milan

milan was... overwhelming. and I only saw like, 3 streets. overwhelming in a good way. I've been wanting to see the duomo (catherdral) since I knew for sure I was coming to italy. it's magnificent. it commands your attntion. i came out of the subway on the left side of it, and i tired so hard as i walked around to not look at it till i was directly in front. i just stood there in awe for awhile.... too long i think, this guy (there was so many, three or four each by each subway opening thingy) came up and grabbed my hand and tied a bracelet on it. each dude was holding hundred of them, they try to talk you into buying them, they are like the little friendship bracelets we used to make out of thread... but he just came up out of nowhere and before i knew what language he was even speaking he was like, "you like? ok now pay me euro/swiss franc/american dollar?" i told him i had literally no money and came to just take pics... and after repeating it 10 times and showing him i only had a 20 cent euro coin or whaever he walked away. later i sat and watched them do the same thing to so many other people. they would sneak up and almost tie them on and want to be payed. it was weird.

so i got my self situated and walked around a bit and looked at the little stands of postcards and tourist-y gifts... (yeah i was mentally picking things out to buy when I came back) but kept coming back to the duomo. it's that spectacular. i kept being pulled back. so the whole day i didn't wander far from it. it's marble i was told, and once you get close it has this pink hue to it and it's just so beautiful. i went around three time trying to find the ticket office to go up on the roof. there are stairs and a lift. i reccommend the extra few bucks and taking the lift. 250 stairs up sucks. there was a man outside playing the saxophone when i was going up though, the echo from the inside was so hauntingly beautifuly. on the way down i caught a weird rythm and the stairs went by super quick.

The view from the roof was really nice. I looked at my phone at like, 11:09 and it didn't even register it was almost 11:11 on 11:11. I moved the other side of the roof and looked again and it was 11:13 and then realized i missed it. oh well. So i made no wish on epic wish day, but atleast i'll never forget where I was.

there was so many people on the front steps when i came back down to the ground that i couldnt find a place to sit and wait to kill time for my subway or whatever, so i went around the corner and sat up on a ledge. it was so nice, i'll never forget it I don't think. I had lunch with anna at her work so i could meet a few people she works with, they were all really nice and i can't remember any of their names at the moment. they all laughed at me when i said i felt bad for almost kicking a pidgeon. (which i did, until i walked three more feet and one almost flew RIGHT into my head so i decided i dont like them... and i didnt feel bad any longer)

then i came home because i was exaushted, from like, 4 hours... it's so overwhelming (atleast i think) when you're not used to that much comotion. it's a lot to take in. i'm going back on thursday. here are some pics.

i heart food.

now that my stomach is feeling so much better, I am able to enjoy the food and omg.
bgkjsabgksgbdskajgbssjkbdbj.

My stomach is going to be so sad when I have to go home and fend for myself again. Tonight we had like, oysters? I think they were, with olive oil and lemon juice (my mouth is watering thinking about it) and last night some of the best pasta of my life, ill take a pic of the recipe in the book and come back tomorrow and edit this post with a pic... but both times we had wine that was supposed to "enhance" the flavor... i hate wine... but it really did make it taste so much better. the one we had yesterday was from the region we went to when I first got here... we stopped everywhere to find this kind of wine and all the winery's were closed. so we stopped and store apples out of the orchard. haha. I will probably never forget that in my entire life. I have never seen so many grape vines and apply trees, but the apple trees look so different from the ones at home, we were sure they wouldnt miss 4. eventually there was a store open and there was the wine that he was looking for I guess. It was really good.

Im going to make a series of post I think instead of one big one, it might be easier/less messy.

I'll start with last week (Thursday? maybe Friday... I don't remember) I met a few of the neighbors. One's who live like, 3 houses down with a 7/8 year old (I'm not quite sure how old exactly she is) and 13 month old boy. The mother is so nice, I cant spell her name to save my life, and the dad is insanely tall and pretty quiet... they are so relaxed and just...really nice. The grandmother (who I met her briefly) watches the kids everyday, and I was told she's old and gets tired easily. So on Thursday the mom comes home a little early and she's going to show me the way to the girls school and after we pick her up we are going to hang out for a bit and see how it goes. She wants me to play/do activities with her that make her use her English. She knows a little but gets shy around English speakers I guess and just wont talk. So we'll see how that goes. I'm really curious. It's going to be an everyday thing after Thursday if it goes well so I'm hoping it works out.

The other neighbors I met were really, uhh, had a lot of energy? at least the mom and kids did. the son had more energy than a whole litter of puppies combined. The father was really relaxed. he and the daughter were the only ones who spoke English. I think I heard that the mother is a teacher... and He is a lawyer I guess. he said he needs his English brushed up, so if i wanted to come around and just talk with him and the kids or something? idk, he was mostly talking to Anna in Italian about it, and I haven't seen them since, so we'll see how that one goes. i'm not sure which house they live in, i haven't seen them around, but the father office is directly across the sidewalk/walkway thing. They know a lot of people and said they could introduce me to more people and some more my own age so I'm not so lonely/have more things to do, ect.

I realized tonight that

I'm getting spoiled with all this amazing food. I'm (actually my stomach is) going to be super sad when I have to go home and I have to fend for myself again....

Tomorrow night I'm going to try to write a really post about various things and maybe a few pics... i was going to do it tonight, but we ate dinner really late then attempted to watch a movie and i'm too freaking tired.

goodnight!

sun? what's that?

i am forgetting what the sun looks like. It disappeared sometime last week and hasn't been around since. I hear it should make an appearance tomorrow, but I'm not going to count on it very much. when it rains hard, it's like a wall of rain... but when it drizzles, people still don't do anything. soooo... nothing has been going on since, like, saturday/sunday ish. and i'm starting to go nuts. i can only clean so many things. and then they just get dirty again in 30 seconds and I have to clean them again and then i just get mad. the way the dust in this house operates is so weird I've never seen anything like it... i feel like im neglecting this space, i dont have much to say though... just about nothing is going on because of all the raaaaiiiinnn.

lovely, lovely clouds that wont go away -___-

Othello is not impressed either...

I remembered!

one of the towns at least... the one famous for all the winter sports was Madonna di Campiglio. the mountains were called The Dolomites. they were so beautiful. I want to say the other town was Moreno or Mareno (It reminded me of Mr. Moran the math teacher every time we went by a sign that's the only reason i remember.)on the way back we saw mountains made of marble. Mountains. Made of marble. MARBLE. my mind was kind of blown, i don't know why. i just picture marble as statues and not massive mountains, like, i know it has to come from somewhere but seeing it as a mountain is kind of mind blowing. even from a distance for 3 seconds. I didn't even have enough time to take a picture, it went by that fast... but still.... MOUNTAINS OF MARBLE. omg.

here is a picture of me looking like a dope in front of the dolomites.

i spent the day just hanging around. i don't know my way around yet, in a few hours I'm going to be shown my way to the train station so i can find my way out of here during the day, there is really nothing to do in this little town once the baby is at school. it's basically the Italian equivalent of Ida. just less dense. everything is all together on one hill and everyone is close together. so maybe when i know my way out of here i'll have more exciting things to do talk about. Tomorrow i'm going to out on my first adventure alone =S the only sentence i know is "I don't speak Italian" but other than that i know like 15 words, but can't make a coherent sentence out of them. I think Como is kind of touristy (in the summer anyway) hopefully if i am in a blunder someone will know how to speak English. I think i'll just walk around for awhile and take my own snacks so I don't have to go through the hassle of ordering just yet. I just point and nod, If they ask questions I'm totally lost. The little kids at the stores and such are kind easy to talk to because most are shy and they understand the 15 words i know. There was a little boy at the hotel over the weekend who told me my Italian was bad, yeah i know kid. Then asked if i knew Spanish. I told him i could count to ten. I know polo loco (or el polo loco? IDK) too. I think that's the name of the restaurant on Breaking Bad? hmm, what else. They take dogs everywhere here. into stores and everything. big ones too, i saw like, a great dane type one in the shoe store. haha. i miss cuddling with my baby cats all the time. the two they have here are older, but they only want to be pet when they want to be pet and wont let me pick them up. all four of our cats really don't care if you touch (or even wake them up) them when they are sleeping... these ones do, lol. one is really loud and sounds like a kid. yesterday he was in the other room making tons of noise and i though it was a kid outside.
ok that's probably enough i guess. i'll go find something to do...

my days are still mixed up, im thinking its monday. so i dont know when we left, saturday? sat-yesterday... longest car ride of my liiiife. it took maybe 2 hours to get there. it was gorgeous. the place we stayed was way up in the mountains. so long wind-ey roads at the bottome that made me super tired. and once you started going up they got really short. we got there at like 5 i think and dinner was at 7 and then we all went to bed because no one could keep their eyes open. then sunday we went to the town of Garda i think it was ( i honestly cant remember any of the names :O) and walked around a bit, it was really beautiful.) then went to  another city an hour or so away. all the roads are short and curvy in the mountains and its a mixed of whiplash and just flat out making you want to sleep. we drove through what was I guess the most famous place for white wine. i've never seen so many grapes vines. there was no grapes though, the harvested them a  week or so ago. on the way back we stole some apples though. (apple is the first word i learned when i got here.... melle or mele (idk how to spell it...  but you say it may-luh) but i got one out of the fridge and the mother in law just gasped when i took a bite. they dont wash them before they put them in the fridge here... sooo i was like commiting a crime or something, haha)   the town we ended up at was close to Austria, but looked very german. and everyone spoke german. I had to use the bathroom and it was one of the ones where the people sit there and you have to pay when your done... they didnt speak english and i spoke no german/italian... so we just threw up our hands and i got to pee for free. the next day (monday? it was halloween) we went to a town super far away, but it was really nice. They have either the snowboarding or skiiing world cup there every year... i can't remember the name, ahh. then back in the car after walking around for awhile. we didn't spend too much time in any of the places :-/ we are kind of going on the kid's schedule....

I got her up and ready for school today by myself and I think tomorrow i'll take her alone, its really close to the house and easy to get to. today i'm just going to hang around the house... i think maybe take a shower and maybe a nap.... ive never been so tired in my life. i dont know why my body won't adjust already.