i am back from italy and so i figured i should write a little update on my life. i took like 200 pictures, and they're all up on facebook. i'm too lazy/busy to try to then update everything on flickr and then figure out how to get them on my blog. chances are if you read this, you can see them anyway. so after a full week of classes, on thursday i woke up at 4 am, pushed the dog out of my bed and grabbed my things and walked to the train. it was kind of eerie to walk around so late (and sober). i felt like a teenager running away from home, for some reason. i took the train to schönefeld airport and got on a plane and flew into milan. my mother and i met up by the GRACE of GOD on this airport bus, and we got on a train and headed out to lake como. como lago, as its called in italian, is a BEAUTIFUL lake in northern italy about 45 minutes outside of milan, where the versaces, roberto cavalli and george clooney (among many other rich people) have villas. it was absolutely spectacular. we met up with the group, all together numbering around 120 people, and ate lunch and took a boat tour of the lake. we then road the funiculare up the mountain and got to see the lake from way up high at sunset, which was really beautiful. later we stopped by a silk factory, but rather than taking a tour which would have been interesting, we ended up just shopping for extremely expensive silk things.

the next day we woke up around 7 and spent the day touring milan. my mother and i opted to walk from our hotel into the downtown, which took about 45 minutes at a leisurely pace and was really beautiful. italy really does not get started until 11 am. we were walking around at 9:30 and everything was closed, which is very different from berlin. italy also closes earlier, which is annoying, and apparently (obviously) has much stricter alcohol-in-public laws. not as bad a scotland, but still, kinda lame. anyway, we walked around and saw the duomo and a big workers strike happening, and then i met will and noah in the plaza of the duomo!!!!! i was so excited to see not just familiar faces, but familiar faces of old friends. it was really really nice. the four of us ran around and got lunch and chatted and caught up and drank a fair amount of wine (at least two of us did). we then met up with one of the groups and toured the duomo which is beautiful and really unique inside. we went through an old shopping plaza which might have a 7 star hotel, but noah doubts the credibility of our tour guide. then we took a tour of la scala, which was really beautiful, and i felt lucky because i got to see a special exhibit of maria callas' costumes, and i wrote my final paper on her j-term of my freshman year. i bid goodbye to noah and will, and the group went to the church santa maria de grazie to see the last supper (la ultima cena). it was spectacular. to go in you had to go through two rooms in order to maintain the climate in the room, and each group is only allowed in for 15 minutes.

after the last supper we walked through a beautiful old castle which used to mark the northernmost part of milan, but now is smack in the center. we then went to a wine tasting dinner which was absolutely delicious. by 8:30 pm it was full of drunken middle aged women dancing with the almost-as-drunk waitstaff, which was pretty hilarious. that night, after everyone else went back to the hotel to sleep, i met up with MARY CHILES!!! which was also amazing because i haven't seen her since may and i have missed her dearly. we caught up for a few hours in a bar down the street from my hotel, and when we came back to the hotel my mom woke up and we all stayed up talking till around 3 am. i was so happy to see mary, it almost didnt matter that i had to wake up the next day at 5:30 am. i managed to get out of bed and stumble, still drunk, onto the bus for the best part of the vacation.

yesterday we took a 3 hour bus ride (which i clearly slept through) to VENICE. i'm not kidding when i say that it is my favorite city in europe. i want to live there for the rest of my life. i want to live there at at least 7 different historical time periods. i want to walk every street and ride a gondola through every canal. i could have spent the whole weekend there and been satisfied. we took a gondola ride and ran around the city and ate a delicious lunch in a restaurant in the center and went to the murano glass factory to see a glass blowing presentation and gawk at tacky glass figurines that cost 45,000 euros. the whole city was absolutely unbelievable, and i really didn't want the day to end. eventually we made our way back to the bus and i proceeded to fall asleep for another three hours on our return trip to milan. last night i went out with my mother and her friends and a few other people to a restaurant and gorged myself on gnocchi and caprese salad. this morning was frustrating, especially because i was functioning on practically no sleep, but i woke up at 4:30 and eventually landed in berlin unscathed, if a little poorer. upon landing in berlin, for most of the landing i couldn't see the ground which made me very nervous. the cloud cover was extremely low, and as we were a few feet from the ground i finally saw why - everything was covered in snow. that's right, november 11th and it has been snowing steadily all day. in the city it isn't sticking to anything, what with the heat from the cars and all the foot traffic, but in schönefeld, way out in the suburbs, there were at least 2 inches coating everything.

it was really wonderful to see my mother (and im not just saying that because she's my #1 blog reader). it was also nice to get some comforts from home in the form of slippers, dial soap, junk food and a few essential DVDs. it did remind me of a lot of the people i miss, as did seeing mary and noah and will and gossiping about middlebury. it's hard being so far away sometimes, especially when i see the pictures from halloween or think about people who are going to be back for j-term. i am really happy here, though, and i realized halfway through our second day in milan that i really was missing berlin. i was missing my apartment, my bed, ditte and kathi, my street and my new friends, and i think i even referred to it as "at home" a few times. i really am feeling very much at home here, but at the same time the trip away was much needed. it was equally nice to get out of the city as it was to come home and feel like it was a homecoming. being greeted by kathi and ditte as i walked in, given a cup of tea and a blanket on the sofa, i told her about my trip from start to finish. the german word is gemütlich, which means cozy and homey, which is really how it's starting to feel here.