The train races on...

Yesterday on the train to my internship in the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town, a kind of scary looking crazy-seeming older woman turned to me and said "life moves so fast, doesn't it?" I said yes it does and turned my head to look out the window to see the city racing past me outside.

...

Can't believe I've already been in Cape Town over a month! Feels like I just got here, but yet I'm settled in and living life. I've got my routine again. Funny how easy "settling in" gets. I've done it so many times that I feel like a an old pro. Perhaps I should write a book on it? "How to move a million times all around the world and somehow manage to make it work..." or something along those lines. I must blog more, but I'm so busy reading, writing, and holing myself up in the library here at the University of Cape Town that I just haven't found the time to properly put my words on here. I wrote a piece on "entitlement" (a popular concept and topic of discussion here in South Africa...) but not sure if I'll post.

Hoping to have a chance to blog soon. Stay tuned. A photo of the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens on a sunny winter day to tide you over some more...

10[ish] days of summer...

So before embarking upon the blogging journey of my time in South Africa, I wanted to give a brief recount of my summer. Exams for first semester were officially over July 8, but honestly my summer started before that. One of my best friends, who is living in Florence and who I’ve had the good fortune of being able to see quite a lot over the past few months, came to see me the weekend before exams so that we could enjoy my last weekend in Bologna together and partake in the beginning of the infamous July sales. So I spent my last weekend in Bologna with a dear friend enjoying my dear city, eating lots of Bolognese cuisine, and not actually buying much of anything since I lack funds, but still loving life. Then during exam week, I managed to hop over to Parma and Modena for the day to enjoy my region of Emilia Romagna a bit (and do a little bit of shopping outside the city…). In Parma we saw some strikingly beautiful churches, the kind that make your heart drop and your soul ache for something more. Then instead of staying and melting away in the humid hell that is summer weather in Bologna, two friends and I escaped to Ancona to enjoy a little 2-day seaside vacation. We went to the Riviera del Conero and swam in turquoise sea and ate an awesome dinner of seafood pasta and friend sea creatures and wandered around the old port city scattered with Roman ruins and even observed (but did not partake in…) some drunken chaos in an aptly named Piazza del Papa (the Pope’s Piazza). After a final whirlwind day in Bologna, during which I was sick with a nasty cold and felt like dying in the humidity as I packed up my Italian life for good, I hopped on a 6 hour Intercity train bound for Frosinone to spend my final days in Italy with my dear dear crazy friend Carlotta whom I may not see again for a long while. After a few lovely days enjoying the mozzarella di Bufala of the region (if you have never tried this amazing version of Mozzarella, you really must because it is to die for…) and taking in some sun and sea on the Lazio coastline, I boarded a Turkish Airlines flight in Rome bound for Istanbul. Now Istanbul in the summer is just about my favorite thing ever, so to only have 3 days to spend enjoying it was kind of painful, but I made the most of it. I only saw one friend, but my family friends were in town and we enjoyed the Bosphorus, the mall, and a nice long day out on a boat at the Prince’s Islands just off the coast in the Marmara Sea. I may have only had 10 days of summer, but I must have spent at least half of that swimming in the sea. And then, at 7pm on the evening of July 19, a “tan” Giovanna boarded a final plane on her way to South Africa. And thus a new adventure began…

Life is a Broken Heart

And so she felt as if she belonged everywhere and nowhere, all at once. So she felt like her heart existed broken so that it may leave pieces of itself in all the places she had loved so dearly. In a piazza in Bologna next to an obscene fountain, on a strait next to a bridge in Istanbul, on a beach in sunny San Diego, there were jet-lagged jagged-edged parts of her heart hidden in the crevices, waiting in the cracks to be picked up again. She learned then that hearts don’t just break for love lost; a heart will break just as harshly, if not more so, for love gained.

Sorry I haven't been blogging. It's been a hectic month of moving and enjoying life and now I lack internet. Will update you all soon.

Much love,

Gio

I heart Roma

Last week I had to go to Rome for the day to visit the South African consulate to inquire about my student visa for study in Cape Town next semester. Now the process of getting that visa [or not getting the visa as it turns out to be] is not something I want to go into here [due to the sheer ridiculousness of that situation], but I did want to talk a bit about my obsession with one of the most beautiful cities in the world: ROMA.

Now those of you who know me well know that I'm not one of those girls that just falls in love easily. But this only holds true for people. Places, on the other hand, have the power to sweep me off my feet. Cities steal my heart in a second. I find myself dreaming about places I love like a 13 year old girl dreams about her middle school crush. And Rome, OH ROME, how I swoon for Rome!

Just as Istanbul is the culmination of Turkey, Los Angeles is California and Cusco is Peru, ROME is Italy. Rome is the Italian stereotypes; the beautiful, the dirty, the men on the streets whispering "ciao bella" as you walk by, the smiling square-sliced-pizza vendors, the friendly directionally-challenged police men, Roman ruins at every turn...Rome is Italy and I love it. Whereas other tourist spots in Italy such as Florence and Venice are overrun with tourists, especially the particularly loud American tourists, tramping on the culture and stealing tastes of the "bella vita" in disgusting mouthfuls of bad pasta, Rome is surprising REAL. I mean of course the Vatican has hoards of tourists pushing their way through the giant cathedral doors and the forum is crawling with gawking foreigners, but wander down streets, even streets in the dead center of the old city, and there are Italians everywhere living their lives. Winding down side streets and sitting in piazzas, you can feel as though you're truly in Italy and truly in the former capital of the Romans, a population that dominated Europe for a thousand years.

This trip, I decided to go to a museum that somehow I had missed during my time in the city: I Musei Capitolini. It is a museum all about the Roman empire, especially its' elite and its' emperors. I'm usually not very interested in Roman statues, but these were definitely the best

Roman statues that exist. There were

giant heads of Constantine that used to sit on bodies and thrones in the old city, a giant horse mounted by Marcus Aurelias, and the official busts of all the emperors. I walked among these faces of old Rome seeing in their facial features images of modern Italians, big noses and curly hair. Beautiful greek statues that adorned rich gardens of senators and tombs of people that lived 2000 years ago. To top it off, the museum has a fantastic view of the forum spread out in front of the hill just as it was all those generations

ago, minus a few pillars and roofs here and there.

One thing that struck me this trip to Rome as I was looking around at all the tourists taking pictures and enjoying the sights, was my complete bafflement on how these people are probably in Rome for the only time in their lives. So many of these people come to Rome for a day or 2 or maybe 3, see the sights, and then leave, never to come back again. I can't do that. Every time I come to Rome, it just makes me want to come back again and again. It's like a drink of the most delicious nectar that I find myself craving more and more of. The idea of never being able to come back to Roma makes me sick. The city gives me this feeling of comfort and wonder at the same time. Despite my troubles at the consulate in the morning, the day in Rome made me feel so good, so refreshed. These past few months back in Italy have made me a little dissillusioned about life here, with lots of frustrations and a general homesickness for my fully-functioning California, but with one day in Rome was enough to reignite that flame of love in my heart and make me dread that day in 2 weeks that I leave Italy, most likely never to live here again.

So here I pledge my undying love for the eternal city, and I promise you, Roma, that I will return to visit you again.