date: 1094545272
mood:
listening to:
day 3:
well, its sunday morning ,around 11 am. i woke up about 30 minutes ago (yay for computer/palm alarms working!) , and got up around 10 minutes ago. time to have breakfast with my italian neighbours.
this is all so surreal.
i wonder what will today bring! hopefully, internet. i woke up thinking how much i wish i could email instead of just writing this.
going to go knock on her door now…
—
weeee.
okay, so we had “breakfast” – some coffee with steamed milk she made – was very good – she is very italian, she complained the coffee is not good! hehehehe.
she had a biscuit, i had some musli with milk, and tea. i also tried a bit of her coffee (i just had half a cup).
during breakfast we arranged what should be bought: eggs, salt, lettuce, tomatoes, onion, cucumber, potatoes, basil. she is allergic to wheat – so i’ll buy some flower (flour?) for myself, for little things, but not soon.
she loves pasta and said she’ll make pasta with some tomatoe sauce later. and she claims she is not a cook!
i hope that the division between the two of us as me cleaning/preparing and her cooking will mostly work. i’m ready to make potatoes and such (we have no oven but i’ll figure something out), but i just am not sure what should i get for sauces and such. we are undefined on what kind of meat we should get.
after breakfast as we were going to our rooms one of the guys from last nights indonesian party stopped by with his laptop, asking me for assistance on how to put photographs together. i just noticed a panorama making software on his desktop and just ran through with it, showing him how to fine tune. in the beginning, it was adorable, francesca was making these huge eyes at me, like “who is he?!” and then i explained that i met him at last night’s indonesian party on the 2nd floor, and that i will help him edit photographs. the guy is like 30, has a blurry photograph of his son on the background. the picture that we put together was a BEAUTIFUL photo(s) of a mountain in indonesia. looked magnificently beautiful, and … yeah, i wanna go there too one day. :)
it is sunny outside, so i think i will go shower, dry my hair and go walk outside for a while.
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the shower is very nice. pressure is not insanely strong, but its strong enough to enjoy. water is very nice and hot, and the shower is fairly big (like canadian shower, maybe a bit bigger). i feel … at home, finally. at least in some sense.
—
alright. hair dry, clothes on, shoes tied (not running shoes!).
i’m going into the world! woohoo, brave me :D
—
oh my god! i left at 1:15, and came back at 5:15, and i was walking practically non stop for all this time.
soo, people are saying that sunday is a dead day… yeah, right. so i walked (by sheer intuition) to the main square, then to The Bridge (the one that’s on all photos and the one that’s closest to main sqaure), crossed it, walked around on the other side, then crossed on another bridge (the Modern Bridge, it was built recently. dont know its real name), came back to the square, hang out a little more, then walked around until i got back home.
so all this time the streets were *chockfull* of people (well, main streets).
i have so much to tell, that i am not even sure where to begin.
the main square and streets leading up to it slowly fill up with people as you get closer to it. the actual main square if *FULL* of people to the point where its impossible to walk through. there is wonderful live music, and a load of stores selling wine and beer and icecream. i stood there for about 15 minutes, listening to a band of like 9 men, with one drummer and the rest on various wind instruments, playing jazzish music. it was seriously nice.
then i continued walking, not looking at the (practically useless) map, just in the direction of the water and just where i felt like going. as you leave the market, there is a huge walking section of streets, where there is like an insane amount of stores, and again, and insane amount of people. all the stores were cool, clothing, shoes. no coffee shops (and not “coffee shops” either) in this area, people don’t sit, just walk.
i stopped by an electrical stores, 10 dvd-rs cost $19.99 euros. my palm costs 230 euros. ipod mini 250 euros (approx). i took a little ad as a reminder.
i kept walking, stumbling around different streets. eventually i reached the water front, where i walked to the old bridge. crossed the bridge, continued stumbling.
interesting stores: canadian naturals, mcdonalds, SUBWAY (?!), america today. a lot of cool shoe stores.
everyone are dressed to stylishly. even kids of like age 4 are wearing things i like. not to mention girls and younger women and adults.
no one looks like a teenager, everyone are either 20something or 40something.
no one walks alone: you either have 1 (usually 2) very blonde and young kids, AND a partner, AND/OR a dog, OR a bike. all kids are blonde, most people are blonde too. i’m talking white hair here. surprisingly most people are fairly tan (as in, not dark skin, but this even … bronze glow). it is sunday, and most people are fairly dressed up (damnit, i knew i should’ve dressed up too!), and an incredible amount of people have dogs.
i’ve seen maybe one other person with a camera. i was the only one with an d/slr.
on the waterfront there is a huge, huge area full of chairs and people drinking coffee. it feels almost like a zoo, because the area is so big and uniform.
people eating waffles, ice cream. drinking coffee, beer, coke.
the other side of the river is quite more quiet – people juts disappear. i walked a little, crossed on the newer bridge (nothing spectacular, the london millenium bridge was better).
back on the other side i decided i was tired.
went inside a church. sat for 15 minutes. listened to song. lit a candle for my grandma. it was very nice.
went outside, wandered until found an empty chair. sat down, waited for someone to talk to me (as in, waiter). didn’t work out. =p i got bored so i left.
walked back to the main square in a different path, there i got some icecream (yummy). then walked some more, picked an odd way that i didn’t take before, found some fantastic odd small streets and places.
i mostly didn’t take photographs, just some snapshots and even not too many of those. it was just better to enjoy the surroundings.
walked back home at this point, very odd backward way, through small streets, in a big curve. enjoyed small streets, its just awesome, the atmosphere. found some buildings with “ucm” on it (the name of the university).
came home, *ideally* walking out on the exact street that i needed that is closest to the building. i’m an ideal navigator, i tell you, did all this without a map!
came home, debated calling home, decided that nah, i’ll just figure out how to email tomorrow.
came home, drank 2 glasses of apple juice. dinner at 8, but i’m not sure *what* i’ll be eating, as i know francesca has pasta, however i’m not sure if there’s some for me. all convinience/supermar ket stores were closed, i was looking on the way. don’t feel like going to shoarma again, although the menu said they have lasagna, and its like 5 euro… and i didn’t really eat today yet.
well, we’ll see.
i’m extremely tired, sitting in the “dining” room of the floor, watching the marathon race of the olympics – last show! – and typing this, slowly. *dead* tired. so much walking and everything, its just deadning.
its sunset and hot in greece, it was sunny for the whole day today here (except now its again overcast), and i wonder how it is in toronto. i miss everyone greatly, i was thinking about how fun it would be to have each and single person here with me (not all together, haha). each one would have enjoyed a different aspect of the walk.
i think i’ll go take one of those sweet thingies i got yesterday.
more food shopping tomorrow, also 8:30 at reception to discuss lack of microwave and bookshelf (who cares but i need to make sure that they dont blame me for disapperance), then 10:15 have to be at this street (which i didn’t really find today, although i wasn’t really looking) to meet Ina (the woman who was arranging courses with). i wonder how many other people will be there. francesca has a seperate, different (later) thing. so its only cross ocean students that them make get up so early! hehe. i wonder what’s my schedule like!
6:07pm, i’m going to go eat and watch olympics, and relax, and miss you. (well, not you, but the other you).
—
oh my god!
okay, i ab solutely love my neighbour. we spent like an hour talking about paris and rome and taking trips to them, and she told me that i can get an airplane ticket from brussels to rome for like 25 euro. !!!!
and then i just need to take train to brussels (like 2 hours), so that’s fantastic.
i can book over internet, so that’s what i shall do tomorrow. and train from rome is not 18 hours, its 10, according to her. she said a friend took train from northern netherlands, and it was 12 hours.
and she looked at my rome maps and gave me more advise.
did i mention that i’m thrilled?
so now instead of dinner here, she invited me to go with her to her friends to have dinner with them. since i’m starving, and we have no food, i agreed.
we *might* go out afterwards. judging by last night its unlikely, plus i have to get up early, but i’m not going to refuse ahead of time.
she’s getting very dressed up (make up and all).
i’m wearing boots, pants, black shirt, jacket. simple. i COULD get dressed up, but i don’t really feel like it.
YAY food! its 9:40pm so i’m pretty hungry.
i’m happy. but i still miss everyone!
—-
wow, i’m extremely late writing this. this is almost exactly 24 hours later, its 9:17 the next night. so many things happened!
so i went with her to the other building.
there were about 16 people there, italian, brazilian, french, austrian, (and me). we all sat in this common room: it is very large, as the building is far better then the one that i live in. huge ceilings! anyway, the room has 3 couches, a coffee table, and a tv, and behind all that there were two large wood tables surrounded by plastic chairs. everything is ikea or similar, but i’m fairly sure its ikea.
after about an hour, italian people made pasta with tomato sauce and bacon for everyone. while waiting we all just talked, conversations was just flowing between different people. the music was smashing pumpkins, evanecense, queen, coldplay, prodigy, and then during dinner real italian music (like, ballads/pop, not dance or trance). it was absolutely fantastic!
the people that i met:
francesca: my neighbour, very nice girl, about 20, going into economics, very cute and friendly, claims she can’t cook but knows a lot of basic dishes, allergic to wheat, has very poor english but adorable italian accent. talking to her makes me laugh because she is so extremely emotional!
dolphina: a french girl, from south of france, speaks fairly good english but also with problems, we got along very well. it was her birthday.
eva: austrian girl, not from our school, she studies in leiche, but she’s here because she an dolphina met during dutch language classes (somewhere). also very nice.
brazillian girl: who’s name i AGAIN forgot! ARGH, i just asked her for it yesterday. very shy, very quiet, never talks, but when i did talk to her she is very friendly. when we go out she comes with us.
diego: a brazillian guy that the girl met at the train station, lives in the same building as me and francesca. curses a lot. loves soccer.
a bunch of italian guy who i gave up on trying to remember their names. they don’t speak english that well (most of them) so we get along fine by just waving hi.
oh, there’s one italian guy who’s name is … (goes to francesca to ask) enrico. he went to toronto 2 years ago, and there was this hilarious story that happened to him:
he was in finch station, and he entered through “outside building”, which is i assume the passenger pick up. a cop stopped him, and tried to take his documents. enrico didn’t recognize the cop being, well, a cop, and kicked him. (when i asked how come he didn’t recognize he said “well, his clothes looked dirty and he smelled bad!”) the cop punched him (like, duh), breaking his lip and sending him to the ground. he ended up going to the police for a few hours, where they said that he could have went to jail.
anyway, that was a fairly reasonable person to talk to, except i have no idea how he lived in toronto, their english is … well, sucky. i feel my english becoming much worse as well.
after we all ate (and drank tiny glasses of red wine to share with everyone), i went to wash the dishes, as i didn’t cook or buy food or anything, and i was STARVING and ate this huge serving of DELICIOUS pasta. i figured people wouldn’t particularly notice, but *5* people came up to me seperately, *each* one asking why am washing (“because i didn’t cook so i want to do something”), arguing that i should stop washing (“but cooking is easier than washing!” said by an italian guy), and the last person was the brazillian girl, who came in to offer to help me, but i was already done (it was like 16 plates and some forks and such, its like 5 minutes of washing), and was very surprised. all in all it was very nice, i felt appreciated and happy.
after that i went to call my parents, spoke to them for a while, and then we went out.
which is where the sad part begins.
we were walking to find a pub (some people wanted coffee shops, and there were plenty of those, however francesca, myself and the two brazillian people don’t smoke). while we were walking on a very narrow street, a person on a bike passed us. he was riding downhill and going very fast, and swerving, and he hit the last girl in the line that we were going at. she had a bruise on her head and otherwise she is okay, however he fell on the ground, and hit his head to the point where he wasn’t blinking, wasn’t concious, and had a huge pool of blood around him. police was there in 1 minute, and ambulance took him away in like 5-10 minutes. the girl went with them just in case (for her bruise). i have no idea what happened to him.
anyway, aftewards, we all went straight to the home, and very shocked just sat for about 2 hours. went to sleep at 4am, after drinking the medicinal tea to relax (me, francesca and diego).