Lago di Garda

I know I've been neglecting my blog. I officially start 'school' today!

Lago di Garda was amazing! It was nice to get away from the city for the weekend and just relax, and don't worry! This time I did not fall into lake water, but it would have been perfectly fine if I did. Haha. We started with an early train ride there, where we all pretty much fell asleep. It was an hour and a half long, so we did have a little bit of time to get ready for the long day ahead.

After getting to destination point, we caught a cab to the trailer park where we were staying. It definitely was the cutest little trailer...ever. LOL! It had air conditioner, and I had my own bed. After dropping our stuff off there, we headed out to get something to eat because we were all so hungry. Jade and I split a hamburger and french fries. It was seriously so good! We then headed out to rent those foot paddle boats. I don't even know what they were called, but it was definitely so AMAZING!

We walked around in the pounding sun for about an hour. The town was so pretty, but it was definitely a relief to get back to a place we recognized. We chilled at the pool for a while before going to dinner at this Mexican place. The food was alright, but the company was AWESOME.

The next morning a group of us wanted breakfast. In Italy, they don't do "breakfast." You know....eggs, pancakes, bacon, waffles....and in Hawaii rice, fried rice, spam. Haha. But we went around looking for something that would satisfy our craving, but with no luck, we found the nearest restaurant and decided for some pasta. It ended up being a great decision. We were going to try and catch the bus to the castle, but it started pouring, so instead we decided to go back to Milan. It was a great decision at the perfect time because the train system was on a strike that day! We got lucky though. When we got up to the window, the ticket lady said she just heard of a train we could catch back to the city. We were stoked that everything worked out perfectly!

This weekend we stayed in Milan because it was Milano Fashion Week!!!! It was amazing, but that'll be my next blog. I'm also heading to Oktoberfest next weekend. We're driving from Milan to Germany. I'm so excited!

House Party!!!

On Monday, we decided to host a girl's night at our small place. It was so extremely hot, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. The food was great, and the company was even more amazing! We kept it rather small to about ten girls. Jade and I made the pasta which turned out pretty great...if I must say so myself. Haha. Camila and Nathalie, the Brazilians, brought salad and dessert, and Korina, Delaney, and Ariella brought loaves and loaves of bread! Haha. So we ended up having lots and lots of bread for leftovers. Bread here is a little weird though. It gets extremely hard and tough, so tough in fact, that it's rather hard to eat the next day. Definitely a bummer!

After dinner, we decided to set up a photobooth area on one of our walls. Something so simple but so fun. Such a great night. In fact, we're actually planning on doing it more often, but we'll see...

We went to Brandy Melville today. There is way more stuff here than back home in Hawai'i. It's only two metro stops away and oh so good :) I bought a shirt and a necklace for this weekend. We're going to Lago di Garda!!!! I'm STOKED. FOREAL!

Como Lago

Lake Como was AMAZING minus one of my usual, embarrassing falls, but I'll get to that later. We started off our wonderful day by sleeping in until 10:30. It was a rather late Saturday night, so we definitely needed it! Haha. We met up with our friend Delaney at the S'ant Aogostino metro station before actually going to the train station at Cadorna. I must say the metro is amazing. I sound like a tourist, but it truly is...especially because we don't have one in Hawai'i!!! After the metro, we met up with our friend Nathalie and finally got on the train to Como Lago (Lake Como).

My first train ride was exciting. It was only about an hour, but it was still a great experience :) Lake Como was hot and humid. We were all rather hungry, so we decided to grab lunch at what we thought was a small restaurant. In reality, it was huge. It had about three rooms filled with tables, a patio area, and the area that we entered from. All I can say is I've never had more incredible pasta in my life. I had the spaghetti carbonara. SO SO GOOD!!!! After lunch, we sat at the restaurant for a while and pondered what to do while surviving the humid heat. One of the waitresses pointed us to a funicular railway where you could get a great view of the city. I was ridiculously hot in that 'THING'!!! There was literally no air circulation, but once we got out, since we were so high up, the air was a lot more cooler. It was awesome. From there, we walked to see the beautiful city and lake in whole.

After coming down the mountain on that 'thing,' we decided that it would be a great idea to stick our feet in the water just to cool off a little. That was a bad idea, for me anyway. Haha. I totally slipped and ate it just as I was about to get my feet in the water. I was worried about my lens, but I'm just happy I had a filter on my lens. Even though the filter cracked and was ruined, my lens ended up being perfectly fine!!!

After I recovered from that super embarrassing slip, we decided to take a boat ride around the lake to get the cool breeze. It lasted for about and hour and was a great, relaxing idea. After getting off the boat, I just wanted to go home and sleep. But we walked around for a bit, and then caught the train back to Cadorna. We relaxed last night and had dinner at home because we were exhausted from the day's trip. All in all, it was AMAZING...as usual. Haha.

Vogue Fashion's Night Out Milano 2011

I feel so blessed that I got to be in Italy during Milano Fashion Week, nonetheless Vogue's Fashion Night Out! It was amazing and so ridiculously crowded. It was definitely something I'm glad I experienced. So many stores were giving away free drinks and random 'stuff'. AMAZING!!!

Tomorrow's plans include Lake Como!!! So exciting.

Bug bites and language barriers

Although Italy is AMAZING (I have no other words to describe it!), there have still been a couple of interesting situations. Haha. I have these incredibly huge bug bites: one on my arm, the others on my two legs. The one on my arm has swollen up to the size of a huge orange! It's not enjoyable at all, and I'm not sure what to do about it except ice it.

The language barrier makes it harder to communicate. I'm not sure why I wasn't expecting for it to be so hard, but this experience will definitely help me be more compassionate to those who don't speak my language. I've been trying to pick up Italian as quickly as possible, and the Italians who do know that we can't speak Italian are really helpful. Haha. I'm definitely learning a lot about everything!

But onto the AMAZING things....

We've been exploring our neighborhood. It's everything you think Italy would be! We've also made amazing new friends from all over the world: Brazil, France, Hungary just to name a few. They're awesome people and have definitely made the language barrier a lot easier.

Our school is beautiful. They have these gorgeous courtyards with the greenest grass I've ever seen. We've also found that for this Italian intensive course we're taking, we only have school on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. And for the regular semester classes, we don't have school on Fridays, so you know what that means....HAHA!

We also went to the Duomo the other day. We were supposed to meet up with some friends that day, but we couldn't find them when we got to our meeting place, so Jade and I decided to walk to the Duomo. It was amazing! When we turned the corner and saw it, we were speechless. We have nothing like that in Hawai'i. NOTHING! Haha.

Ciao!

Oh my goodness. Europe has been beyond amazing so far. I don't even know where to begin, so I'll do what I usually do when I'm overwhelmed...make a list. Haha.

• French sunsets at 36,000 feet in the air
• Amazing buildings and cobblestoned roads
• The beautiful scenery covered in graffitied walls...literally! But it just makes Milan so much more charming.
• Not having to worry about driving
• EATING...As Thomas calls it, E A T A L Y
• Spending the night with a group of amazing Brazilian people
• Buying our own groceries and eating what we made.
• Buying 'things' in a foreign language
• Our beautiful apartment with its old-school elevator and its black cat
• Our sore feet from walking EVERYWHERE!
• Quiet Milan mornings
• Hot, sweaty, humid days and nights! It's like Hawai'i but hotter!
• Oh yeah...we shorted out our electricity on the first night by using too many things at once. Haha. A bad situation turned hilarious because the problem was fixed.