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.