I'm Back!

Hallo, blogfriends.

I have been back in the USA for about a month now, and this is my first blog post, so yay!

Some thoughts on recent events (In no particular order):


The Olympics: London is so cool. I didn't get to explore much of it when I was there (IT IS ENORMOUS) but I like revisiting it through the bike races. And the opening ceremony was awesome. Also, poor Jordyn Wieber! I love watching the women's gymnastics stuff, and this is the first time I've been older than, like, ALL of them. And it must be really hard going through whatever you go through when you're 16 on top of being a world class athlete and needing to have that kind of discipline. Anyway, random tangent.

My goddaughter: I had a visit from Beth and Diana last week! For those who don't know, Beth is an old friend from church. We met when I was 5 and she was 16 and I fell in love with her peekaboo skills. Anyway, 17 years later (wow) I am her daughter's godmother. And she is the cutest, smartest, best little toddler I've ever met (no bias whatsoever). We had a great time when they were here, mostly in the pool. She LOVES the pool. It's hysterical. Anyway, we got to be quite good buddies, and she might even be able to say my name the next time I see her. (She's only 20 months, and "Lizzy" is a tough one. I'm currently Yi-yi.)

My trip to Europe: It was amazing. I stayed in hostels. I went with my friend Sarah for the whole thing and we met up with Loryn for about a week and a half of it. I went to all the cities on my previous list (to reiterate: Milan, Venice, Florence, Siena, Pisa, Rome, Florence again, Milan again, London, Paris). My favorites were Florence, London, and Paris. Venice was also beautiful and a ton of fun to explore (and shop in) but the leather markets in Florence just killed me (seriously, along with a large chunk of cash, I think I left part of my soul there).

Some highlights (Also in no particular order):
- Art exhibits in Paris on Degas' bathers and da Vinci's Saint Anne with Jesus and the Virgin Mary (one of my favorite Renaissance paintings anyway, and seeing it on this trip was so amazing).

-The beach in Pisa, where I found a live starfish and a live hermit crab, swam in the Mediterranean, built a sand castle, and learned how to duggie on top of a boulder.

-The exhibit Americans in Florence (in Florence) of Impressionists like John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassat and a bunch of others that I walked through twice because I liked it so much.

-The aforementioned leather market in Florence, which was full of color and vendors and people and where I spent more money than I had.

-The Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens in London, where Sarah and I went with Del, a family friend on my mom's side who had us stay with her (She's 84, and her late husband met my grandfather during World War II in Trafalgar Square in London and invited him over for tea). It was one of my favorite moments. I love Peter Pan and I love fairies, and the statue had tons of fairies, with Peter on top playing the flute. They put up the statue at night so that the children would think it was a gift from the fairies. I could go on about that statue for ages.

-Having 2 buses break down on the way from Rome to Florence. It took 3 buses to get us there, and we were waiting at a gas station for at least an hour in between the last 2, so the three of us had a sing-along. I think we entertained some of the older Italian onlookers.

-Gelato.

-My peaceful afternoon in Paris's Luxembourg Gardens with my camera and my kindle (soon to be uploaded to facebook).

-Getting home.

-Sketching in Venice and Florence and Paris. Sketching in a lot of places, actually.

-The waiters--We had funny ones, flirtatious ones, and some that were a mix of both and spoke imperfect English. Such as the one in Pisa who said "I know my chickens" when he was talking about the three of us. Probably meant "chicks." But we liked chickens better.

-The handmade candle shop in Siena. It was really cool to see all their candles hung up, on shelves, just everywhere. There were tons of colors, and they had melted wax in regular old spoons (probably for painting details) suspended over larger vats of wax, so you could tell they made them right in the shop.

-Fish and chips at a pub in London (now I'm hungry).

As for what I'm doing next, we shall see. I am hoping to join a writer's group that meets in Syracuse, and maybe go to some figure drawing classes (expensive) and join a book club (hopefully free). So for the immediate future, I will continue to live with my parents (did I mention that I'm completely out of money after this trip? Still working, but paying off some debt for the foreseeable future. Not exactly going on shopping sprees). And I will be trying to write. Not so much here, but I will be writing. Let's go, dream-followers. We can do this.

Ciao and cheers!