What I'll Take Away

My friend Brandun pointed out that 5 weeks from today we'll be going home. 5 weeks sounds both impossibly long and impossibly short. How have I been here for over 2 months already? Seriously?!?

Forevermore I'm going to associate the smell of cigarettes with Rome-this is one city where the anti-smoking movement hasn't reached.

When I hear the sweet funk of James Brown, I'm going to think about last night, when a bunch of us went to a club called Big Mama's where a James Brown cover band was playing. At first the Italians gave us the old stink-eye, but once the music really got going and we got dancing, they warmed up to us. I did the lawn-mower, the shopping cart, the squat, and a whole bunch of other moves. I think I probably looked like a spastic monkey.

I also got to experience the joy of the Nightbus. Unlike in Harry Potter, you can't just stick our arm out to find a ride home. Instead you have to take a random bus to Termini, the main train station, then hop on another bus, just to find a stop where the N6 goes. When you find an N6 stop, you have to wait for 42 minutes for it to come, at 2:15 in the morning. Eventually you make it home, where the short & angry porter judges you for being out so late. I kept singing Matt Nathanson's song "Come on, Get Higher" to warm myself.

In order to recover from this madness, I slept for something like 10 hours today. I only got up to eat and use the ladies' room. Oh yeah and I watched Deep Blue Sea while doing my Latin homework.

So while I'm taking a lot with me from Italy, I also know that I'm still me. Quirky, eccentric, bread-loving, bad-dancing me.

P.S.
Last night while waiting for a tram I starting singing and Lindsay made me stop. She reminded me that I'm tone-deaf. I just like to forget that when I sing, it sounds like cats dying.