Hey. I'm home.

Leaving Perugia was funny. We had an awesome week - Christmas parties, dinners, all kinds of stuff. The night that everyone else left, we all went out until 1am and then took them to their group bus. It was so funny - everyone was dancing in bars and then they just went home, got their stuff, and went to the airport. Everyone at the buses was yelling "have a nice life!" and half the people were crying and half were laughing and everyone was either drunk or losing their suitcases and they wouldn't all fit on the buses and people were trying to tackle them into the luggage holds and kicking stuff and it was just a big hilarious mess. Finally, they all got onto their seven buses and pulled away, and it was just me and Jess left, and a couple of other people. We walked home; it had started to snow. The next couple of days were weird. We had to stay until Sunday 'cause of the train strike. I took walks around and looked at all the cute Italian kids and got coffee and said goodbye to Perugia. I never liked it so much as I did the last few days, obviously...Christmas lights and the fountain all frozen and everything. Jess was pretty upset that everyone was leaving. I was in a good mood because finals were over and, even though it was sad everyone had left, I felt like I was finally traveling on my own again, which was good.

We took the overnight train to Paris. I love overnight trains; it was hilarious. We shared a room with six bunks with three other people. There were two Asian girls who kept taking pictures of themselves in their bunks making peace signs, and an Ethiopian (I think?) guy who just kept saying "it's okay, it's okay" about everything. Jess' suitcases wouldn't even fit in the room; we had to like wedge them behind the ladder on the window in the air and pray that they didn't fall on the little Asian girls. Me and Jess took sleep aid pills and ate Ritz Crackers and I lay down on my bunk at 10pm and didn't wake up until Paris at 9am the next morning. Except at 5am, when the French border police came, banged on the door, hauled out the Ethopian man, and escorted him off the train because he didn't have a passport. But other than that it was great; I never sleep through anything usually. The funny thing about the train was that every time it stopped and started again, it would jerk so hard backwards and Jess would almost fly off her bed and you could hear things falling all over the train.

Paris was awesome. We stayed with Troy. He lives in a tiny hilarious French apartment with a floor that slants, a bathtub in the middle of the bedroom, and these really disturbing paintings of men with horns eating pig heads and like having vomiting orgies all over the bathroom. It was really cozy though (other than, like, the orgies). His roommates are this guy and girl from Northeastern and they are really fun. They had finals week, so Jess and I explored on our own. We saw the Eiffel Tower and we rode up to the very top in a glass elevator, which actually was the scariest thing I've ever done and I had to close my eyes and if it went any higher I'm sure I would have peed my pants. But I made it. The top was closed in and it had arrows pointing in the direction of all the different countries of the world and you could see Paris for miles and miles. The cool thing about the tower was its size. I know, I'm dumb, obviously it's big, but it was REALLY big. At night it lights up and has a spotlight and you can see it from everywhere and it's so out of place but not; it's so French somehow. For ten minutes every hour at night it sparkles. I almost killed Jess cause she made us wait for an hour to see it sparkle but it was worth it. We went to the Louvre, which was huge and overwhelming, and saw the Mona Lisa, which was...underwhelming, at least size-wise, but still looked cool. Saw the Venus de Milo too, which was really cool, and lots of other stuff. You need a map to navigate just the lobby of the Louvre. There's a mall IN it. Ridiculous. The whole time we were in there they were making announcements that there was danger and we all had to evacuate, but no one did, so whatever. We saw Notre Dame. As soon as I walked in, I felt quiet and creepy and in awe. It was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. Gargoyles and huge sweeping arches, shadow and darkness. When a church, which is supposed to reflect the power of god, actually makes you feel afraid when you walk inside, I guess you could call it a work of art.

We saw Versailles. It was awesome. The rooms were restored to be ridiculous and ornate; my favorite part was Marie Antoinette's room and the secret door she snuck out of when her palace got stormed in the revolution. Then we took a little train around the gardens on the grounds, and everyone on the train was elderly and angry and we were crunching on Pringles and they were shhhh-ing us so we got off at the first stop and saw the mini village of Marie Antoinette. THAT was ridiculous. I think there were 12 or 16 buildings, tiny houses with thatched roofs, water wheels, a lighthouse, ponds and wood paths, a tiny Greek temple, even a farm with horses and rabbits and all kinds of things. There were gardens everywhere; it must be gorgeous in the spring. I sort of just like ran around everywhere and felt like I was five years old the way Marie Antoinette does in the movie. I probably looked dumb. Anyway, we went back and we took a walk with Troy and saw all kinds of things, and went to the Avenue de Champs-Elysees and saw the Arc de Triomphe and went window-shopping in the ridiculous crazy diamond and car and toy stores there. They had the biggest Sephora I ever saw; it was about three times the size of my house. I almost dropped dead. We also went out to dinner with Troy a couple of times, got tons of pastries and baguettes (the French can REALLY do pastries and bread...I don't understand. It's so good. You can just eat it by itself.) We went to a cool concert venue that was in the suburbs in an old abandoned train station and somehow got ourselves invited into some private party with free food and champagne, which was cool. The wine is very different there than in Italy, and so are the grapes. They taste really sugary and like, exciting. Or something. We also went to Troy's friends' goodbye party for the semester and met all kinds of cool people. We saw the department store Christmas windows: singing, moving mannequins of penguins and bears and creatures, ridiculous ornate setups of snowy woods with mannequins dressed in white and diamonds, a really funny one of space men that had nothing to do with clothes but which was hilarious. I don't like a lot of European billboards because they have a lot of talking animals/babies for some reason, which is this sort of secret fear of mine (don't ask). But they can really, really do store windows.

The last day, after Jess left :(, Troy and I and his roommate went to Eurodisney. It was really cool. It was like the Magic Kingdom in Disney World, but different; it had Belle's Christmas village, and Sleeping Beauty's castle, and a MUCH cooler Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain and all that. The best part was the show at night though; characters came out with Christmas music and the castle lit up different colors. I had this hot chocolate that was overflowing and the whipped cream was going all over my mittens and I was just sticky and I felt like I was five and I was watching Disney and it was Christmas and then all of a sudden the castle lit up sparkling, the whole thing, and artificial snow fell all over the park (it doesn't really snow there, so they fake it). It was awesome. It was a good last day.

Also, French people are ridiculously nice. I don't know what anyone is talking about. Paris isn't dirty either. It's a little dirty, and there are a LOT of homeless people sleeping in blankets everywhere, but it's a city. That's how cities are. I'm wondering how a lot of people don't like Paris.

The airport was nuts. I took a city bus and got there on time, but it turns out that everyone in the entire airport had a 1.15pm flight, so they were all in line at once, so then we were all late, so no one could check in automatically because check-in was closed, so then the line got longer. Everyone was yelling in French and Spanish at each other. I was stuffing my face with crackers and cheese because I was starving, and crackers and cheese is one of those foods that is awkward to eat when you have to move two huge purple suitcases up one foot every other minute. I felt very distinctly un-cool compared to the French people. When I got to the ticket desk, my suitcase broke the conveyor belt, so I had to stand up there for 20 minutes because my luggage never went, and finally after I begged the lady to let me go because my flight time was in 15 minutes and I had no money left for food if I missed it (whoops), she told me I could go. I sprinted down like 20 hallways, took a tram, literally ran through security, and got to my flight, which was delayed anyway. I ran into two Northeastern girls and a guy I used to sit next to at work who is awesome in the Paris airport. The flight was pretty long and terrible. I sat next to a nice guy from India though, so I talked to him for a while. When we landed, the first thing I heard was a guy yelling in a Boston accent and I got weirded out. I couldn't stop laughing. I stopped soon though, since I had to get searched since I was apparently trying to sneak "agricultural materials" into the US. I tried to explain that there is no way I could be doing this, because, of course, I couldn't find my bags. This did not really help. Obviously, the bags never came. I'm sure they are still on the broken conveyor belt in Paris. Oh well. Jess had to spend the night in Logan airport on the way to New York, so I think I'm lucky. Plus I should've known: something happens to me every time I go on a plane. No escaping it.

So now I'm home. My parents picked me up; they brought me flowers. It was really nice to see them. It's funny how much bigger everything looks here to me now. Everything is huge: cars, roads, trees, houses, lawns, stores. There is so much food; I haven't stopped eating Doritos since I got back. Everything's snowy and pretty too, it's awesome.

I'm not really sure what to do with myself. The way the time zones changed, I was up for 24 hours yesterday, traveling for more than half, and I still went to bed at 1am and woke up at 6 and that's why I'm writing this, because I can't sleep. I know from last time I came back from Europe that jet lag is NOT something to mess with. I feel like I've been walking for four months without sleeping. I've never been so tired in my entire life, but I can't sleep. I also seem to have developed some sort of rabid eye infection or something. I think I am just going to hide in my room for a few days.

I am supposed to write an after-I-get-home blog entry for school. I am supposed to talk about how I've changed and what I've learned and all that. This is not that blog entry. The fact that I left school and Europe with only twinges of sadness and got home and am happy but so tired makes me think that I am not actually in reflecting mode yet. Either I have turned into a person who is REALLY good with change, which actually might be the case, or I am not mentally competent yet, because it's been pretty much "I'm leaving Europe...oh. Okay, whatever. I'm home...oh. Okay." I need to at least wait until I can sit with my eyes open and form functional sentences before I even begin to think about how many things just changed over the past week. So I guess I'll write another one later.

I am going to get up now and go take the last $8 in my bank account and do something with it. Yessss.