Pre-Departure 3

Saturday, August 8, 2009

So, today I met up with Daniela, Jessy, and Frank (who will not be on the Alba trip, but rather in Oxford) at Bryan's house. We started mapping out our travel plans, which was reassuring. We only made one definite plan, which is to go to the UK, visit Oxford friends/see London and then, in the case of Jessy and I (hopefully) go on to Dublin and hang out there for a couple of days. We will then all fly out to Amsterdam for a few days and then go back home. The Alba program offers one week with nothing going on (kind of like our fall break) and we're going to do this then. It's just a general plan that will probably be changed all around.

Other trips I'm considering:
-Paris with Bryan and Frank on the first Friday of either October or November. There's some exhibit Frank wants to see, but I mostly want to go to Paris.
-Madrid with Dani

Places in Italy I will see even if I have to resort to street walking to pay for them:
-Venice
-Rome
-Florence (and Pisa! because Bryan and I have to do this /makes arm gesture)
-Naples
-Milan
-ELBA

The program has field trips to some of these cities, but for the ones that aren't offered, I'm going to have to finance myself. Which sucks, but is totally worth it.

Other noteworthy happenings on this adventure:
We decided to go shopping for clothes for the trip. Italians like to dress up (or so we've been informed) and therefore this means we have to get super awesome clothes so we aren't out of place. Nice clothes are a necessity. In any case, we ended up going to Ten Car Pile Up. I've only been there once before, but I still want to own everything in that store. Gah, I wish I had more monies. I'm going to have to go there one day and buy a dress. It will happen.

We then went to the Schezuan House, which is a chinese restaurant off of York Road. My grandmother used to love their food, so we used to go there a lot. It was really weird to drive by their condo building and be in that restaurant. It's ok chinese food, but I can't not love it because of the associations I have with it.

We also hit up the Towson Mall. Stopped by Levi's and was jealous of the clothes they had in. Then went on to Forever XXI and H&M. Gah want clothesssssssssssss. I didn't really find anything that I had to have or was cheap enough, though. Le sigh, so is life. I really want to get some cute shirt/blouses to wear to restaurants/bars. I was told, however, that the market in Alba has a pretty good selection of blouses and that I shouldn't worry too much. I ended up hanging out with Bryan and Frank most of the time. They were good for helping me find what I was looking for and holding my bag when I decided to throw on a shirt real quick. I think Jess and Dani will probably end up hanging out a lot, but I think I have a steady buddy in Bryan. I always feel awkward when there are groups of more than two, so it's nice to know that I can have a shopping buddy in Bryan. Like, I know that we'll all hang out together and it'll be great. But if there's anytime that I let myself fall behind, Bryan will be there to help me out. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it does in my head.

Also, I'm pretty set on using planes to travel around. Like, the trains look awesome. I've never been on a train, not that I can remember anyways. I'm so excited to get on a train! But, planes are cheaper and faster, so I'll probably be using those. Frank showed me a website (http://www.ryanair.com) that has hella cheap flights. Hello 3 euro flight!

In other news, my parents bought me a camera and it's really nice. I've been playing with it for the past couple of days and I've pretty much got the hang of it. So, these posts will have pictures to accompany them, hurrah! I could include some from today's adventures but I'm too lazy to do that.

FInances are doing ok. My dad got me a job at his company, which is $9/hr and a guaranteed 24hrs a week. Which is schweet! I also am considering selling some of my old stuff to get some extra spending money. I need to talk to my dad about it first, but I think I could probably get at least $150 from one thing, and i could probably throw together some craft things and sell those. We'll see what happens. My mom just informed me that she will reinstate my allowance, and is actually going to increase it while I'm gone. I hate having an allowance, but it will be nice to have the extra cash at my disposal. If things go well, I should be able to go over with about $1,500. That isn't very much, but it's a lot better than what I was expecting ($600). I'll actually be able to do at least some traveling, which I wasn't expecting to be able to do. There's so much I want to see and experience, though. I guess I'll just have to make going across the pond happen sometime in the future a reality!

I guess the last thing to talk about is the issue of boys. In my case, one boy. He is very pretty and friendly and has been seeing me exclusively for almost a year now. We've decided to stay together while I'm gone. A part of me is iffy about this decision, but the most of me is relieved to know that he'll be there to listen to my excitement with a forced grin on his face and to greet me when I get home with a hug, and probably some form of pda not appropriate for children. This is only an issue for this blog because there will probably be a mixture of exciting adventures and accounts of how much I miss my boy. This is a disclaimer for those latter bits. I apologize, but you will just have to deal.

With love,
K



PS We finally got flight information, health insurance information, and class information! Yay!
I'm taking Italian 201, Psychology of Food, Music History, and a class on the Decameron.
So excitedddddd want it to be September 7th naoi plz!