for your amusement

although, i don't think the last two are all that shabby. that's right. i'm getting better fools.

the infamous lion/snake/antelope picture. laugh it up.



these next two i did at the photography museum. i had about 15 minutes for each, and in all honesty, i'm quite impressed with my ability to turn these out under an extreme time crunch and low lighting conditions. i got skillz. they're not finished yet, but i'll probably never get around to it because i'm too lazy.



yes, i know it looks like my shading got a little out of control on this one, but this is a picture of a miner, and he was supposed to be dirty.



a lady wearing some sort of cloak thing. more unfinished than the last, but you get the general idea.

i will never eat chocolate again

If you’re like me, when you think of Italy you think spaghetti. Ravioli. Gnocchi, caprese salad, olive oil…you think food. (And you think right.) Some of you may reflect back on the genius of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Petrarch; maybe it’s the structural wonder of the Duomo, the ancient Roman Colosseum, the Popemobile. But let’s face it, at the end of the day we’re a people who love our food and Italians definitely love theirs – and certainly do it better. A shining model of excellence amidst an already glorious land of deliciousness, Perugia, the capitol of Italy’s Umbria region, once a year satiates the inner hormonal woman in all of us. They call it: Eurochocolate.

When I heard the words “Europe’s largest chocolate festival”, I knew that this was the place for me. So I set a whole day aside to go check out this chocolate extravaganza - you know, just to make sure these guys were truly worthy of this self-proclaimed reputation (mine are the only standards that matter) - and fasted for three days so that I might gorge myself with as much chocolate as humanly possible. I joke only about the former part of that last clause. When I disembarked from the train in Perugia with several of my friends, the city appeared to be in a state of sheer chaos. Cacao, or the prospect of it at least, has a way of driving people mad, and I was no exception to this rule. I quickly tore through the crowds, weaving in and out of less important people, dodging giant bodies that didn’t need the chocolate as much as I did, and throwing little old ladies to the outskirts of the mob. And somehow along the way, Jessica and I managed to get entirely separated from our group of 150 people on the Florence for Fun tour and miss our bus. Nice goin guys. Yet driven entirely by instinct, we quickly hopped on to the next bus we saw and prayed that it might take us towards the chocolate. It was only when I saw the reflection of the bus in a store window that I was able to make out the fact that we were headed in the right direction. And lo and behold, we jumped right off the bus and into the welcoming arms of our four other friends not 15 minutes later. (That whole episode was quite strange, to be honest.) The day began with me downing an entire box of Choco Vitamins. I have a feeling I was supposed to space those out over several days, but I was pumped about getting the Chocofest started and this happened to be my very first “choco” for the day. Alright, I’m gonna stop with all the chocolate puns right now because this is getting old even for me. Trust that they’re still here in spirit. Now I’m just going to tell you now that this festival was not quite what I had expected. There were no chocolate eating contests (I would have dominated), over-the-top chocolate sculptures, or even chocolate wrestling tournaments. The large part of the fair was made up of booths for different companies to hawk their chocolate wares. The eating insane amounts of chocolate part came in with all the free samples. And the other ways in which we were able to work the chocolate system… (I’m doing it again, I apologize.)

Our first stop was this underground network type thing in Perugia. First we visited a chocolate exhibition. Boring. Who wants to shuffle like a bunch of idiots through a little educational tour on chocolate? That’s right – losers. I was there to experience my first heart attack, so Jessica, Erica, and I quickly bailed and found the hot chocolate stand. But as luck would have it, they had just run out, and had to make a new batch. They still had a bunch of the Cioccolato Caldo Pepperoncino – Spicy Hot Chocolate – something which I just wasn’t feeling right then. Something which I’ll probably never feel. So we literally stood around waiting for this freakin hot chocolate juice to get hot for a good half hour. The lady kept telling us “5 more minutes”, and we eventually reached the point where to give up on waiting for the stuff would have been to undermine our entire time standing there thus far. I’m not going into the outcome of this little incident, because all that need be said is that the stuff was completely unworthy. We were far less than pleased. But don’t worry - unphased. Our next stop was the “Lindt Snap!” stand, the point of this activity being to put on a blind fold and try chocolate in the dark to heighten your other senses to the chocolate experience. They even gave us canes to use in the dark, but the bastards wouldn’t let us keep them afterwards. And unfortunately, they gave us terrible directions; whereas we thought that we were supposed to pick up the different types of chocolate at various points along the hallway and enter a room to conduct the taste test at the end, we were actually supposed to have tasted the chocolate along the way. Unfortunately for those Lindt people, we all stuffed our bags with as much of their delicious chocolate as we could carry. So it was fine.

Next we decided to step into the light of day, where we continued to collect even more free chocolate with our special Eurochocolate cards (one of the perks of the FFF group), see the world’s largest chocolate bar – 11 meters squared – and pretend we were interested clients at each of the booths so that the people working them might give us more free chocolate. We also got free Coke Zero (this Coke promo is everywhere in Italy, by the way), iced tea, and bottles of brandy. Sadly, Erica peaked early in the day and had to cut herself off from the chocolate festivities. Jessica and I, however, forged on. We visited more stands, went through a little chocolate mini-tour, and made some new friends. I bonded with two Perugian boys in the early afternoon by letting them listen to awesome songs on my iPod. The event unfolded after they asked me some question about Guns ‘N Roses, after which I had them listening to some more epic bands. They should have known that they had opened the floodgates with me when it came to music. And I should have known that I too had opened the floodgates by naively befriending two young Italian gentlemen. After considerable efforts, we were finally able to part ways, shortly after which Jessica had to throw in the towel with all this chocolate business. My friends were dropping like flies. The true champ (me) proceeded to guzzle down another cup of hot chocolate - white hot chocolate this time - work the booths for yet more free samples, try some chocolate covered churos, take a spin on the merry-go-round, and join a chocolate choir, because apparently it reached the point where I had to sing for my goods.

I’ll stop narrating and post the pics.

Erica on the train to Perugia right before she passed out.



Jessica, Anna, Paige, and Natalie.



Erica and I pissed off at the hot chocolate stand because it took so damn long.



me and my free stuff.



crowds in perugia. my favorite part of this picture has to be the guy wearing the "playboy" shirt.




the chocolate started getting to our heads.

example of a chocolate booth.

example of another chocolate booth.

the mad hatter.

she took the chocolate pretty hard.

we are god.

ok, now we are really god.

the guy in the background would not stop taking pictures of himself. i tried to get one of him standing up holding the camera low and taking one up at his blue steel face, but i couldn't bust the camera out quick enough. i guess i'm giving him too much in posting him online, but oh well. you had to see what a dick he was.

"dammi, oh bello, il tuo cioccolatino." these are the words i sang in my choir of fellow chocolate lovers.

erica got caught up in a crowd of people jumping for pieces of chocolate. this was after she had gotten hit in the face by an old lady with a bag of oranges.

almost sickeningly beautiful.

the magic of the merry-go-round just never died for me.

this is what the sun looks like when it sets on chocolate.

you've seen one garden, you've seen 'em all

Now I’m not trying to rip on the Boboli Gardens – they’re very beautiful and all – but I felt as though a montage of flower and tree pictures might get a little monotonous after a while. So I have compiled a series of photographs entitled “Posing at the Boboli Gardens,” starring none other than yours truly. I realize my title screams “poser,” but at least I’m being upfront about it. Seriously though, how often is it that you get to look at a bunch of pictures of me amidst the beauty of nature? And I’ll even venture to claim that it is perhaps my lovely self that is all the more aesthetically pleasing than one predictable cross-section of God’s Green Earth. Am I right…am I right? Yes I am. So consider yourselves lucky.

gypsy is the new emo

From the very day that I arrived and got intercepted by my first gypsy at the Duomo, something about that sly looking woman seemed oddly familiar to me. You can’t really match the unbeatable long neon skirt, floral pattern bubble shirt, sandals with socks look, but the forlorn looking person waving a cup in my face stirred a sense of nostalgia in me that was hard to place. And then it clicked – when I saw this girl wander over to her other gypsy friend and give her the cocky “hey, I’m really working these suckas over here” look, I knew that the spirit of the gypsy rested in none other than the breasts of countless emo kids the world over. Think about it. They walk around all day, bemoaning their ill fortune and trying to get people to feel sorry for them. And half the time, I’m pretty convinced they’re faking it (as evidenced by the cunning look that our prior gypsy gave her fellow con-woman). I realize that kids back home aren’t begging me for money and gypsies aren’t cutting themselves, but there really are a lot of parallels. Take the greasy hair look for example. Totally gypsy…totally emo. And now I know that hopeless adolescents back in the States wouldn’t be caught dead sporting those bright florescent colors – they tend to go for the black and 73 shades of gray color scheme – but I think it’s a valid argument that both groups of individuals are in desperate need of a fashion makeover. Come on. Purple socks with Tevas? Skinny jeans on guys? The only thing I haven’t figured out yet is who can give me the better sad face.

the slaughter

I got my ass handed to me in Milan. Rife with high-end labels, glamazons, and beautiful negozias galore, I tried to bat in the big leagues in the fashion capital of the world and lost more than the designer duds I couldn’t afford. It was a good portion of my budget that I have set aside for the next ten months in Europe, along with my dignity, that went down the drain. I had always thought that I had some inkling of self-discipline, but when it came time to set foot into fashionista territory, I just lost all control. Of course, I was able to rationalize this all at the time, thinking to myself, “Hey Self, you’re in Milan, homie. Let loose. Enjoy the ride.” And enjoy it I did. For your viewing pleasure:

It was this horrifying image that greeted me to Milano, and which would proceed to haunt my dreams for the next couple of nights. She served me well, however, as I used her as one of the subjects for my sketches for class. If you thought this image couldn’t be any more frightening, you were wrong.



To get a good sense of Milan, you have to realize that they have the most amazing advertisements plastered all over the city. Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to capture this in a picture, but I feel as though this giant lady might come close to doing the trick. (She was about two stories high.)



Oh wait a second. Is that a break dancer? Yes that is. Even Milan can be ghetto fab.



The Duomo in Milan is absolutely stunning.



La Rinascente was the 7 story department store that I popped into, that truly had everything. After my visit, I better understood the mindset of a gold-digger. Unless you rock the black AMEX card, you really have no business being there. I literally found $100 t-shirts (which were adorable, by the way – that store is also quite depressing). The following are the displays in the windows of La Rinascente, and as they are the sexiest displays I’ve ever seen, it was worth taking pictures of all of them and posting them for you.

A little view inside the store, one which does it no justice whatsoever.

This is what rich guys see right before they have sex.

There was an entire floor devoted to sections like “Armani Junior.” I shit you not.

First interesting point to consider about this picture: there is an actual dog being walked through the store. Alright, fine. This is typical of Italy. But in a store like this one? Seemed a little strange to me. But then considering that there was also a section for household pets, I realized that it was probably I that was more out of place than these dogs – which probably have more money to their names than I do.

And then…there was this. The top – and most glorious – floor of La Rinascente. Full of bins upon bins of candy and delicious food, this place was a refuge for a dazed individual like me.

When I said La Rinascente literally had everything, I didn’t make this statement lightly. I even saw an albino in that store. I’m going straight to hell.

T, this one’s for you buddy. This was an ad I saw on the subway. I thought that only I made that face (see kid on right), so when I saw this, it was necessary to share. I realize that my family members are likely the only people to understand this one, mostly because I’m better able to contain my eccentricities in public.

The token Kaitlin picture.

Castello Sforzesco serves as a testament to the fact that Milan is more than just shopping. It’s actually got a whole historical side, one which I’ll stick to the next time I stop in.

The reflection pool…I thought this was pretty.

I finally got around to taking a picture of the people who sell illegal knockoffs in Italy. These guys really intrigue me. They lay out all their wares on blankets, and then the minute they spot the po's coming, they quickly swipe up all their stuff and book it. So far I’ve been scared to buy anything from these crafty buggars, mostly because we had the Italian Consulate come in and talk to us in Florence about how we could get arrested for doing business with them (probably a semi-hollow threat). Needless to say, I haven’t been willing to take the risk. But as these guys came in the dozens in the middle of what was essentially a park, I decided to go for it. And damn, can I barter. What was originally a 45 euro bag, I got down to 13 euro, a handful of coins, and a 5 dollar bill – bear in mind that the exchange rate favors the euro. The guy even asked me if the bill was real, which stirred a thought in me. If these guys can’t tell the difference anyway, why not counterfeit my own money? I would make out like God. One more anecdote about these dudes. They also try to sell little things like bracelets and belts – and these businessmen are actually a bit more pushy. So this one guy comes up to me and starts tying a bracelet around my wrist. I immediately told him, “Hey man, I’m sorry. I’ve don’t have any cash.” “Oh don’t worry, Miss, this is for good luck.” “For good luck you say? And it doesn’t cost me a thing? Sweet deal.” My friend Jessica had a similar interaction with the man in the next moment, and immediately after, he was petitioning us for donations. After weaseling our way out of that one, I had another idea. Why not see how many free good luck bracelets I can collect while out here? They’ll be like trophies. My only concern is that I actually have a terrible cold right now, and I’m wondering if it’s because the guy placed some sort of voodoo curse on the bracelet after I refused to pay him for it. Well guess what? I’m not taking it off. It was free.

Welp. That is all.