wrapped up in a blanket, red wine buzz kickin' in

day 2: market day, sunday
- woke up at 4:30am from the jetlag and listened to the sounds of the market getting set up until about 7
- woke up again to the alarm at 10, got ready and ate breakfast with caryn... learned italian words off our cereal box. (cat = micio, dog = cagnolino, rabit = coniglietto, swan = cigne, indian = indiano, man = omino)
- went down to the market with kari and caryn, it was way bigger than we were expecting... we never found the end! we managed to find me a purse as well as 5 scarves for caryn and i, a necklace for caryn, and 2 magnets for our apartment next year. it was incredible the variety of stuff you could buy: rusty powertools to pearl necklaces to shoes to antique furniture, all crammed next to each other in no apparent order. after 2 hours we were exhausted
- made scrambled eggs (the only food we have, other than cereal) with caryn and showed greg around our apt via skype
- wandered down our street all the way to the tiber in search of a grocery store that was open, to no avail. fortunately, caryn and i got a bunch of cool pictures and more gelato so it wasn't a total loss
- siesta for the rest of the afternoon during our first italian thunderstorm: doing the dishes, uploading pictures to facebook, skyping, napping, "reading for class" (but really doing anything but)... and i finally booked my hostel in spain!
- meeting with tobin craig to go over some house-keeping and touch base
- dinner with david, caryn, joe, dylan and kari at a cafe we found down the street closer to the river. i had my first calzone and it was absolutely to die for.

the view behind me

i'm sitting on our balcony, preparing to do my reading for class, because it is at least 10 degrees cooler out here... the shower in our apartment is bizarre and i just managed to create quite an impressive pool on the floor and soak all my clothes, ah well, i can still chalk it up to culture shock... or jet lag. hopefully i'll sleep much better tonight. i forced myself to be active and outside in the sun as much as possible and ate meals at regular intervals - all the tried and true cures. it's just so frustrating that, despite the lovely red wine buzz i have from dinner, i still feel wide awake. perhaps a couple hours of reading will solve that for me, we have a long day of italy orientation tomorrow with ACCENT (a couple days late if you ask me!) then caryn and i need to figure out our phones, possibly the trains, and we absolutely need to find an open grocery store! our current diet of eggs and cereal is going to get old very quickly. it will be a busy day indeed... then classes start , but i'm ignoring that for now.