nutella. bruschetta.

Today we learned imperatives and Anna Maria got high on power.

Anna Maria: Don't sit that way! Don't eat! Listen! Sleep! Sit down! Stand up! Give me that strawberry!

We're sitting in the kitchen and making dinner. By "we're making dinner," I mean Erika is making dinner, some of us (Caroline) chopped stuff, and my tomatoes were contributed.

Me: I wouldn't even mind being covered in nutella.
Erika: I'd just snack on myself.
Me: I would love to snack on myself.
Stephen: [gives me an inquisitive blink]
Me: ... if I were covered in nutella!
Stephen: [gives me another inquisitive blink]

Our first appetizer was bruschetta. Our second appetizer was nutella on bread sticks.
There is, in fact, a dedicated nutelleria in Bologna. By that I mean a nutella-owned nutella-based cafe. I got a nutella piadina after class today. That's a nutella sandwich.
Today I ate a nutella sandwich.

I'm just going to let that set in.

Matt: Do you bruise easily, or do you just have an aggressive lifestyle?
Erika: ... I think I just bruise easily?

Love always,
Clara

sorrento songs

I'm popping over to Sorrento for the weekend. Consider me on hiatus. In the meantime, listen to these songs.

Open Season - High highs
Sprawl II - Arcade Fire
Ours - Taylor Swift
Track 4 - Sigur Ros
Perth - Bon Iver
Who Says - Selena Gomez
Holocene - Bon Iver
Crave You (Adventure Club Remix) - Flight Facilities

Love always,
Clara

a golfer's opinion

Caroline: So, Erika, as a golfer, how do you feel about the Tiger Woods scandal?
Me: *giggling*
Caroline: Well, I've never gotten a golfer's opinion!

We're talking now about Michael Jackson.

Caroline: I'm curious about how his kids will turn out.
Erika: Yeah, doesn't he have a kid named blanket? Man, that kid needs a nickname. Like, Little B. Or, like, yo Safety B!

Last night I told Marco that I blog. He seemed curious about it. It's hard to explain a blog like this one in italian.

Erika: Therein lies the sass.
Me: Ah! That's amazing! That is a sentence that I have never ever heard before! It's so great! I'm going to blog that!

Love always,
Clara

sono stanca

Yesterday was incredibly busy, and had a lot to do with Taylor Swift.
Today, we went to the opera.

Last night we had a cooking lesson, after which we ate mountains of homemade tortelloni and tortellini (one is bigger than the other. We suspect that the line between a tortellono and a tortellino is relative). Anna Maria stayed over to help us out with the food. It was a charitable act of hers, really.

After dinner we decided to make some music videos to tswift songs. Around 12:30, homework had not been started.

So today, I was tired. We had class until two thirty, at which point Erika and Caroline and I decided to come home, take a fifteen minute power nap, and get work out of the way before the opera tonight. The fifteen minute power nap turned into a one-hour siesta. Any plans I may have had to do other things in that time had to be abandoned. So it goes.

The opera was some take on Cinderella. I'm not one hundred percent sure what exactly went on, but at the end of every act, the ensemble had at least begun to remove their clothing. I started thinking about a version of cinderella set in a modern day urban area, in which the evil stepfather (this version had a stepfather) is abusive and the prince is a senator's son. They would go to high school together and it would be a gritty teen film very unlike the Hilary Duff version.

These are the things that have been happening lately.

Love always,
Clara

cooking and penises and dead animals

Erika: I'm bringing out a symbolic egg. I have others. This is not a symbolic tomato. It's the only one I have.

I skyped with my parents earlier. We talked about my niece, who apparently is huge.

Mom: She's like you. You were always above the hundredth percentile!
Me: Mom, that's not how percentiles work.
Mom: You were an amazon baby!

They said that all of my blog posts are about food. That's basically true. We're making dinner now. By that I mean Erika is making dinner and I chopped up a tomato. Michelle grated some cheese. Caroline says she's hopeless in the kitchen, so she's telling jokes instead.

Today we spent many hours in the park and talked about various interesting things.

Erika: How much do you think a penis weighs. Like, if I looked exactly the same as I do and had the same proportions but had a penis, how much more would I weigh?

It's a question that I don't think I've ever sufficiently considered.

Caroline: Are we telling dead animal stories? Because I have the best one.

Now there's a quote without context.

Love always,
Clara

i have a bicycle!

At last!
She is green and her name is Stella because she is a star. She's also a vintage fixed-gear. Call me a hipster. Just try.

We have all grown weirdly attached to our bicycles.

Today we went to Ravenna (and rode our bicycles to the train station). I'm not sure anyone was feeling phenomenal, but we managed to stay composed (unlike the day we went to the medieval museum), walking around churches and looking at the mosaics. The mosaics were pretty cool, if I say so myself.

Then we went to the beach, where I promptly passed out in the sand. Best nap of my life. I probably spent an hour and a half with my face pressed into a rolled up pair of jeans. Whatever.
Tomorrow we might go to Florence.

Life is not so bad.

Love always,
Clara

iper-coop, et cetera

Yesterday was wild. Imagine you wake up feeling dehydrated (or is that just a euphemism?), meet your class in town and collectively shuffle through a medieval museum. You all take whatever opportunity given to sit on the floor. Then you grab a sandwich and brace your attention span for what is essentially a straight three hours of class.

What do you do? You take a 5-hour-energy shot that's been sitting in your purse since Spring Weekend.

That describes the first half of my day yesterday. Five-Hour-Energy is one of the best things in the world, I've decided, because it can make you feel alive again when you're in zombie-mode.

After class, a bunch of us decided that we would acquire bicycles if it was the last thing we did. We'd heard that there was a place to rent them near the train station, so we went on an expedition northward. When we got there, though, the man told us that it was eighteen euro per day to rent bicycles, and if we wanted them for any longer than a week it would be cheaper to just buy one. He called us a taxi to take us slightly out of town, to where he said there was a megastore that would sell us a nice one for cheap.

Megastore indeed. the iper-coop is a combination of everything good about America (i.e. Super Target) and everything good about Italy (massive wheels of parmesan). When we got there, we met an American security guard named Bob, who told us that the next day, the bicycles would be on sale, so we should come back tomorrow. We even picked out little baskets. Baskets were mandatory.
(We had this whole plan to go back this morning, but then we found out that you can buy a used bicycle in the city for half the price anyway. So that's what we're doing.)

Anyway, as long as we were in this glorious supermarket-on-steroids, we had to do some shopping, and then we just had to sit on a bench outside and eat Magnum bars and nutella and cheese on bread, waiting for a taxi to just arrive for us so that we wouldn't have to call one. No luck, but the cheese was awesome.

Then I came home, realized I'd just sat on the side of the road eating chocolate, and decided that I absolutely needed to go for a short run, so I did that, showered, did my homework, and we all went out to explore Bologna with some real italians.

Do you remember how terrible I felt when I woke up?
Me neither.

Love always,
Clara

when you're with us you don't have to be quiet

Erika: Can you get the colander off my head? There's a reason it's there. I needed somewhere to put it.

Questa notte, andiamo alla discoteca.
(Translation: Tonight, we are going to a disco)

My italian skills are becoming more and more sophisticated by the day. Today I made myself a caprese salad for dinner, and ate bread and honey for dessert, and felt simultaneously local-food-healthy and oil-plus-sugar-equals-heart-attack. It's been good.

Anyway, dancing is a workout, so that definitely counts.
Apologies for the fact that I've been notably absent. It's busy over here between class and homework and preparing food for myself and exploring the city.

AnnaMaria: Say sentences! More! I want to be bombed by sentences!

Class is intense. We've got three hours a day, and then essentially a chapter of homework every night. Our two instructors are the coolest, though.

AnnaMaria: Vorrei un chilo di banane. A lot. Like a monkey!

Love always,
Clara

strega nonna

Caroline is telling us about these books that apparently everyone read except Erika and I. They were about an Italian witch-grandmother.

Caroline: So the guy doesn't know how to stop the magic pasta pot from overflowing with pasta, and pasta just flows all over the town!

Today I made fried eggplant. When you cover vegetables in oil and bread and cheese and salt, you can pretend that they're healthy when they're actually delicioso.

Me: This needs something!
Erika: Try some spices. They're above the stove.
Me: Oh. Cool. You're more culinary than I. What do you recommend?
Erika: Try... oregano, and basil, and... thyme.
(later)
Michelle: Erika, you're so domestic. You should have a show.
Me: Yeah. Like, "How to do things"

I plan to learn how to do all kinds of things from Erika. She truly is fantastically domestic. I feel like I'm living with Martha Stewart (in the best way possible) and it's definitely rubbing off on me. I made curtains today.

Me: Ooh, what website is that?
Erika: Martha Stewart dot com. It's embarrassing.

Also notably delicioso is nutella, but we all knew that.

Caroline: Did you know that hazelnuts are plentiful in the northeastern region of Italy? ... there's a build-your-own-breakfast feature on the nutella website!

We are having a grand old time.

Love always,
Clara

biciclette

Our classroom is a half hour walk from our apartment. We need bicycles. Pronto.


Yesterday I provided food for myself which was tremendously exciting. I made myself an omelet with parmesan and tomatoes and prosciutto and all sorts of delicious things. Erica cooked up some zucchini with parmesan, which I stole a couple bites of, and that was also delicious.
I also snacked on Nutella for maybe four hours straight.

Life is not so bad.  

Love always,
Clara

appletizer

Erika: Is anyone hungry yet? I'm not really that hungry, but if there were food in front of me I would eat it and be a happy camper.
Me: I sort of am now. That apple made me realize, oh hey I have a stomach and there isn't that much food in it.
Erika: Well, appetizers are called that because they awaken the appetizer.
Me: Oh! Well then I've just had an apple appetizer. I feel appetized.
Caroline: An appletizer!

I really am hungry though.

Caroline: Cello is spelled the way it sounds... because it's Italian.
Erika: Thanks for that.

We're learning all kinds of new things.

Love always,
Clara

songs for drinking espresso in the summertime

I've downloaded a ton of new music and it is very pleasing.

New Morning - Alpha Rev
Bring On the Comets - VHS or BETA
A Year Without Rain - Selena Gomez & The Scene
Doubt - Wye Oak
Enzymes - Freelance Whales
Long Live - Taylor Swift
When I'm With You - Best Coast
Cuckoo - Lissie
Pumped Up Kicks - Foster The People
The Suburbs (Arcade Fire Cover) - Mr. Little Jeans

Love always,
Clara

new best friend

I have a new best friend. He is the old man who works in the cafe across the street from my apartment.
This morning it was raining, but I was wearing sunglasses, because that's generally what I do regardless of the weather. I came into the cafe to sit and drink espresso and work on my homework, and another italian guy said something to me.

Man: [incomprehensible italian]
Cafe man: [explaining that I'm american and have no idea what he said]
Me: Si.
Man: [pointing outside] [pointing at sunglasses] You are an optimist!
Me: Ah! Si!

I sat there for a while, and the cafe man actually helped me a bit with my homework (What is the plural of caffe? Caffe!). Later, the sun came out. As I was passing by on my way to meet the others at the fountain, I stuck my head into the cafe.

Me: Sono optimista!

He blew me a kiss. We're definitely best friends.

Love always,
Clara

bologna!

I'm here! I'm so excited!

(That is the sort of thing that might sound cliche on another blog, but anyone who knows me knows that I am just as likely to say it out loud, making it authentic.)

Bologna! Woohoo!

I got in yesterday around six and embarrassed myself thoroughly, several times. I even dragged my suitcase up two flights of stairs into the wrong apartment building. Turns out, the third floor of that building was a hospital, and the workers pinned me as another utterly hopeless American. (On second thought, I might have needed medical attention after all. That suitcase is heavy.)
At that point, my ego had been so destroyed that nothing stopped me from doing the following.

Me: (Knocks on random door)
Man: Si?
Me: Do you speak English?
Man: Yes.
Me: Can you tell me where I am?

That is the realest of real conversations.

I did eventually get here though, thank goodness. The bunch of us went out to dinner with our language-partners, where they taught us to order pasta. I've learned all I need to know.

Love always,
Clara

ready to roll

My train to Bologna (or, Zurich, then Milan, then Bologna) leaves in two hours. I'm awake. I want to go. Right now.

At the same time, I feel like there are a billion things I forgot. Like what? I don't know. That's the point. If I remembered them, of course, we wouldn't have this issue now would we?

I'm a bit nervous but don't tell anyone that.

Diving into the internet helps me none here. I will need to go out and be social and only feel slightly smug that I'm not jet lagged like everyone else.

Love always,
Clara

you're wearing that?

I've been messing around with clothing lately (which explains the state of my bedroom). My most recent addition is one of those headbands that you wear around the top of your head like a hippie. I got it at H&M and I'm quite fond of it.

Mom: Hey, do you want to have lunch with us?
Me: Oh, I'm having lunch with Kyle later.
Mom: With that... on your head?
Me: Yes, with this on my head.

Her face was priceless. Little does she know I'm actually super stylish right now. Also, little does she know, I'm adopted and I'm actually a princess with super powers. This is equally likely.

I look forward to going out in public though, and seeing all the Swiss folk think, "you're going out... with that... on your head?"

Love always,
Clara

last days in bern

I really ought to start packing for Bologna, but packing is intimidating, especially right now when my room is a mess. I don't even want to talk about the degree to which my clothes and such are strewn about. It looks like a tornado hit my closet.

Of course, the real explanation has more to do with my mother's birthday dinner, the Annabelle shoot, and never having any idea what to wear in the first place. Strangely enough, my room never got quite this messy at school. (I think the issue is that I have more space here. At school, it was never more than three steps in any direction to put something away. Here, sometimes I have to go all the way downstairs. It's a burden.)

Anyway, that's my life right now.

• I should pack for my glamorous Italian summer abroad, but packing is hard.
• My room is messy and I don't want to clean it.

This post would have been better suited for twitter, because I'm basically just going on about things that you don't care about. It's my bad-blogger guilt coming out and forcing me to write totally inane posts. I'm sorry.

Love always,
Clara

apologies

I haven't been blogging much because I haven't had a ton to say.
I went to Geneva with Kyle the other day. That was fun.

Me: We used to have a house on the eastern shore of Maryland.
Kyle: I have extensive knowledge of that... from reading about it... in a book.

We also went to France (standard, really). Did you know that in France, you can buy a bottle of champagne for one euro? I mean, it's probably really terrible champagne, but... still!

This was exciting for me.
The weekend has been interesting. Now it's mom's birthday, so the rest of the world will need to stop turning until June sixth. Sorry about that, world, but you know how it goes.

Love always,
Clara

havoc

My great grandmother was cool.

Today I cut up a tee shirt because I'm basically that kind of person now. Also, I crave sartorial creativity, but cannot sew. Cutting up tee shirts is really all that I'm capable of.
Anyway, I needed scissors to do so.

Me: (calling down the stairs) Mom? Do you know where the scissors are? Mom?
Mom: Clara! Do you want a cocktail?
Me: Mom, I'm doing things with scissors!
Mom: Even better!

I think she wants me to die in a tragic drunk-shirt-cutting accident.

Seriously though, I am just about the clumsiest person in the world, and it's been getting worse lately. Anyone who's had more than a few meals with me knows that my utensils will somehow just end up flying across the room for no reason. I have literally no idea why or how this happens.

I just wreak havoc.
(Speaking of havoc, everyone should read Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk, because it's great)

Love always,
Clara