Chim-Chiminey

It turns out a piece of wire from someone’s underwire bra was blocking our washing machine. Hence the sea of water flooding our kitchen at various parts of the day.

I know this because when I entered the apartment yesterday, all sweaty and gross from another full day of walking around, a man brandishing a can opener and what appeared to be a belt greeted me with a jovial smile on his face with the news. As if to say “HA! You women have done it AGAIN! You with your underwire bras!” I guess he was forgetting we’re not the ones who leave toilet seats up, nor are we the carriers for tons of STDs. Then he proceeded to leave the culprit covered in lint and hair from God knows when right in our kitchen. That’s like leaving the turd on your bed that was clogging the toilet.

After Marisel, Libby, and I had each walked past it 5 times each, wrinkling our noses at the foreign object and pondering over the fate of all good bras and if it would be possible to fashion the wire into a lethal weapon or a cooking utensil, I sat down to think about what would make the world a better place.

And here it is.

The Abbreviated and Not Yet Fully Complete List of How to Make the World A Better Place:

1. Humans be photosynthetic. We would not have to go to the bathroom, nor worry about eating and gaining or losing weight. Eating would be something we just do when we feel like it.
2. Have everyone know every single language in the world at birth.
3. Eliminate all forms of money.
4. Eliminate grades. Have people just study for the joy of learning. HA!
5. Have everything in the world be free.
6. Eliminate the jealous and greed gene in all people.
7. Have everyone be born with another romantic half. Kind of like Plato’s or whosit’s theory. The halves are entirely compatible and the two people find each other irresistible. Then a lot of misery and loneliness would be gone.
8. Get rid of that most holy of sacraments, matrimony.
9. And IF it’s necessary to still have it because of the cake and the wine, then abolish dresses like these:





























Sorry. Could not quite capture a good picture of the second dress.

10. Have everyone do everything out of the goodness of their hearts.
11. Let everyone be supremely confident and comfortable with who they are.
12. Create a way which everyone has 3 apartments in different parts of the world, and 3 houses made entirely out of people’s favorite foods so that when they do feel like eating something, they have a whole house of the stuff. And how COOL would it be to say that you ate a house?
13. Everyone be entitled to one friendly ghost.
14. Magic is really magic, and not a trick.
15. Everyone have one superstition that is actually true and really does bring bad or good luck.
16. Everyone like their own type of music, but not dislike any kind. That way you won’t feel like an idiot when you’re singing to any song in the car with the window open.

Libby’s Suggestion
Everyone should be responsible for planting one tree

Marisel’s Suggestion
Certain days of the week should be dedicated to one kind act, like taking care of the sick or feeding the homeless where everyone participates. Or making national holidays days where everyone pitches in to help. I mean, we can fucking celebrate Abraham Lincoln, why can’t we do something good?

Also, everyone who gets a job should have 1 or 2 years of charity work. Like TFA for everyone. Or all doctors should all work 2 years in some impoverished country, and lawyers work for free for a year or two for people who can’t afford lawyers.

Then again, in my world, there would be absolutely no reason to sue people.

There you have it. You can tell that my suggestions are way more…self-centered. My roommates make me feel like a greedy pig. Then again, the greed gene has been eliminated.

Ok. I have to get my now nearly dry and spun clothes out from the washing machine!

Classmates

Summer school programs abroad not affiliated with the student’s home university are always an iffy thing. It’s different when it’s with the home university, because then you’re basically going to be paying the same tuition price as if you stayed. But with outside universities, the chances are not as great that you’ll get financial aid. And these universities like to milk ignorant American study abroad students dry. So you know what this means. The people who participate in these programs are, ahem, pretty well off.

I am not saying this automatically excludes you from being a good person. I have plenty of friends who are very lucky and know they are lucky to have parents who are able to pay for a college education. Not only pay for a college education, but let their kids have a relatively comfortable lifestyle. IN FACT, I guess you’d say that yes, I belong to this group of kids.

I tread such precarious grounds by saying this that I generally hate admitting that I do go to the school I go to, and that yes, I am here for the summer. I suppose I could have dropped off the face of the earth without telling anyone. I hated when people asked me what I was doing for the summer because the conversation would generally go something like:

Student: “Hey what are you doing this summer?”
Adrianne: “Oh…I don’t know…how about you?”
Student: “Just staying here, working.”
Adrianne: “Oh, COOL!”

Because really, how would I say something like “Oh, you know, just hanging out in Rome” after someone told me they’re going to work?

ANYWAY, what I want to say is that it’s not how much money you have, it’s how you handle it. Kind of like having a third arm: the point isn’t that you have it, the point is that you’re using it in a cool way. Such as for a clothes rack or a windmill. And in summer programs, although there are people who gracefully behave as a cool linking sentence between paragraphs, there are those who can only make the transition by stating “I am a transition sentence.” And it’s when they’re stating that the topic of their paragraph is money does the problem arise for me.

Last week I had to spend a particularly painful dinner at a salad restaurant. Among the group of people I went with, there was one girl in particular who I would have preferred to be an exotic dish everyone hates on the menu. I don’t even know her name. We’ll just call her Motherfucker (MF).

So MF sat down at the dinner table. My initial reaction was one of fear and anxiety. I would have to try to make conversation with HER? I know some people probably think I’m judgmental. I guess I am. She looked like the kind of girls who made me feel like an ungainly hippo in high school. Tall, tanned, thin, pretty. The kind of person who probably made fun of me for wearing that shirt.

Anyhow. MF sat down haughtily at the table and then made one of those “OMG” faces when the waiter spoke to her in Italian. JESUS. Automatically, her ears seemed to stick out a bit too far.

She started talking about how her mom is one of the top 40 businesswomen in Pennsylvania, yet she STILL is cool enough to smoke up with her daughter. Then, as the sort of default topic all college students are wild about, the conversation turned to bad liquor and the worst wine you can get for the least amount of money. Yeah, she hung out with Roberto Cavalli’s son or grandson or monkey or something who bought her a 160 Euro bottle of vodka. Oh, and went to Art Café’s expensive area to rub shoulders with rich people. By that time, her nose was way out of proportion, her skin was rubbery, and her mouth looked like a rat’s tail.

While she was talking, she was looking at everyone expectantly. I wanted to say:

"Mary mother of God, can I please TOUCH YOU??? YOU STOOD NEXT TO ROBERTO CAVALLI’S GRANDSON OR SON OR SOMETHING?”

Then I had to spend another half hour with her. Upon departing, I was tempted to tell MF that the diamond necklace she had around her neck would have looked better as a noose.

So this program is kind of filled with people like this. With people who in the computer lab only say “God, I got so wasted last night” or “So what country did you do this weekend?” (That’s another thing. Although I should probably plead guilty, most of these students talk about “doing” places. As in “I did Amsterdam” or “I’m going to do Greece.” As if traveling was just another check box on their list of “Things to Do.”) Or who want to know if the pope still rules Rome. Or who ask someone if they went to visit Mary Kay’s (uh…Anne Frank’s?) house in Amsterdam and who don't realize that "All roads lead to Rome" is an expression and that they can't, in fact, take Highway Atlantis across the ocean to get here.

So there you have it. Just remember, "No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather." And it's really really hot, MF.

Uh huh

One of these days I'll write something.

Brace Yourselves

So I’ve been living together with two girls for three weeks now, and I think it’s only fair that I give them the introduction they deserve. After all, they put up with all my admittedly strange quirks and my strong body odor, so I’ll let the world know they are some swell people.















This here is Marisel Chavez. Marisel is from Miami, and she goes to University of Florida. In addition to being absolutely lovely and Latina, she is terribly nice and friendly. She has made more friends in 2 weeks here than I have made in my entire life. Maybe it’s because she has no body odor and when she smiles she doesn’t look like she’s pulled 85 muscles doing it. Then again, it might be because she hands out $90 instead of $10 so people will say “Hi!” to her.

I share the same room as Marisel. This has allowed me an intimate glance at her wardrobe and her fine organizational skills. As luck would have it, she is like all the rest of the roommates I have ever had. Namely, if I breathe in the corner furthest from the bedroom of the apartment, she will snap to attention in the pitch dark room and glare in my direction. How dare you breathe! How dare you blink! Go to sleep! An ant sneezing two miles away can wake her up. I don’t know why I’ve had such rotten luck with roommates. I can sleep through a small-scale war or the latest song of Paris Hilton blaring in my ear. Why can’t other people do the same? The lightup screen of my cell phone hidden under my sheet manages to wake her up, and I can’t even turn around in bed without waking her up. I literally creep into bed and hold my breath for the entire night in order to not disturb her slumber.















This here on the left is my roommate Elisabeth Ingwersen Ganung. Otherwise known as Libby. She is from many places, the latest on her list including Hawaii, and she is a degree seeking student here. This means she spends the whole year lounging in Rome. Err. Studying. I mean studying. I bring out in Libby a withering sarcasm and destructive cynicism. That is, I HOPE I bring it out in her, because I think the world’s crust would melt off if two such sarcastic people existed at the same time year-round, even on the other sides of the world. Last week after one of our classes, I actually had such a sarcastic overload that I seriously had to consider saying a couple of sincere and nice things the next day. That lasted from about 9:15 AM – 9:30 AM.

Libby has a great Italian boyfriend who cooked us dinner tonight. Which goes to show that you can be cynical even if you’re not single and therefore have no reason to have lost faith in the entire world and all of mankind. The great thing about Libby is that I know one of these days we are going to sit down and have a three hour long conversation about the correct way to sharpen a pencil, and then continue with a half hour long conversation about the right way to put on socks, and we’ll still manage to consider the other an extremely profound and intelligent person. That’s just the sort of lady she is.

By now my discerning readers will have realized something: Marisel, a perpetually cheerful and optimistic soul, is quite different from Libby and me. This means that occasionally I have to be wary of what I say. Because, see, Marisel hasn’t yet realized that the world is a cruel place in which it is useless to hope for anything nice to happen. Also, she gets annoyed with me very quickly, and she manages to bring me back to earth.

WAHOO!!! Can you believe that in elementary school I was actually described as OPTIMISTIC?? I swear I was! I bet you can’t even believe that I actually really like Christmas carols.

God. I’ve got to snap at out of this.

So there you have it. I have introduced my roommates to the entire world.

Random picture that is on this zip drive














There were supposed to be more, but for some reason it's not cooperating. Later, then.

Shikha, I check my gmail regularly, and I WILL write you back one of these days

It really bothers me when people lack imagination.

I’m not talking about the type of imagination science fiction authors have. Or the kind of imagination needed to make a visit to the gynecologist enjoyable, or the kind to plan a burglary of the Crown Jewels. I’m just talking the good old-fashion imaginative know-how that gets you through 2 hours of an Italian 101 class.

Everyone’s gone through a 101 class. It’s when you are the lowest of the low, the pit of the arm, the heel of the foot, the drain of the sink. You’re just getting introduced to the stuff, so you can’t really go around talking like you have the foggiest idea what’s going on. And if you happen to entertain the idea that you are the cat’s pajamas in your class, then there is ALWAYS someone who knows more. Even the dumbest people in the 102 class are better than you, and that’s pretty pathetic…to be beaten out by the bracefaces of a subject.

I am in Italian 101. I realize I have a distinct advantage by already kind of sort of knowing Spanish. I can now roll my Rs and execute some pretty impressive hand motions when I’m saying “Alexander and his dog are very smart.” But this can still not get me through the day. This class is so long and excruciating that it’s capable of rendering me infertile and making various parts of my body rot off and disintegrate on the spot.

To get through 2 hours of this class everyday, it’s necessary to take some drastic measures: create my own diversions. Since it was required to buy colored pencils the first day of class in order to underline the subject, verb, and adjective in such phrases as “He is a witty student,” accompanied by a picture of a very witty student, I have a ready source of entertainment. The very witty student finds himself with a deadly disease where skin turns purple with green polka dots, hair becomes a glorious shade of orange, and his very witty homework bursts into flames. In addition to providing me with endless amusement, other students also get a kick out of looking at such artistic endeavors when I go up to the front of the room to project my homework onto a large screen.

However, this is not enough. This Italian class is labeled as a “multimedia” class. I mistakenly thought in the beginning of the course that this meant I would have to take an internet class. Not so! This just means the teacher brings in video clips and Italian songs to enrich our learning experience. We listen to jovial Italians singing their traditional folk songs, and yesterday we spent the entire 2 hours looking at pictures of Italian foods on the internet.

My first year of college I went through a very rough patch where nothing in the dining hall tasted good anymore. I call this my Dark Months. In order to get through these months, it was necessary for me to download lots and lots of pictures of good food. What started off as a very wee section of the “My Pictures” section blossomed into 6 albums of pictures of very good foods. Julie and Mary Kate rightly called this “food porn.” Every time one of the pictures would flash across my screen in my screensaver, all three of us would start salivating uncontrollably and we’d see little yellow stars.

Yesterday’s 2 hours of class when we had to look at pictures of cannolis, panelles, and all manner of assorted main dishes and desserts, I thought I was going to pass out. It wasn’t that I was really hungry, but really, WHY would you do that for 2 hours straight?

I realize I am jumping around a lot, but just bear with me. Sorry. It all started in Spanish 101 when we had to make up sentences for class. There were always the boring people who would say stuff like: I have a dog. The dog is big. But THEN, there were those people who realized that it didn’t matter what the hell you said, as long as you conjugated the verbs and put the adjectives in the right place. And the teachers would be a-ok with this. They had to sit through an entire day of be-pimpled and be-hormoned students; they needed some sort of cheap distraction. So the good students, those who got extra pats on the backs, made up sentences like “The criminal with the green face is in the hardware store,” or “Lucia, my very dumb aunt, makes a cake with a dead dog in it.”

I have tried my gosh-darn best to integrate this method of teaching into our classroom. Not only because it is exceptionally fun, but because it’s necessary. Why in god’s name would I have to look at 15 different pictures of a cannoli? If you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. And unless this cannoli is walking down the street waving its arms and handing out lots of booze and money, or it’s brandishing a machete and heading straight towards me, I think I could have lived in blissful ignorance of what the 13th cannoli looked like. However, I need to know about serial killers in the cereal section of the grocery store and prostitutes in libraries. It is ever so much more likely that I will have to yell out to everyone walking on Via del Corso "ATTENTION! THERE IS A LARGE BLUE-FACED MAN WITH A KNIFE WALKING WITH A SHOPPING BAG" than "May I please have water without gas."

So when I’ve had the opportunity to talk to people in that class in our painfully structured conversations, I have tried to get people to open up. To tap into their creative fountains. To no avail.

The points of these exercises is to just hear ourselves talk and conjugate the two verbs we happen to know. But NO ONE gets the point that even with two verbs, there is potential for some extreme things here! I say something like “Antonio is over there, and he is with the daughter of the president who is very tall. Are you angry?” and the kids say “Who is Antonio?”

PEOPLE! WORK WITH ME HERE! USE SOME CREATIVITY!

That’s when I confess that actually I don’t have the foggiest idea who Antonio is, he could be your brother, boyfriend, or drug dealer, but you know, you are free to make up anything you want. Then they get this deer-in-the-headlights look as if to say “You want me to LIE? In Italian 101 class?!?!?!”

That is PRECISELY what I am asking you to do.

If this were a support group, I’m sure I’d have all manners of problems. I have said such outlandish things that no one believes anything I say. My house is to the right of a big volcano, I eat bears when I am hungry and it is hot outside, and I have a brother who lives in a train station. However, this also means that I can say anything I want to, even the truth, and no one will believe me.

Like:
“Last night I went out and I drank a lot of good wine!” I could say.

Or

“There are 9 very dumb girls in my class. They are ugly and the also have very large ears,” I say. “But this is all a joke of course.”

Those movies I promised...

So I don't remember what order I placed these things in, and I can't be bothered to figure it out, since I have to go do some homework now.

Isn't that the most depressing phrase ever? "I have to go do homework now." I suppose it could be worse, like, "My childhood pal died, I cut my arm off, I've got a rotting ear, but now I have to go do homework," but it's still pretty bad if you're not going to compare it to anything relatively speaking.

Enjoy good food!

I'm still alive

We don't have to point out the obvious: I am really bad at predicting things. But what will be even more obvious within moments is that I should just stick to taking pictures instead of getting into the movie business.

To watch the game, I went to Circo Massimo which was where, way back in the day, all those brawny Romans had their chariot races. Now, it functions as a large latrine for tourists and a big basin where lots of protestors can go and get drunk. While protesting of course.

So when I went on a walk the other day to go to a lookout point, I ran into two boys from Berkeley who had studied abroad for a year in Paris. Luis hated Hungarians, and Mike had holes in his shoes. Both of them were going to Circo Massimo for the soccer game.

Libby came with me to watch the soccer game. There were tons of people in this large basin, and there was a cloud of dust, pot smoke, and cigarette smoke hanging over the entire thing like a fog. We bounded in head-first and proceeded to demonstrate that we actually had no idea what the hell was going on in the game, but hey, enthusiasm is catching.

Rome was not built in a day, but a World Cup victory definitely had the power to destroy the city in a night. When Italy won, every nook and cranny reverberated with screaming, bellowing, and fireworks. The whole general mayhem.

That is...I think Italy won. But maybe they just did all this because it was a Sunday.


































































































It got SOOOO much more crowded after that. After the national anthem was sung on TV, you couldn't even see the ground. Libby and I had just escaped from the pit early.


































Hey Libby! We're going to step in a mud pile of astronomical proportion in 3 seconds! What do you have to say about THAT?!


































Movies to come after I eat. Or maybe tomorrow.

I really hope Italy wins tonight, but I don't think she will

Undoubtedly, there are many strange things in this world. Restaurants, for one, I think are pretty strange. You go in there with a whole bunch of strangers, order food, get the food, then sit in a large room filled with strangers and eat your food someone else cooked for you. Not that this will keep me from eating out, since I’m all for not doing dishes and suffering through eating food I made, but it’s still kind of strange if I think about it hard enough.

I also think John Locke on Lost is pretty strange, along with the popularity of celebrity gossip, people who don’t like chocolate, and people who think they look good in gaucho pants or bandana shirts.

Tourists are another phenomenon which continues to baffle me throughout the years.

**ATTENTION** By this I am not saying I am not a tourist. I know I am a tourist and I will always be a tourist.

What I think is strange about tourists is that it is so obvious when they are one, even if they don’t say anything. Through my travels, I find tourists, for the most part, fall into one of two categories.

1. Tourists who desperately try to not be tourists
2. Tourists who are tourists, and don’t do anything about it.

Category 1 tourists are the ones who buy an entirely new wardrobe when they enter a country. They all have same idea: if they shop at the same place “the natives” shop at, then they can fool anyone into thinking they’re actually “native.” So then one can see lots of people, mostly girls my age, who are dressed from head to toe in clothes from the country, and it’s still obvious they don’t belong. How can I tell? I have no clue. I mean, there are the dead-giveaway clues, such as when they forget they should go the whole nine yards and not wear Keds shoes with a bonafide Italian dress, or when the victim is of a different ethnicity, but in other cases, I really don’t know why it’s easy to pick them apart.

The Category 2 people are people who know they are tourists and let it get to their heads. When I was staying in the monastery/hotel at the beginning of my adventures, I went to breakfast one morning when an American family sat down to the table next to me. The dad was wearing a loud Hawaiian flower print t-shirt and whipped his map of Rome out with a flourish after yogurt.

“MMMMMMmmmmmmmm,” said he contentedly. “This is a GOOD breakfast. How do you say ‘My compliments to the chef’ in Italian?”

I had a beautifully strong urge to point out that in fact everything he was eating was store bought and busted out from either a jar or a bag, but I was curious to see how big of a jackass he’d make himself first.

His son, who probably had 2 years of Italian thrown at him in the hopes a week’s worth of material would stick to him, stuttered something about 12 times before he finally settled on a final answer.

“Chidosap fjispaoci iorcmsdak;c!” said Hawaiian shirt horror to the stony faced coffee lady who came around.

She stared at him, then wordlessly poured him a cup of coffee and walked away.

“All right. We’re going to see one of the Seven Wonders of the World today! Let’s finish breakfast!” exclaimed he.

These are also the people who try to soak in the “local flavor” until they’re marinated to the point their pores ooze Essence of Smelly Cheese and Olive Oil. If their guide book lists a certain restaurant as having “ambience” in some “cozy piazza” that only the “locals” know about, they’ll be the first people scrambling in line for dinner there. Also, they will take a picture of any equestrian statue they see, regardless of whether they know the person sitting on the horse or not. Mickey Mouse sculpted out of playdough with pieces of horse crap stuck on for eyeballs could be astride the horse, but they don't care, so long as he looks pretty magnificent.

Also, they always pose their kids to be framed by an arch when they take their pictures. I don't know why. The arch fails to hide the fact that the kids are dripping with sweat and don't care what country they're in.

But back to the first case, I really don’t know why tourists can’t fool others. I am, by anyone’s account, Hungarian. Yet way back in the day when I was in Germany for school, my Hungarian teacher was able to detect my sister’s Hungarianness and before I said anything, she said I had been “Americanized.” We grew up eating the same food and using the same toilet paper. This was even before Agi had released her famous hit single “I’m 100% Hungarian, Bitch,” but why could the teacher tell my sister was Hungarian and I was a weaker, watered down, “American” version?

Even in Hungary, if I dress in traditional Hungarian garb down to embroidered underwear, it’s pretty obvious I wasn’t born and bred on the fat of that land. It’s too late to fix the accent I know I have but can’t erase, but well, what’s the matter with my appearance?

So this is call for reform to tourists everywhere. Embrace your touristic tendencies! Visit those historic sites in your guidebook but at the same time draw a limit! Besides, when, if you’re ever a resident anywhere, would you be able to say:

“Why yes! I am a visitor here! You just caught me on my day off, though. Usually, I herd goats in the mountains and go digging for mushrooms just outside the city, but today I think I’m just going to stand in the middle of the street and what color motorino will run me over.”

It’s fun being a tourist in a cool country. It’s the difference between being an employee and a customer in an ice cream shop. The employee is probably sick to death of the flavors, but the customer isn’t yet. But customers, don’t binge on certain flavors.

Pictures Part 2

Olav, I never saw the stone man again. I don't think I ever will, but one can always hope.


































This was the very very drunk man during the soccer game. I am going to try to add a video clip of him hollering at the bottom of this post, just in case you care, and because I like to abuse novelties to the point of excess. Please, just ignore my voice, and listen to the yodelling instead if you feel like watching the kind of pointless clip.

Introduction

I don’t know how many times I started to write an entry, and I just couldn’t find a correct place to begin. First I thought I’d do a short introduction of my roommates, the school, classes, and how it’s impossible to buy notecards in Rome. Then I thought I’d write about the recent Italian victory in soccer.

Then I realized that probably the best beginning would be to talk about something that wouldn’t mind being talked about. Namely, my apartment and the one eye patch guy working downstairs at the pizzeria. I’m still not yet at the point with my roommate where I can write freely about their bra size and booger problems, so I’ll leave that subject until I’m safely stowed away in another country at least 2,000 miles away from them.

We live on the same street as the school, which is extremely convenient for me because I know that if I lived on any other street, I would never make it to class. The more I walk around, the more variations I accidentally find to get to a place. This way, I can just roll out of bed and hit the road in the morning to go to my...

Two classes: "Multimedia Introduction to Italian" and "Bernini and the Baroque." I thought my two hour Italian class was bad until I went to my 4 hour art history class. After two hours of sitting in the class, I started imagining was being smashed against a wall like a squashed fly and being rhythmically pounded with baseball bat. By the third hour, I was imagining drinking an entire bottle of nailpolish remover and then my pulpy carcass being set aflame, and by the 4th hour my brain had gone entirely numb. A single hour has never gone by slower. On-site class isn't so bad, but then it's standing outside for 4 hours in the heat, or standing in a stuffy museum where you can't lean against anything and have to stand up straight as a flagpole. By the time I get home from classes I'm generally exhausted and I just want to sit on our couch for a while before doing anything else.

Ok, the original post I wrote totally didn't have that interlude of complaint, but I guess it slipped. At LEAST I feel like I'm being set afire in Rome, and not in Santa Clarita, CA. It could always be worse.

You’ve probably always wondered what it would be like living 100 feet away from a maximum security prison. Unfortunately, kind of like massage chairs and perfumed tampons, it loses its novelty. But it’s still pretty exciting to go home at night and wonder which escaped convict will be joining you for dinner and maybe a chat over a glass of wine about the latest issue of Vogue.

We live like queens here in our apartment above the pizzeria. The leaky washing machine only adds to the charm of the angry threats of one-eyed pizza man from downstairs. And here we commence our visual tour.

Welcome to our humble abode! Would you care for some cheese? Rock-hard bread perhaps? Crackers? Maybe a stray cat?















Our sitting room tastefully decorated with my drying unmentionables in the foreground.















This is the temperamental washing machine. I just had to put my clothes through the spin cycle 6 times for the water to get the sloshing water out. I think it is endearing, but I can see how it can get irritating. Especially for one-eyed pizza man downstairs.















My bed is the one on the right. I like mattress with a firmness factor somewhere between a plank of wood and a slab of rock, and this mattress fits those requirements beautifully.




















The kitchen. There is not much to say about it, except that it is so narrow you have to suck in your stomach when you’re doing dishes and it would really be as difficult as riding a camel through the eye of a needle if you felt inclined to, well, ride a camel through here.




















This is the shower. I would not wish the experience of showering in here upon my worst enemy. In the first place, it supposedly leaks, further endearing us to the pirate downstairs. The walls are moldy beyond repair, and there is a nicely situated window opening upon a sidewalk where people walk past at the most unexpected moments and never fail to peer in. One does not shower with the window open, but yours truly has started showering with it open several times. Shaving legs in this shower is an exercise of patience, endurance, and kung fu or yoga positions. It’s impossible to get a good angle because it is so narrow that unless you stick your leg straight out the window or straight up in the air, which is kind of impossible unless you’re a gymnast, you would throw your hands up and admit defeat if you could, only it's so compressing in there that you can't really throw you're hands up. So you’re left with just trying to cram yourself into some unrecognizable shape as if you’re putty or a sardine, and then with a sharp razor graze over those hard-to-reach places.















That goes up to my roommate, Libby's, loft. There is only room enough for a queen sized bed, and then you can't sit up in bed. Not much air reaches up there, in spite of our ceiling fan's most hearty efforts, since it's so high up and the atmosphere kind of thins out, and so Libby is left to breath shallowly in hot, stuffy air when she goes to bed, kind of as if she were being buried alive in her tomb.




















Leaving so soon? Well, don't forget to shut the entrance door...

I've found a solution

I think what I'm going to do is make posts solely of pictures or solely of words, and only posts the pictures with the wordy entries when absolutely necessary. This way, my 3 or 4 readers can decide off the bat if this is a read-y entry or more a look-y entry.




















































































































































































This is it for now. I have to be heading back to my apartment. I hope everyone is doing well.