Who's Next?

It all began at 5:45 in the morning on Friday. Or maybe it started the night before when I set my alarm for 5:15 and wondered why I was going to be leaving my house so early to catch a train. It was a bit of a strange feeling walking for half an hour to the train station when it was still very dark outside. It was worth it though. 22 of us went to Cinque Terre this weekend and it was amazing. Cinque Terre is a group of 5 towns that are connected by train, boat, or hiking. It was absolutely incredible, especially because of the weather. It has been the perfect temperature here the past few days and it was even better in Cinque Terre. We spent the weekend in our swimsuits on the beach. Ironic that it was snowing at my house... It was so nice to just be able to sit in the sun and not have to worry about the large pile of blank paper at home waiting to be drawn on. We did have our fair share of exciting experiences though. After a while people began to walk around in fear of who was going to be next. It started when we were swimming on Friday. There were seven of us at this point and six of us were swimming and enjoying life very much. After a while we decided to swim back to shore where Sharlie was watching us. All of a sudden one of the girls yelled out that she had been stung by something. We swam around in a bit of panic. Everything became a bit more frantic when another girl was stung and then the first girl was stung again. Try and imagine what happened next. If you imagined pandemonium you are very correct. We all proceeded to swim back to shore as fast as we could but we weren't exactly sure what we were swimming from. I was half laughing and half freaking out. For those of you who have seen me around fish just take that and imagine that the fish was ACTUALLY trying to get me, it wasn't just a figment of my imagination this time. We made it back without any more problems, but it was pretty entertaining, especially for Sharlie who had no idea what was going on but just had to sit and watch pandemonium erupt. Everybody is ok now though. Over the course of the trip we experienced many other small issues. Believe it or not, a cat actually peed on my backpack. It was quite the experience that has only accentuated my dislike for cats. Another girl tripped and twisted her ankle quite badly and then our train coming home stopped in the middle of nowhere for an hour. We aren't exactly sure why we stopped because we didn't understand what was going on, but something about a broken train car on the track and waiting for the police. To top it all off, we found out today that Peter (our program director) got bit by a snake on Friday. Turns out it was a potentially lethal snake and he ended up in the hospital for a night because the venom had started to spread into his chest. He's fine now though. His hand is extremely swollen, but he seems to be acting normal. All in all, the weekend was an adventure but we had such a good time. A little adventure makes everything more fun.


It was a bit of a strange feeling to be on a train so early in the morning, but you do what you need to. Things like this make me wish we had better public transportation at home.


It really wasn't hard to entertain us this weekend. We were mostly just really happy to be in the sunshine and warm.


The views were absolutely incredible and pictures don't do it justice. Every time I looked around I was stunned. I love the combination of hills and ocean. You can't get much better.


We spent a lot of time swimming and being on the beach. Here is my general feeling about the Mediterranean after spending time in a couple of different locations on the coast. I love to look at the water. It is amazingly clear and such a great color. I don't particularly love being in it though. Turns out I don't appreciate being able to see everything (rocks, fish, plants, other strange things) that is under me. I find it hard to relax this way.


We got up pretty early on Saturday so we could spend some time in the cities before we had to go home. It was incredible to see Cinque Terre before most things were open and all the people were out. It was a truly beautiful place.