the last few weeks

Things have been really fun. I'm going to miss this city a lot and the friends I've made here. I haven't posted in a while so I'll try to recap the Cinque Terre trip and the past weekend.

Cinque Terre was very beautiful. I wasn't expecting to see so many lemon trees everywhere. I went with three other friends and we stayed in Monterosso, one of the five and in my opinion the best one. It was also supposedly the one geared towards young people so that might explain a little even though it wasn't exactly a hotbed of activity. I enjoyed it a lot though, the beach, the sea, and salty air. It was really safe and pretty. There were a couple of free beaches so we just hung out at those and ate some seafood (which is harder to come by in Siena). Also we had a lot of pesto because Liguria is known for it's pesto especially and also it's lemon honey/ lemon products.

We stayed atop this hotel which was above about 10 flights of outdoor stairs and was run by a brother and sister named Jerry and Cherry (I'm not kidding). They were quite nice and also ran a enoteca/ regional food store where we ended up going to pay the room bill, kind of weird but we went with it/ it worked out well because they charged us less than we though we would get charged for a pretty decent room even though the state of the bathroom wasn't great. It had a cool view though/ we could see the ocean. Also the terrain is steep so at night we could see headlights driving through the trees way up the rock inclines towards the sheltered houses.

We only got to go to three of the terres: Monterosso, Vernazza, and Rio Maggiore. There's a convenient train in between all places. The whole trip to get to Cinque terre only took about 3 hrs, less than what I was expecting but we had to transfer trains three times. Cinque terre is really beautiful because it's on the sea and I loved all the greenery/ loved the lemon trees. I would definitely recommend it. It wasn't as touristy as I thought it might be and everyone seemed decently friendly. I might have had the best gelato ever there. I think I got mango and also melone. The flavors were more fruity than Siena because they are closer to the ocean/ it just seems right.

This past Saturday the school had a final exhibition where we all go to show our work, the girls from the creative writing classes read their stories, photography and paintings were put up, all the book art things were put out, there was music/food/ company/ etc. It was fun. My host came for awhile which I thought was really nice of her considering in the morning she had had to go to Florence for her son. She was also nice enough to make the whole school these great cookies. They were like shortbread but folded over different fillings: jam, choco/ricotta. She is really good at cooking/ baking. Yesterday she made her own tagliatelle again= fantastic. The home stay turned out to be a good thing. I'll miss her.

After the exhibit a few of us went out for dinner/ drinks at Due Porti and the "shot bar." It was then it finally started to set in that the semester is coming to an end. I have one more full day at school (the final dinner is tomorrow) and then on Wednesday I go to paris and then Istanbul with Maryann (and then home!). ahhhhdfjtujtutfgf

I'm also going to miss my friends here so much. It was great that it was only 11 people in the program since we know each other well know but it's a shame that just as we've become comfortable with each other we have to leave.

Sunday some of us went to the Siena-Palermo soccer game at the stadium. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would and Siena won 1-0. wooooop