this cracks me up

i was just telling min...now i feel super lame about my blog posts because they are about things that i think are funny/cool/whatever, but other people might think they are lame. traveling around Europe is not lame to talk about. this is...

so was just checking up on some of the sights that i used to peruse and i decided to hop on "Twilight Guy." i'm sure most of you have heard of the Twilight books...if not, um...look it up? lol. i don't know. its pretty big. so anyway, this guy Kaleb has his own site about how he reads the four books. he posts sort of analysis about each chapter as he goes along. its basically like, yes, i am a guy and i read these books and they aren't that bad. plus he's a writer. and i find him to be incredibly funny.

anywho, when i peeked on the site today, it seems he's started a new thing. first of all he has all these little bits he does. video blogs. normal posts. reoccuring...idk what you'd call them...um columns? for lack of a better word. so he has a new one now called "What R U Saying?" which is taking some of the more hilarious parts of all the hate mail he gets from people and posting on his blog. here's how he actually describes this:

What R U Saying: I’m not as stong as emmet (or the jo bros)

- April 11th, 2009 at 11:14 pm by Kaleb Nation -

Due to a recent influx of messages from your typical village idiot, I’ve decided to put my hatemail to good use and entertain my readers with it. I receive so much hilarious hate that I can no longer keep it for my own selfish amusement. Feel free to attempt counting and/or translating each of the mistakes:

and i have to say i find them extremely funny. i was laughing so hard at these. i'm going to screenshot some of the better ones and put them in below. but anyway...the guy just has an interest so he started this site, and now all sorts of Twilight fans...and no fans, are writing into him and being jerks. i'm glad he's got a sense of humor about it. seriously. so here are some of the more amusing "What R U Saying?" posts...

I have a new phone. And i am posting this blog from it right now. Woot.

Just wanted to test it out. I'll try to give you guys a better update later.

...and i'm back

the trip home was...interesting? lol. idk. i am not one for traveling that takes a long time. i remember as soon as i stepped off the plane in Florence i thought "thank god, i don't have to do that again for three more months."

our first flight out of Florence wasn't too bad. we were in the smallest plane known to man as well. haha. it was two rows an aisle and then two more rows. and then we landed in Munich, had a three hour layover, and then got on the plane to Chicago. that flight was so much better than the long flight we took to get to Florence. the plane was way nicer and they had this great movie selection where you could play any of them that you wanted, and not just watch them as scheduled. it was awesome. i watched three movies on the plane tv and then one of my own, so the time pretty much flew by (no pun intended).

and then of course in Chicago, our flight to MN got cancelled. this woman who was rechecking in baggage after customs told Spencer, who was in line in front of me, and i didn't believe her. but she was right of course. so we had to haul all of our luggage to another terminal and stand in a huge line for an hour before we figured out that we had been rescheduled on a flight for the next morning at 8am. all i wanted to do was get home. i seriously considered calling someone from Winona and begging them to just come and get me. idk. it was just something about being so close to getting there, and then not being able to get back until the next day. but, anyway, it didn't end up too badly.

we got our bags rechecked in and they gave us a voucher for a discount on some hotels, so me and a couple of other people split a room and just crashed. got up at 5am, headed to the airport, and eventually got on the plane. and i loved the pilot of this plane because he just booked it. 50 minutes and we were in the cities. so awesome.

and now i'm home. things are too strange. i mean, i feel sort of stupid saying things to my friends like..."well, when i was in Italy..." haha. it sounds so superior, when i don't mean it to be. and i know they don't care. but it'll take some getting used to. just like the fact that everything here is huge. there is so much room. everyone obeys traffic laws. and i can eat whatever i want. lol.

okay, well i just got up, and i feel like there are a couple things i should really do today, one of which is trying to find a cell phone. so i'm gonna get on it.

half over

with two finals down i feel a little better. i can definitely tell that my stress level has gone down. whoo. my literature final was this morning, and i don't think it went too bad. actually not bad at all. plus we got our grades for our oral presentation and i got an A. sweet.

then i just got out of my art history final which was insane. i was really nervous about it. and i think i did alright. we had to do 10 short ids...which is seeing a picture of a painting/sculpture/etc and then saying who did it, the title of it, the date, what its made out of, and where it is. then 2 long ids, which is the same thing, but then we have to give at least four characteristics of the painting...so more in depth stuff. a couple of comparison and contrasts of paintings, multiple choice, and vocab. and its over now! lol. i will say that i feel pretty smart about art now. and i loved the teacher.

all that's left is my culture class final today at 3:30 and the my italian one tomorrow. the culture one will be a joke. we have to write 20 lines on three different topics...that she already told us about. so that'll be fine.

tomorrow night we have a farewell dinner with everyone from our program, the CAPA staff, and our teachers. i'm looking forward to it. its a resturant i haven't been to yet, and it'll be a nice way to say goodbye to everyone. and extremely weird. although i don't feel like i've made a million lifelong friends, i do feel like i got to know people pretty well, and that we'll at least be able to carry on a conversation if i see them later in life. haha. and kelly and i are pretty close. she invited me to come to her lake cabin in May, which is really sweet.

as for the rest of the weekend, friday is devoted to packing and cleaning. i'm about half packed right now. and we've got to get our apartment back to the state it was in when we showed up. however, i am going to also make one last stop at the San Lorenzo market on friday. so it won't be all work that day. and saturday we head to airport at 8:30.

anywho...its cram time. maybe i'll post one more before i head out on saturday. later.

summer movie list 2009 edition

i love movies. i think most of you know that. so basically every so often i go onto Yahoo's movie page, and get to the trailer page, and sit and watch all these different movie previews. and since i haven't done that in months, i went on the other day and found a bunch of movies that i want to see when i come back. maybe you'll be interested in some of them too (underlined titles = links to movie preview)

May

1. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past - May 1st, Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Gardner. yeah, i know Matthew MacConaughey in a romantic comedy, how suprising right? but it looks cute. and i like jen gardner.

June

1. Away We Go - June 5th, John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph. john krasinski...enough said. haha, no i really do think it looks funny. and its got some heart.
2. The Proposal - June 19th, Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock, odd pairing that has to get married. hilarity ensues.
3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - June 26th, Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, and Rainn Wilson. do i need to say more? i'm excited for Rainn's cameo.

July

1. Public Enemies - July 1st, Chrisitan Bale and Johnny Depp. this looks cool. and old school bank robber and the guy that tries to catch him. lots of running and guns.
2. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - July 17th, Daniel Radcliff, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint. i don't know if i need to explain this. its sort of given since i've like the other ones. and the fact that sam 1 is possibly interested in going to this means it must look amazing. (p.s. this is the new trailer)
   
3. 500 Days of Summer - July 17th, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zoey Deschanel. another romantic comedy that won some inidie film awards i believe.

so it looks like i'll be giving the movie industry a good chunk of change this summer.

speaking of spending money...my poor iPod had not been the same since its "malfunction" so it looks like i will be perusing the options for a new iPod this summer. which honestly, i'm not too upset about. haha. okay...class.

ugh.

yeah. that's all i have to say right now. i am interuppting the previously planned movie to post to bring you these dismals words.

italian class sucked today. completely sucked. obviously we have finals this week...so we're reviewing. we went around the class doing different exercises and every time i got mine wrong. every time. actually one time i got it right, but it was a sentence where i had to give two answers, and i got the next one wrong. ugh. and i could tell my teacher was just getting so upset at me. like "how come you don't know the simplest stuff?"

i mean, she even tried to break it down for me, and everything i answered then we even wrong. oh god. it was horrible. i am not kidding you, i almost started crying right there in class. speaking italian when the situation calls for it is one thing, but being in class and learning it is like the most difficult thing i've ever done. i'm not kidding, i would take a math class over this class any day. well, actually that's not true, because i do like the class, and i like learning it, but i'm not good at it. what i'm saying is, i would do better in a math class than this class...and that's saying something. its like hitting my head against a wall every time i go in there. and every time i leave, i feel as thought my brain has had the biggest workout in the entire world. literally like my head is tired of thinking. haha. well...it'll be over with in a few days. so i suppose that's good.

i don't have any exciting pictures to put up from this weekend. i went out to dinner on thursday night, and then for the most part, just stayed in all weekend. i watched a lot of movies. maybe that's sort of lame. lol. um...let me think, there was Atonement, Just Like Heaven (not that good), Benny and Joon (its okay), The Dark Knight, and Wedding Crashers.

i've got about half of my stuff packed up i'd say. i am crossing my fingers that my suitcase will be less than 50 pounds. although i feel as though i have a pretty good shot. and i'm going to sort of stuff everything in there that i can, and leave my backpack a bit empty so that if it is, i'll just pull a couple things out no problem.

okay, enough about my packing. iTunes gave me the perfect song this morning, so i'll share it with you. its called "Non-Believer" by La Rocca. this is not a video for it, someone just put it up on YouTube with a picture for the whole song, so you can just listen : )

observations

there is a new group of people that came to the CAPA center 2 weeks ago. they are from community colleges all around the state of Washington, and they are here for i think a month? or a month and a half? i'm not sure. anywho...its always interesting when new people come. it always changes the dynamic a little bit. and now from this group, there is a girl here who is always in the lounge on her computer. always.

now i spend my fair share of time here on the computer. more so in the last couple of weeks because i am working on this paper that is taking forever (although i am almost done now...i swear). so because i am here a lot, i have a learned a number of things about this girl. mainly, she doesn't like Florence and she doesn't want to be here. and as i said, she's only been here a couple of weeks. i feel bad for her. i've heard her say once and twice that she is incredibly jealous of those of us who are leaving next week. i think its such a bummer. i mean, spend all that money and come all the way here and you just want to turn around and go back. hopefully she'll end up making an effort to get to know other people and go out and explore the city. at this point she's been spending all of her time taking to her friends online and playing video games. there is just something about the situation that makes me so sad. i'm really not trying to judge her. it just goes to show that there are tons of different wants to handle a situation and they all have different outcomes.

okay...enough with my introspective look into human psychology. i have no idea what else i am doing this weekend. whatever it is i hope its free. i have 40 euro left for my whole trip. granted, i am stock piling a little bit of money in my checking, but that's sort of like, in case i have to pay for something at the end of the trip. anywho, i haven't really gotten a good look at the Boboli Gardens, so hopefully i'll do that. and i hear its supposed to rain until we leave. its sort of good symmetry. it rained the first week we got here.

i've got italian class on monday and tuesday and then finals wednesday and thursday. on thursday we are having our farewell dinner which i'm looking forward to. in all honesty i don't have many pictures of people in the program. anyway, the faculty is invited to come to the farewell dinner too, which i think will be fun. i love my italian teacher...she is the nicest lady ever. we had to do an oral final yesterday and she knows that i am really struggling in the class. after i was done she was really nice about it..."bravo. gratzie. gratzie." that might not seem like much, but she was smiling a lot. lol. i was proud.

it is incredibly strange that i'm leaving in 8 days. 8 days. i feel like the last week just flew by me, so i'm sure this one will too. i can tell you, i am not looking forward to the grunt of traveling back. 20 plus hours of being in planes, sitting in gates, hauling around luggage. yuck. but the end result is going to be fantastic. i kind of keep picturing what it will be like seeing my mom and dad at the airport. which sounds so cheesy. but i am really excited.

alright. i need to go. and really finish my paper. haha. one last thing, if you're bored, here's Switchfoot's latest podcast episode (#39 i think). its pretty cool. they got to put cameras on their surfboards. which actually means that if you don't like cameras moving around a lot, and it makes you sick, don't watch it. drew always cracks me up...he's the one at the beginning and end of the podcast. okay. for real i am going now.

next post...Hayley's summer 2009 movie list. get excited.

explosions and broken things

how was your easter?

mine was pretty awesome. as you most likely read in my previous post, i was planning on going to see the exploding cart in the Piazza del Duomo. which i did. and i did take video. now, before you watch, i only took about minute snippets because i thought i might get boring going on for a long period of time. and i was in the middle of the massive crowd. it very much reminded me of a Sonshine mosh, and so i was jostled, hence the unsteady cam. anywho...at least you can get a little taste of this. and it really did sound like a machine gun when the firecrackers were going off by the way. and you'll notice how it gets more smoky as time goes on. we were covered in ash by the end.







in other exciting happenings, i thought i broke my iPod last night. let me tell you that was probably the worst thing that has happened to me in a long time. haha. i know, you are all thinking "rough life." but here, my iPod is basically essential. so i was playing a movie that is on my iPod while it was plugged in to my computer (big screen) and all the sudden the movie froze. and i tried to pause it and play and and nothing worked, so i figured i'd just eject my iPod and things would be cool. instead i ejected it and my iPod got stuck on this screen:and nothing happened. i tried to shut it off. i tried to charge it. i tried to plug it back into my computer and my computer told me that my iPod had "malfunctioned." malfunctioned. a little over a week before i am supposed to get on a plane for 7 hours. before i spend 20 hours traveling. and not to mention i use my iPod to fall asleep basically every night. the walls are thin here. and my roommates computers are loud. haha. needless to say, i was having a panic attack. i took my iPod into Ada's room and she grabbed it, held a couple buttons and it restarted and it was fine. heart attack averted. so now i know that you reset your iPod by pressing menu and the middle button at the same time. haha. anyway, that was traumatic incident, just thought i'd share : )

okay, i have to go be productive now.

and can i just add...this looks insane. and awesome.

not working on a paper

i should not be blogging. i should be researching primo levi. lol. but i'm not. obviously. i don't know...its like i've lost my homework work ethic this semester. which, i know i'll regain when its necessary (like this summer in class) but right now i just don't want to write it. i want to be outside. i want to enjoy Florence. and i keep saying to myself "its not due until April 23rd." haha. and i have time. and two days off of school next week to work on it. its so easy to find excuses.

so i know i posted about my fall semester schedule earlier. that's changed. its more cost effective to take only one summer class. so that's what i'm doing. and then i had to figure out how to make some other things work. but i'm taking mostly the same classes, i just substituted one for another. so its all good. i am feeling not stressed about it at all.

for the second time ever, i went rooting around on different publishing company websites to see what their job offerings are. i know, its early. and i always end up kicking myself because something awesome is offered and i can't apply for it. haha. but i don't it makes me nervous and excited for the future. at this point, i think Penguin seems like the most fun, or the best fit, granted i don't know much about them. the last time i looked at their site they had a job posting for an HR/Training Assistant - how perfect would that have been?! - and then today when i looked they had an opening for a Marketing Assistant. both in NY, NY. most of them are based there, or have branches in Chicago. i did peek at some in London too. so besides publishing companies i also took a gander at random ones that would just be fun to work at like Apple and Google (which was rated the best place to work in an article i read this last year).

there are so many tourists here right now. according to Danny - one of the guys who works at CAPA - this is nothing. there are a million that coming starting in May. its hard to walk anywhere. i am constantly surrounded by all these people. and they won't move. its funny, i mean, i can completely understand why Italians get annoyed with us. we are loud. we are always in the way. we are always holding up some area because we need to get the perfect picture. lol.

okay, i am going to push my way through the San Lorenzo Market to get a couple last minute souvenirs.

the earthquake

so i am sure that most of you have heard about the earthquake that happened in italy yesterday night. i am totally fine. although, i can honestly tell you that i thought my room shook a little bit at around 10:30 that night, but i thought i made it up. i guess not...scary.

from what i've heard, earthquakes are not common in italy. our italian professor was talking about in class yesterday and she seemed pretty shocked. during class the director of our program came in to ask everyone if all of their roommates were accounted for. and some of them were not, which was a bit eery. however, everyone from CAPA is fine and everyone that was traveling around the country for the weekend made it back before the earthquake happened.

i've been trying to read up on what happened and found a pretty comprehensive article here on the BBC News website. here's where i am in relation to L'Aquila:


now...how i change the topic on my blog without sounding like i'm making such a big thing sound small? lol.

last night we went to an italian movie with my italian class. it was a really interesting experience. i didn't really understand much. luckily it was a movie that did not depend entirely on dialouge. it was about the defects of italian society. so basically the flaws that italians have. it was a satire. i don't know...i think even if i spoke italian i don't think i would have liked it. haha. but i did get to see two american movie trailers in italian: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and Seventeen Again. which was interesting. as the girl sitting next to me said: "it's weird to see Matthew Perry but not hear his actual voice."

nothing else big is going on this weekend. i have a quiz in italian on thursday, and then the whole weekend to write a paper (woohoo). actually Easter weekend is sort of a big deal in Italy. on sunday they have this huge exploding cart go off by the Duomo. i think it should be pretty interesting. we watched a video on youtube in one of my classes about it. basically they load this old cart up with a million fireworks and then just let it go off with people standing like 5 feet from it. our class was sort of shocked, but my teacher just shrugged her shoulders and said "no one's died yet, why should we make them stand back?" haha. i think that's sort of the attitude italians have about a lot of things we think would be really dangerous. and i don't think they probably have nearly as many lawsuits as we do in America.

alright...until next time.

how i spent my weekend

the title of this post makes me think of those essays/writing assignments you get when you come back to school in the fall in like middle school and elementary school. "how i spent my summer vacation." granted...i don't really think i ever had to write anything like that...i have probably only seen it on movies.

so this weekend i was in Florence on my own. that is to say...all of my roommates were gone (roxy in Athens, anna in Amsterdam, and ada in Hamburg). i am not traveling anymore (and did not go to Greece) because i'm quickly running out of money. i am not telling you this to get any sympathy...its just a fact.

so anywho...things were pretty quiet in the apartment. i enjoyed it. i tried to explore the city a little more than i have before. i walked around a lot and tried to take some pictures so you guys can get the feel of something italian things. for instance...Italian parking


it's sort of hard to see here...but there is no room for those cars to get out. and its like that all the way down the street.we went to the San Ambrogio Market. here's one of the meat counters.

at the fish counter. this was gross...and also unbelievable.

view from Piazza Michelango. yep...i live here.

a copy of the David.

...okay, homework time.

i am graduating in a year. how did that happen?

so i have been looking at my schedule for the fall semester recently. i sign up for classes in a little over a week. and the whole thing is just sort of strange to me. i am taking two summer classes, so that leaves the total number of credits i have left to take to graduate at 24. 24. that's 12 a semester. haha. which isn't even full time (we'll address how to fix this issue in a bit).

and once i have planned out what i'm taking in the fall, then basically i have planned out what i'm taking in the spring, because there's only specific ones left that i need to take. then i'm done. and then everything is real. lol.

i am really excited about the fall semester though. i am looking at taking a lot of mass comm. classes to finish out my minor. there's Computer Applications...which will teach me all about the basic Adobe programs. i think that should be interesting. then i am going to take Broadcast Writing...which i don't know a thing about, but again...and i think it will be interesting. and the one i am most excited about it Literary Journalism. its a special class offered just this coming semester. basically its taking newswriting, but putting a spin on it. making your news piece more of a story. so we are all going to be interviewing different people from around the Winona area and then putting our pieces together into a big collection. its all going to be related somehow. i can't remember exactly what the email said...but its going to be awesome.

then i am actually going taking one english class. i know...that's strange. but since i am taking two this summer, it sort of gets the tough ones out of the way. well, actually the one for the fall, which is Seminar in American Literature, its going to be tough as well. it counts for an oral flag course, so that means i am going to be taking a lot (yippee). but its taught by Professor Oness, who i love.

that brings me up to 12 credits. so either i am going to take this Computer Science class (it counts for my last University studies credit) or i am going to count the credits from my summer internship in the fall semester. i will probably just take the class and put the internship in the spring...but i don't know.

i am just now realizing how boring this post might have been for all of you to read. lol. sorry. nothing really related to being in another country at all. which reminds me...i will continue to blog when i get back, just like i blogged before i came, but if you don't want to continue subscribing to my posts, i will completely understand. it will all be about normal stuff, school, work, friends, movies, people in general. but anywho, you can just email me (hcfast@gmail.com) when you feel like it, and i'll take you off the list.

and for those of you who feel like counting...22 days until i touch down in Minnesota : )