I am an aspiring... something

Reflections (or Fast Day 3)

2012-03-04T22:11:00.001+01:00

Can I stress enough the ups and downs that I have been through this year? The fact that I'm starting to put together a meaningful existence in Amman is almost enough to make me forget the months of floundering around.

But it's the challenges we face that make us who we are, and who I am has been so changed by everything that has happened to me this year. Going all the way back to last year's fast when I loaded up on Fairbanks campus water alone in the mornings and broke the fast at night with french fries at the cafeteria with a friend or two who could be persuaded to eat so late to right now.

I am seeing myself, my religion, my future, my culture in a multitude of new ways I never thought possible.

Baha'i Fast: Day 2

2012-03-03T19:16:00.008+01:00

“These are the days of the Fast. Blessed is the one who through the heat generated by the Fast increaseth his love, and who, with joy and radiance, ariseth to perform worthy deeds.”

-Baha'u'llah

Fasting alone in a foreign country is lonely. I miss waking before sunrise at home with Mom and Dad. Listening but not really listening to Dad go on and on and on about proper hydration. Early, early, early morning breakfasts at Denny's with close Baha'i friends. Having water drinking contests with Valerie until we make ourselves sick.

The differences between Alaska and Jordan are magnified under this lens of fasting, and the long hours between sunrise and sunset make me miss home in a way that I have not quite experienced yet. Even the time difference makes home feel so much farther away than it has seemed in months.

Nonetheless, thinking back on all the places I have been in this last Baha'i year has made me really grateful to be able to take my first sip of water to the calls to prayer at sunrise and sunset in this region of the world that practically bleeds spirituality. From celebrating Naw-Ruz in Otovalo, Ecuador with Valerie to saying prayers in a tent in the Arctic to attending Feast in Florence, Italy to visiting Haifa, Israel not more than two months ago, this has been a wonderful year. And if missing home a little bit while waking before sunrise in Amman to get my eight cups of water and tea a day (just for you, Dad!) is how I'm going to see it out then I think I can manage.

Allah'u'abha, dear friends.

Adventures in getting places, snow in Amman, losing my phone, and fasting

2012-03-02T16:19:00.002+01:00

First of all, to all my Baha'i readers out there: HAPPY FASTING. Once my Dad told me that you only wish people Happy Fast on the last day of the fast, but whatevs Dad. I am 45 minutes away from sunset in Amman!

But anyway, fasting is a very small part of this story. This story is about adventures in getting places. For the last two days, Amman has been experiencing snow the likes of which have not been seen in years. Since this is Jordan, and not Alaska, no one here knows how to handle snow so everywhere has shutdown including my university. While snow days are typically celebrated, I've mostly spent the last two days wrapped up in a blanket inside my unheated apartment.

So today, Katrina, Fathme, and I decided to venture out. Our plan was to head downtown to Jafra and pick up the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice and the complete series of Firefly. And then go to Abdoun to check out a café we'd read about. Upon leaving our apartment we were ATTACKED by keffiyeh-wearing-obnoxious-snowball-throwing-hoodlum teenage boys who thought they were HILARIOUS (they so weren't). Luckily, we got a cab pretty quickly and hopped in with most of our limbs intact. Katrina, the Arabic expert, instructed our cab driver to take us downtown. And so, feeling relatively successful we settled into our drive.

Until we realized fifteen minutes later that we were no where NEAR DOWNTOWN. We tried to ask our cab driver what was up, and ascertained that he has decided to take us literally on the scenic route so we could take pictures. At which point, I was like "LA SURA! LA!" And Katrina more eloquently explained that we didn't want to take pictures we just wanted to go downtown to Jafra and buy the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice.

Nearly an hour later, we ended up downtown. At which point our cab driver tried to charge us 22 dinar. There was a loud chorus of la's from the backseat. We payed him significantly less than he asked, and bolted out of the cab and into the DVD store. A week ago, I had asked the adorable hipster guy at the video store to get Firefly for me. So I was fully expecting to be able to pick it up today. Sadly, he told me he didn't have it, citing Syria and snow and everything closing down as the reasons.

We got a few movies and went to catch a cab to Abdoun. We ended up finding a really nice English speaking cab driver, which put all of us in good moods. Until we got to Abdoun and realized EVERYTHING WAS CLOSED. After a little while of walking through slush, we ended up in a Starbucks. Katrina and Fathme went to order drinks, while I took my fasting self upstairs and opened my laptop to start blogging about how crazy our day had been. When I realized my phone was NOWHERE TO BE FOUND.

After frantically searching through every pocket of my coat and backpack, I remembered that our English speaking cab driver had given us a business card. So I called him with the awkward introduction of "Hi, I was a girl in your cab and I left my phone there." Luckily, he found it and came back to Abdoun about half an hour later showing me a variety of six phones that had been left in his cab. I picked out mine, tipped him, and headed back inside.

And now it is almost time to break the fast. I hope, for those of you reading this that are about to embark on your first day of fasting due to time zones, that your day goes a lot more smoothly than mine did.

All things considered, I did build a snowman today. So that was nice.

and so I dwell in all the possibilities

2012-02-27T18:51:00.000+01:00

My assimilation into life in Jordan has been seamless. I'm not homesick, I'm not culture-shocked, I'm not frustrated when things don't happen the way I want them to. Yanni, it'll work out, inshallah. And maybe this is a grace period, but more likely it's not. Italy taught me a few decent things, and how to live abroad was one of them.

How much I love Amman has surprised me. This semester has surprised me. In Florence, I craved a challenge, an embracing culture, students that were motivated and smart, a place where I would learn and grow. Because in Florence I found none of those things. So like a fish out of water, I desperately looked for change. Closing my eyes and picking a future at random.

The truth is that before I fall asleep at night, I think about moving back to Amman after I graduate from college. Spending next summer here. Perhaps never leaving at all. There is no falling in love with Jordan about it, I have well and truly fallen.

“The journey changes you- it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body.”

- Anthony Bourdain

More than once in the past week I've had the thought this is what I want to do with my life run through my head. And I don't even know what that means really. Because you cannot study abroad in Amman for the rest of your life. But when the coffee guy at school gives us four coffees even when we only pay for three just because there are four of us sitting next to the window or when a kind Baha'i family picks you up and takes you into their community no questions asked; it aligns with the emotions you felt driving through a refugee camp and the motivation you embraced when you listened to citizen journalists talking about why they do what they do.

So here I am. Memorizing both the Arabic alphabet and the city skyline at sunset. I desperately want to remember both when I leave.

Ayyam-i-ha in Amman

2012-02-26T23:28:00.004+01:00

Today marks the beginning of the Baha'i celebration, Ayyam-i-ha. The Baha'i calendar is 19 months of 19 days, which leaves 4 days (5 on a leap year) left over to line up with the solar calendar. The days of Ayyam-i-ha are generally spent eating, celebrating, and gift-giving before the 19 day Baha'i fast starts.

I went to an Ayyam-i-ha party tonight, which ended up being fabulous amounts of fun and also sort of I-have-no-idea-what's-being-said awkward. It was sort of like going to Feast in one of those all Persian Baha'i communities in Los Angeles. Everyone is so nice to you, but honestly you have no idea what's going on. Mostly, though, tonight was so much fun!!! I ate delicious food, played games, made new friends, mispronounced things. The usual.

This time of the year is such a wonderful time for Baha'is, and since I can't be in Alaska with my family I'm glad that I'm kind of finding a place here. It has definitely been a year of ups and downs, and I'm finally settling into my grove in Amman, Jordan of all places. I was sort of dreading fasting alone in a foreign country, but now I'm starting to look forward to it. And I am especially excited to observe the Baha'i fast in a society where religion permeates every part of life. Also because the call to prayer will serve as my sunrise and sunset calls!

On that extremely positive note, I'll leave you with a really long exposure picture I took from my rooftop around sunset the other day. Ma assalama!

Yesterday was such a good day

2012-02-25T13:09:00.004+01:00

We left Amman in the morning, and drove to Ajloun. It took about an hour and a half, and on the way we drove through al Baqa'a, the largest Palestinian refugee camp outside of Palestine. I'm taking a class on the Israeli-Palestine conflict this semester, and even though I've only had a week of classes I already feel like I'm approaching the conflict with a completely new perspective (i.e. I have a perspective). It's really interesting to be in this region of the world learning about these things, especially with the perspective of an American Baha'i. At some point in the semester, our class is going to visit al Baqa'a, a field trip that I am extremely excited for.

Right before we got to Ajloun, Mohammad turned around in the car and asked us if we liked bread. We replied yes, and he hopped out of the car and ran across the street and bought a whole bunch of the most delicious bread I have ever tasted. Eventually, we got to Ajloun, and got a tour around the old castle from a man who was part of the archeological team that had dug up some parts of the castle in the ground and discovered them. Everyone was just so happy yesterday, so it was really fun to be running around this ancient castle with all my new friends taking pictures and listening to a wise old man tell us all the history. When we finally made it up to the top of the castle, Mohammad pointed off into the distance and told us that we could see Palestine from where we were. At which point, drunk off proximity to places we had only ever read about, I took the best jumping picture I think I've ever taken.

After we finished exploring Ajloun, we headed back into town and ate a delicious (and cheap!) lunch of shawerma and hummus in this cute-borderline-tacky restaurant. And then we set off for Jerash. Jerash is basically a bunch of old Roman ruins, but really really cool ones. As someone who just came from Italy, I personally thought Jerash was way more interesting than Rome. It was raining, but raining lightly so that you weren't really getting wet, but everything was glistening in the light drizzle. The grass was greener, the rocks were beiger, the yellow flowers were yellower. Again, we lucked out with a really good tour guide and spent an hour and a half wandering through the ancient city of Jerash listening to him tell us stories.

Along the way, Ghadeer helped me finally name my camera, who will henceforth be referred to as Tosweera (or "dear little picture" in Arabic). She also taught me how to tie a hijab, which was something I've been thinking about a lot lately since about 80% of the women in town cover their hair. And with all different women wearing hijabs, there are so many different styles and colors and ways to tie it! It's just another accessory for the girls here, which I think is something Westerners fail to grasp sometimes. They think that the Muslim world oppresses women, which yeah, it does. But it isn't the hijab's doing. Point being, hijabs are cool, guys.

After our long day of excursion-ing, we finally headed back to Amman around dinner time. My roommates and I were hanging out listening to foreign dance music and brushing our hair, when Katrina pops up and decided to assign us all Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants personas. Weirdly, it worked out really well. Katrina, the quiet, beautiful type, was Lena. Stephanie, the blonde soccer player, was Bridget. Fathme, the computery person, was Tibby. And me, the loud, obnoxious, bi-racial type, was Carmen. I've never been in a group of four girls where everyone is obviously one sister from the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, so it was pretty exciting. Anyway, after that we took some pictures in our parlour for the cover of "Shmesani Life: Season 1."

After my roommates and I were done with our awkward parlour photoshoot, we went out for dinner. Wherein we observed our first Jordanian fight, complete with onlookers phoning up their cousins and an angry waiter running out the door and chasing a cab down the street. After dinner, we went downtown to a café, and hung out until 1 in the morning drinking tea, smoking hookah (well, those of us who could smoke without coughing smoked), and talking about how great our day was. Which it was. Yesterday was such a good day.

Why living and studying in the Arab world is important

2012-02-22T22:31:00.050+01:00

Back in November, when I decided that I wanted to study abroad in Amman, Jordan, I felt sort of crazy. I spent a lot of time thinking about it, feeling like this was some slightly mental adventure that I was about to embark on. And the truth is that Amman, while extremely different from home, is not terrifyingly different.

And this is why Westerners need to spend more time in the Middle East. Our view of the Arab world is pretty much completely dependent on Western Media, which does not really accurately represent the life and culture people live here. Even growing up as a half-Persian kid, I really didn't (and don't) know anything about the Middle East.

Back in October, the Matador Network published a piece about why you should study abroad in the Islamic World. The first two reasons on the list were contributing to world peace and shattering stereotypes. Without hands on experience in the Middle East, the West and East will never really understand each other or be able to start getting along.

Another good way to expand your worldview and see things from the other side's perspective is to take a class called Arab-Israeli Politics while living in the Arab World. Whoa, history textbooks, you left out a lot of kind of important details (i.e. all the details).

Anyway, my point is that you should come live here. It's awesome, and I absolutely love it.

I'm in Shmasani, b----.

Karaoke Jordanian style

2012-02-21T08:38:00.001+01:00

On Saturday night, I headed to Books@cafe with a few friends and hung out during Karaoke Night. And it was awesome.

SNOW DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2012-02-19T06:50:00.000+01:00

THERE IS NO SCHOOL TODAY BECAUSE IT IS A SNOW DAY!!!!!!!!!

Granted it's the kind of snow day we used to have in Georgia where you can't see any snow, but they cancel school anyway because your school is up in the mountains and it's all icy up there and thus extremely perilous.

But the point is NO SCHOOL NO SCHOOL NO SCHOOL NO SCHOOL.

Commence going back to sleep and waking up later to wrap myself in a blanket and watch movies only to leave the house on a hunt for falafel or lemon corn.

SNOW DAY SNOW DAY SNOW DAY

On being fearless

2012-02-16T11:02:00.004+01:00

I'm not exactly a shy introverted person, but I'm not fearless either. And the reservations I hold are the ones that make me nervous to order dinner in a different language or anxiously check my watch so I won't be late for the bus or smile at a stranger instead of engaging them in conversation. And maybe this is a lifestyle that works for a person who doesn't have aspirations of eventually ending up on the floor of a new friend sharing rice, but I am a person who wants that from my life. Which means that I am currently on a mission to be fearless.

This morning I rolled out of bed at an hour that's quickly becoming a regular part of my life here, but an hour I'm still getting used to, and made my way through the rain to the place where everyone applies for their visas to get blood drawn. Having an HIV test is a part of obtaining an annual visa here. There were probably over a hundred guys milling around trying to get work visas, and here we were: a small group of American students, completely out of place.

Since I'm a young female, I feel constantly stared at and almost dissected here. Especially because I don't cover my hair like a majority of the women, and you can typically tell that I don't hail from around these parts. And this morning was no exception. At one point, we were standing outside in the cold rain, and I was already nervous to get blood drawn when I noticed a group of men whispering and staring at us. Instead of avoiding eye contact like I probably should have, I met the eye of one of the guys and laughed at them, and they laughed at me right back.

I don't know why the unfamiliar is so terrifying, except that it is. But I also know that people will be nice to you regardless of whether you ask for the bathroom or for the pigeon. So here I am, trying to be fearless about it.

Happy Valentine's Day from a smitten girl in Amman!

2012-02-14T08:39:00.002+01:00

Happy Valentine's Day! I was going to be all above V-Day this year, and not make a blog post about it. But the truth is that there's so much going on in my life right now that I absolutely love and that's making me really happy, so I thought I'd write about it in the context of a useless-Hallmark-kind-of-lame-extremely-American day of the year.

I love Amman. So much. I am seriously smitten with life here. Even the things that I don't love, I love them because I don't love them. Deciding to spend a semester studying here was one of the best decisions I've made all year, possibly in 19 years. Even after just a week of being in Jordan I can safely say that Florence was all wrong for me.

Your time abroad is supposed to be continuously fantastic and full of cultural experiences that make you rethink everything you thought you knew. I mean, that's what I've surmised from movies and books. And even though that's a blatantly inaccurate representation of living abroad, I feel like I'm coming so much closer to that ideal now than I could ever even dream of last semester.

So yeah, I absolutely love living in Jordan. When I decided to study here because I wanted to be surrounded by motivated smart people and because I wanted to experience something really different and because I wanted to escape the thousands of drunk obnoxious American students in Florence, I didn't know if I would actually find what I was hoping to find here. And I did. I really really really did.

All in all, happy Valentine's Day readers. This is the third one we've celebrated together, if you've been around since the beginning. I feel like I can honestly say that I am unequivocally happy this year. Peace from the middle east!!!

Elika's first day of school!

2012-02-12T15:03:00.004+01:00

I live with three girls, so between the four of us someone's alarm should go off, right? Wrong. Today was our first day of school at Al-Ahliyya Amman University. Stephanie was planning on getting up at 6:15 to shower, Fathme was going to get up after her, and Katrina and I were going to get up at 7 and blearily eat breakfast before we caught the school bus. Except I woke up on a fluke at 7:30 to a sleeping apartment. Three of us were out the door in about 15 minutes (Stephanie decided since she didn't have class, she would stay home), and we ended up waiting around for a late school bus for a while anyway. Enter living in Jordan.

Our university is about 45 minutes to an hour and a half away from where we live by bus (depending on traffic). The actual university is beautiful. It's a real school where real Jordanians (and foreign students from around the Middle East) go to school. This is a really nice change from Italy, where I felt like I was going to a fake school designed entirely for American exchange students who were around to take a semester off from studying. The university is actually really similar to UAF. The campus and student population are about the same size, and walking around a real college campus again just fills me with happiness. There's a bowling alley, and computer labs with free printers, and a registrar office, and pool tables, and a gym with a pool! Suffice to say, I love it.

MY STUDENT ID WHICH IS IN ARABIC!!!!

So today was my first day of school. I caught the school bus at 8, got to school at 9, and spent two hours bumming around campus until class started at 11. I'm taking mostly useless but incredibly interesting courses here that promise to be really, really great. As in my Gender in Islam class I had this morning where the teacher told us that she didn't like tests, but she did like field trips! I also had Arabic 101 today, and I feel like I'm going to learn a lot. People don't speak nearly as much English here as they do in Italy, so I'll be forced to practice speaking Arabic all the time! Also, I'm in class with students that are really dedicated to learning Arabic, unlike the students I was in class with last semester (but with Italian). Plus, Jordanians are SUPER nice, so I feel like I won't be too intimidated to speak by the proud Italians that breeze past you on the sidewalk and won't give you the time of day like I was last semester.

To wrap up a really good first day of school, Jaime and I caught the public buses home instead of waiting around until 5 for the school bus. And we made it (mostly) successfully!!! We almost didn't get off at the right stop, but a really sweet girl on the bus helped us out. Of course then we casually walked across super busy intersections without looking both ways, but that's kind of a routine part of life here.

Maybe making it home is a minor victory, but I'll take what I can get.

Packed!!!

2012-02-07T02:34:00.000+01:00

I'M PACKED!!!

That's twelve months worth of stuff! But even though I condensed my life into a suitcase, duffel bag, and backpack, it's still going to be a struggle to drag through Florence, Rome, and Amman.

In other news, I am the official ISA blogger for Amman. If you're interested in following yet more of my blogging adventures, you can check that out here. I'll be updating hopefully once a week, and doing a much better job of describing life in depth than I do here sometimes.

The next post you read here will be coming at you from Jordan!!! I'm super excited!!!

Dear Dan Sullivan, Anchorage Assembly, and the Anchorage School District School Board:

2012-02-05T00:31:00.007+01:00

The list of proposed cuts in the Anchorage School District budget this year is particularly extensive (you can find it here), and I wrote this letter specifically asking the school board to reconsider their proposed cut of eight elementary school librarians. As a (kind of former) resident of South Anchorage, I was affected when the Samson-Dimond library closed down, and I don't want to see Anchorage shutting down anymore libraries or firing any librarians!!!

If you would be affected by these cuts in a way you don't want to be- speak out! Write a letter, or if you are in Anchorage- attend the public hearing about the budget this Thursday. I posted the letter I wrote below.

To Whom It May Concern:

I am an alumni of Dimond High School. I graduated in 2010, and I am a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I loved Dimond (some of the time), and I have to say it's a good school, and there were some staff and faculty there that really made an impact on my life.

Ms. Metcalfe, the librarian, is one of those people. I spent a lot of time in her library, and some of my absolute favorite books of all time are ones recommended by Ms. Metcalfe.

But a library is not just a room full of books. During my senior year, I became the editor-in-chief of Dimond’s newspaper. The newspaper had been a print newspaper for many years, but because of the cost of printing a paper was so expensive the paper ceased to exist for a few years. When I started working for the paper, we decided to take it online, and Ms. Metcalfe gave us some invaluable help during that transition- teaching us about wikis and helping us set up our website. It should also be noted that the faculty adviser for the paper, Mrs. Norsworthy, was one of the best teachers I had during high school, and she also gave us fantastic guidance.

Libraries cannot operate effectively without librarians. I’ve spent a lot of time in a lot of libraries, and I can say that without any hesitation. A librarian turns kids onto reading, keeps their collection up-to-date and well developed, recommends books, assists students with research projects, puts together different programs in the library, and does so many different things for the school, the library, the staff, and the students.

I realize that there have been some awful budget cuts in the Anchorage School District, and there have been hard choices to make. But the fact that the proposed budget will reduce eight elementary school librarians to half time is really scary, because it means that the ASD doesn’t find libraries important. Fully staffed and well-stocked libraries are vital to students, and I am begging you not to undervalue them.

When I was in school, I know the APD police officers stationed at the schools were paid for by the school district. I know the budget cuts have to come from somewhere, so I am suggesting that you consider this as an alternative cut. A student will get much more out of a devoted librarian than a police officer watching him at lunchtime. Please give the responsibility of paying the police officers back to the city, which is forcing the cuts to the ASD budget in the first place.

I love Anchorage, and I am pretty sure that I want to live there again someday. And if I end up raising my future kids in Anchorage I want them to get an education from a quality school system that values libraries, music teachers, and art programs as well science, math, and sports. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Elika Roohi

Using your talents for the betterment of society

2012-02-03T00:08:00.000+01:00

I stumbled across this quote by Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha'i Faith earlier:

“If you possess a real talent in writing you should consider it as given by God and exert your efforts to use it for the betterment of society.”

— A letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi in 1932

I realize that posting that quote makes me sounds like I'm saying "Hi, I'm Elika and I am a talented writer. Here, take a seat, and I'll go pour us some obnoxiously self obsessed tea." But I am really, really passionate about writing, and I think that kind of reflects.

One of the closest friends I made this semester is from California, and she's majoring in International Relations with a minor in wanting to change the world. Hanging out with her, and watching her apply for internships, jobs, research positions, and academic programs has made me evaluate my goals and start to get motivated.

Maybe Italy wasn't exactly where I was supposed to be, but I think my semester here has really given me a good idea of what I want to accomplish next semester and how to do that. The truth is that I'm an idealistic half-Persian-American Baha'i youth, and I want to understand the Middle East, tell stories, and intertwine those things with my religion and contributing to the betterment of the world and all that jazz.

I'm moving to Amman in less. than. one. week. I picked this place almost at random at first, based on visa processes and the prices of plane tickets and the fact that Jordan sounded like it would scare off annoying American students. I cannot read or speak Arabic, which is starting to terrify me. But the more I learn about Jordan, the more I read, the more I research, the more I think maybe-just maybe- that this is where I am supposed to be going.

We'll see.

To all the jars. You know who you are.

2012-02-01T15:08:00.000+01:00

In addition to dying of impatience, I have been spending my time lately making pancakes with friends, biking around Florence, reading, watching movies, and making stop motion animated videos.

I spent an entire afternoon photographing jars and stringing all the pictures together in iMovie and animating them and then playing music on my ukulele to put in the background. Obviously I have too much time on my hands. But you should still be impressed.

One week, not that I'm counting

2012-01-30T12:14:00.000+01:00

I'm totally counting.

This is the last week of my extremely long winter break that I have been pretending is not just a countdown until moving to Jordan. It hasn't been a countdown to Jordan because I've been traveling through Turkey and Israel with Valerie, and saying my goodbyes to Florence, and bumming around Budapest.

But as much as I have tried to adopt the live-in-the-moment motto of every 20-something I've met this year, I am just not a live-in-the-moment person. At least not in a make-out-with-boys-and-refuse-to-label-it-a-relationship-drink-your-life-away-smoke-too-much-pot-travel-every-weekend-while-only-checking-your-bank-account-balance-every-two-or-three-weeks-and-that's-what-living-in-the-moment-is way.

I am a countdown person. A make-sure-you-know-what-you're-doing-in-three-months person. A write-down-every-penny-you-spend-and-on-what-because-summer-job-money-can-only-get-you-so-far person.

I have tried showing up with no plan, and it's stressful and annoying and you never get as much done as you think you will and more often than not you don't have fabulous adventures you just get lost and it makes me want to find a place with wifi so I can pull out my iTouch and look up basic facts about where I am and what I'm doing.

Point being that I've spent the last three months reading and researching Amman, Jordan, and the suspense, at this point, is killing me. And I'm trying to be sentimental and preemptively nostalgic about this being my last week in Italy. But, to be honest, I'm just ready to go.

When I knew that I was going to be living abroad, I wanted to accurately represent what that was like on this blog. I wanted to cover the highs and the lows. But the truth is that when it gets bad, I don't want to post because I don't want it to seem like I'm using this time to feel any emotion but wonder. And when it's good, I don't want to write because I'd rather be off laughing and enjoying whatever it is that's making me happy. As a result, I've mostly filled those empty spaces on this blog with pictures and hoped no one has noticed.

There is a reason that I decided not to stay in Italy for a year, and instead spend second semester in Jordan. And that reason is that I don't quite belong here. It is as simple as the girl who picked the wrong college and decided to transfer. I've met wonderful people. I've had fabulous adventures. I will be sad to see Florence go. But. There is no denying that being in Italy just wasn't right for me, Elika Roohi.

And this is all a really long winded way of saying that I have one week left. And it seems like it will last forever.

"The Name of the Star" by Maureen Johnson review

2012-01-29T05:16:00.000+01:00

It is 5 a.m. where I am, and I am still awake and blogging because I have to gush about this book that I just finished.

The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson is the. best. book. I have read in a very long time. It has all of Maureen's trademark bizarreness: boarding school in London, paranormal activity, Jack the Ripper, quirky girl from Louisiana. But it works oh-so-well, because, of course, Maureen can do bizarre like no one's business.

Plus, unlike so much YA lit that I read, this book is all plot. John Green, who is one of my favorite authors and a brilliant writer, focuses so heavily on character and developing themes and having clever allusions and witty banter. And sometimes I don't want to think about why Augustus Waters died and his meaning in life, I just want to read about a girl who can see and talk to a ghost imitating the Jack the Ripper murderers, and who occasionally makes out with curly-haired-kind-of-a-conspiracy-theory-nut-Jerome.

And just to add to the ambiance of the book, I stayed up incredibly late in an old, European city reading the book into the night while church bells rang occasionally outside through the cobblestoned streets. Not going to lie... that was a bad decision and the reason I'm awake and blogging does have a lot to do with the fact that I totally freaked myself out.

The only problem I had with this book was that it will have a sequel that it does not need. It could have wrapped up nicely with Rory having a giant scar on her abdomen and finishing up school in London in a whirlwind of making out with curly-haired-kind-of-a-conspiracy-theory-nut-Jerome and studying Art History and English Literature and eating breakfast in the refectory while talking about Louisiana. But no, now Rory has somehow imbibed the power of the terminuses (termini?), and so she will reappear in two years with 250 more pages of adventure. Dear authors (this means you, Ally Carter!), sometimes it is ok to let a good thing lie. Repeat after me: not all books need sequels.

But overall it was a fantastic book. The concept was totally original, and very engrossing. I literally read the book cover to cover on my iPod touch this afternoon (my nook's screen spontaneously stopped working, and I don't want to talk about it), so that tells you how good it is. Go pick it up from your local library right now. You will not regret it. Unless you're not into fabulously written paranormal murder mysteries set in a modern day English boarding school. And, let's get real, everyone is into that.

I just really like suspension bridges

2012-01-28T21:00:00.000+01:00

I spent the last week in Budapest, Hungary with my (former) roommate Deshani. We had a faaaaaabulous time experiencing central Europe, climbing up hills, being cold, eating bland German-esque food, hanging out with the super cool couchsurfing community from Budapest and Debrecen, and walking back and forth over several of the many suspension bridges that connect Buda and Pest over the Danube River.

And through this trip I discovered that 1. couchsurfing is so. awesome. and 2. I just really like suspension bridges. Here are a handful of the 200-odd pics I took of bridges in Budapest:

Arrivederci, San Gallo

2012-01-21T18:55:00.000+01:00

I moved out of the apartment yesterday.

I have now started the stage of my winter break where I'm living out a backpack while my suitcase with a year's worth of stuff in it hangs out in the corners of living rooms of friends.

It was a good five months on Via San Gallo. There were so many good times and laughs in that apartment, and I think I will really miss the pizza place downstairs and the proximity to Il Centro.

But it's time to move on. Next week, Deshani and I are going to Budapest. And then I come back to Florence for a few more days. And after that I start life in Jordan. I really can't wait for next semester to start!!!

Feel all the things!

2012-01-15T22:55:00.002+01:00

I just finished The Fault in our Stars.

At this point in my young life, I am extremely familiar with the works of noted author John Green. I have read his four novels, his two co-authored books, his several published short stories, the zombie apocalypse novella, the pieces he wrote for Chicago Public Radio, all of his blog posts from back when you could access his blog archives on his website, and of course I've been watching Vlogbrothers for years.

I first read An Abundance of Katherines when I was a freshman in high school, and honestly I picked it up because the cover looked really cool. And it was back when I was friends with this girl that I stopped being friends with eventually but this was before that, and she had to go to math tutoring and I had to wait for Mom to pick me up from school and while she was working her way through math homework I was reading. And it was so funny. Surprisingly hilarious and also kind of message-y, but, like, not in an obnoxious way.

And then I read Looking for Alaska, which was, if possible, better. And then a few months (or maybe a year?) later Paper Towns came out, and I read that, and it was good but not quite as good. And then I discovered Vlogbrothers. And then I got really obsessed with John Green and watched and read my way through everything I could get my hands on.

And then Will Grayson, Will Grayson came out and it was ok. It was funny. It was a nice story, and I think it might have meant more to me if I had ever struggled with the intricacies of being a depressed gay teenage boy. But I haven't. So mostly it was just funny and still really good, but mostly just ok.

So at this point, I know John Green's voice really well. When I read his writing, I hear him saying "Good morning, Hank. It's Wednesday." I think of the guy who put peanut butter on his face or the guy who licked a cat. It's almost hard for me to suspend disbelief at this point.

So I was excited about The Fault in our Stars. But I was not capital-E Excited for The Fault in our Stars.

But. I managed to suspend my disbelief. It was so good. It would not have worked with a male protagonist. It was this hilarious, poignant, incredibly sad novel. I was going to review it in a little more depth, but usually my reviews include a lot of details since I have absolutely no regard for people who are like "AHHHHH DON'T SPOIL IT!!!!!" It is not about what happens, but how you get there. But I have a lot of respect for nerdfighters, so I will suffice with merely saying that it's brilliant. Also, there's sex.*

*I really wanted to add that bit. So sorry. But honestly, it's not an important spoiler, and really. Don't you ever read the ending of a book halfway through? It's not about the destination, it's about the journey!

The not-so-great moments

2012-01-14T11:37:00.001+01:00

In the grand scheme of things, my trip with Valerie went really well. No one stole anything from us, I got a super cheap really cute haircut, we didn't miss any planes, we both bought these really awesome harem pants from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. But. Traveling is full of these moments that you have to embrace with an open, flexible mindset. So, without further ado, a list!

1. Ending up in some sketchy alleys on our first night in Istanbul. We got into Istanbul in the afternoon, and made it to our hostel by the evening, and then we decided to go out to dinner. On the way home from our okay and sort of pricey meal (re: 12 lira/$6, we were in the tourist part of town) we managed to get hopelessly lost and end up in some sort of sketchy looking alleys. Neither of us had slept in the last 36 hours (Valerie because she was flying for 36 hours, and me because I had spent the night before sitting alone and freezing outside the Roma Termini-but that's a different story), and we didn't have a map. Eventually we flagged down a taxi, and told him to take us to the Mavi Guesthouse (a GREAT hostel). But he didn't know where it was. He also didn't know where the Blue Mosque or the Four Seasons was. So we ended up in a 15 lira ($7.50) taxi ride where the driver pulled over every so often to ask for directions. Of course we managed to find the tadi driver who didn't know where he was going.

2. Pamukkale, or not. Going to Pamukkale wasn't an original part of our travel plan. But when we stayed in Cappadocia, we met several people who told us we had to go there, and they made it sound really appealing. We had been planning on spending two days in Konya, but truthfully there's not much there besides Rumi's grave and the accompanying museum. So we decided to get up super early the next morning and take a bus to Denizli and then a shuttle to Pamukkale. Firstly, we barely caught the bus. The man we bought the bus tickets from told us (or so we thought... language barriers) to wait in front of the office at 7 a.m. So we were there... until 7:20... with no bus. So then we booked it to the otogar and barely made the bus. Which was supposed to take five or six hours to get to Denizli. But it took more like eight and a half. So we didn't arrive until mid-to-late afternoon. But we figured we might as well take advantage of the little sunlight we had left, and take a shuttle to Pamukkale. The guidebook said they would take about 20-30 minutes. It was more like an hour. And on top of everything, we missed our stop. We ended up at the end of the road in quickly fading twilight. Valerie and I came really close to stealing a dolmus. But we didn't, and we made it back to the otogar in Denizli and caught a night bus back to Istanbul.

the one pic taken that day: "WHERE ARE WE?"

3. Staying at the Marom Hotel. When Val and I were making plans for accommodations we ran into some problems about where to stay in Haifa. On the one hand, we could stay at a hostel down in the port, but that would mean a lot of time spent traveling back and forth between our hostel and the gardens. Or on the other hand, we could stay at a hotel up on the mountain, but that would be pretty pricey. We ended up at a sort of middle ground, picking a really cheap hotel that advertised itself as "close to the Baha'i gardens." It wasn't. I mean, yes, it's closer than Florence, Italy or Fairbanks, Alaska. But we still had a lot of problems getting to and from there by bus, and sometimes that trip took us more than two hours... which leads us to...

4. That time it took us more than two hours to get from the ITC building to our hotel. The previous night, Valerie and I had made it from the Pilgrim Center to our hotel no problem on bus 23. Brimming with success, we were excited to try it again now that we knew what we were doing. So we got on bus 23, and waited patiently for it to get to Palmach Street, following its progress diligently on our map of Haifa. We were happily anticipating our arrival at the stop next to our hotel, when suddenly our bus made an unexpected turn and we ended up traveling through this mysterious tunnel for several minutes! We ended up at a bus depot in the port, and when we tried to ask the bus driver where we were and what had happened he opened the door and shooed us off impatiently telling us he only spoke Hebrew without even glancing at our map. We ended up waiting for a bus back up the mountain for about half and hour, and when we finally got off that bus it was still a twenty minute walk to where we were staying. We had left the World Centre property a little after nine, and didn't make it back to our hotel room until a little before midnight.

These were the biggest problems we encountered on our trip. Although, we spent a lot of our time lost. No so much because either of us is horrifically bad at directions, but because we were too impatient to use a map. And there was the portion of our trip where Valerie only had one pair of socks. Or the number of times we ended up stranded in pouring rain. Overall though, I think we managed alright.

Visiting Haifa

2012-01-13T09:12:00.007+01:00

On our travels, Valerie and I had the blessing to visit the Baha'i World Centre in Haifa, Israel. And it was wonderful! Even though we were only there for a short time, I went away feeling radiant.

Earlier this week wasn't the first time I was ever in Haifa though. The picture on the left was taken when I was four years old, and my family went to go visit my Grandma who was working at the World Centre at the time.

Being a Baha'i is this huge monumental part of who I am, and it always has been. I mean, my parents met because of the Faith, so without I wouldn't even exist! Not to mention every single Sunday of my childhood that was spent driving back and forth to Baha'i school (sometimes a really long drive) or every Baha'i book night at home or going through intensives during high school or years and years of attending feast.

I think one of the things I miss most this year is living in a place with a decent sized Baha'i community. There aren't that many Baha'is in Florence and only one other youth (who I've only met once). So seeing Valerie and getting to go Haifa was completely wonderful. Even though three days in Haifa is far, far, far too short.

I don't talk about religion that much on this blog. But one of my goals for this new year and new semester is to write more about faith. And also to read a Baha'i book and remember to say my obligatory prayers on a more consistent basis and learn all the names of the members of the Universal House of Justice and also the American National Spiritual Assembly and in general to understand Baha'i administration better.

I bear witness that he who hath known Thee hath known God, and he who hath attained unto Thy presence hath attained unto the presence of God. Great, therefore, is the blessedness of him who hath believed in Thee, and in Thy signs, and hath humbled himself before Thy sovereignty, and hath been honoured with meeting Thee, and hath attained the good pleasure of Thy will, and circled around Thee, and stood before Thy throne.
- Bahá'u'lláh

2 years!

2011-12-25T12:33:00.001+01:00

GUYS, GUESS WHAT TODAY IS? MY BLOG'S SECOND BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!

Remember me two years ago on December 25, 2009? I was sitting in the kitchen working on college application essays, and Mom had the window open even though it was super cold outside. And then I decided I was tired of writing essays, so I started a blog.

You probably don't remember that because the only people that read my blog back then was my Mom and Robin. And oh my goodness, how that number has grown! Something I never, ever would have predicted!

I have 36 official followers on Google, but I know more people follow my blog than that. As of this moment there have been 27,860 hits on my blog (and none of them from me). My posts have gotten picked up by random sites on the web devoted to travel and backpacking and Italy and study abroad and living in the Arctic. My blog ran on the UAF Sun Star page for a semester. Tweets linking to some of my posts have been retweeted many times by a multitude of different people.

And this is cheesy, but it is all because of YOU. Back when I was senior in high school, if no one had sat down and read my blog and told me they enjoyed it, I would have given up posting a long time ago. All the comments, all the likes, all of the hey-Elika-I-read-your-blog-and-I-love-it!'s are 70% of what's kept this blog alive for the last two years. The other 30% being my interest in practicing writing on a regular basis.

So THANK YOU!!!!!! I know no one really cares right now because it's Christmas and you're all WEEEEEE CHRISTMAS PICNIC IN THE SNOW (wait, that's only one person I can think of). But I compiled a list of some of my favorite posts from the last two years, and you should check them out!

1. In which a blog is created (Dec. 25, 2009)
2. An interview with myself (Feb. 27, 2010)
3. A Nicholas Sparks experiment (June 17, 2010)
4. Aspiring... writer? (Jan. 12, 2011)
5. Sunday afternoon thoughts (Feb. 20, 2011)
6. A trip to the courthouse (April 8, 2011)
7. Happiest girl in the world (Aug. 16, 2011)
8. Missing home, secret underground tunnels, and midnight adventures (Oct. 9, 2011)

Florence study abroad tips

2011-12-24T13:00:00.003+01:00

If you're planning on studying abroad (or even visiting) Florence, make sure to check out some of the following:

1. The Florentine
My dear English speaking student, The Florentine is your friend. The events page is full of everything from special club promotions to opera to live music at an aperitivo to TEDxFirenze. Read it whenever it comes out. And the classified page found two of my roommates jobs. One teaches English to two adorable boys, and the other one babysits the kids of some obnoxiously rich family.

2. Flo'N The Go
This is a pretty good resource for young American students wanting to know what's going on in Florence. Everything from concerts to restaurant reviews!

3. Cup of Local Sugar
Cup of Local Sugar is actually a really cool network. You email the people that run the site, and tell them where you're going to be and when and they set up a coffee date with a local for you. And then you meet up with that person, and they tell you all about their city. The only problem I had with CoLS is how pricey they are. It cost 35 euro for a coffee date with an expat in Florence, which was way too steep for me. But for those who have the budget for it I would say go for it!

4. Intercambio
Intercambio is a language exchange. I had two intercambio partners. Through my Italian class, I met up with Alex every other week this semester and completed the "intercambio" assignments we were required to finish. And through my exchange program, I met up with Rita a couple times for lunch. I wouldn't say I became bosom buddies with my intercambio partners, but I enjoyed hanging out with them and picked up some Italian I never would have learned on my own. It's a good way to make Italian friends as an American exchange student, and I would definitely recommend it.

5. Adopt a famiglia
This is the idea that a student will not live with a host family, but have an Italian famiglia they hang out with once a week anyway. I didn't do this activity, but a few of my friends did and they made really close connections with their family and said it was completely worth it.

6. Volunteering
The school I attended here set up a couple different volunteering options, and I ended up working at a daycare all semester. What I learned from this is that I never want to work at a daycare. But it was a great way to get involved with the community, hang out with cute kids, and see a part of the city I never would have seen otherwise. Volunteering really puts you out in the community, and it's a good way to bridge cultures and meet locals in a positive environment.

7. Your professors
Your teachers are a great resource. They all have really interesting back stories, so talk to them! My Travel Writing professor is a renowned Italian poet, and told me about some awesome poetry readings this semester that I thoroughly enjoyed attending. And my Intro to Mass Comm professor got me hooked on Al Jazeera English and schiacciata (delicious, salty, Tuscan bread).

In conclusion, enjoy your time abroad. But make sure to make the most out of it! Your time here is limited, and you want to go home with more than just a few stories of eating pizza and drinking wine and walking on cobblestones.

We heart pizza!

2011-12-23T13:24:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, Melanie and I went to Gusta Pizza. It's supposedly the best pizza restaurant in Florence, and everyone I know raves about it so it was about time I knock it off my Florence bucket list.

We showed up at the restaurant, and immediately the owner leaned over the counter and kissed both of us on the cheek and wished us a "buon Natale!" We happily ordered a spinach and ricotta cheese pizza (sounds weird, but it was really good) and two bottles of water and sat down.

A few minutes later, our pizza showed up in the shape of a heart!

We heart this pizza place!

Lazy Florentine Sundays

2011-12-18T16:38:00.002+01:00

Today I walked to a grocery store really really far away from my apartment, just so I would have a better reason to walk around other than just aimlessly walking around. Which is a great thing to do if you are in a wander-some mood. But I needed some motivation to leave my apartment, and a 45 minute trip each way to buy milk managed to do the trick.

Also, I got lunch and sat on the curb of a sidewalk eating my panini and feeling all Italian.

And a random couple asked me how to get to Santa Croce, and I gave them directions in Italian. And I was really proud of myself because I get left and right (sinistro e destra) mixed up all the time, but I didn't this time.

Then three hours later when I finally got home, I made peanut butter cookies. I'm on my fifth one right now. They're really good. Also, I'm putting nutella and strawberries on top. So, they're, like, REALLY good.

You know that part of Eat, Pray, Love where Julia Roberts sits on the floor of her apartment in Rome and eats asparagus? That's kind of how I feel right now. Except substitute cookies for asparagus, Florence for Rome, my bed for the floor, and me for Julia Roberts.

Have-a-nice-life hugs are weird and awkward

2011-12-16T12:55:00.001+01:00

This is everyone's last day. It's weird to hear Alysa say "my friends are having a welcome home party for me on Sunday." Because Sunday is the day after tomorrow.

On the roller coaster of emotions right now, I am trying to understand what it would feel like to go home right now and failing. I am trying not to be too sad about all of these amazing people leaving. I am really happy about finishing another semester of college. I am excited and scared and excited for the next semester.

I completely bossed my Italian final. I may not be fluent, but I can conjugate irregular past tense verbs like it's nobody's business. I'm pretty sure I did well on all my other finals too.

My roommate Amy has completely moved out of our apartment on Via San Gallo. Her closet is empty, there are no sheets on her bed, and her pictures were stripped off the wall on Tuesday afternoon. She's living in another apartment next semester.

This blog posts is a bunch of small fragments. But that's how I feel right now. Fragmented from everything that has happened this semester. I showed up in Rome with a bunch of expectations about life in Florence, and here I am three and a half months later with most of them unmet but with a world of memories I never ever thought I would have. I remember thinking a few weeks ago that I haven't really changed that much, and isn't that disappointing? But that's completely untrue. Italy has crept its way into my soul, and I have roots here that have dug down beneath the streets and curled around the Etruscan ruins.

I'm being far too melodramatic, but I have been listening to "Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories" on repeat this week, and it's raining, and all my friends are leaving. So I'm allowed to indulge in some melodramatic blogging.

Next up: Jordan!

2011-12-11T17:34:00.007+01:00

All of my semester friends here are going home next weekend. Next weekend! I feel like I'm never going home, to be honest. But everyone around me is packing up and trying to fit four months worth of Europe into a suitcase.

This is a good time to mention that I'm leaving too. The opportunity to spend second semester somewhere else presented itself back in October, and with the support of my super awesome parents and a lot of reflection, research, and consultation, I decided to take it. Which is why instead of spending the whole year in Florence, I'm going to Amman, Jordan for spring semester. At this point, I've had about a month and a half to get used to the idea, so it doesn't completely shock me any more. But I realize all you lovely readers are probably like "WTF?" right now.

This is a picture from a children's atlas I discovered in the Bologna public library. This is a WHIRLING DERVISH SAYING MERHABA!!!! Which is hello in Arabic. I will be learning Arabic. I might also become a whirling dervish, even though technically they're more from Turkey than Jordan.

Before I go on, let me just say that I'm not leaving Italy because I don't like it here. I love the cobblestones, I love Tutto 99 Cent-the Italian version of a dollar store, I love, love, love (cliche as it may be) the food. I predict heart-brokenly watching Camera Con Vista in the future, and telling the unlucky soul next to me that I've been there and there and there and there, and look how beautiful it is.

But living overseas has afforded me a lot of time to think about what I want from studying abroad, college, life, etc in the context of a completely different environment. And it took me a few months to figure this out, but I realized that I wanted more of a challenging experience from this year.

So, Elika, you crazy-wandering-gypsy-traveler-girl, why Jordan?

I was basically just aiming for anywhere I would experience really bad culture shock, and things with Jordan just fell into place really quickly. The visa process there works really well for me. Living in Jordan gives me the chance to learn Arabic. It'll give me an awesome perspective on what's going on in the Middle East right now. And as someone with Middle Eastern roots, it'll give me the chance to understand part of myself that I don't know too much about. Although my Dad wants me to mention that Persian culture and Arab culture are not the same at all.

Anyway, as excited as I am, I'm trying to focus all my energy on my remaining time in Italy. After all, I will never live in Florence again and I want to make sure I finish my Italy bucket list before I leave in February. So that's why you haven't really heard too much about this big giant moving to the Middle East thing, and why you probably won't hear too much about it until I actually show up there.

But I have been asked a TON of questions by friends (i.e. will you have to wear a veil? are you scared? when exactly are you coming home? etc) and I was thinking of addressing them in an FAQ type post. So if you have any questions post 'em in the comments and I'll get to them within the next week! Or if you're shy you can ask them anonymously at the formspring for my bad advice column blog (which you should read, and ask advice-y questions so Denali and I can answer them).

Amman, Jordan otherwise known as "The White City" (pic from Google Images)

Ho attraversato

2011-12-09T18:02:00.002+01:00

Today I got together with a few other girls who are studying abroad here, and we watched Italian movies and ate panettone. And it was sitting on a couch cushion watching La Vita é Bella and eating cake that I realized I no longer feel like a fish out of water.

I spend so much time frustrated with my incredibly basic Italian and feeling like an outsider to this culture that I've completely missed the fact that I've learned how to live here.

I can navigate this city like a pro. Put me anywhere in Florence and I can find my way home. I understand the trenitalia website, and no longer stress about getting anywhere by train. I know that the café in San Lorenzo has a waiter everyone is in love with, but the food isn't actually all that great. I know where to find cheap pomegranates, and after a semester of testing different places I know which kebab stand has the best kebab.

It's so easy to get frustrated when proud Florentine women breeze by you, never giving you the time of day, not even to move a little to the left on the sidewalk. And I will never be Italian, I will never completely understand what's going on in this culture and country. But I've come a long ways from the girl that got off the plane in August.

View of Florence from Piazzale Michaelangelo

I LOVE OPERA

2011-12-08T18:48:00.015+01:00

I went to the opera tonight. Again.

It was brilliant. Again.

I think I have a future career as an opera singer. Perhaps I will stay here forever, eating only pasta, singing only arias.

L’amour est enfant de Bohême,

Il n’a jamais jamais connu de loi.

Si tou ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime.

Si je t’aime, prends garde à toi!

Two really super awesome exciting things that happened to me today

2011-12-05T17:53:00.005+01:00

1. This morning I checked my mail and found a super ghetto taped up mac and cheese box from Fairbanks. Inside was not mac and cheese, but NINE DIFFERENT LETTERS. This is a shout out to Denali, Quinn, Ashley, Morgan, Jonathan, Jeremiah, Jamie, Jenny, and the AMAZING Valerie for getting everyone together to send me hands down the best piece of mail I've ever gotten. Also, there was a copy of Coldplay's new album, a bag of candy corn, some glow sticks, and a plastic demon bat. My heart is seriously overflowing with love. AHHHHHHH!!!!!! I love you guys!!!!!!!!

2. So, I was Skyping with my super awesome friend Quinn today at 4:30 a.m. Alaska time (Quinn, you need to sleep more. But that's not part of the story). And he told me a story about Jamie Napolski, the director of res life. You know, the woman that told stories about piranhas attacking drunk girl's boobs, and that's why we're not allowed to have piranhas as pets? Her. So, Quinn is an RA and he's off doing official RA things, and Jamie says "You know what I miss? Mystery Desserts. What ever happened to that? It even had a cool theme song and everything." AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I AM THE PRODUCER AND THE DIRECTOR OF THAT LOVELY VIDEO EXPOSE ON TILLY DESSERTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WROTE AND SANG THE THEME SONG!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE DIRECTOR OF RES LIFE WATCHED MY DESSERT SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so famous. And stuff. For those of you who missed all six episodes of Mystery Desserts from last spring, I created a playlist for you:

Visiting Venezia

2011-12-04T16:07:00.002+01:00

I would be lying if I said Cornelia Funke's childrens book The Theif Lord did not play a big part in my fascination with Italy. Set in Venice, it's about a group of kids that live in an abandoned theater and steal things. Also, there's a magical carousel and a twist regarding the best thief in the book. I recommend it. It's one of my all time favorites.

And because of this book, the place I've wanted to visit most in the world since about age 11 is Venice, Italy. So this weekend I finally made it there.

This is a blog post about shattered illusions. Venice, like a lot of places I've been in Italy, is falling apart. The city is literally sinking further and further into the dirty and polluted water of the canals every day. In the winter, it is rainy, cold, and foggy. Old buildings peek through the fog every so often, and the city has an almost foreboding feel to it. Pigeons dive bomb people in the piazzas, making you look nervously over your shoulder every few seconds.

I almost feel like Venice is meant to be visited in the rain, though. Perhaps Venice on a summer night is magically beautiful, with reflections of city lights twinkling in canals. But Venice is a more somber and ominous beautiful, and fog and rain reflect that pretty well.

Not to mention, Venice is painfully expensive. If it's rainy and cold then that means you won't be there for too long and thus have less time to spend money. Anyway, here are some pictures I took. I've been using my 4-year-old Cannon point and shoot that's been dropped on pavement about 900 times by siblings, cousins, and yours truly in it's life since the demise of my Nikon lens, which is really frustrating photographically, but better than nothing.

The last picture is from the Vivaldi museum. These are super old oboes. So cool! And the instrument at the bottom of the picture is a super old English Horn. It bends in the middle. Isn't that crazy?!!?

July 10, 2011

2011-11-26T19:16:00.002+01:00

I found this in a file titled "All I Want To Do Is Be Above The Treeline" in a folder on my laptop earlier today.

July 10, 2011

This morning I woke up on a mountain. I woke up 5,000 feet in the air, above the tree line in a small, orange tent I borrowed from Dave. The wind was blowing at a million miles an hour, and fog was rolling across the valley.

But I was so happy, sitting there eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, soaked to the bone with bugspray and sweat, hair unbrushed for nearly a week.

And that’s what I like about Coldfoot. The fact that the simplest things make me happy here. I’ve been sleeping in a tent for seven weeks now.

There was more to it. But that was the best bit. The part that brought me back to what seems like just a really weird, wonderful dream of a summer.

Midnight sun

"NOOOOO SCOOOOOOOOTERRRRRRRRR!!!!"

LCC4LYFE

Denaro e bellezza

2011-11-25T17:45:00.001+01:00

If you live in Florence, you've seen this poster everywhere.

On buses, on the sides of buildings, at the library, at cafés. Seriously, this poster is everywhere. So today, my friend Lindsey and I finally went to go check out the exhibit it's been advertising in our faces for the last two months.

And it was the coolest museum exhibit I've been to so far this year. And I've seen the Mona Lisa, the David, the Sistine Chapel, the Picasso Museum, and a whole lot of Botticelli (not to brag or anything).

The exhibit is called Denaro e Bellezza, which means money and beauty, and is centered around the "Bonfire of the Vanities," a bonfire that took place in Piazza Signoria in 1497 when Girolamo Savonarola, the Domenican Prime Minister, collected and publicly burned cosmetics, works of art, books, and thousands of other objects that were regarded as a vanity, and might tempt one to sin.

I walk through Piazza Signoria everyday to get to school. But back in 1497 there was no Chanel store, no fake statue of the David, no water fountain. It never fails to blow my mind how much history there is here.

10 things I'm thankful for

2011-11-24T11:00:00.000+01:00

Lately, I haven't been feeling overly thankful. Lying in bed, consumed in a feverish haze, fading in and out of the worst stomachache ever hasn't really lent itself to dwelling on the positive things in life. But now I think I'm starting to see the end of this awful, awful flu. So, in typical Elika list format, 10 things I'm thankful for right now:

1. My high school librarian made a sign that said "Elika, Don't forget to be awesome, -John Green" and then took a picture of my favorite author holding that sign and sent it to me.
2. I can hear the bells of the Duomo chiming when I open my window.
3. I know this is going back a few months, but I'm so, so, so thankful for my summer in Coldfoot.
4. And everyone I met there.
5. The friends that I have made this semester.
6. The friends back home that are on the other end of Skype in the middle of the night.
7. Skype.
8. The Asain grocery store that is open later than all the other stores and sells cheap chocolate.
9. My family.
10. And having the opportunity to be here, and travel. Really, I could not be more thankful for that.

DFTBA

2011-11-21T10:57:00.001+01:00

Life made. Thanks to my high school librarian for this picture!

Sick sick sick sick sick

2011-11-20T14:11:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I was at a friend's apartment sitting on her bed. When suddenly, I got really cold. And I was like "yo, I'm cold." And then everyone was like, "it's really hot in here, what are you talking about?" And then I tried to swallow, and realized I had a sore throat. And then, out of nowhere I got a headache. And when I felt my forehead, it was way too hot to be normal.

So shivering, wrapped in two coats with a scarf around my head, I walked home. A journey I had made less than two hours before in a sweater.

Anyway, I have the flu. This is pretty much the sickest I've been since age 15 during my first fast when my Dad came home from a business trip with the flu and then everyone else in our house got sick.

Here's a diagram of flu symptoms:

Sudden symptoms? Check. Unexplained chills? Check. Fever? Check. Sudden, unexplained aches? Check. Also, I'm pretty tired. So I'm going to take a nap.

Adorable Italian children are adorable

2011-11-19T17:33:00.004+01:00

When I first showed up in Italy, I signed up to do some sort of volunteering at the school I attend here. After a few weeks of filling out forms and doing interviews, I was assigned "teaching English to kids." Which I was SUPER excited about.

Until I showed up, and found out "teaching English to kids" meant making sure a bunch of 4-year-olds don't hit each other.

But they're still really cute.

This is Flauvia. If I had favorites, she would be my favorite, because she always hugs me when I show up, and she likes to send Tonka trucks down the slide. The boy behind her is Leonardo, and if I had favorites he would be another one of my favorites, because he always pretends he is an airplane. Also, he is best friends with Alex, who I call Little-Charlie-Bone in my head because he looks exactly like what I imagined Charlie Bone would look like at age 4. Little-Charlie-Bone is another completely hypothetical favorite, by the way.

Also, Italian children say "mamma mia!" all the time. Heart melt.

A weekend in the Tuscan countryside

2011-11-07T16:25:00.000+01:00

In the last year and a half, I've gone from living at home, to living at school, to living in a tent, to living in Europe. And lately, I've been filled with a whole lot of questions.

That's really why leaving home is hard. Because when you're surrounded by your best friends and your favorite flannel pillowcase and the soccer field you've been playing frisbee on for a while, it's easy to know who you are. You are exactly who you have been for as long as you can remember.

But in a new place, in a dorm room far from your bedroom, in a tent in the woods, in an apartment in a different country it's harder to know exactly how you fit into the fabric. It's enough to make you reexamine a lot of basic things you thought you knew. To pull up roots you thought were sure to stay firmly in the soil.

I spent my weekend in the countryside. I miss leaves and grass and fresh air.

Pictures of Madrid

2011-11-04T18:36:00.002+01:00

Pictures of dawn

2011-11-03T08:37:00.002+01:00

Guys, I'm really sorry there's been a lack of blogging lately. Like I mentioned before I'm sorting through this really big, potentially life-altering decision and its requiring a lot of research and time and effort. And I've also been writing these long novel-length emails full of inquiries and intentions, and at the end of the day I just don't have it in me to write up blog posts about how cool Madrid was, even though I know you want to hear about it and see pictures.

Luckily, I have the best, most supportive family in the whole entire world. When I send them emails full of crazy ideas, they don't just write me off. They make me evaluate and question what I'm doing, and push me to look for more than just the easy route out.

Also, sometimes my Dad sends me pictures like this:

And then he says stuff like "I took this pic for you earlier today! I was thinking how this is the dawn of your adulthood!"

I really miss dawn in Alaska. And I really miss my Dad (also, you too, Mom! And you too, Zayn). But for the first time in two months, I don't feel like I would rather be in my mountainous winter wonderland state than here. It's kind of a big shift in my perception of life this year.

I promise I will go back to my regular routine of blogging nearly everyday about things you couldn't possibly care about in a week or two. But for now, I need this time for myself and my own thoughts.

Traveling is no excuse (except when it is)

2011-10-31T15:55:00.001+01:00

Hi, I still exist, so don't worry.

The past two weeks I was traveling the frick out of Spain and France. It made me think a lot about where I am in my life at the moment and where I want to be. Also, it made me wish I spoke both Spanish and French. Also, when I came back to Florence, I was like man, it's good to be home. And that was a great feeling.

I just wanted to reassure you of my existence, and I promise I'll write more later. But for now I'm trying to sort through a really big decision/I need to do my laundry/I need to figure out what I'm going to be for Halloween. So here's a picture of the Eiffel Tower for you in the meantime:

Fiera di Scandicci

2011-10-14T20:31:00.000+02:00

Today, Amy and I went to the fair!!! It was SO MUCH FUN!!!! Definitely the best day I've had since moving to Europe, but probably the best day of my whole entire life. EEEEEeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee best day EVERRRRRR!!!

Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia

2011-10-11T17:45:00.003+02:00

There is no future tense in Italian.

Here's an example of how this can get confusing. Someone asks you che cosa fai? And then you're like crap, do you mean what am I doing right now as you're asking me this or do you mean what am I doing in the future?

Sometimes I misunderstand the context, and say something a long the lines of um, I'm having a conversation with you, duh. Except in my broken Italian it's more like che? parlo con tu. And then the other person is like, I meant tonight! What are you doing later tonight? Except in Italian it's more like, no! Che cosa fai a notte? It can get embarrassing. But it turns out the whole process of learning a language is embarrassing.

As humans, we spend so much time planning for the future, wrapped up in its intricacies. And I can't help but love a country that eschews that state of mind so thoroughly they've evicted it from their vocabulary.

Missing home, secret underground tunnels, and midnight adventures

2011-10-09T19:08:00.002+02:00

This summer I got almost crushingly homesick. It's sort of embarrassing to admit (so I'm posting it on the internet). But since it was so bad this summer, I thought I'd used it all up. I mean, I miss Fairbanks, sure. But I'll be back next year.

But on Friday night it hit hard. Living with a million girls can get to be sort of much, and at 1 a.m. I was sitting alone in the living room in tears wondering what on earth I was doing in Italy when everyone I love is in Alaska. It took me ages to fall asleep, and when I woke up I was exhausted and dazed in a homesickness hangover. My eyes had that dry, itchy feeling you get in the morning when you cry yourself to sleep while listening to spoken word poetry podcasts.

To make matters worse when I got on the computer, I immediately got a Skype call from my three best friends. They were all "hi, we miss you so much!" And I was pretty much on the verge of bursting into tears again.

But yesterday, I was in Orvieto which is filled with secret underground tunnels and ruins and hills overlooking the gorgeous Umbrian countryside. And at some point mid-morning the chest-crushing feeling that I'd made a mistake leaving Alaska disappeared and was replaced with a whole lot of enthusiasm for secret underground ruins.

Yesterday? It was perfect. I got lunch in a trattoria, and we ate wild boar which is a specialty of Orvieto. To be honest, it just tasted like lamb. It was a magnificent fall day, with crisp, cool weather and leaves that had just started changing colors. And last night, I went to Fiesole. Six of us squeezed into a tiny European car, and tore through the dark city streets. We climbed up to the top of the town, and stood quiet and awestruck before the sprawling, twinkling metropolis of Florence at midnight.

from Desh's tumblr

I don't claim to know the anatomy of missing someone. But I think the cure is climbing to the very top of a hill and star gazing with arms stretched out wide enough to hug the night.

Signs the world is changing

2011-10-06T12:26:00.002+02:00

So Steve Jobs is dead. And I am taking an extended break from Facebook. And all my best friends at home dressed up in banana suits and were featured in the newspaper, where this time they recognized that we like to be called The Bananooks. Not to mention the Middle East has been revolting for a little while, and we elected our first black president when I was a junior in high school, and I'm probably going to dye purple streaks in my hair as soon as I can justify spending 8 euro on hair dye.

And guys, our world is changing.

We are so, incredibly interconnected, all of us on this earth. I am sitting in the living room of an apartment in the center of Florence, writing a blog post that people in Alaska (and a lot of other places, but primarily Alaska) will read. I'm drinking pineapple juice, which reminds me of Coldfoot and Jeremy's love of all things Hawaii, which means that in this moment I am borrowing bits of culture from Italy, Alaska, and Hawaii. But the bracelets on my left arm are from Ecuador, and the pants I'm wearing are hand-me-downs. I think they're from Connecticut.

And what I am trying to say is that this world is big, yes. But the distances between countries and cities and people and places? They get smaller every day.

So, thanks Steve Jobs. I like the first generation iTouch that I bought from my brother's friend for $30 back when he was in middle school. It got me through my summer.

I am obsessed with spoken word poetry

2011-10-03T16:11:00.005+02:00

I am actually kind of obsessed with spoken word poetry.

Let's get real here, we all saw this one coming. It was obviously going to happen, sometime after learning how to play obscure stringed instruments and before taking up painting artsy pictures of the backs of heads with lots of brushstrokes. I mean, this summer I lived in a tent. As I write this, I am listening to Regina Spektor. So, yeah, I'm that girl.

This summer, I heard Sarah Kay's TEDtalk. And it's 18 minutes long, but it's possibly the best 18 minutes of podcast I have ever listened to. So it is worth your time. That's what I'm trying to tell you.

But anyway, I discovered Sarah Kay sometime in July. And last week, I played part of her talk to my roommate. Who has friends who are brilliant slam poets, of course. And between last Tuesday and right now, I discovered IndieFeed, a podcast full of slam poetry. I went to the beach on Saturday, and instead of splashing around in the ocean or lying out to tan I listened to slam poetry. Okay, and I also did a fair amount of splashing around in the ocean as well.

Anyway, here are some good ones I've discovered in the last few days. They're all Sarah Kay, but that's because she is so. freaking. inspiring. I want to be Sarah Kay.

This is an amazingly beautiful portrait of friendship. And the weird coincidences make me miss my weird coincidence girl.

This is how I felt about my summer. Except more Arctic-ey, less India-ey.

She was 18 when she performed at Def Poetry. SARAH KAY IS AMAZING.

Chanting monks at sunset

2011-09-30T20:07:00.002+02:00

Four times a day, there are monks chanting in San Miniato al Monte the basilica on top of Piazzale Michaelangelo. So at sunset today, I climbed up the hill to listen to them.

The cemetery at San Miniato al Monte

It was this sort of ethereal religious experience. Sitting in the basement of a church on top of a hill overlooking an ancient city of art listening to monks sing Gregorian chants. There were beautiful painting on the ceilings, and Latin verses were carved into the marble on the floor.

But there was also this intangible human element to it. One of the monks showed up late, rushing into the room, his robes lifting up just a little to expose the fact that he was wearing Birkenstocks and socks. He kept rifling through the pages of his songbook looking for the particular page the other monks were on.

There was another monk who could not stop smiling, like the seed of the music had wormed its way deep inside his soul, and he could not stop the light from spilling out through his grin. He was young, he had not yet learned to look somber while he sang.

This picture reminded me of some photography I'd seen on Dad's Tumblr

On the walk home, the sun was setting. And there is nothing more beautiful than disappearing light and city and river all rolled into one.

Yumm :) A post monk chanting treat.

The city at sunset.

5 things I disliked about Lola and the Boy Next Door

2011-09-30T00:37:00.005+02:00

I'm a huge Stephanie Perkins fan. She has punk-rock-cool blue streaks in her orange hair, and she writes a charming blog. And of course, she's the author of the delightful novel Anna and the French Kiss, a parisian love story involving hot British boys and crepes.

Since I read Anna in January, I've been eagarly scouring Perkins' blog and anxiously awaiting her next novel Lola and the Boy Next Door, a companion novel to Anna (meaning some characters overlap, but it's in no means a sequel). But I'm a little disappointed with it. Here are 5 reasons why:

1. Crickett obviously really hurt Lola in the past. And I know he didn't do it intentionally. I mean, he was a 16-year-old boy and they're complete morons. But when it came time for them to finally talk about what happened two years ago, Crickett was just like "I'm sorry" and Lola went with it. I'm just saying that a you-moron-I-really-liked-you-and-why-do-you-think-you-can-just-be-nice-to-me-now-I-mean-do-you-remember-what-happened-between-us-come-on-bro-seriously line yelled in the guy's face would have been really satisfying.

2. Max is really unlikeable. I know that Lola loves him, and he's some sexy rock band guy, and she lost her virginity to him. So the situation with him is really complicated. But honestly, he's just a nasty, possessive, creepily older boyfriend. I realize breaking up with Max right away would shorten the novel by about 245 pages. But the choice is painfully obvious, Lola. Come on.

3. Lola is seriously leading Crickett on. Chucking bobby pins at his window in the middle of the night and suggesting going on a walk while you know Crickett is madly in love with you and you're dating someone else? Unacceptable. Lola, you do realize that you are being a girl all girls hate right?

4. So stop acting like such a victim when Calliope gets into with you for being such a tease around her twin brother. Of course she doesn't like you. Her brother is madly in like with you, you're toying with his emotions, all the while you're sleeping with a guy 5 years older than you (re: ages 17 and 22).

5. From literally the first page you can tell that this is a book that ends at the prom. Or winter formal. I mean, I'm not at the end yet, and it's painfully obvious to me what is going to happen.

The story is just unrelateable. And that's where Lola fails as really good chick lit. I will never be like Lola. She's so melodramatic and annoying and she's just breaking Crickett's heart for 200 pages. That's probably the biggest problem I have with this story. Lola just really strings Crickett along.

I'm being harsh. Lola is a cute, funny book. I really enjoyed it. Anna and the French Kiss was a hard first novel to follow. Overall, it's really great. I love Perkins' writing, and of course the boys she creates for her stories. There were just a few things, namely the main character, that I didn't like.

10 things to consider if you are planning on studying abroad

2011-09-27T18:25:00.003+02:00

1. Research the climate of the country you're interested in. For example, I dislike weather over 65 degrees Fahrenheit, and tend to enjoy the wintry months. It's the end of September, and still 95 degrees in Florence.

2. Think about the kinds of people your country will attract. For example, Italy gets a lot of American students looking for a place to party where the drinking age is low. Add in the fact that Italian is not commonly taught in US colleges so there's no language requirement for study abroad programs in Italy, and you find yourself surrounded by hungover morons in 9 a.m. classes that ask questions like "um, do we need our passport if we're going to another country?"

3. Consider staying for a year. I'm a month in, and I don't feel like I know anything at all. I can't imagine only having two or three months left. Not to mention, the semester kids are tackling the following locations one weekend at a time: Switzerland, the Amalfi Coast, Oktoberfest, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and London. That's insane is all I'm saying.

4. Showing up with a basic knowledge of the language is a really good idea. UAF offers Italian I off campus at a really inconvenient time. So I never took it. And I showed up with absolutely no knowledge of Italian. After about a month, I've finally started to pick up the basics. But it's really discouraging to know so little.

5. Look into living with a host family. I saw that it was more expensive, and immediately crossed it off my list. But it's a good thing to consider. I absolutely love the girls I live with, and I'm glad I ended up in an apartment. But a host family is a great way to experience the culture that you're not going to get to do when you're living in an apartment.

6. Realize that you will get homesick, and it will suck, and then you will get over it. You will probably cry when you have to leave your respective temporary home. It's the way these things work.

7. Try to find a program that supports all of your interests. You'll probably do that because you're smart. But I'm a moron, and I'm still trying to find some community band to play in here so I don't wither away musically.

8. Make a budget, and track your spending. You can live cheap in expensive countries if you don't go out to eat every night and buy expensive clothes. And a good way to figure out if you're living cheaply is to pay attention to what you are spending your money on.

9. Going on exchange is kind of like your freshman year of college all over again, but a little father away from home.

10. Realize that even though there are some challenging aspects to your life on account of language barriers and a million miles separating you from your best friends, you are incredibly lucky.

Someday

2011-09-26T17:53:00.001+02:00

First of all, I like Brett Dennen a lot. Second, I haven't brushed my hair since Thursday morning. Don't judge. Third, sorry the lighting isn't better. By the time I got a good take the light was gone. Fourth, enjoy!

Public transportation makes me anxious

2011-09-25T14:20:00.001+02:00

A couple days ago I was invited to a potluck. I was instructed to call someone I live close to so we could come together. Except I have this thing about using my cellphone. It's a minuscule pre-paid deal with exorbitant rates and bad reception. So instead, I sent an email. Which no one responded to, because, let's get real, who responds to emails anymore?

This morning, I still hadn't heard back so I called. It turns out as I was calling, they were getting on the bus. "It's ok, though!" she said. "Just get on bus number 14, the stop is Via Morgagni."

So I headed toward the bus stop near our apartment and got on bus number 14. And rode the entire route twice.

I could not find Via Morgagni. The first time around, I ended up about 45 minutes outside of Florence. I asked the bus driver about it, except she didn't speak any English. But I got the general idea that I had missed my stop, and just stayed on the bus until I was close to home again.

So then I got off and waited for another bus number 14. This time I paid excruciating attention to detail. And even though I watched every single passing stop like a hawk, I still ended up back in San Marco Square without ever seeing Via Morgagni.

After more than two hours of this, I gave up. Florence bus system, you won this round.

Hanging up pictures means I'm here to stay

2011-09-22T17:54:00.001+02:00

Yesterday, I finally tracked down a cartoleria and bought some masking tape so I could hang up my pictures.

The other day, I was hanging up my laundry and I accidentally dropped a piece of underwear over the edge of our balcony. And it's stuff like that, the mundane everyday things like buying my groceries and saying "no grazie" to the cashier when she holds up a bag and asks "borsa?" that make me feel like I really live here.

The thing about Amanda Knox

2011-09-20T21:06:00.005+02:00

Since I am a studying abroad in Italy, and I am sort of into gruesome murder cases,* I have spent the last week educating myself on the Amanda Knox case. Technically it's an assignment for a class I'm taking. But it's one I'm really enjoying.

Ok, if you're like me a week ago and you were confusing Amanda Knox and Casey Anthony, here's the reader's digest version: 4 years ago a British girl studying abroad in Perugia gets stabbed to death in her apartment. The Italians convict the roommate (Amanda Knox), her boyfriend (Raffaele Sollecito), and this other guy no one ever talks about (Rudy Guede). Several months into the case the American media picks up on it and is like "she's so pretty! she can't have committed this case!" Meanwhile the Italian media has been like "Foxy Knoxy is a sex fiend American muderer!" for the last four months or so. And the British media is like, "hey, remember that this case is about Meredith Kercher? The girl who died in agony?"

So here's the thing, I think she did it.

I don't know if it was her or her boyfriend or the other guy that plunged the fatal stab. And I think they were on drugs, I don't think she would have killed another human being in cold blood. But I think they were involved, and things spiraled really out of control really quickly.

There are just a lot of things that don't add up. She and her boyfriend didn't call the police until late the next morning. The store owner later testified that he saw Meredith buying bleach the morning after Meredith's murder. She didn't go to the memorial some students had organized for Meredith, instead she went out and bought lingerie with her boyfriend. When she was waiting to be questioned at the police station, she was giggling with Raffaele and not acting sad at all while her roommates were huddled together crying.

Not to mention the inconsistencies in her story. First she said she was with her boyfriend. And then she said she wasn't with her boyfriend. So then she said she was at the apartment, and she heard screaming. Then she said she didn't hear screaming. Then she accused her former boss of murdering Meredith (a man that fired her from her job) who also ended up being completely innocent. She also said she was subjected to police brutality, and later it was revealed that while she did undergo some intense interrogation, she was never actually hit.

Right now she's appealing her case on the basis of faulty evidence. There's a pretty good chance that her sentence will get shortened, or even completely overturned. Fifty percent of cases in Italy are altered in some way on appeal. Rudy Guede, the accomplice that no one ever talks about who got 30 years in prison, had his sentence shortened to 16 years when his case was appealed.

So after a mere four years in jail, the now 24-year-old might walk away from these murder charges and Italy forever.

And while I think Amanda was involved in the murder, I don't know if I think she should spend the next 22 years in jail. For one, jail is not a place where a person can grow or learn from their mistakes. I don't know the re-incarceration rate in Italy, but I know that it's pretty damn high in the United States. And after a mere 3 weeks in this country, I've realized that our problems at home are nothing compared to what's going here.** So, I guess I don't know what I want to happen to Amanda Knox.

Anyway, I would love your feedback on this post! Do you think she was guilty? Should her sentence be changed on appeal? Should she spend her full 26 year sentence in jail? And how did I do summarizing the case?

*Mostly I am into Castle. But I also like Jodi Picoult books. And, um, real murder cases are fascinating too.

**Starting with Berlusconi, the sexist prime minister who controls all of the media.

I just wanna blog about food

2011-09-15T20:22:00.003+02:00

I live in Italy, the land that invented pizza. So yeah, I'm eating well.

The produce at the market is enough to make any girl die of fresh fruit love. But I'm from Alaska. So that plus 900 million. It's like everything I eat here is imbibed with some sort of magical Italian deliciousness. Except bread, all the bread so far is really dry.

Anyway, here is some food photography of my creations. Enjoy!

Strawberries, raspberries peaches, granola, nutella, and gelato.

Stracitella yogurt, my Italian obsession.

Stir frying eggplant and tomatoes for dinner

Stew beef, eggplant, tomatoes, and basil with bread, pesto, and brie cheese

Lemon yogurt, strawberries, nutella, granola, and basil

My least favorite market woman, and my favorite market man

2011-09-15T15:54:00.002+02:00

My least favorite market woman is an old, grumpy German woman. When I ask her how much raspberries are, she tells me €2, even though €1.50 is written right next to the berries. And once, when I tried to buy basil from her, she kept talking to me in indecipherable Italian, and eventually took the basil and put it somewhere else so I could not buy it.

I ended up buying basil from a man who is now my second favorite basil selling vendor. My first favorite basil selling vendor is out of basil a lot.

My favorite market man sells me peaches and sometimes strawberries, when he has them. He's a middle-aged Indian man, and I point at the strawberries, and say "Cuanto cuesta?" And then he tells me €1.50, and I tell him no, €1, and he says €1.25. We go back and forth, and I don't always know what is happening because my Italian is molto male. And I probably pay too much for my strawberries, but I feel better about it in the end.

Sometimes, my favorite market man smiles really wide and gives me a little banana for free.

Florence at night

2011-09-10T23:22:00.005+02:00

If I think about it, I've never really enjoyed a city at night. Anchorage in the summer is always daytime, and in the winter there's no outdoor nightlife (let's get real here).

So possibly because it's all so new to me, I am in love with Florence at night. I could spend my whole entire life in the Piazza della Republica after sunset listening to the street performers and watching happy kids riding on the carousel.

Not to mention, Ponte Vecchio at night? Beautiful, amazing, magical, and so many other descriptive words.

Tonight, two of my roommates and I went off in search of the Boboli Gardens around sunset, and ended taking a couple stops along the way. Actually a lot of stops, we never ended up at the gardens. But we did some good documenting! Here's the products of our night:

I LOVE FLORENCE AT NIGHT.

Adjustment period moments

2011-09-08T00:28:00.004+02:00

The last week has been full of moments that I really only describe as adjustment period moments.

Like on Monday, when it took me a good three hours to make my way from the ISA office to FUA. A trip that should have taken eight minutes tops. I just kept wandering in circles, and ending up in the Pizza Signora.

Or on Tuesday, when my Italian class took a field trip to the market. And my professor said "You have 20 minutes to look around." So I spent twenty minutes buying tomatoes and cheese and bread, and then I realized my class was nowhere to be found.

Or a few days ago, when I was making a list in my head of reasons to move back into a tent while a bunch of girls had a conversation about dying their hair that lasted close to an hour.

Or yesterday when I was making salad and I accidentally mistook Amy's bottle of wine for a bottle of olive oil, and then my salad tasted weird.

Or earlier today when I went into my first ever high end designer store ever and started laughing out loud when I saw a price tag for 280 euro hanging out on a fairly weird looking necklace.

Adjustment period. You know.

Pictures of Italy

2011-09-05T19:42:00.001+02:00

Roma, Italia

Oh you know, just chillin at the Colosseum

Fontana de Trevi

The Spanish steps

First night in the apartment

Um, is this real life?

Doin' ma laundry like an Italian

Bedside table

Ponte Vecchio from Piazzale Michangelo

Disconnect

2011-08-28T11:01:00.001+02:00

Currently, I'm sitting in the middle of the family room. It's 12:46 a.m., and the entirety of my closet is strewn around the bottom floor of the house. My bags are packed for the most part, and I've double checked the flight times for tomorrow (2:35 p.m., because I know you want to know).

And yet, I really don't feel like I'm leaving.

Maybe it's because I'm wearing a llama sweater and $6 leg warmers, and how can a girl like me be traveling to what seems like the fashion capital of the universe tomorrow? Or maybe it's because two feet away from where I'm sitting are the Carhartts I found in the Crew Quarters this summer, and a little further over are my muddy hiking boots, and there's just a little bit of a disconnect between Coldfoot and what's to come.

Right now I'm a million different things: tired, anxious, slightly terrified, incredibly excited. And here I go, here I go, here I go.

I miss Coldfoot

2011-08-26T06:02:00.006+02:00

Photo cred to the broski

Turns out no one picks you up when you're trying to hitchhike in the middle of a subdivision in Anchorage. But if someone wants to drive me 500 miles north, then that would make me happy. Take me back to the mountains and mud and river. Take me back to a place where I didn't have a to-do list longer than a Steinbeck novel and no one expected me to answer my cell phone.

Today, I was at Titlewave, and I spent a good 10 minutes reading and rereading the entry for Dalton Highway mile 175 in The Milepost, and staring at the accompanying picture of the cafe with Coldfoot Mountain right behind it.

Coldfoot, I miss you.

Happiest girl in the world

2011-08-16T00:33:00.003+02:00

Last night, Teresa and I biked out to Marion Creek, and hiked up to the waterfalls. We trudged through brush for a while, until we found a rock next to the top of the falls. And we stopped and ate our dinner of PB&J sandwiches and carrot sticks. My jeans were covered in mud up to my knees, my hair full of pine needles, my fingers stained purple from picking the last of the summer’s blueberries. And then it started to pour on us.

And there we were, two girls in the middle of the mountains. Soaked through to the bone, shivering in the cold autumn air. But laughing. Yelling, “Look at Emma Dome! It's beautiful!” Rain pouring down around us, water tumbling over the falls.

Being out here, getting to do this stuff? It makes me the happiest girl in the world.

And yes, I am so ready to leave. But a part of me really isn’t ready at all.

Living in a tent for three months has been an incredibly humbling experience, and it’s really put a lot of things into perspective. I've grown up more this summer than I have in last nineteen years. And I don’t want to go home and get wrapped up in things that don’t matter again.

I like the person that I am out here in the mountains, and I don’t want to see her disappear.

Let's conjugate the verb "to be" and follow with "really cold"

2011-08-14T07:47:00.003+02:00

Can we just take a moment to talk about how cold I am?

I guess first of all, summers in Alaska are not that warm. In Anchorage, summer days like to hang out in the 50’s and 60’s and be drizzly and grey. Which usually I can handle, because if the thermometer gets above 65 degrees then I melt into a puddle of overheated Elika on the floor.

In the Arctic, the season of summer is basically June and July. The wildflowers bloom, the sun comes out, and it still doesn't get all that warm. But now that it's August the nights have been dipping down below freezing, and the rain hasn’t stopped for about a month.

And have we discussed the fact that I haven’t slept inside in three months yet? Tent life is damp and cold and unpleasant.

If it weren’t bad enough that I sleep outside in 25 degrees, sometimes the hot water heater just gives up. And I’ll be stuck in an icy shower with my hair full of shampoo and one leg shaved.*

I am cold. You are cold. He is cold. She is cold. It is cold. They are cold.

We are really, really cold.

*Just kidding, I haven’t shaved my legs since June SINCE IT’S TOO COLD TO WEAR SHORTS.

And summer is almost over

2011-08-12T08:18:00.001+02:00

I have one week of work left.

I'm having a really hard time grasping that concept. I sort of feel like I'm going to be sleeping in Tent 4 forever, waking up every morning at the beautiful hour of 7:57, talking podcasts with Stephanie throughout the day, playing Would You Rather* with Cleo, and climbing mountains on my days off.

I'm really good at pumping myself up for things. I obnoxiously spout off countdowns to the second, I literally jump up and down in excitement, and I make lengthy lists about everything I have to look forward to. So the fact that I'm so blasé about being home in a week? Really, really weird.

I'm chalking this up to that same feeling you have in the middle of winter when you can't remember what summer is like because the concept of sun and warmth is just so foreign. Because at this point, I really can't imagine life outside of Coldfoot anymore.

*Today's WYR, courtesy of all the baby questions we come up with in the North Inn: Would you rather find out you were pregnant (or you had just knocked up some girl) right now, or never be able to have kids?

10 people I kind of fell in love with this summer

2011-08-09T08:13:00.004+02:00

a list

Jad Abumrad from Radiolab. He is my public radio crush, and I am seriously smitten.
Gloria-the-Baha’i-from-Florence who sent me the world’s nicest email. It was actually so sweet that I burst into tears when I read it.
The hot expeditor. He’s the only hot guy I’ve seen in three months. Oh, the things my life has been reduced to.
The trucker that drives the pink truck. The first time I hitchhiked, when I got picked up by a guy with a flat tire, the pink truck trucker stopped to help us. He got out of his pink truck, wearing a cut off t-shirt that said “You’re not worthy,” strode over to the group of truckers milling around, and got the tire changed. Super manly. Just sayin.
And on that note, I love every single person that’s picked me up when I was hitchhiking this summer. Even some of the more creepy guys.
Cami, who caught the mice that were running around the Inn, skinned them, and tacked their hides to the bulletin board.
The guy that left us a pie as a tip. Seriously, he left us a whole pie. And I don’t know who he is, or where he went, or anything about him at all. But he won my heart.
Laura-the-tour-guide who always strips her own bed and leaves a $10 tip. This is a woman after the hearts of housekeepers everywhere.
The crew guy that came to one of our bonfires, and brought Capri Suns. And when he offered one to me, and I delightedly asked, “you were the one that brought these?” He responded, “do you see any other 8-year-olds here?”
The girl that works at Taco Bell and has a crush on Jonathan. This is reason number four hundred and eighty-seven that I’m going to seriously miss Fairbanks next year.

3 months in a tent, and I kind of, you know, enjoyed it

2011-08-06T06:38:00.005+02:00

At some point this summer I stopped keeping track of how many days I’d been here, how much I missed home, how much it rained, how cold it got at night and started to love Coldfoot.

I don’t know when it happened. But now that I have two weeks of mountains and Dalton Highway and muddy puddles and Koyukuk river left, I’m realizing I’m going to be really sad to leave.

The last three months have not been the easiest three months of my life. A lot of things frustrate me about living here, and I can go on and on about what they are. That’s easy.

It’s a lot harder to explain the things I do like about Dalton Highway, mile 175. The sound of rain on the tent in the middle of the night, the girls I work with, hiking in the hail, eating an apple on the top of a mountain, the midnight summer sun, the mice hunts, sitting at the picnic tables outside and wasting the evening away like we have nothing else in the world to worry about.

But there’s something else intangible. Some kind of big, beautiful thing about Alaska that’s so present in everything here. Something I can’t really explain. It’s beautiful and genuine and wild.

On more than one occasion, I’ve caught myself calling Coldfoot home. This truck stop, this tent, this stretch of highway has become home to me in less than three months.

I’m still excited to go back home to Anchorage. Beyond excited to go to Italy. But for the next two weeks, I’m just really happy I’m here.

Irrelevant appearance

2011-08-04T04:51:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I was assessing the state of my hair in the bathroom mirror when Cleo said “Man, imagine what it’ll be like to go back home and actually worry about what your reflection looks like.”

Living in Coldfoot is a little bit like living in a land with no mirrors. In the dark. There's no reason to brush your hair, no reason to worry about the 14 bleach spots on your work shirt, no reason to feel self conscious about walking into the cafe with your pajamas on.

When I went back to Fairbanks, a guy I knew took one look at me and asked rather incredulously “Are those cargo pants?"

Every single article of clothing I have up here can fit into one load of wash. And it's all tshirts, cargo pants, and wool socks.

Stephanie and I have daily conversations about the irregularity at which we wash our hair (weekly for her, biweekly for me) and how when we put on mascara (which has been about four times between the two of us all summer) we don’t recognize our reflections.

To be honest, I'm at the point where I find the uniform black rainboots in the shed kind of-at least a little bit-cute.

Arctic love despite everything

2011-08-03T06:02:00.001+02:00

I like Coldfoot. But sometimes it’s just too much. It’s too removed, too small, too rainy, too cold. So I left on Sunday, and went to Fairbanks for the day.

And while I was in Fairbanks, I realized that my summer? Well, it's been different than your summer.

I mean, I knew that my disconnected summer of living in a tent, climbing mountains, and limited amenities would be different. But I didn’t quite realize how different until I went back to Fairbanks and saw for myself.

It was sort of a weird feeling actually. Like even if I explained exactly what living here for nearly three months has been like, the person I was telling wouldn't really get it.

Because in the last few months I've done a lot of backcountry hiking and backpacking. I've hitchhiked with truckers. I've chased down mice, killed approximately 9 million mosquitoes (and gotten bitten by 10 million), and gone several months using a calling card to connect to the rest of the world. I've lived in a tent for nearly three months.

Even some of the crew guys that work three week shifts for the oil companies up here don't quite get what working for Coldfoot is like. Today, a couple of guys asked me how to turn up the heat in their rooms. "It's so cold in here!" they told me. I tried really hard not to roll my eyes.

And even though I get so frustrated with life here sometimes, even though it's been below freezing at night and I sleep outside, even though I'm so far away from everyone and everything that's been familiar, I'm really glad I'm here. At least for three months.

10 reasons I'm excited to go back to civilization

2011-07-28T08:49:00.002+02:00

1. Sleeping inside.
2. Normal internet. Limited bandwidth sucks hella balls.*
3. Not spending 10 minutes punching in calling card numbers for the weekly call home.
4. Mooses Tooth.
5. Movie theaters. And driving to Century with the windows down singing along to the radio at the top of my lungs.
6. Looking like a normal teenage girl that does things like: wear makeup, brush her hair, put on nice clothes.
7. Not working 900 million hours a week cleaning toilets and making beds.
8. Buying things. In stores.
9. Having the option of taking a bath.
10. The Elika-Valerie One Week Together Schedule of Events. Which includes but is not limited to: pizza eating, movie watching, tie dying, mountain climbing, and dying blue streaks in our hair.

*A Jeremyism I've picked up.

27 days

2011-07-24T22:56:00.001+02:00

I'm a countdown enthusiast. So that fact that I haven't been counting the hours until I leave Coldfoot is kind of a miracle (instead, I've been counting down until I move to Italy and then subtracting 7, so I'm not exactly innocent). But I officially have less than four weeks left here, and I am mega super ridiculously excited to go home.

I like Coldfoot, I've had a great summer, and I'm ready for it to be over. I've spent a lot of time hiking around, reading books I never would have gotten around to, writing a lot, and generally sitting around staring at the mountains and thinking.

But the truth is, I do not belong here.

And I'm ready to return to a world where the newspaper on the table won't be from four days ago.

27 days 27 days 27 days.

Arctic Ocean

2011-07-19T22:30:00.001+02:00

Jumping in the Arctic Ocean.

These two actually jumped in the Arctic Ocean.

Zayn got a certificate. BOOM.

Sloooowwww down

2011-07-08T07:07:00.001+02:00

For the most part, I am one of those people that's just a bundle of energy. When I was at school I was taking 19 credits, and playing two intramural sports, and working for the paper, and playing in the symphony and the band. I was extremely busy.

And I'm okay with that. I thrive on having too many things to do.

So being in Coldfoot? Not the easiest experience of my life. When I showed up here and walked into my tent for the first time, I sat down and wondered why on earth I thought this would be a good idea.

This is the most laid back, calm atmosphere that I think I've ever experienced. And for me-the poster child for leading a busy life-it's hard to handle sometimes. Sometimes I get excruciatingly bored. I want to drive South forever, until I reach home where there are stores and people and pizza and libraries.

But earlier I was sitting outside drinking chamomile tea, and talking, and laughing. With nothing to do and nowhere to go. And I was the most content I've been in a long time.

"Loverboy" by Brett Dennen (album review)

2011-07-03T09:56:00.000+02:00

I've been a Brett Dennen fan since I checked “So Much More” out of the library a couple summers ago.* "So Much More" is Dennen's second album, and the theme of the music is about a 50% split between songs about social justice and love. Which, coincidentally, is exactly my kind of split.

So I was eagerly anticipating this April, when his fourth album “Loverboy” was released. I pre-ordered it on Amazon, I had a countdown widget on my laptop ticking off the seconds, and I obsessed over the single “Sydney, I’ll Come Running.”

Dennen has really progressed musically since recording his first album, and what I was hoping for in “Loverboy” was more beautifully sung tracks commenting on the state of the world we live in. I wanted “So Much More: the sequel.” And “Loverboy” is in a completely different genre.

After listening to the album a couple times, I really began to appreciate the genius behind “Loverboy.” Almost every song on the CD was recorded in one take, which gives the music a really genuine feel, and also speaks to Dennen’s talent as an artist.

“Loverboy” is fantastic summer music. There are some great, upbeat tracks for indie kids to dance to, such as “Comeback Kid,” “Dancing at a Funeral,” and “Sydney, I’ll Come Running.” (Confession: I’ve busted out with some moves on more than once when these songs come up on shuffle.)

My favorite song on the album, however, is “Make You Fall in Love With Me.” I have a soft spot for unrequited love songs, and this one opens with “I saw you dance and sing on stage, with your bare feet and your hair in braids.” Melt, melt, melt.

“Loverboy” is quickly becoming the soundtrack to my summer. But I have a feeling that I wont stop listening when October comes.

*If you don’t check CD’s out of your local public library, then I don’t know what you’re doing with your life.

Getting pumped for Italy (or I love opera)

2011-06-29T07:47:00.002+02:00

When I was a junior in high school, I went through this phase where all I wanted to do was move to Italy, eat spaghetti, and sing opera.*

Of all the daydreams I dreamed up for myself in high school, it’s funny that this is the one that's coming the closest to becoming real.

I listen to music (and sometimes NPR podcasts) while I work, and recently I’ve been busting out the opera. Which is just making me incredibly excited for next year.

Is there any better way to get ready for a year abroad in Florence than listening to Andrea Bocelli while cleaning bathrooms at a remote truck stop along the Dalton Highway?

Well, probably.

60 days 16 hours 49 minutes and 5 seconds until I move to Italy. Boomshakalaka.

*If you haven’t noticed, I go through phases like this a lot. Currently, I have aspirations to become a slam poet, and live in inner city Chicago touching the lives of young, underprivileged youth through verse. Mostly because of Sarah Kay.

Summer solstice where the sun never sets

2011-06-23T07:57:00.000+02:00

We built a cabin, and burned it down.

I love Alaska

2011-06-21T04:42:00.000+02:00

I love, love, love mountains. I love the ocean, and the mudflats. I absolutely love lakes, and I love rivers and streams and creeks only slightly less.

I love winter. I love the snow and the cold and the dark. And I love when winter ends, and everything is grey and melting and hopeful. I love the first leaves on the trees. And I love how quickly everything can transition from black and white to color.

And I love mountains. Did I mention that already?

I’m really getting up close and person with my love for Alaska up here this summer. And while I’m discovering a lot of things I don’t love (like clouds of mosquitoes, the inability to fall asleep while 30 sled dogs howl through the night, how hard it is to get out a warm sleeping bag in the morning), mostly I am discovering how many things I do love (like mountains, mountains, and more mountains).

Banana rock

2011-06-15T08:10:00.000+02:00

I found a banana rock. This is literally the greatest discovery I have ever made in my 19 years and 1 month of life.

Tent life gets fancy

2011-06-12T23:40:00.001+02:00

At this point, I've pretty much accepted that I'm not going to get a roommate this summer. So a few days ago, one of my friends here helped me get a box spring and bed frame from the Inn, and we put the other mattress on it, and pushed the beds together. Then I hung up my mosquito net, and basically my tent just got pretty fancy.

I'm sort of loving the fact that I'm living in a tent for three months. Even though the 30 noisy sled dogs that like to make their presence known in the middle of the night and constant daylight make it sort of hard to get enough sleep. Not to mention it's freezing in the tents when it's remotely cloudy outside, and it heats up like a greenhouse when it's sunny. Oh, and did I mention the bugs?

But really, I'm enjoying it. Every time I go hang out in someone else's tent, I just want to exclaim "I love what you've done with your tent!" Some of them have carpet, and some of them have wood desks, and some have really exciting shelving. Not to mention there's a lovely variety of mosquito nets in Coldfoot.

It's definitely not comfort living up here. But it's completely wonderful in it's own way.

Climbing mountains and hitchhiking with truckers

2011-06-03T09:04:00.000+02:00

This morning, Cory, Teresa, Irene, and I got a ride the 29 miles from Coldfoot to Sukakpak Mountain from one of the maintenance guys here at camp.

Then we climbed a mountain.

If I seriously thought about why I decided to take a job at a truck stop in the Arctic cleaning toilets for three months, my answer probably would have been something along the lines of today’s hike.

If you ever make it to mile 203 of the Dalton Highway: stop. Get out of your car. Look at the mountain in front of you. And climb it.

It’s the kind of hike that makes you want to climb mountains everyday. It’s also the kind of hike that makes you think seriously about how far away you are from medical help if you fell down the crumbling bits of mountain you’re climbing up.

After a good seven hours of mountain climbing and jumping for pictures, we made it back down to the Dalton Highway, and started heading South.

The thing about hiking far away from camp out here is that you can nearly always find a ride out, but not always a ride back. So on trips a long distance from Coldfoot, you hitchhike back.

A trucker finally picked us up a good two to three miles down the road, and we were headed happily back to camp and dinner when he got a flat tire. So Mike (that was our trucker) pulled over, and started to get going on changing the tire. Within fifteen minutes four trucks had stopped and everybody was hanging around helping Mike change his tire.

The whole day was so very Alaskan, from climbing a mountain to hitchhiking with truckers and helping them change a tire.

Homequeasy

2011-05-31T06:41:00.002+02:00

There's no getting around it. I miss home. A lot. More, I think, than I have ever missed home.

And this is not a vague, familiar feeling of home that involves college and extended family. No, I miss being in Anchorage specifically.

I miss the library and my room that keeps out the sunlight at night. I miss Kincaid, and I miss driving Dad's car. I miss my high school friends. And most of all, I miss my parents.

Even if saying that makes me sound like a homesick 7-year-old at a slumber party. But I kind of feel like a homesick 7-year-old at a slumber party.

Except I'm 19.

And I should be past the point where I feel like crying when I think about all the things I'm missing this summer. I should be past the point where I spend a large amount of time despondently wondering what on earth I am doing up here, in a tent, for three whole months.

But I'm not. And I miss home. And I miss everything.

Disconnected summer

2011-05-30T07:34:00.000+02:00

I climbed a mountain on Thursday.

That's what I do here. I hike and read and sleep and work. I take walks and look at the mountains. It's a slow, introspective kind of life. There are no text messages to answer, no constant connection to the internet. I take my time tying my shoes, and I always rush through tying my shoes.

I sort of like this disconnected state.

Mountain girl

2011-05-26T23:32:00.000+02:00

By no stretch of the imagination am I an outdoorsy-mountain-climbing-granola-eating girl. I mean, I go on the occasional hike. And ok, I do put granola in my yogurt. But I'm not really a mountain girl.

Except I think this whole living in a tent for three months might put me a little closer to mountain girl territory. Not to mention the backcountry hiking (since there are no people here, there are also no trails).

Teresa and I found a meadow yesterday. And then we got sort of lost in the woods, because, well, that's how I operate.

Tent life

2011-05-25T05:35:00.002+02:00

Currently I live in a tent.

It is a very spacious tent. And the floor is wood. I even sleep on a cot. But it is still a tent. It does not do a very good job of keeping out the 24-hour-sun, or the cold, or the heat, or the mosquitoes (the latter just seem to find their way into every part of my life here).

There's even room enough to jump.

10 things to be excited about (plus honorable mentions)

2011-05-21T00:12:00.006+02:00

1. I'm starting work tomorrow. Or at least, I'm going up to work tomorrow, and I'll get trained and start on Sunday or Monday or sometime soon. But my summer of tent livin' starts tomorrow.

2. I'm learning how to play the guitar.

3. I just called the study abroad people and told them that I wanted to play oboe in Italy (preferably in an symphony, please), and they told me that was possible.

4. On the same phone call, I told them I didn't want to take Econ, and that I actually wanted to take Professional Food Writing. And they told me that was also possible.

5. And while we're on this note: I'M MOVING TO FLORENCE ITALY IN AUGUST! FOR A WHOLE YEAR! Or at least a school year, which is still a long time.

6. I'm a lot less worried that something will go horribly wrong in my visa application now.

7. TENT! I'M GOING TO LIVE IN A TENT ALL SUMMER! Oh wait, did I already mention that? I'm SO EXCITED! I'm living in a tent all summer, I'm living in a tent all summer, I'm living in a tent all summer. In Coldfoot, Alaska. In a tent.

8. In the season finale of Castle, Nathan Fillion declared his love for Stana Katic. I mean, while she was lying on the ground losing consciousness. But still. Oh yeah, and spoiler alert.

9. Beka gave me hand sanitizer and three little notebooks for my birthday. Two things (or five things, I guess) that I will use a lot while I'm LIVING IN A TENT THIS SUMMER.

10. I just discovered a website full of books in the public domain, and now I have lots of Austen to read this summer when I'm living in a tent.

Plus LOTS OF OTHER THINGS like: Harry Potter 7.2 is coming out this summer (and I probs won't get to see it until August, but still), and the Barenaked Ladies are coming to Alaska this summer and there's a slight possibility that I'll make it down to Fairbanks to see them, and I have an actual job where I'll be living in a tent AND making money at the same time, and I have a plane ticket to Rome for Aug. 28, and AYS is going to Europe next summer and I might just meet them there and play music with my fave orchestra ever, and there are Thai food leftovers in the fridge, and SO MANY OTHER THINGS.

Hunger Games: the movie

2011-05-20T06:46:00.006+02:00

A few months ago, I started to get sucked into Hunger Games movie mania.

And like any self-respecting bookworm, I have my doubts about how Hollywood is going to handle this dark, brilliant trilogy that is essentially a war story.

My WHAT!!??!?!?!?!?! moments so far:

Jennifer Lawrence, blonde bombshell, is going to play Katniss, the badass, dark haired, archer, and tribute from District 12?

Liam Hemsworth is playing Gale. If you've never heard of this actor, it's because the only really major role he's ever had was in The Last Song. Picking Gale from an actor that's only ever really acted in a Nicholas Sparks book-turned-movie????? Well, you all know how I feel about Nicholas Sparks.

And, to make it a highly questionable trifecta, Josh Hutcherson will be playing Peeta. I mean, I know Peeta is supposed to be the nice baker's son, but this kid looks like he's seven years old. Plus he's supposed to be blonde.

But this week's cover of Entertainment Weekly set my mind at ease a little bit.

That's the Katniss I know, love, and kind of fear.

And Hunger Games fans should check out this map of Panem. Puts some geographical sense into where you imagine the districts should be. Also, according to this map I used to live in District 12 (so cool, so cool, so cool).

Mystery Desserts: episode 6

2011-05-18T03:52:00.001+02:00

This is the season finale of "Mystery Desserts." I'm not sure what will come next, but something will. Sorry it took so long to edit. I was busy with finals, and then my brother was helping me with the intro. Which ended up a bit fuzzy anyway, but it's still exciting. Anyway, enjoy!

Special thanks to TJ for eating one of the mysterious see-through bowl desserts. Always the most mysterious.

Recap and precap

2011-05-14T09:27:00.005+02:00

In half an hour I will be 19 years old. I generally do not like years in which I am an even numbered age, so I'm really excited about this. But for all its evenness, 18 has been a pretty good year. In the last 365 days I have:

1. Graduated from high school
2. Started college
3. Gotten the best job ever reporting and blogging for the Sun Star
4. Gotten my wisdom teeth out
5. Gone to Ecuador to visit my best friend
6. Found an excellent ottoman at the dump
7. Finished my first year of college

18 has been an adventure, that's for sure. But it won't even compare to 19.

In a week, I'm heading up to Coldfoot, Alaska. A truck stop and tourist destination on mile 175 of the Dalton Highway. I'll be working 50 hours a week, living in a tent, hiking, writing, jumping, and blogging. Although the blogging will be much more intermittent because I generally lack inspiration in the summer, and I'm not sure how much I'll be on the computer. But the blog will be here and updated on a semi-regular basis, so make sure you check in every once in a while to see how the uke is doing so far north.

And then at the end of August, I move from my tent in the Arctic to Florence, Italy with a brief stop in Anchorage. I'm pretty confident in saying that I might experience a bit of culture shock in that move.

And as much as I can't wait, I'm really enjoying pushing that anxious anticipation aside, and watching my bro PR at regions, eating Mooses Tooth with my parents, and sitting in my backyard playing some ukulele. My adventure will come. But in the meantime, I have friends to visit, books to read, and songs to play.

Dear Parents, I love you

2011-05-10T10:45:00.002+02:00

This is my favorite picture of my parents:

My Dad is all "seriously, lady?" And my Mom is all "but you're such a cute security guard!" Mom is sporting a jean jacket, and Dad has a persfro. Seriously, do photographs get better than this?

Sometimes when I am angsting about the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing with my life, I look at this picture and laugh at my parents being Baha'i youth in Haifa in the early 90s. Because they didn't know what they were doing. And they've ended up being the best kabob making, jumping picture taking, Daily Show watching parents ever.

So I have hope that I'll turn out ok someday.

Hey Mom? Hey Mom? Mom? MOM!

2011-05-09T00:40:00.005+02:00

Happy Mother's Day, Momskillet yo.

How to take a successful jumping picture

2011-05-08T02:14:00.001+02:00

Taking a jumping picture is equal parts jumper and photographer.

Jumper:
1. Make sure to bend your knees when you are jumping in the air. This makes you look like you have serious mad hops, and people will be impressed with how high you can jump.
2. Flail your limbs. This makes the picture a thousand times more exciting.
3. Count down for your, otherwise they won't know when to click the button.

Photographer:
1. Keep your finger on the button, halfway pressed down. When the jumper is in the air, click!
2. Make sure there is a countdown. Either you or your airborne subject. This adds to the success rate of your picture, believe me.
3. Don't be afraid to take jumping picture after jumping picture to get it just right.

The most successful jumping pictures come from pairs that jump and photograph together all the time. For instance, my brother and I usually get excellent shots the first time through. But when I'm jumping with others, we often have to take the picture a few times before it's successful because our internal jumping picture timers are not in sync.

Follow these steps, and you can go from this:

To this:

And leaving is surprisingly bittersweet

2011-05-07T05:59:00.006+02:00

Right now, I'm packing up my room, cramming for finals, and inventorying everything and everyone I need to say goodbye to here.

This first year of college has been fun and awful. Long and short. Easy and hard. Cold, with a few weeks of warmth. At one point or another, I've hated dorm life, the music program, cafeteria food, intro classes, and subzero temperatures. At one point, I hated it so much here that I decided to move to another country.

But then I've also loved it. Especially in the last month or so, I've discovered this niche I fit into where I write articles every week, and eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner with Denali. I've spent the year working for an awesome paper, where I've learned a bajillion million things. I've made some seriously excellent friends. I declared a major in something I'm genuinely happy to be studying. I scored a goal in broomball, I learned how to bellydance, I get paid to blog, and the sun is just starting to come out.

Really, now that I'm about to leave, I'm discovering I like it here.

Mystery Desserts: episode 5

2011-05-04T03:45:00.000+02:00

In which Leo eats a really really mysterious pudding, and it's spring in Fairbanks.

Dance, dance

2011-05-02T01:36:00.000+02:00

This semester I took a dance class. Despite the fact that I'm the kind of graceful person who trips over sunshine and falls out of chairs, and I was taking 18 other credits; I signed up for Middle Eastern Dance.

On Friday night, all of Fairbanks's bellydance classes and groups came together and put on a three hour show of hip shaking and shimmying. And I was in one of those groups.

After our performance at Cymbal Salaam

With the exception of a brief career in workshop as an eighth grader, this is the first time I've ever really dance danced. I like to break it down as much as the next girl with little to no self reservation. But I've never worked on choreography, or made costumes, or danced on a stage in front of people.

And it was fun, but it wasn't exactly easy to get to that point. With my nonexistent background in dancing, I had a hard time figuring out how exactly to move my body and remembering choreography. And it seemed that everyone else picked up on the moves so effortlessly, and here I was- the only middle eastern girl in the middle eastern dance class, and the only one that couldn't dance.

Now that the semester is over, dance is too. But I've officially caught a dancing bug. I want to branch out and learn latin and swing and jazz. I want to pick up some bollywood moves, and get better at shoulder shimmys.

During our performance at the Springfest Dance-off

I also want to be a rollerderby girl, but that's another story.

My favorite kind of weather

2011-04-27T21:37:00.000+02:00

It's rainy and grey outside.

This is my favorite kind of weather.

Weather that you can stand outside in your sweatshirt drinking the coffee Ashley bought you after class. Contemplating how much Wednesday is left, and reveling in the wet pavement. It is such a perfect temperature, and you're heading off to talk to a guy about recycling, and the notebook in your backpack is full of the anticipation of unanswered questions, and you love your job.

But it's also weather where you take your Melina Marchetta novel up to the sixth floor of the library, and immerse yourself in the world of Tom Mackee on a couch by the window while listening to The Decemberists, because they are such a good soundtrack to Marchetta's books always. Tom's heartbreak contrasts the grey skies so nicely, and it is so cozy.

And this is my favorite kind of weather.

Rediscovering artistic Elika

2011-04-27T04:18:00.001+02:00

A week ago I opened the top drawer of my desk looking for a stamp and found my markers.

I like markers, and my last name, and John Green.

I'm one of those artsy types that likes to write and read and dance and draw and paint and wear strange clothes and pretend I have an interesting fashion sense instead of no fashion sense at all (just in case you haven't figured that out yet).

Last year, art and I had a falling out. I took Art I as a senior in high school expecting it to be fun and easy. It was awful. My teacher graded us harshly. And everyone in my class were annoying, talkative sophomores (except Faryal).

I remember on my last day of high school, I was in second period Art I trying to solder my ring and it wasn't working. And class was about to end, and high school was about to end, and I was almost in tears, and I was freaking out because what if I didn't get this ring done and I got a B in Art I and that would be the worst thing ever basically.

My point is Art I was stressful and not fun at all. And the traumatic experience of that class, combined with moving away from all my oil pastels and gel pens have resulted in fairly artless year for me.

Except last week I opened the top drawer of my desk looking for a stamp and I found my markers instead. I think markers are my favorite artistic medium. Colored pencils are too precise, and crayons are too elementary school, and paint is too messy, and clay is too serious. But markers are nice.

A week and a half before finals is not the best time to rediscover my artistic passion, but let's get real here, I wasn't going to study that hard anyway.

Suh-suh-suh-summertime

2011-04-26T01:17:00.000+02:00

Last year when I was trying to figure out where to go to college, and my parents were trying to convince me to go to UAF, my mom said "It's just like all the other schools! ...except you won't get that whole 'studying on the green' experience."

Well, there's about two weeks at the end of the semester where you can legitimately study outside.

Sunrays sunrays sunrays

girlfrand puhlease

50 degrees and super sunshiney and sitting outside the dorms with Denali talking about pulling the heads off ants with tweezers? Summertime and the living is easy. Minus the impending finals.

Mystery desserts: episode 4

2011-04-25T10:08:00.002+02:00

Skyler and Quinn were this week's Mystery Dessert participants. As always, Mystery Dessert participants earn my utmost gratitude, respect, and wonder that they'll actually participate. Extra hilarity this week because Quinn is wearing a tux.

Mystery desserts: episode 3

2011-04-25T05:21:00.000+02:00

This is last week's episode of Mystery Desserts. It's been up on YouTube for a week, but I'm just now getting around to putting on my blog. Sorry, dessert skeptics. I blame it on the end of the semester craziness.

Anyway, this is a double feature of two strange desserts. Thanks to Ashley Strauch for taking two for the team, and eating them.

Intro classes and ketchup

2011-04-21T23:00:00.002+02:00

I am a college freshman, which means that almost every class I'm taking starts with a 1. Comm 141, Chem 105, Geos 120, Hist 100, Soc 100.

Right now I'm sitting in Geology. And I'm blogging during class. Not for the first time either. The girl sitting next to me is doing math homework, and the guy behind me is reading a magazine. I could go on: the guy in front of me is scrolling through facebook updates on his iPhone, and a girl two rows down is filling out a study guide for a different class. The only people paying attention are three kids sitting in the front row, and I would guess the reason their attention is captivated is because we're watching volcano eruption videos on YouTube. Over half of this class left after we took a quiz 20 minutes ago.

I'm not necessarily a great student. But I'm also not a bad one. I'm an average amount of smart, and I study when I need to. I turn in my papers and homework on time, and I understand most everything with a moderate amount of trying.

I've learned a lot since August, but barely any of it has been from any of the classes I've taken (18 credits worth, both semesters). I've learned how to dance from my one credit dance class. I've learned that I don't work very hard at music when I have no competition, and I learned how to beat OWL (screenshots). I've learned that classes on the honors house couches are a good time to take a nap.

I like to believe that classes will get better than watching my geology professor pour ketchup and peanut butter on a ramp and calling it lava. But until that day, I'm going to keep sitting in the back of the lecture hall to avoid the smell of ketchup.