The Hospital

May 10, 2010
I cannot believe that the time has gone by so fast! I leave in literally 2 days.
Poor Nizhoon has had a bad cold for about 5 days and has been coughing really badly. He boyfriend was supposed to be here Sunday morning, but has had 3 malfunctioning planes. So at 6 am this morning we got an email that he had still not boarded the plane. Then we decided that we had better get Nizhoon to the doctor to make sure she doesn't have pnumonia. So we headed to the "hospital" where we were in for the ride of a lifetime!!!!!
We walked up and the hospital is a bunch of different buildings.... No one knew where we supposed to go, then someone said go to the ER first. We asked a DOCTOR where the ER was he told us somewhere that was not correct, but finally we found it. When we got there, the ambulance people were checking someone in and then the front desk guy took our information and we sat down to wait. Nizhoon was labeled as "white" meaning she was the lowest of low priorities. We sat there for about 3 hours. I watched 10 different "emergencies" come in with the ambulance. They all took presedence over us. We heard a few doctors complaining that they had too many patients to see. We watched everyone get about 5 coffees each instead of helping patients. Italy has public healthcare and from what I saw, it's crap. Heaven help us if we ever get public healthcare. It was a joke. Even our Italian translator thought it was a joke. We left after 3 hours and just decided to self medicate her.
After that we tried to sleep and just hang out then we headed to the school to fill out evaluations and turn in our phones. I know have no way of knowing what time it is, and no alarm. Hopefully I'll get up on time for our flight!
Today was our last day of cooking class and we made tiramisu, some sauces and something else. It was so good and I ate too much. After that we hit up a pizza place for all you can eat pizza. This is not any ordinary pizza. Pizza in Italy is an art. It's so amazing. I can't even describe it!!! Here they had a bazillion different pizza's with FRENCH FRIES and sausage, a vegetarian pizza, a hamburger pizza. Oh it was amazing and I ate too much.
Now I'm home recovering from a very long day. I'm thinking I need to pack but have no desire whatsoever to start......

Lugano, Switzerland

May 9, 2010
Slept in and hopped onto a train to Lugano, Switzerland. For some odd reasons the trains were super crowded. Then we started talking to the ladies next to us. They were from Germany and had been in Venice. They were supposed to take a plane to Frankfurt Germany this morning, but surprise, surprise, the Milano Airport was shut down this morning with no flights going in or out. Family and friends of other students in the group are arriving in the next few days so we're hoping that everyone is able to get here. More importantly I hope I can fly home. As much as I love it here, I'm ready to go home.
We got to Lugano and started walking around. Everything was closed so there was not much shopping. We stumbled upon a fountain and started taking pictures then some

random guys wanted us to take a picture of them so I jumped in and joined them in the picture. After that we found a souvenir shop and discovered that Switzerland uses Francs and Euros. I thought Switzerland was part of the European Union? Then we kept wandering around the lake. It got a little bit cold so we stopped for a snack of hot chocolate. Oh my goodness. This was literally a melted chocolate bar with some milk added. It was SO yummy!

As we walked we saw a mini castle up on a hill and decided to see if we could get closer. It was not a hill, it was a mountain. Not the Swiss Alps, but I'm sure a sub terrain of them. It was nice to get out and stretch my legs on some hills. There are not any hills in Milan. Turns out the mini castle belongs to a famous person because there was surveillance all around and huge bushes that we peeked through. I considered breaking in but I didn't really want to be arrested by the Swiss guard.


I didn't make it to Pisa, but while here I found a mini Leaning Tower of Pisa!
I decided to stalk up on Swiss chocolate and had to pull out money. Bad idea. They only give you Francs. So now I have an endless supply of useless European money. I randomly found 1200 Rubles in one of my bags! At this point I found out that Switzerland is not part of the European Union. (Guess I should pay more attention in history) Someone told us it's because Switzerland has to stay neutral, and they have all the banks so it doesn't matter...


After the money fiasco we had a lovely dinner of lasagna and watched the rain come down. Then we wandered the quiet lonely streets and headed home.

Dancing!!

May 7, 2010
It feels so good to not have homework! I slept in and had the entire day to do whatever i wanted.
We found a nice salon across the street that does pedicures. So amazing. She scrapped off about 2 pounds of gross skin. Too much walking. Then we hit the town and went shopping. After 2 years and a trip to Italy I found the perfect pair of black shoes!
Today was a very chill day. We planned to go dancing for Monica's birthday. So of course we played dress up to get the most perfect outfits.
Then at 11 pm we celebrated with gelato cake and then made our way to the club. Got in for free and started dancing the night away. It was a crazy night. There was stage dancing and some making out. I would give full details but what happens in Italy, stays in Italy.

End of Finals!!!

May 6, 2010
Today marked the end of classes and finals. Thank goodness that is done. It started early at 8:30 AM with a 2 hour essay about the pro and cons of Italy and my critique on Italian design, how it could be better. That's too early to start an essay so it took my quite a long time. Then we had a really long lecture about Italy and how they get all of their influences for entertainment from America. They even had their very own Elvis Presley. Weird.
After a quick lunch of tomato and mozzarella cheese salad I headed back to school. I tried not to throw up my lunch because it's presentation time. This is my project that I presented. It's already been ripped to pieces so don't worry about offering your critiques or advice. I personally think this is one of the better projects I've done and I'm pretty proud of it. But teachers always have ways that you can improve. And I spoke SLOWLY and I breathed in my presentation!


Milan 2015 World Expo-Retail Boutique
I choose to showcase the state of Texas. Texas has the most land farmed than any other state and Dr Pepper was invented in Waco Texas.
My concept was to follow the Texas Hold 'Em Poker game. I wanted it to be in a very high end saloon. Very low lighting. High end, elegant but edgy.
Everything in this space are recycled products that can be found in the Texas landfills. The walls are made from Portafab, a portable space company that makes portable spaces that can be moved easily.
Open floor plan-floors are dark hardwood floor made from wood pallets. The tables and chairs on display are from recycled drum barrels and recycled street signs. The Jail dressing room is made from recycled metal.
The lighting is from recycled shot glasses and whiskey bottles.
The areas that Is show cased were the front entrance, cash wrap/bar and the retail dressing room/jail area.
After finals we celebrated at the Mexican restaurant and had some much needed Mexican food! Then I passed out at 10 PM.
I have more pictures......stay tuned.

8 more days

May 4, 2010
Another eight hour day. We had a guest lecture from the Director of the Master s Interior Design program the school we go to. He talked about the design in Italy; how it differed after the war all the up until now. It was pretty interesting.
After that we headed to commercial design to work on finals. Our presentation is due thursday so it's crunch time. I feel pretty good about my presentation it's just a matter of figuring out and practicing what I want to say.
We had cooking class today as well and we learned how to make risotto. It's really not that hard and I think I could do it.

Fascism

May 3, 2010
Eight hour class day.... We spent the morning having a lecture about WWII, how it started and then how it ended. We looked at some images of the European cities after the war. I'm still so amazed at how much was destroyed by the war. I'm so grateful that nothing to that extent has never happened in America.
Then we took a quick lunch break of four cheese pizza and headed out to the city. We visited the main university in Milan that was bombed during the war and then rebuilt. We also visited some sites throughout the city that had been bombed and that had memorials from it.


After that we hopped on to the tram with a really really hot tram driver and I chickened out giving him my phone number. Baby steps. We headed to the main courthouse, that had been built during fascist times, so we were studying the architecture. At the entrance of course we had to go through heavy security, comparable to that of the airport, and then we were allowed to wander around. It was HUGE! The scale of everything seemed like it had been built for giants. If I was a criminal I would feel pretty intimidated.
Today the weather was a bit cooler and after we headed home and had dinner it started to rain, no down pour. So a couple of people ran outside and danced in the rain then we went a got gelato. This is my life in the middle of finals. Super boring.

You know it's finals when.....

May 2, 2010
There is marker all over you, your face and you can't see the top of your table.
I can't put off my homework anymore. After church I came home and made many attempts at rendering.
Church was nice, it was fast and testimony meeting. I meet the mission presidents wife and sat next to her and their daughter. Then I raced home to avoid doing more homework. But actually to got a lot done. I know my hand renderings are not the greatest, in fact someone once said it looked like a psycho killer on the loose drew them, but I have no other option! I'm really ready for finals to be over with......

Cinque Terre

May 1, 2010
I cannot believe it's May already! I went to bed early the night before because I'm going to Cinque Terre pretty early in the morning. The roomies were not and so they were doing something. I woke up at some point in the night and noticed Nizhoon missing and thought maybe she just fell asleep in the other room. Then at 6 AM when I woke up she tip toed in and said HI we just got home. Apparently they went dancing all night! They looked pretty beat but said that they had a blast.
I meet Monica and Marjorie in the lobby and we rushed to the train station to get out tickets and catch the train. First of all the machine kept canceling our tickets so finally we got them and had 3 minutes to get to the train. So we went running up the escalator and somehow managed to go up the down one and almost broke our necks turning around to go to the right one. Then as we're running along the train to the right car they dropped our ticket on the train track!!! No one was hurt and we got on the train just fine. We didn't have assigned seat so we just found some anywhere. Then half way there the people whose seats they were kicked us out and we sat on little stools in the hall way for the next hour. Of course that's the day I picked to wear a skirt. Very long awkward train ride.


Then we got off at Monterossa the first of the 5 cities. It's right on the shore of the Med sea. It was really pretty! We walked around for a while then decided to hit a couple of the other cities. So we hopped back on the train and figured we could just take the boat back between the cities and see all of them.
In Marpola we had lunch at the worst cafe ever. All they had was seafood so I ordered linguine with green beans and potatoes in a pesto sauce. Surprisingly it was pretty good. Most of the cities are either right on the shore or built up the side of the cliff. Not quite as beautiful as Venice, but still pretty. We're all getting pretty tired and ready to go home so we went to catch the boat. Well for some reason here people don't believe in boat docks. So we made our way through the rocky cliffs and waited for the boat to get there. It was like a roller coaster ride trying to get on. I don't remember much after that just that I was trying not to throw up from sea sickness. I'm done with boats.


We switched our train tickets to take an earlier train and headed home at 5 pm. This time we had our own seats and so we settled in for a long train ride home. In this train there are 6 seats to each little room. I sat on the edge and crossed my leg. I think my foot was extended 3 inches into the aisle way and this drunken man was walking by but then when he got to my foot he stopped and started at for like 2 minutes until I moved my foot and turned away then in the most nastiest way said
thank you. Jerk. When we finally got to Milan the train was pulling and getting ready to stop and the SAME man comes walking by. By this time he is pretty drunk. Again he stops and looks at me and thankfully I don't understand him and I have my headphones in so I just dont' acknowledge him. Then some people start walking by and notice him. At this point he's started calling me and the other girls I'm with B**&^% and whores. Thankfully the people behind him pushed him off the train and we waited until he left before we got off the train.

May 1st is a big holiday in Italy. It has something to do with the war. As a result the public transportation closed at 7:30. We had to call and wait for a taxi.
For dinner we went to the most amazing Chinese restuarant! So yummy!

Catch up

April 30, 2010
Today was catch up day in class. For the morning we had a lecture about Italian holidays and how much fun holidays are in Italy compared to America. For New Years EVERYONE sets off illegal fireworks and most people throw out all of their old appliances like washing machines, from their balcony windows. They do this because it is the New Year and they will be buying new things anyway! Imagine if that was what happened in America?!
For lunch I braved the cockroach pizza place again and had the most amazing 4 cheese pizza again. It's so yummy! Four cheeses!
In commercial design I got everything caught up and ready to render. I don't want to render. I'm avoiding it all costs. The problem is that I can see the retail boutique in my head and it looks perfect but I know once I start coloring it won't come out the way I see it. Computer or hand drawn. It's frustrating.
For dinner we missed happy hour and decided to eat actual food. So we got French fries and I ordered a lasagna pizza. The fries were SO good! I haven't had any that good in a long time. I was so full from the fries that I couldn't finish all of my pizza.