Cock your doodle elsewhere

The computer labs are seriously a vortex which sucks me in and consumes my day. I spent two hours after lunch catching up on emails. Slightly out of control, no?

Here's a link to my photo album from Florence. Like before, you may have to create a yahoo id if you're unable to view them. I had to break the link in two so it would fit, so pay attention that it makes it in one piece in your browser when you copy and paste it. My favorites are the ones with water. http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jachawk3/ album?.dir=/2f54&.src=ph&.tok=phKkjfCBLn93iPLa

I made a little trip to the tabacchi after I got my email fix. Oh what a joy it was to find color safe bleach in Italian brands. I came prepared, armed with a sticky note with translations of stain and bleach so I wasn't searching blindly. My recent attempts at putting food in my mouth which ended on my shirt left me with some undesirable red-orange spots on my clothes. Finding a stain remover was impertaive to my wardrobe. I'm sure the owner thought I died I spent so much time staring at the soap/cleaners/laundry dtuff (although I didn't realize it until I was at the front counter, he was watching me from the hidden security cameras the whole time and knew I had not fallen ill). Tons of Mr. Clean products cluttered the shelves, and if I had any plates or glasses, they would most certainly be clean thanks to the array of dishwashing soaps, but the choices for laundry soaps were not impressive. I finally found a box with the Tide multicolored bull's eye (but not the Tide brand) and although I couldn't understand any of the words on the box, I thought it was the closest thing I could find. I also purchased some hair ties, although I should have known they wouldn't have the Goody Ouchless brand. Hopefully these generic rubber bands won't tear my hair.

I think I may be getting sick, which isn't surprising considering quite a few other people are. With everything that we share at school (most germably...the computers), germs must breed like no other. I'm not a big fan of sharing (i.e. my food) but in Florence, my friends would ask for a bite of my crema and chocolate gelato, and offer me some of theirs. If I had wanted Snickers, I would have ordered it. And if you really want chocolate that bad, you should have picked it instead of spreading your sick germs on the tiny spoon into my cup. But it's not like I'll say no. Really, though, I do not want to part with my nutrients, even if you offer up yours.

Contributing to my weak immune system would be the inadequate supply of soap in bathrooms. None of the bathrooms at school have soap (or towels) for you to wash your hands. They do have towel racks... I bought soap last week at the tabacchi, although I couldn't find hand soap and settled for dish soap. And while my hands smell like a dish washer when I'm done, it's better than having germy hands.

I have also yet to sleep in since I've been to Italy, and I still haven't caught up on all the sleep I missed because of Florence and traveling. Of course, the roosters crowing hours before my alarm is set to go off doesn't exactly start my morning off right. I am not kidding. There are roosters. And not just one. There are a lot. And it's not like the movies where the just crow at the strike of 6 am like an alarm. They crow all day. Forget an afternoon nap. Don't plan on concentrating. No matter the time of day, a rooster will be creating an offensive noise nearby to bother you. My room mate Carolyn thought we should devise a plan to poison the local roosters, but thought that since their meat would most likely be served up and called chicken the next day in our cafeteria, it wouldn't be a wise choice.

I took some Sudafed and need to take some Aleve for my headache. Hoping a warm shower and going to bed early will cure my ailments. As a last resort, I do have the option of visiting the school nurse. Her hours, like all places in Italy, are insufficient. She doesn't work every day, and of course she doesn't work all day. She also doesn't speak English. We've been told she's gotten pretty good at watching us act out what's wrong and going from there. I've never really liked school nurses, so I doubt I'll be paying her a visit.

Tomorrow I have my first Italian presentation. Each group has to act out friends meeting at a cafe and ordering drinks. I serve as the barista (waiter) for the skit. Following what I can only assume with be exceptional acting on the part of my not so thrilled classmates speaking in butchered Italian, we have our first test. Which seems a little presumptous considering all I know how to say, with the aide of my book open in front of me, pertains to saying hello, ordering a coffee, introducing friend A to friend B and what kind of wine I want. I have yet to learn the correct pronouncation of thank you in Italian. You see, we have been misinformed in american that "grazie" is how they say thank you in Italy. Reality check... that is actually the informal tense. Which means if you bust that out at a restaurant or to an adult, it's actual impolite. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the act of gratitude turns into one of ignorance. But for whatever reason, I can't remember how to say the correct conjugation. It's either grat-z-ay or grat-z-uh. But someone else said you don't annunciate all the syllables and it's more like gratzuh. I think I need to figure this out soon, because smiling and nodding won't do me any good much longer. And it's just ridiculous to not know how to pronounce such a necessary word.

Ciao ciao (spoken mostly by women, or younger Italians)

side note: the title of this email is in reference to the cockadoodledo noise roosters make (which is actually a commercialized sound someone who didn't actually get awoken by roosters made up.)