ok, time to play catch-up. luckily, my memory is bad enough that i've already forgotten most of what i did last week, so ill just cover the highlights.

cordoba was much less interesting than grenada. the hotel was also not as fancy, but the tradeoff was that it had a pool. then the trade-back-off was that the pool wasnt heated and as soon as we got to cordoba it dipped by about 5 degrees (celsius). i and about 4 others went for it, spent a few minutes trying to fool ourselves into thinking that we were having fun, and then eventually gave up because it was freakin cold. i think jason was in the longest, for a total of maybe an hour.

dave and i decided to go for a walk to find food, and it turns out that the neighborhood in which we stayed is pretty dead. eventually we found a mall - thats right, an actual mall in spain - with a grocery store. we sat on the patio until about 1am eating sandwhiches that either consisted of brie, ham, and avocado or just avocado and salt, and argued about right-wing fiscal policy. it was probably the most good-natured political debate ive had in years, which is especially suprising given that, despite being socially progressive, he is a pretty hardcore neo-classical capitalist (or is it neo-liberal? von mises/FA Hayek? someone help me out).

the next morning we got up early to visit another mosque, this one gigantic, arcaded, and containing within it a cathedral that was build hundreds of years later by a king, i believe charles I, who didnt want to destroy the mosque because it was pretty. i guess he was happy to just kick out all of the people that might have used it.

we then walked around the old jewish quarter, which was small and kind of depressing, compared to the resplendence of the catholic and even islamic artifacts. but anyone that knows anything about history will not be suprised. i got lost, sat on a bench for an hour thinking, wandered around, and ended up eating burger kind fries for lunch because it was the only thing i could find that was vegan and not an overpriced salad without dressing.

on monday i went to the local velodrome with juan and his/my new friend pedro. a velodrome, for those who dont know, is a track for bike racing. it is relatively short and has very steep banked turns. it was a fucking blast. pedro won the first few races when we were just messing around because he has thighs like an iron man triathalete and a higher gear ration than juan or me. however, once we started taking it a little bit more seriously, i won the last three in a row by drafting off of him until the last bank, and sprinting down it to overtake him. each time i was able to hold onto my lead just long enough to finish first. now i see why all of my friends in new york are so into this shit.

sometime early last week, i finished the wind-up bird chronicle. the first half was probably the best book ive ever read, but then, about five minutes after i told dave that so far, it was the best book i'd ever read, murakami did that thing that i sort of hate where writers start skipping around with their chronology, and i lose my grip on the character. it lost a little bit of its mystery and cohesiveness, and by the end, i was re-attatched to the fate of the protagonist but a. not quite as fiercely as before and b. the end made only a litle bit of sense. im still not really sure what happened, or what about half of the charaters and sub-plots had to do with anything else, although im suspicious that it is something. still one of the better books i've read, probably better than kafka on the shore, and mom, i recommend reading it.

a few days later i finished love in the time of cholera. i had mixed feelings. marquez is a genius of description, very lighthearted with a good sense of humor, but i think his characters are weak, and seemingly deliberately so. i remember having a similar feeling about chronicle of a death foretold. it wasnt until the very end that any of that characters started to really take shape, and even then, only fermina daza and not the supposed protagonist, although the line is a bit blurry. still, it was a nice book with a very sweet ending, and had it been a little shorter, i think i would have been entirely content without there being any characters.

thursday night i went out to dinner with a friend of a friend, who, unlike the friend, is not a vegan straightedge hardcore kid but an air force pilot ex-hardcore kid. he was really nice and i had a good time, although i got a little tired of the conspiratorial bro-talk about that girl in that restaurant or whatever.

friday night was my first european alleycat. i followed juan and pedro and got third out of maybe 10 or 15. it was really short, basically a downtown sprint, and ended in the police chasing us with sirens on for going the wrong way. we lost them in the crowd of people in plaza mayor, though i did spend the rest of the night flinching at every flashbulb because the tattoo on my leg is pretty damn identifiable.

afterward we stood on the street in lavapies drinking beer or lemonade. i ended up talking a lot of the time to a spanish kid that was raised in australia and therefore speaks english. he is an ex-messenger turned boiler room stock trader (im not really sure what that means, but i know its not exactly legal) who is currently about to make an extra hundred K with some not so legal stuff involving diamonds. he does about a bag of coke a day and talks like it.

saturday night i went out to dinner with a friend and had a fabulous time. it was the first real vegan meal ive eaten in weeks, and despite the 20€ price tag i was stoked. we walked around for a while, met up with some other people, saw oceans 13 in english (i tried to read the spanish subtitles), and then walked in the rain for hours to get home. the metro is closed after 1:30 (at this point its about 2:30) and i am too cheap for a cab, so i convinced her and the guy we were with at that point to walk home a couple of miles away in the rain. it took about an hour, and i had fun. it took me another 45 minutes of walking about half an hour on a bus to get home.

on sunday i listened to music, took a walk, and read. all day.

yesterday i went to my first day of my new job tutoring spanish kids in english. ive thought of myself for years as someone who doesnt really like young kids. i never know how to talk to them, because i had a hard time wrapping my mind around someone not being intellectually capable to have a normal conversation with me, and i also dont like how rowdy they tend to be in groups. boy was i wrong. the two boys, 13 and 14, are totally sweet, good-mannered, and attentive. but the real treat turned out to be the 6-year-old girl, clara. she is the sweetest, most shy little thing ive ever met, and i want to adopt her and take her home and spend all day every day saying the names of colors and writing them in cursive with her. i very quickly caught on to how you need to talk to a 6-year-old, and i made up a game wherein we count to three in english together and then say a word, such as "yellow", that she is too shy to say to me by herself. i cant wait to go back this afternoon. and im also getting paid 12€ an hour (which is about $16) for this. what a deal.

the bus ride from madrid to grenada is around 5 or 6 hours and there was some kind of weird rule that we couldnt use the bathroom on the bus because the trip wasnt long enough, so i spent a good chunk of the ride being extremely thirsty and not drinking anything, because, as those of you who know me are probably aware, i have a bladder like a 3 year old. we stopped once at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere for 40 minutes, and i got offered all kinds of plant-based table scraps from people who had just discovered that i am vegan. we got to the hotel, and inti and i went up to our room. i felt like an imposter, because it was hands down the nicest hotel room into which i´d ever set foot. or wait, did we go straight to the alhambra? maybe we did that first. no, thats right, we dropped off our stuff and then went to the alhambra. it was stunning. it turns out that i love arab architecture from the middle ages; the materials and designs are simple but somehow breath-taking. if im ever rich, ill have a courtyard built in my home like that one, because i swear it was the most peaceful place on earth.

our guided tour was only of the alhambra, so after it was over, we wandered around the other sites in a pack. i ditched the pack on the tower in the... shit. the something that starts with "a" and is across a courtyard from the alhambra. whatever. i was sick of being around people, and i had a hunch that the gardens of the generalife (i know what you´re thinking, its pronounced ghen-eh-rhal-LEE-fay) would be better experienced in relative solitude. i was right. turns out that the gardens are even more peaceful than the courtyard at the alhambra, and since i wasnt with a group, i managed to avoid seeing or hearing humans for stretches of up to 5 minutes at a time. i spent the latter half of my walk fantasizing about building a commune designed after the generalife in which talking was restricted to certain areas. yeah, when im a millionaire.

i found falafel on my walk back to the hotel, and while i was eating it, spotted the first south-indian restaurant i´ve seen in spain. i made a mental note of its location and promised myself that i´d return when i got hungry again. i spent a while reading, took a long shower, and then tried to walk back to the indian place. i got lost, realized that i had forgotten my map, wandered around a bit, then came back to the hotel and made a PB&J (bringing a loaf of bread and jars of PB and J turned out to be a very smart move). after "dinner", i went to a friend´s hotel room and sat in her bed reading while she watched a movie on her ipod. as far as i know, she was the only other person in the hotel that didnt go out that night. her friends kept telling her that she was missing out on the experience of grenada and that shed never have this chance again unless she came back. she replied that she didnt think that getting drunk at a club full of dancing tourists was really essential to the experience, and i think somewhere a straightedge band got its wings when she said that.

the next day we went to some old cathedrals and talked about gothic architecture. i was fascinated, since i never took art history, but i wont repeat the lecture.

the next stop was the alcazín (i probably misspelled that), the arab neighborhood in the hills across from the alhambra. of course it stopped being an arab neighborhood after 1492, but apparently it is starting to be repopulated. the tour ended at a little park with a great view of the city, where seemingly homeless men played beautiful classical spanish guitar for change, and stray dogs wandered around stealing hearts - including mine. there was this one dog... he was seriously the sweetest thing i´ve ever seen (except you, scout, you know you´re the only girl for me!). he was very mellow but a face-licker which gets me every time. unfortunately, he didnt try to follow me home.

we ate lunch at a super fancy restaurant in the hills. they made me a special salad without the cheese (delicious) and a plate of grilled marinated veggies (even delicious-er), and everyone else complained that there was too much fat in their steak.

next time: córdoba, el velodromo, and concluding thoughts on haruki murakami´s the wind-up bird chronicle

in case you were in suspense, i did not get a job as a messenger here. im only in town for 6 weeks and i speak very little spanish. plus there are only 20 messengers in this town, so even if i was better qualified, the likelihood of there being an opening would be low.

so back to... where was i, sunday?
in the morning i walked to school to use the computers, but it was closed, so i walked back. i spent about 5 hours reading, and then went down to lavapiés to meet up with juan.
juan is a messenger here that i met while he was living in new york for three months and working there. he was following me during the haloween alleycat and we started talking. fast forward 8 months and im living in his city. given that the only other people i know here are nyu students, and im not going to learn to speak spanish by hanging out with them, it seemed like a good idea to get in touch.
i met him at his house, where, not for the first time, i had to explain that i dont drink without looking like i was refusing an offer to hang out. we sat on his deck and i drank pineapple juice while he drank beer and smoked cigarettes. you know that part of hanging out with a relatively new friend when you dont really know what to talk about? well its even harder in spanish. but i managed to deal with it. after a while we went with his girlfriend to a falafel shop so i could eat, and then to a bar where i had another pineapple juice and he had more beers.
i asked him to accompany me to the welding shop the next day to translate, and not only did he say yes but he lent me his spare bike to use in the meantime. it felt good to ride again.
monday was the first day of class. its long - 4 hours - but not that difficult. so far we have just been reviewing, but i already feel like my spanish is better than a good portion of the class, so i dont expect to struggle. plus, no one else (to my knowledge) has a madrileño friend to practice with. at least not yet.
after class i wrote my last entry, but had to leave in a hurry to meet juan at work.

after leaving his work, we biked back to my place to get my bike. we went to the welder, who said that his son, the one who did the welding, wouldnt be back until later or possibly tomorrow. he also said it would probable cost 15€. we went to a bar. more pineapple juice and beer. we nerded out about bike parts. ah, the universal language of bike nerddom! he knows a guy that is selling some old italian stuff and might have some cheap cinelli track drops for me. it then occurred to me that i could buy a regular seat collar from the bike shop and use that to keep my seatpost in place until i took care of the welding. that solution was perfectly serviceable and cheaper. plus i didnt have to wait.

we rode to a neighborhood in central madrid where are the young people hang out (up until now i had been wondering where the nikes where hiding). we found an italian place that would make pizza without cheese, and sat in a plaza eating and drinking... pineapple juice and beer. i swear the guy drinks like 15 beers a day - yesterday he drank about 7 over the course of about 5 hours) - and never gets even the slightest bit drunk.

i biked home, which felt fucking great, and finished what is the what. after an hour or so of feeling nihilistic and hopeless (the picture that eggars paints of humanity and civilization is not a positive one), i ate some food, took a shower, clipped my toenails and flossed. i sat back down at my desk wearing a bathrobe and realized that even though nothing matters and all of life is suffering, its not really so bad. then i did my spanish homework.

after class today, i walked with an nyu kid to a retrospective of the photographer sebastiao salgado´s work in africa, which, coincidentally, included a lot of photos of the dinka tribe, a member of which is the main character in what is the what. my mind is still spinning with questions about eurocentrism, paternalism/cultural relativism, and human "rights". im also very new at trying to appreciate visual arts, and im not yet very good at appreciating or criticizing documentary photography. if i have any great epiphanies later today, ill be sure to let you know.

in two hours i have to meet nyu for a mandatory visit to the prado. i think that until then ill sit on the patio and read.

it appears that computer access will be somewhat sporadic in the coming months. the nyu computer lab closes early and is closed all day sunday, and ill be damned if im going to pay to write in this thing. thursday evening we had a walking tour of madrid, and afterward i ended up at a cafe with my new roommate, inti, and two other nyu kids. they had beers, i just sat. like most nyu kids ive ever met, most of the 66 kids in my program want to spend their time here "partying", think that being vegan is insane, are pre-med or business majors or are liberals majoring in humanities, and dont know anything about any of my interests or hobbies. that being said, they are mostly decent, reasonably intelligent people that i think i will enjoy taking classes with. this is an exercise in diplomacy for me, and so far i think ive done pretty well at not being an elitist prick.

on friday, we had orientation. it involved fewer ice-breakers than i expected (there were none). its kind of a blur by now. in the evening, we had a tour of the old stuff in madrid, which was quite interesting. i wish i had taken history classes, because it turns out that its something in which i am very interested. i guess ill just have to read actual books after i finish school. after the tour, i went to a turkish place and had this thing that they called a vegetarian pizza. it was sort of like a falafel burrito and was the first real meal id eaten, not counting the beans and rice that ive been cooking for myself.

the book stores here close really early, and on thursday and friday i was finished late enough with nyu activities that i didnt make it. i spend a couple of hours friday night working on a letter, and went to bed early.

on saturday, we had a day trip to segovia. segovia is fucking gorgeous, as are the castle and cathedral contained therein. more tours, more hanging out with nyu kids, and more allergies. for lunch, i split off from the group, because just about everyone wanted to eat the traditional segovian suckling pig at really expensive restaurants. i found a bar and got a lettuce, tomato, and asparagus sandwhich which tasted like nothing. the girl working at the bar was cute, but i didnt feel up to the challenge of flirting in spanish, so i started wandering to kill time until we were suppose to meet back up. i ran into another nyu kid who told me that there was a modern art museum nearby, so i checked it out. i still dont really get art, but some of it was cool, especially a piece which consisted of little kids´ stickers arranged to form letters which spelled "i love making cutting edge art". har har. after the museum i decided that i might as well brush up on my spanish, plus you only live once, so i went back to the bar, this time with another kid, to get some juice and talk to the waitress. i understood about 75% of what she said, including that she was from valencia but spending her summer in segovia, where there is nothing to do but hang out and drink (shocking), that valencia has beautiful beaches that i should check out if i have a chance, and that my spanish is good enough, albeit barely so, to have a conversation with a stranger, crack a couple of jokes, and give her my number. she blushed, but i dont expect a call, given that segovia is over an hour away from madrid.

we got back to madrid just in time to buy some books. the selection of books in english is rather small and they arent cheap. i bought 4 books for about $70: what is the what, by dave eggars; love in the time of cholera; something by margaret atwood (someone suggested that i read her books but i dont know anything else about her), and the windup bird chronicles by haruki murakami (im sure i just butchered the spelling of his name). i figured that with so much free time and so few distractions, i would be able to break into the classic literature that ive skipped over and dont have the attention span to read when there are alternatives, but gabriel garcia marquez was pretty much the only author i could find. they also had dostoyevsky, but not the brotheres karamozov, which is the one i wanted to read.

more beans and rice for dinner.

i need to go meet juan at his job and see if they have a position for an experienced messenger who does not know the city, speaks poor spanish, and is only free monday-thursday after 1:30. it seems unlikely, but this place is more expensive than i expected, so i could use the extra money. the rest of the weekend and day one of class later.

a little before noon (your time) on tuesday, i hopped on my bike, carrying nothing but a backpack full of clothing and an ipod. as it turns out, clothing + ipod + random odds and ends = a relatively heavy backpack. im not talking copy-box-heavy, just kind of heavy for a 20-mile ride (ben, if you are reading this, which you probably arent because you dont have a livejournal, you are goddamn crazy to plan on riding across country without paniers because a 20lb bag starts to feel like 100lbs after about an hour of riding). after getting confused in rock creek park, back-tracking a ways, walking my bike up tilden and then riding the rest of the way to reagan national, my back hurt but i felt good. i figured that if i was going to be in an airplane for the next forever or so, a bike ride there wouldnt kill me. then things started to go wrong, as they often due for people whose attitudes about travel are as lax as mine tends to be. normally, i hate being rude to people in the service industry, but when the baggage people told me that i couldnt bring my bike on the plane without a box (which the website specifically said i could do, so long as the pedals were removed and the handlebars turned sideways), i had to make a bit of a fuss, and eventually they relented.

i enjoyed stranger than fiction, wrote a little, and slept.

at a little after 7am (my time), i got off the plane in madrid barajas, and began wandering around the airport looking for the metro. the next thing that went wrong was that i was told i could only bring my bike on the metro on weekends and holidays. ill be damned if was going to shell out for a taxi, so i started riding. i ended up on a highway where bikes were clearly not allowed, so i asked directions at a gas station. several gas stations later, i was on the main road towards town. i noticed that when i put my seat post back in after lending my bike to alexia it was still a little low, so i stopped and adjusted it. upon tightening the seat collar, it snapped. i spent the next couple of hours getting lost in a foreign city with no map (the streetwise madrid map that i bought at borders turned out to be useless because it only included the touristy downtown area) with the seat on my bike all of the way down, killing my knees, and a now even heavier backpack. but the weather was damn nice, so i wasnt too bummed.

then the atm wouldnt let me take out any more money. i called the bank less than a week ago to tell them that i would be in europe, and they still fucking cut off my account after i withdrew 20 euro for food. oh yeah, and i was supposed to give my landlord cash upon arrival. luckily, she was very friendly and didnt mind waiting until i straighened things out to get the money. i did the following things that day: bike (uncomfortably) to where there was supposed to be a bank of america a few miles away (there wasnt), bike another few miles to where the guy at the first wrong location said there was one (there wasnt), bike back toward my new place, take a detour to find a bike shop i was told about (coulnt find it), bought food (shitty selection but dirt cheap prices), nap for 3 hours, read the stranger cover to cover (looking back, i should have brought something else to read, but it was the only thing i had with me), eat, take the metro downtown, wander around, and pay 2.50 for a fucking soda so that id have an excuse to sit at a table outdoors at 12:30am.

now im at the computer lab at nyu. no one is here because the program coordinators are at the airport picking up the people that are arriving today.

to do:
-find bike shop
-borrow american cell phone and call bank of america, probably be rude to service worker again
-eat something
-find bookstore that sells american books and purchase new dave eggars novelç

highlights:
-ive only been asked to repeat myself once and the only person that has offered to speak english to me was the woman at nyu. my spanish must be pretty ok. nevermind that i only understand about 1/3-1/2 of what they say to me.
-nice weather
-nuria is really nice and i think she´s funny, although its always hard to tell in a foreign language.
-no jet lag

so we hung out at josh's place for a while, waiting for sasha and violet to get back, because they had left bags there when they went somewhere else for the weekend. eventually they showed up, we hung out some more, and then we decided to go eat at some jewish pizza place that is apparently amazing. unfortunately, it was close. and so were the next 4 places we went. seriously. so after about 3 hours and maybe 6 different busses, we found a place that was open, and had the most amazing pizza, pasta, and bruschetta ive ever had. italian tomatoes make american tomatoes taste like cardboard, and the fresh local olive oil was incredible. i had a pizza and split bruschetta with josh, for about 7 euro, which is less than $9, and you dont need to tip here. during the 3-hour oddessey, we happaned across such landmarks as the forum and cat sanctuary. we didnt stop because we were hungry and on a mission, but it was kind of neat to be walking around in a city that is sort of like new york meets southern california, only the cars are smaller and people speak italian, and to run across famous old stuff as though it doesnt mean anything. probably because josh and evelyn are basically the same as the people i hang out with at home, and because sasha and violet are the people i hang out with at home, and because we were searching for vegan food at 9pm, it didnt really feel like i was traveling europe so much as just hanging out. but hanging out - oh wait - near the forum, which is like, a bajillion years old and people fly from all over the world just to look at it. after dinner we came back to josh's and watched second season friends dvds from midnight until 6 when everyone fell asleep.

we woke up at about 3, which infuriated cindy when i told her (her point is that i spent 1/4 of a day, which is 1/12 of my time in rome, watching friends, and then slept in too late to go sight-seeing, and shes not so wrong, but as i explained, it was bonding time with my new friends). i went with josh and evelyn to the print shop where he makes to kill merch and then we drove to central rome to get more food. for 1.4 euro, we got these delicious fried chick pea patties on rolls which were delicious and filling and fucking cheap. then we got soy gelato, which we also did the night before after dinner, though i forgot to mention it. then josh dropped me off at piazza di popoli where i met cindy. we walked to the spanish steps, then in the general direction of the trevi fountain. cindy got confused, and had to look at a map, which she was embarassed about, and then asked for directions. it turned out that we were about 2 blocks away. on the way there, we stopped at a stand where i bought two scarves for 5 euro each, and at this place called zara's, which is like a higher quality, sweatshop free h&m thats all over italy. i didnt buy anything, but if i needed nice looking jackets or clothing to wear when i dress up i might have. then we took a bus back to her neighborhood, got indian food with her friend sarah, and hung out at the bus stop until my bus came. taking the bus back involved transfering, and in rome, there is no indication of which stop you are at, so i had to keep watching the signs outside until i thought i was at the right place. i wasnt. more wandering. then i caught another bus back to josh's, where we ate more pasta and watched more friends. this time, however, until 4, which is a slightly more reasonable hour for bed.

this morning i got up around 1. we hung out at home for a while, then drove into central rome for food. we made it to the jewish pizza place that we tried to go to the day before, which was open this time. and delicious. after lunch, i walked to the coliseum to meet cindy. we walked around outside of the coliseum, which i was too cheap to pay 10 euro to go inside, and then attempted to go into the forum which is free, but closed. i need to work on this whole leaving-the-house-at-3pm thing. but hey, when in rome... we ended up just walking around some more in vatican city, buying dior knock-off glasses for 5 euro, getting food, sitting in a cafe (where cindy had espresso and i didnt get anything), and talking for a few hours. then we hung out at the bus stop for a while, and eventually i actually got on the bus. it was really nice just to hang out with her and talk. then i fucked up transfering busses again, and wandered around. when i got back to josh's we had some food and threw friends on the tv. after a while, we broke out the tattoo machine. josh's friend has a machine that he left with josh, so josh has been doing some tattoos on himself. we decided to do tattoos of each others' bands. he did an attrition lyric on his knee and i got "mosh to kill" on my ankle in cursive (his band is called to kill, and mosh to kill is what they put on their shirts). it turns out that i am as shitty a tattoo artist as i always assumed i would be, because i have a very unsteady hand. my tattoo looks terrible, but whatever, its only permanent. then josh did "god free" on her ankle with an upside down cross in the middle. now we are watching more friends, and i have to leave in 4 hours to catch my plane. that is, if the strike at fiumicino airport is over. see you soon... maybe? or maybe ill be staying on josh's flood for another few days, doing more shitty tattoos on myself. well, maybe that would be a lousy idea. anyway, here are some pictures. sorry, i dont remember how to do an lj-cut without using the client that i use at home, so they are going to just have to take up space all over your friends page. ok, nevermind, i just realized that id have to import the pictures and then re-save them in a smaller file size and that would take forever and i dont feel like doing it. ill put some on my myspace, and leave the tattoo pics for when i get home.

i got to the airport 2 and a half hours before my flight. i didnt have to wait in any lines, so i just sat around at the terminal for 2 hours. this happens everytime i fly: i show up really early to be on the safe side and get through security in like 5 minutes. its not that i dont believe that sometimes you really have to wait that long, its just that i never seem to need to. so the flight was boring. i slept most of the way, and ate the food i brought because i hadnt ordered vegan food ahead of time. i got to fiumicino outside of rome and wandered around the airport trying to find the train station (note: wandering will be a continual theme here). everyone at the airport probably spoke english, but i hate feeling like a tourist so i tried to avoid talking to people as much as possible. i figure that if i act confident enough, people will assume im a local (especially since ive been told that i look italian). eventually i found the train to termini station, where i did some more wandering. 45 minutes later, i was on the 36 bus to piazza sempione. then more wandering. josh told me to call him when i got to the bus station near his house, but i couldnt find a phone. once you get that far out of central rome, people dont speak english, and all i know in italian is please and thank you. i found a public phone but i couldnt figure out how to use it, so i asked a cab driver for directions, and sort of understood his response. then i wandered some more. i looked up "how do i get to" in a phrase book, but despite the fact that josh says my pronounciation is good no one that i asked seemed to know what the hell i was asking. it turns out that his street is really small and no one knew about it. eventually, however, i found josh's apartment. so that takes care of the first 5 hours i spent in rome. all in all, wandering around in rome when its 65 degrees is not a bad way to spend the afternoon. im sick of typing, so im going to go eat (which is apparently all romans do) and watch friends with evelyn, josh's girlfriend (which is apparently all josh and evelyn do). ciao.