Yet another insanely crazy weekend. The theme presented in the last blog entry of YOLO (you only live once) could be applied even more appropriately to this weekend. I've been thinking a lot about how I really only am this young and able to go on these crazy adventures right NOW. I need to remind myself that some day I won't be able to get 2 hours of sleep and then hop on a train at 5am and still enjoy myself. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and "forced" myself to take a weekend trip to Rimini with a few friends, knowing it would be a little crazier than I was used to. I don't think I'll ever use the word "force" again, though, because I would gladly hop on the opportunity to relive this weekend over and over!
Okay so now to talk about Thursday (a day that now seems 5 weeks ago). Let me pull through my many memories for a second, okay, got it! Well I went back to Wednesday, actually, because that is when I had my written final for Level 2 of Italian. It went okay, not as great as I had hoped, but I'm content with my grade. Thursday was the oral final, I happened to be first AGAIN, and I happened to be extremely nervous AGAIN, but it was over within 5 minutes and it was officially the weekend! And I officially have Italian level 2 (20 weeks worth back at Santa Cruz) under my belt. Go me!
So Thursday night I took Christine and Vicky with me to meet up with Martina and her friends. We trekked over to an area of town undiscovered and had an amazing apperativo with good food and such good drinks. Their 3 guy friends met up with us at one point and they were HILARIOUS! It is so nice to meet actual Italian guys who are normal (ie not the creepy one's at clubs) and we had a great time talking in a mangled combination of English and Italian while comparing our two cultures. After this, we took them to the "American" end-of-finals party some girls were throwing. I felt like I had showed up with 20 bottles of champagne or something, everyone was so happy to see these Italians. They were taught American drinking games and I'm pretty sure everyone, well at least the boys, had a BLAST. The night went by quickly and after a quick drop in to a horrible club, we arrived back home at around 3am.
We are students, we are cheap, we don't need sleep, so of course we take the 5am train to Rimini because it is only 11 euro instead of 30! After a 20 minute nap I very groggily crawled out of bed, grabbed my stuff, walked out into the crisp morning/night desolate air and streets with Anna and Christine and arrived at the emptiest train station I have ever seen. We met up with two other girls, Sam and Alexis, and hopped on our empty train. We each took up two seats and slept like babies. Until 40 kids came on all going to school. We quickly woke up to their chatting and were extremely embarrassed . We had "AMERICAN" written all over our faces. The rest of the train ride was uneventful but we did pass through some gorgeous hills and after a quick transfer, we arrived in Rimini at around 8am! From here, everyone grabbed a coffee and we waited to board another 1 hour long bus ride to take us up to the COUNTRY (the third smallest in the world, to be exact) of San Marino. This gem of a place was discovered the day before when a classmate mentioned we should look into it. I am so glad for that person because this country was amazing!! The windy drive up to this mountain was not so fun, but once we arrived we were met with spectacular views below and ancient castle towers above. We spent a good 3 hours there climbing every tour and taking millions of pictures before finally grabbing a snack and heading back to the bus (side note: my detective skills have led me to assume this country does not have strong laws because some things in the windows were....interesting...to say the least). We slept like rocks on the way down (remember we were surviving off of maybe 1 hour total of sleep) and groggily woke up and figured out the bus system in Rimini. We made it to our hostel without any problem and were amazed as the bus zoomed by the coast. The only place I can compare it to is Santa Monica, or the muscle beach area. Others said it reminded them of Miami. There were bars/rides all along the sand and miles of miles of this sand stretched out ahead. It was curious, though, because there seemed to be no one around. Hm....
After checking into our hostel and setting everything down, we stole a cheat and laid out on the sand. This beach was nowhere near as nice as the last, but it sufficed. I slept and never even touched the water (sad) but we maybe saw a total of 10 people out on this huge stretch of beach. Definitely not high season. Definitely not warm enough. Definitely not the best idea to go to Rimini in the middle of March. Oh well, it was still an adventure! As the sun was lowering and our bodies were chilling, we decided to leave the sand and return to nap at our hostel before our "crazy night" (Rimini is known for its nightlife, apparently). Hold up, let's back up for a second. Before this we were insanely hungry and as we roamed the desolate, ghost streets of Rimini, we found not one single that was selling food at 5pm. NOT ONE PLACE. So we napped with grumbling tummies. When I woke up at about 9pm I was in a horrible mood. It felt as if I was waking up at 5am and being forced to get ready and run a marathon or something. I seriously contemplated just staying in my bed and not going out. No one would let that happen, though, so we got all dolled up and headed downstairs to use the computer and figure out which club to hit up.
Surprise, surprise, NO club was open!!! It being off season and all, most clubs were under construction or getting ready for summer season. It was so sad to hear this and as we sulked in the corner, the owner of our hostel came up to us and asked why we were so sad. We explained, he called up his friend, and got us on a list for a club called "Peter Pan" in the nearby city of Riccione. Thank you thank you thank you! After hitting up the one open bar around the corner and listening to old italian men sing karaoke and the young bartender try to make us his girlfriend, the 5 of us split the cab fare to Riccione and arrived at around midnight. It was way too early. The list we were on was not open until 1am, so we used our pleading American faces to talk with the bouncers and after around 10 minutes they let us in. We paid 10 euros for a drink at the bar and stared in absolute wonder at the most gorgeous, elegant Italians dining just feet away. Now THIS was a club. We slowly sipped our drinks feeling very AMERICAN in our jeans, without heels to add on to that, and out of nowhere a fashion show started! Everyone crowded around and I felt as if I was either on some sort of drug or I was in a strange movie. Where was I?? A fashion show in the middle of a huge club with beautiful people all speaking Italian around me? Not so bad, I'd say. Within a few minutes after the show, the fog machines started cranking away, the DJ in his sequenced jacket and wonderful accent started shouting away, the beautiful people started swaying away, and we joined right in on the party! The night seemed to go by in the blink of an eye but the 5 of us thoroughly enjoyed meeting Italians who actually thought we were Italian (apparently Americans dont often go there) and dancing to some pretty good music. We taxi'd it back to the hostel at around 4am and conked out for around 4 hours.
After some free breakfast, some more bus/train rides, and some walking, we were back in our apartment (it was also St. Patty's day, btw!). I showered, napped, got ready, and then headed out with the group to see the Fiorentina vs Juventus soccer match. We were adorned in purple, with the teams scarf proudly visible, and after being warned that this match was the most rivalrous match of the season, we carefully made our way through the huge crowds of people and past yummy smelling vendors until we arrived to the horrible unorganized crowd of people trying to get into the stadium. Eventually we found our seats and we were SURROUNDED by crazy Italian people all in purple as well who used weird hand gestures, yelled sure-to-be obscene sayings to the other team, and all left with 30 minutes still to go because Fiorentina was losing 0-5. Poor Florence :(
It was a wonderful experience but the lack of sleep thing was really catching up to me so we made the long walk home and crashed for a good 12 hours. The next day was spent cleaning our apartment until we could see our reflections in every surface because we had apartment inspections the following week (we just had it, btw, and we passed with flying colors, yay!).
One sad thing that happened just yesterday (Monday) was that we heard a horrible domestic violence taking place. We are on the top of our building and from our kitchen, with the windows closed, we could clearly hear someone at the bottom floor screaming, shouting, sobbing, and being shoved into the window. We called the police and our program directors right away, and after talking to the police ourselves and discovering that "it was a father and son fighting and the mom was just trying to stop them" the situation was over. I still don't believe it. But what can you do? The cops didn't make it a big deal at all and I think that because we were American they thought we were over-exaggerating as well. We will definitely keep our ears peeled for more of that, though. Such a horrible thing to hear.
Sicily is this coming weekend and I am beyond excited to soak up some sun and play in crystal clear water!!!
Ciao!
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