allowed to touch the butterflies but we tried our hardest to get them to land on us. Laura thought one landed on her but it was actually a dead one.  

We went out to dinner with Ed and his friends at another Mexican restaurant. I got a quesadilla and it was so good! We also got frozen yogurt after. Ed drove us to the airport and we had plenty of time before our flight at 10:30pm. I’m not sure why I thought that I would have a ton of time to sleep AND do homework on the plane. Unfortunately, neither of us slept very well on the plane and the woman next to me kept bumping my arm while she was knitting. Ugh. We arrived in Boston at 7am where Laura’s brother picked us up! It was such a short trip but so so so worth it. I wish Sara went to Gordon although she’s definitely a California girl and I guess I always have someone to visit in California (because I have so much time and money to go there every weekend, right?). Even though it was short, it seriously felt like the three of us had never been apart and it’s so nice to have a friendship that started in Orvieto but can still continue. It doesn’t feel like our friendship is based on nostalgia or anything that would make it hard to be friends after studying in Italy together. 

Swing dancing with Ed's friend

When they asked all of the "visitors" to raise their hands. Obviously,  I was thrilled. 

Day #4 in California

November 16, 2013 – Saturday

On Saturday morning, the three of us took the bus to the farmers' market. I’ve only been to a few farmers’ markets before, mostly just the one in Newburyport. This outdoor market was huge and people would come up to us to ask if we wanted free samples! Even at the dried fruit stand, they told us to try whatever we wanted. So pretty much out entire breakfast/lunch was supplied by all these free samples. There was even a falafel stand with free samples. When Laura and I went to visit Kelly in Edinburgh, we went to this falafel place three times in three days because I didn’t even realize I had a falafel obsession. So I had about five pieces of free falafel and then I ended up buying some for lunch too! We sat on the pier and I ate my falafel while Sara and Laura ate their real lunch – some sort of Mexican. Anyways, for free samples we had all sorts of toffee, fruit, iced tea, crackers, cheese, bread, coffee, chocolates, and more. Then when we left the market and started to walk to the pier with the seals, a lemonade truck pulled up and gave us free bottles of lemonade! You can’t make this stuff up.

We finally made it to the seal pier where we watched these seals for almost an hour. They were so interesting! They were barking, sleeping, fighting, rolling, swimming, and just being seals. People would come and go but Laura and I could’ve watched them for days. They were just so funny! Sara thought they were funny too but she’d already seen them so they weren’t AS exciting.

We took the trolley up and down the hills of San Francisco in the afternoon. Laura and Sara wanted to stand on the side of the trolley instead of sit down so I agreed to do so as well although I wasn’t sure about it. I mean I like adventure and all but hanging out of a fast-moving trolley sounded a little too adventurous to me. Anyways, it was really fun even though I was definitely scared at times when we would pass other cars/trucks on the road and I would flatten myself against the side of the trolley, hanging on to that pole for dear life.

So we took the trolley downtown, where Ed picked us up in his car and we drove to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was so beautiful at sunset! Laura took some beautiful pictures and we spent some time under the bridge until it got too cold/windy. We then went to a Thai place for dinner and that was delicious, again. It was an hour-long wait to get a table (and at this point I was getting prettyyyyyy hungry) but it was totally work the wait. :)

So scared

Day #3 in California

November 15, 2013 – Friday

On Friday morning, Sara went to her morning class while Laura and I slept it. When I woke up, I went outside to sit on Sara’s front porch to watch the sun come up over the ocean. Like… WHAT?! I mean it was hard to see parts of the ocean because there were so many tall palm trees (again… WHAT!) but I guess it was pretty beautiful. So I sat out there for a while and then made pancakes with Laura. I already made pancakes with Sara before she went to her class but since Laura still needed breakfast, I just had to make another batch of blueberry pancakes and eat them with her, too. When Sara got back from class, we packed up her car and started our road trip to San Francisco! The drive to San Francisco was so beautiful – throughout most of the drive, we had the ocean on our left and then the golden hills on our right. Sara had a lot of road trip CD’s, most of them from high school so we spent the 5+ hour drive singing and catching up on everything from when we left each other in Orvieto on June 15th. I thought the drive would seem long, but after two hours, we stopped at a beach to collect sand dollars and soon after that, we stopped for lunch. I was so surprised at how friendly everyone was at all the restaurants or coffee shops that we went to. I would go up to order my food, and the cashier/server/waitress would be like “HI! What brings you to Santa Barbara/San Luis Obispo/San Francisco?” This always caught me off guard because I wasn’t ready to make small talk. Anyways, everyone was really friendly.

We eventually made it to San Francisco after 7pm and our reservation at this fancy sushi place was for 7:30, so we quickly dropped our stuff off at Ed’s (Sara’s boyfriend) apartment and then walked to the restaurant. It was pretty small and I’ve never had real sushi before (unless you count the California rolls they sometimes have in our dining hall – with cucumber and avocado but no fish) so I was pretty nervous about dinner. The four of us sat right in front of the chef and Ed told him that we wanted the “chef’s choice” so pretty much he would give us two rolls/pieces of sushi at a time. I should’ve counted how many pieces we ate but I think I lost count because they just kept coming! We had all kinds of raw fish, eel, mackerel, and sea urchin (this was the weirdest one). We also had fish eggs too but this was the one that I couldn’t finish. Pretty much all of the sushi was so good and I liked them all, but then I would remember that it was raw fish and then I would feel kinda queasy. After dinner, we then went to an ice cream place and I think I got some sort of chocolate ice cream and it was all vegan/organic. San Francisco was so organic and ecofriendly too – at least the part that we were in was really clean and there were recycling bins everywhere. After ice cream, we went back to the apartment and fell asleep right away even though it was only 9pm! 

My crazy hair made it's way into this picture

It was so cold here!

Day #2 in California

November 14, 2013 - Thursday

On Thursday morning, Laura and I woke up and left Sarah's apartment in LA. We walked to the bus stop and took a bus to downtown LA. We then took another bus to Union Station, which is where we were going to take the train at 10am to Santa Barbara! Before we took the second bus, though, we decided that we would save money and walk but after walking in the heat with our suitcases for fifteen minutes, we checked our map to see that we were only 1/4 of the way there and we immediately got on another bus. So we arrived at Union Station an hour before our train so we had some breakfast and sat in the sun for a little while. It is so warm here! We were both wearing tank tops and shorts and it was so hot just sitting in the sun.

At 10, we made our way over to the train tracks and got on the one to Santa Barbara. Once again, I'm still impressed that Laura and I made it this far because of our past travel fails. The train was pretty spacious and comfortable. Laura and I sat next to each other and the seats reclined but I couldn’t really fall asleep – Laura fell asleep though because she sleeps anywhere when we travel. The train went right along the ocean which was so beautiful and even though the ride was two and a half hours, it was nice to look out the window and see the ocean the whole time! We were about twenty minutes away from Santa Barbara when there was construction on the train tracks or something like that. We were so close! After about half an hour of sitting there on the train, we started to move again and soon we were in Santa Barbara. Laura and I ran off the plane (well, tried to run with our backpacks and carry-on suitcases) and frantically looked around for Sara. She was running through the cloud with her cute little beach hat and sundress on, of course. We had a dramatic reunion that included me accidently punch Laura in the teeth when I tried to hug Sarah. It was funny and great and weird to finally see Sara again! If you want to read about the MOST DRAMATIC DAY aka the last day in Orvieto, that’s the last time we saw her. We got into Sara’s car and drove to Westmont College. Laura and I were both staved though so we got breakfast/lunch at this place that makes smoothies in bowls with a bunch of toppings (granola, honey, fruit). It was so good and I can’t believe they don’t have that on the East Coast. Although I guess it’s a pretty cold thing to eat so maybe that’s why it exists only in places that are always warm? I don’t know. It was delicious.

Then, we went to the house that Sara lives in with 5 other girls. She has a huge deck that overlooks the ocean and it’s like a cute little beach house. Definitely a step up from my on-campus apartment that I live in now (we have like… two windows. It’s so dark). Sara then gave us a tour of Westmont and it seemed similar to Gordon in size although Westmont had palm trees, fountains, and gardens. Gordon has a pond and some really annoying geese. It was cool to finally see what Westmont was like and of course Sara seemed to know everyone on campus and would introduce us as her “friends from Italy. Well, they’re not Italian. They’re from Gordon.” 

We then went straight to the beach – Butterfly Beach, I think. I’d never seen the Pacific Ocean before so I went into full tourist mode and took a thousand pictures. We asked this man to take a picture of the three of us and he told us he has his own photography business so I guess we asked the right person. That’s why we have all these romantic pictures of us running through the water together.

After spending a few hours at the beach (it was pretty warm, like 75 degrees, but at 6pm it started to get a little colder), we went back to Sara’s house to get ready for dinner. Sara took us to this Mexican restaurant that was really small and cheap but the food was so good. I ate soooooooo much guacamole I was surprised I even got out of my chair after. I love guacamole so much. Anyways, after the guacamole-fest, we went back to Sara’s house again and sat in her living room and talked. Laura and Sara wanted me to read my first blog post in Orvieto (here) and my last blog post. I haven’t really gone back to read my blog but it was funny to read it out loud with them and I realized I had a few spelling errors that I never changed… oops. Laura and I were falling asleep at 9:30pm (12:30am in Boston) so we went to bed soon after that!

Me and Sara!

One of the running pictures...

Setting up our towels

Day #1 in California

November 13, 2013 - Wednesday

Wednesday was one of the craziest days in terms of my emotions and travel. I'll have to write something else about field hockey because I can't even explain it right now, but on Saturday at 2pm we were in Keene, NH, playing in the first round of the NCAA tournament. So that alone was emotional because it was my last game if we won (because my team would move on without me while I was in CA), and it was my last game if we lost, because that's how it works in the tournament! Anyways, the game went well for the first half but then they scored a few more goals in the second half and there were thirty seconds to go and I was crying (because when do I ever not cry?). I ran over to the bench, grabbed my suitcase, backpack, and field hockey bag, then quickly hugged a few people and jumped in the car with Dad. It was 3:45 at this point and boarding started at 6:40 in Logan so I was nervous I wouldn't make my flight! Mostly because of traffic.

Anyways, Dad had a sandwich ready for me for dinner, we talked about field hockey for a while, and then finally at 6ish we rolled up to the airport (there wasn't too much traffic until the end). I made it through security at 6:20 and then I found Laura waiting at the gate! Had some Dunkin' Donuts, of course, and then we started to board the plane. It was weird because the plan was probably only 1/3 full so Laura and I ended up sitting together with a seat in between us. I was so tired at this point and I wanted to sleep but I was SO EXCITED to see Sara that I didn't really sleep at all! The flight was around 5.5 hours long and it felt really really really long after the two hour mark.

So we arrived in LA (we flew to LA instead of Santa Barbara because Laura's best friend is studying there for the semester and it was cheaper to fly there), where Sarah picked us up (not Sara from Orvieto but Sarah, Laura's friend). She drove us to her apartment building where we dropped off our stuff and then Sarah and Laura went out while I stayed back and slept (I'm a sloth) because it was like 12:30am in LA so 3:30am in Boston! I was exhausted from the day but so excited to finally be in California! We bought these tickets at the end of August, before I knew that my field hockey team was going to be good (call me pessimistic, whatever - we've never been this good before). Visiting Sara was something that we talked about at the end of our semester in Orvieto together but it didn't really happen until I was feeling sad about being back at home so I was researching flights and ran into Laura's apartment at Gordon and I was like "LET'S VISIT SARA IN NOVEMBER. LET'S BUY TICKETS NOW." Anyways, it was kind of impulsive and even though it was a little frantic in terms of field hockey, I couldn't believe that Laura and I had made it this far! Mostly because we're awful at traveling together. If you don't remember, you can read my post about our trip to visit Kelly in Edinburgh and how Laura and I got on a train to Bologna instead of the train to Florence. So it was impressive that we made it to LA! :)