For a second there, I thought it hadn’t saved the line breaks.

3:44pm (EST), July 26th, 2003
My bedroom
Montepulciano, Italy

Well, I’m back from the bay of Naples. This will be the start of a new file in my travel journal, since I uploaded the first to Jux, finally. This is quite simply the best way to keep the two separated, so that I don’t have to copy-paste or anything when I go into the internet place, which would, quite frankly, be a hassle. So, for a bit of fun, let’s try to go vaguely backwards in telling the story of Pompeii, shall we?

Dinner tonight was quite interesting. I basically only had tomato pasta, but I also got in an interesting and quite lengthy discussion of literature with Teeter, which was very tired and drinking wine, which made things all the more unique. He was big into comic books and still loves Sci-Fi. I had a great conversation with him, but I think either Will or Scott would have been much, much more at home talking about Philip K. Dick and Larry Niven than I ever could be.

Kasey, whose name I don’t know how to spell so this will have to do for now, also sat at our table. Both of them, actually, although I’m talking about the singer. She’s like my new best bud here. We traveled together on the train back from Naples, even when we had to switch cars, we hung out all of last night, we got McDonald’s together today and went on the giant hunt for bottled water in Napoli Centrali, which took us past not one, not two, but three deceased vending machines before we finally decided to pay .20 euro cents more and buy it from a shop. I started hanging out with her last week after the Rome trip, I ate dinner with her twice after I came back, but now she’s far surpassed my friends of the first week.

Don’t you love it when I get all crazy and write stream of consciousness? I sure as hell do!

But screw working backwards. I’m going to have to move forwards in time now. Unfortunately, there’s a party in my apartment at the moment, which just arrived, and I need to help Steve make the giant (and I do mean giant) party melon for it, after which I will be back. I might help add the booze, but I won’t be partaking, alas.

Okay, I’m leaving. Stop reading and start again in about five minutes.

Since I browsed through all of my Pompeii pictures, that was actually a bit longer than I said it was going to be, but let’s pretend, anyway, shall we?

Wednesday was an interesting day. I got breakfast, which was nice, and I made this awesome Japanese-bound book in Bill’s class, out of newsprint mostly. I’m turning it into one really long letter for Vivian. It’s the first creation I’ve done in that class that I can actually say I’m proud of. I think I’ll make another Japanese-bound one and use it for something else. I left class ten minutes early, not that we were doing much else, and went down to the internet place, because, if you remember, I was praying that people would email me more before I left for Naples since I wasn’t going to get to talk to them much. Well, they did, and it was great. Vivian hit me up with a lot of emails…Travis did his job quite well. The best part was that after looking at the times the emails were sent, I could tell she was online RIGHT THEN, so I got on AIM and actually managed to talk to her in real time for once. I didn’t do it for long, though, since Teeter’s exam was coming up and I hadn’t actually grabbed lunch yet. Teeter’s exam turned out to be easy, I think, which is pretty much what I was expecting. The problem was that we were leaving an hour after it was over, Alberto’s took forever to make the sack dinners they promised us, and I still haven’t packed. I rushed back to the apartment and tossed everything together. Then it was to the bus, to the train.

Train rides are full of interesting conversations, but very little actually happens. In fact, the rest of Wednesday is rather boring. We got to Naples, we took the Circumvesuviana to Pompeii Scavi, and that was about it…except for the pool. Everyone had been really looking forward to the fact that the hotel had a pool. Everyone jumped in it almost as soon as they saw the thing and got their rooms assigned. It was the second-coldest pool I have ever been in (the coldest being Joseph Clayton’s waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in fifth grade or so), but it was worth it. I didn’t stay in long, though, before going to bed. It was actually comfortable enough on the bay of Naples to sleep that night. It wouldn’t be again for a nice, long time.

Thursday dawned overcast but generally pleasant. We ate breakfast and headed to the ruins of Pompeii. The first thing you notice about the ruins is that there are dogs everywhere. Much like there was a cat sanctuary made out of the ruins of a few temples in Rome, in Pompeii, they let the dogs roam free. They must feed and water them to keep them alive, but they definitely have the run of the place. Walk into the ruins of baths…see a dog! Anyway, the second thing you notice is just how massive it was. In my mind, ancient towns had always been small. Not miniscule, but not all that big. Pompeii stretched on as far as the eye could see. No wonder we devoted a whole day to it. Trying to describe everything I saw here would be pointless, since it just wouldn’t be possible. So let me just try to describe a few aspects of it.

Pompeii is incredibly sad. Everywhere are the relics of dead people. The plaster casts, which are famous, are often set up right where they were found. These are women and children as well as men. I originally thought I was going to take a few pictures of them, but once I got there, I just couldn’t. I snapped two pictures, one just to show that yes, they were there. The second to show just how sad they could be. I took a picture of the fugitive’s garden, where like ten people died huddled against a wall for shelter, a lot of them children, and they found all of them. The second, which I didn’t take a picture of when I saw it there but did when I saw its duplicate in the Naples museum, was of a man who had just given up. He’s sitting with his hands over his head and his knees pulled up to his chest, waiting for the end. There was a third one, and the saddest one there, that I just couldn’t take a picture of. We weren’t even supposed to be there, but Teeter knew where it was and took us by a side path. It’s on the roof of one of the buildings. A man and a woman tried to take shelter there, to get above the fumes I suppose. The woman was obviously pregnant. The plaster mold made of them has the man holding some sort of towel over her head, trying to help her breathe…they died that way.

Pompeii is extremely dusty and hot as well. Everywhere on the bay of Naples is hot. Wednesday was a good day, it turns out, because Thursday was hell (but still not the hottest I’d be on the trip). Let’s see, what else to say…oh, yes, the profane calendars of Roman painting and statues they sold in the gift shop were quite amusing. Andrea bought one. Oh, and we met Teresa’s boyfriend, who would be hanging out with us a bit on the trip from that point on. He’s studying archaeology abroad…in Pompeii. She’s gone down that way every weekend since she’s been here.

Our tour of Pompeii ended about 3:30, after which it was back to the hotel for a swim. Everyone was planning on going into Sorrento for dinner that night, and at 6:30, that’s exactly that we did. Sorrento was a nice, pleasant little tourist trap of a place with a beautiful view of Capri, lots of this interestingly strong liquor called Lemoncello, and tons of shops. We had dinner at a nice little pizzeria, where Andrea and I invented free refills in Italy by going to the coolest liquor store I have ever seen, which was right across the street. Apart from having every kind of drink known to man, which really impressed the Southern students, it also had the best sign ever. In English, in the Soda/Wine/Lemoncello secti
on, there was a sign pointing to a small door, which said, “This way to the Booze Side.” Booze side. Awesome.

The girls shopped a bit, but we basically headed back to the hotel after that, where some people got plastered and some didn’t.

The room was incredibly hot that night. It was hard to sleep. Luckily, Teeter had the same problem, and he paid the extra for air conditioning the next night. It was probably the only way I survived last night. The bay of Naples is HOT. But let me describe Friday before I bitch much more about the air temperature, since Friday contains the single hottest I’ve ever been in my life.

4:04am (EST), July 27, 2003
Dining room
Montepulciano, Italy

There are few things more irritating than waking up with Andrea in your apartment. She is one of the most irritating, stupidest people I have ever met. Gaaah. I’ll get back to what happened what last night later; let me continue with the story of Naples now.

Friday we left the hotel at 8:30 to go to Herculaneum; the smaller, less well known city buried by Vesuvius. We were doing it early in first that day since the heat wouldn’t be quite as bad, although we could already tell it was going to be a damned hot day. Dogs ran all over the place here, too. (Why won’t my music go loud enough to drown out her voice? Gah@%!#@)

Herculaneum wasn’t quite the same as Pompeii. It was buried differently. There were no plaster casts lying about to remind you of who died, although they did have bones in a few places, and they found a ton of people around docks whose bones are now in the Naples museum. The big deal with Herculaneum is that since it was volcanic mud that buried it, we have a few things from there that were impossible at Pompeii. Carbonized wood. Surviving second stories of Roman buildings. It was a quicker trip than Pompeii, but still impressive. We left there around noon to head to Naples for lunch.

As soon as I got off the Naples metro, I hated the town. It was hot, filthy, dingy, run down, and everything else bad you can think of to say of a place. I never once got comfortable while there either. I was always paranoid that something was going to happen. It’s just that kind of place. Lunch was fast, and then we hit the Naples museum, which had tons of stuff from Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as some of the villas around the area. They had hidden plaster casts in various places around the museum, so that you would turn a corner or climb and stairwell and see…a dead man! Quite disturbing.

After the Naples museum it was back on the Metro, and then back on the Circumvesuviana for home, where everyone was busy focusing on what they were or were not doing for dinner that night. This is where the worst thing to happen on the trip occurred. Katherine’s wallet was stolen out of her purse. Jennifer saw the woman do it, so we confronted the two gypsies we could see there…but failed to notice their third friend, who was currently in possession of it. They got away. The program is going to take care of everything for her, one way or another, and she got her credit cards canceled, and at least they didn’t take her passport…but it’s still an irritation for her, and quite scary. Some of the girls had been planning to stay past Saturday so they could go to Capri, and this incident cured them of that particular wish. That train was also the single hottest place I have been. Everyone was literally dripping sweat the entire way. I mean, we were soaked.

Once back at the hotel everyone split up again. Some people went swimming, Teeter was helping Katherine, etc. I waited for Jennifer to get off the phone and hopped on to call Mom, since it was her birthday. I used the last bit of the good phone card I had left over, and I still suddenly got cut off without warning (which is unusual for those cards), but I got to wish her a happy birthday first, so that was fine. Once I got disconnected, I decided to try something I had heard a rumor about. It seems the shitty phone cards they got us at the start of the program weren’t so shitty afterall, just badly chosen: They work everywhere BUT Montepulciano. I dialed back using that one, and it said it couldn’t connect to this number at this time, but it was much better than the busy signal it kept getting before, so I at least knew the thing worked. Unable to get back through and say goodbye properly, I went back to my room, took a cool shower to get all the dust and sweat off, and then relaxed a bit with Advance Wars 2.

Not everyone went back into Sorrento for dinner that night. Instead, Kasey, Heather, Mary, Rebecca, Travis and I ate dinner at the hotel’s restaurant. It was actually kind of good. Afterwards, we just hang out for the rest of the night, although about 10 I did decide to try the phone again…

I called the house first, and got the answering machine. The phone card worked! I left a message saying I was sorry the phone had disconnected earlier, and that I would get in touch with them again once I was back from Naples. I was about to leave the booth after this, but then decided to try my luck and call Vivian. And for the first time since I got here, I successfully got through. I managed to talk to her without interruption for 19 minutes, and the card even warned me that it was about to die, although we kept talking right up to the point where the card cut us off. I was in a great mood for the rest of the night. I couldn’t believe I managed to get through, finally. It’s good to know she’s still fine.

There was little of interest Saturday morning, as I told you already. There was a train ride back, I checked my email and had 24 new ones, I ate dinner, I came back here…and they decided to throw a party! Yay! This is when I disappeared last night, because I got sucked into a game of Circle of Death (I was drinking water, but most others had various liquors.), and then of Truth or Dare played with cards. My good luck shined through brightly, as always. After both of those games were over, people were getting quite a bit drunk and loud, so they decided to go for a walk! Other than listing some of the things that happened in the truth or dare game, like Amy giving Mary a lap dance, that was pretty much it until this morning, when I woke up with Amy in bed with Steve and Andrea’s “beautiful” voice filtering down the hallways to my poor, poor ears. Since today is Sunday, it’s pretty much open to whatever we want to do. I’ll go check my email (natch) and grab some lunch reasonably soon, I suppose. For now, I need to brush my teeth and grab a shower, for sure. I think everyone is finally out of there. Maybe.

2:43pm (EST), July 28, 2003
My bedroom
Montepulciano, Italy

The last two days aren’t very interesting, but nor have they been much fun. After eating lunch in the place with the worst service I have ever seen and playing Advance Wars for a few hours, I developed a fever. It was mild at first, but kept getting worse as the day progressed. By the time dinner was over it was horrible. I went straight home and tried to rest up a bit listening to music and playing GameBoy, since I wasn’t tired. It just got worse. After going to bed I woke up in the middle of the night, frustrated, and took two Excedrin since that’s all I have with me. It kicked the fever’s ass, but left me with a cold sweat. A small problem. I still have the fever, although I’m on Excedrin again right now, which means I’m basically fine. It’s better today than it was yesterday, I suspect that much like the last time I got one of these, it will be gone within 48 hours. My immune system is hard core.

Not much else to talk about. Classes today. Most of Bill’s class went into Chuisi to do Etruscan rubbings; I stayed in the Fortressa and worked on my Vivian book. My fever wasn’t that bad then, although it started kicking my ass again in Teeter’s class.

Other than a trip to the Conad, and a good dinner at Gino’s, there’s not much
to talk about today other than my email “problem”. I checked my email three times today. The only real human who emailed me was Elliott, which was great, but I was hoping to hear from Mom, Vivian or Sam or something. CNN did tell me that Bob Hope died. Shocking. I was seriously starting to think he would live forever. I’m going to go lie in bed now and try and kick the rest of this fever’s ass. Gotta go into Florence again tomorrow, and I don’t want to do it walking around feeling like shit, although I am desperate to see David. Hope for me boys and girls!

And some of you had best email me before I check my email on my way to dinner, you hear me? 🙂

3:25pm (EST), July 29, 2003
My bedroom
Montepulciano, Italy

Today was pretty cool, although it will take a bunch of random and sometimes unrelated rambles to explain why. It was off to Florence again for Bill’s class! I had an awesome breakfast of Orange Powerade and Ringo snacks, and I also took a bag of Happy Bears Day with me which I munched on throughout the day. I bought two Powerades yesterday, and both are gone, because last night I drank the Mountain Blast one to help finish defeating my…fever! Yes, when I woke up this morning, it was totally gone. My immune system rocks. I wish I could give it a medal. Anyway, let us continue with the day, shall we?

Not quite yet, though. The Powerade thing leads me into one of my unrelated rambles that I simply must get off my chest. When Americans absorb words from other languages, we ABSORB them. They BECOME English. Latte, for example. This does not happen here in Italy. Instead, and this happens on both imported and local products, they have random English words on products mixed in with Italian. Everything on the Powerade bottles is in Italian except the flavors (Orange, Mountain Blast, etc.) and this strange Liquid System marker. Gatorade is a bit different. The flavours are in Italian (Gusto Limone, Arancia), but it mentions that it is improved by “Constant research by the Gatorade Sport Science Institute” and has labels like Wide Mouth Bottle and Sport Bottle. Now, Italy isn’t like Germany or Belgium or anything. Hardly anyone here knows ANY English. This is complete gibberish to them. It gets better. The Internet Train cafŽ? Every sign and description is in English, but the guy doesn’t speak a word of it. The pop up messages such as “Enjoy our services” and things are in English, but the home page on all of the computers for the service is Italian. And this is in an Italian company! Oh, how about the Diesel: For Successful Living sign on my street? Or the fact that 4/5s of the music on MTV is in English? Or the random Italian products with English gibberish for names? Happy Bears Day = Gummi Bears. Much like in Japan, there are also shirts with English gibberish on them that are totally rad around here. And it’s gibberish to them! At least they like Americans. They may not like some of our politics, but they really seem to like us, and I’ve seen more than a few American flags around. There was even a rebel flag on a building near Pompeii, which we never figured out…anyway.

So, in Florence today, I saw a few things. Like David. Like the Venus on a Halfshell. The Prima Vera. Other such lovely pieces of art. Far too many to go into here, and I didn’t even know what half of them were, although I recognized a lot of them.

The best thing about Florence today was that it finally, FINALLY rained in this country while we were coming back. I got to stand in the rain. It was great. Remember Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, when Azeem goes to England and screams “Is there no sun in this country?!?!” when he’s so frustrated at the clouds? I was starting to feel like that, only with rain. How I missed rain.

Not much else to discuss, really. People emailed me, and I only had five minutes to check it, but it all looked great! Dad is having job success, and I apparently got a raise to $9.27 an hour. That should come to about $20 more a month or so, by some very quick and dirty mental math.

At dinner they served us French Fries. Wheee!

Also at dinner, Erin and I decided to go shopping. We’re going to go all over Montepulciano on Saturday, which I had been planning to do anyway, but I thought I was going to have to do it alone. Have I talked about Erin yet? She kinda freaks me out. She reminds me of Rachel Kaplus. Not Rachel like modern Rachel, but my best friend Rachel from 8th and 9th grade magically aged to 20 without the shit that happened to the real Rachel. It’s not a perfect comparison, but it works. They even look pretty similar. It’s enough to be creepy, and I’ve told Erin so. I wonder how this little adventure is going to go? 🙂

Well, I’m going to go listen to music and chill now.

Oh, and if I have to look at another painting or sculpture of Jesus on the cross, I’m going to go nuts. I have seen ten thousand of those in these art museums in Siena and Florence. Hell, there’s on in our apartment next to the door…I should probably take it down to save my sanity.

3:01pm (EST), July 30, 2003
My bedroom
Montepulciano, Italy

Today deserves only a brief description, since only brief things happened and I still have some laundry to do and a CD to burn before heading to Ostia at 6:25 in the morning. Basically, there were classes today, dinner was good, I got some more food at the Conad, people emailed me, and yay! Apparently, the dinner with family and friends combined just might work. Which is cool.

I went crazy with oil pastels and conte crayons in printmaking today. I just acted like I was in kindergarten again. It was awesome. I drew a bitchin` tree!

The only other thing is that the ATM gave me 200 euros instead of the 100 I asked for and confirmed, and didn’t print a receipt. So I don’t know just what happened. Did I get 100 euros for free? I emailed and asked mom to go by the credit union to find out, so maybe I’ll find out soon. Or maybe not. If it’s free (even temporarily free) money, that would be awesome, especially for my shopping date with Erin, which has been moved to Monday after classes. I think I’ll take a ton of pictures then, too. Oh well, this is a short entry. My final Teeter fieldtrip is tomorrow, and it’s eaaaarly.

I’m making an A in both of my classes though, now, which is also good. Just thought you might like to know.

4:22am (EST), August 1, 2003
My bedroom
Montepulciano, Italy

Most of what happened yesterday, and what’s already happened today, has to deal mostly with home, ironically enough. We walked around Ostia yesterday. It was the least impressive of the ruins I’ve been to, but that might be because we couldn’t get to any of the actual good stuff. Seriously, that’s about all I have to say about the field trip yesterday. I’m very glad I saw Ostia, and I took some great pictures, but there’s little else to say about it that hasn’t been said about other ruins.

I discovered something yesterday while on the train ride back, though. Studying abroad is just like going back to high school, as far as politics go. When you compress a group of young Americans together with few chances for outside association…you get…high school! The only problem is that here, I have no way to escape some of the people. Luckily almost everyone here is cool, and most of them are very nice people. It’s just that sometimes you want to push Jennifer off the train, you know? Oh well.

Once we got back from Ostia I checked my email, and that’s where most of the stuff that’s currently on my mind comes from. It did withdraw 200 euros, so at least I know that for sure, and it looks like the dinner with my friends and family is on for when I get back, which will be great because it means I’ll get to see Vivian, Sam and Travis a day earlier than I thought I would.

I also found out that Travis has decided that Ryan will be the bes
t man at his (eventual…sometime around Clinton’s third term) wedding, and not me. This saddens me, and I’m not entirely sure why. I guess I just always assumed that was where I would be when the time rolled around. Hell, I know he’s going to be the best man at my wedding. Neither of us had time to talk about it, although we were both online, so I’m not entirely sure what’s up with that. But, yeah, I’m a bit upset. I suppose I’ll deal with it.

Next up in the email-a-thon is that The Jux Entente has now been asked by Rebirth Enterprises…one now exists, apparently…to remove our feature of the same name, written well over a year ago I think. I wrote back to the guy who contacted me, saying that I was currently out of the country and wouldn’t be back in charge of the site until the 10th, but that we had no intentions of removing the feature currently. I think we have all the legal high ground, especially since, judging by the website of the company, the feature was written before they even came into existence. I’m not even going to pretend to know how this is going to turn out, but I’m not planning on taking anything that is obviously meant as comedy (and admitted by the person contacting us) down until I know I have to. If Jux goes to court, well, Jux goes to court.

All three of my roommates are out of town. This is the first weekend…hell, the first FRIDAY…I have ever spent in Montepulciano. I’ve been where everyone else (those that are leaving, anyway; there are a lot of us here this weekend) is going already, and I don’t feel like spending the money again. Kalib, Travis, and a bunch of others went to Rome. Steve is the great exception. He’s taking a flight to Amsterdam today. I know he’ll be in heaven, but he’s also paying well over $500 just on flights and hotels, so no way in HELL was I doing that. I can see that part of Europe some other time…and, actually, I know for a fact Amsterdam will never be my thing.

I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to be doing with my weekend. I’ll probably check my email a lot, play some Advance Wars…I’ll work on some stuff for Roman history, too. Probably make a book or four…oh well. Plenty of random crap to do and unwind. Next week will be quite hectic, so this is one of the last chances I’ll get.

I’ll miss I Italy once I’m gone. Montepulciano feels so very, very comfortable now. But I can’t wait to get back…home is always home. At least I know now that I have to come back to Italy at some point. Hard to imagine never seeing this little place again.

Well, I’m going to burn this to a CD again and try to post it as a feature, again. It’ll be shorter this time since there’s fewer days, but what are you going to do? Maybe I’ll toss up some more pictures if I took any really good ones yesterday.