Red plus green = brown handed

Here's  a little art lesson.  When you mix red paint with green paint you get brown paint (a very nice brown I might add, but brown none the less).  This was manifest in real life this weekend when I was working on the mural at my church.  Nobody get too excited, it's Noah's ark. . . for the nursery. . . nothing extraordinary by any means.  So I was getting ready to paint and was trying to transport 7 quarts of paint from the counter in one room to the floor in the nursery in my arms.  I had already put down my drop cloth, but as I was kneeling to put down the cans, they all decided to dive out of my arms onto the floor.  No problem, right?  The paint cans are well sealed. . . no, no they were not because the last time I painted the only thing I could find to pound the cans shut was a power strip, which is not quite as good as a hammer.  So as the paints fall out of my arms I have a premonition in the second that the paint is going to spill and sure enough, the red paint hits the ground and flies open, vomitting its contents all over the carpet.  I grab up the can as fast as possible to keep the other half of the paint from joining itself on the floor.  Then I use a plastic lid to scrape the loose paint off os the groud and back into the can.  Then I call my dad.  At this point I am very mad at myself.  You see, I have done 3 murals at Downtown in Searcy and not once did I ever spill paint on the floor.  And then I come to my home church and the 1st 2 days of painting I get paint on the carpet (Note: the 1st day I painted some of the blue leaked through the drop cloth into the carpet, so the red wasn't the first time).  Dad was nice and told me to get as much of the paint up as I could and then to keep it wet til he got there (3 hours later).  So I wasted about an hour and a half of painting time trying to get that up.  Then I started painting the grass of the mural with a paint dad gave me.  Well, it looked different and was acting a little different, but I didn't think anything of it until I went to clean my brushes and it would not come out of the brushes.  Yes, it was in fact oil based paint.  In the process of trying to clean the brushes I got green paint all over my hands, which mingled nicely with the red already on my hands. . . brown hands.  I ended up using an industrial scrub brush to take off all the skin, and therefore all the paint off of my hands.  Ok, so I still have skin, but it removed a layer or two.  That's my painting story.  Exciting, eh?

I left Italy two months ago yesterday.  Amo Italia.

Ciao, amici.  Well, I've been home for about 3 weeks now and the reason you haven't really heard from me is that there really hasn't been anything to tell.  I am home.  I've been doing pretty much whatever there is to do.  One of my favorite new things is mowing the lawn, which I told my dad I was willing to do because I have no job til camp and so I might as well.  One interesting thing about this is that when I tell people I just started mowing the lawn I get one of 2 reactions.

Girls: I can't believe you're mowing the lawn, thats great!

Guys: I can't believe you've never mowed a lawn before, that's crazy!

Interesting statement about subconsciously perceived male and female roles in society.  Anyway, so this weekend I'm going to the Endwell youth rally. . . as a chaperone.  Weird, eh?  I can't believe I'm 20!  So then Sunday Mom, Mema, Papa and I are driving to Fort Worth, TX for my cousin, Harrison's graduation.  Please keep us in your prayers for safety and sanity as we drive and spend lots of family time together. 

I'd like to leave you with a picture of me and Catelyn acting out Peter Pan while we were in London ("You can fly, you can fly, you can fly. . . ")

Well, if you hadn't heard, I'm HOME!  I actually got home almost a week ago and I'm sorry I haven't posted sooner but I've been tired and going to bed sort of early since my body gets me up early because it thinks its the middle of the day.  We're getting on the right schedule, though, slowly but surely.  Final free travel was AMAZING!  I'll give you some of the highlights:

1. Berlin walking tour.   Our guide was from New England, but he did a great job giving us a picture of the history and current transition of Berlin.  I stood above the bunker where Hitler commit suicide.  For real.

2. PARIS!!!!!!!!  I went to 3 museums in the 4 days I was there.  Musee D'orsay housed all the the impressionist work and it was sooooooo amazing!  I was freaking out each time we turned a corner.  Monet's waterlillies, bridges, haystacks, cathedrals, tower of London, Renior's boating party, Manet's painting with the naked woman sitting in the forest with the well dressed men, Van Gogh's self portraits, bedroom, sunflowers, Degas' dancers and horsemen. . . I was beside myself.   Then the next day I went to the Louvre by myself. . . I wanted to see everything!  And I did.  It took me about 11 hours.  I sketched and learned and looked and it was wonderful!  The following day I went to Musee Rodin.  Rodin is a sculptor and it did The Thinker.  His sculptures are honest and emotive and powerful, they say so much.  It was a happy time in Paris.

3.  We spent a day riding bikes around Killarney national park in western Ireland.  It was so so beautiful with the green everything.  One of my favorite parts was when we napped in a pasture for a little while.  Every night we went out to hear live Irish music.  Good times.

4.  In London I saw 2 shows.  1st was Les Mis!  Man, it was absolutely fantastic!  I can't imagine it being any better than it was.  The second night I saw Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  Its a play I read last summer and it really intrigued me and when I saw who the cast was I knew I had to see it.  Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin are incredible! 

Well, thats the skinny on my final hurrah in Europe.  Now I'm back in NY and it is good to be home.  I do miss Italy. 

This is me in Capri overlooking all of the island.

Someone please tell me why I am leaving Italy.  Here are the reasons I should not leave Italy:

1.  The men love me here.  Its nice to be appreciated.  Ok, so cat calls aren't exactly appreciation, but. . .

2. Art is EVERYWHERE here.  All these famous works of art to study and see!  Its amazing!

3. The hills and trees. . . do you think I can grow cyprus trees in NY?

4. Gelato.  Word on the street is that it is better for you than American ice cream.  I don't really care either way, it just tastes sooo good!

5. I walk everywhere so I've lost weight even though I live on pasta and gelato. 

Those seem like pretty solid reasons to me.  But to be fair I will now give the reasons why I should come home:

1. I miss my family.  I kept saying while I was over here that I would so move over here if my family could transplant here too.

2. I miss everyone else I knew before January.  I didn't realize how important my friends were until I could only email them.  Email is so not a replacement for seeing people or even phone calls.

3. I am fluent in English.  I will not have to struggle to plan out the phrase, "I would like to buy some gum." Actually I did not ever have to say this, I had to play charades when I wanted to buy travel gum.  Picture me pretending to chew and trying to pantomime upset stomach and a curvy road.  Come to find out all I had to say was "trah-vehl goom" (travel gum).

4. Having access to a vehicle will be nice.  I don't have to wait for bus 16 to decide to stop by.  Also, I will get to go directly to whatever place I would like.  What a novel idea!

5. Oh, and camp.

So there you have it.  I am, in fact, coming home.  Please pray for our trip.  Its sort of a random group of people.  Hopefully we will like each other.  I am thankful for this opportunity.  I love you all!

I'm sorry its been so long, friends.  Life is so crazy/busy/fun here.  Since I last wrote you I have spent a week galavanting around southern Italy and a weekend hiking and swimming in Cinque Terre.  Oh.  And I saw the religious center in Pisa. . . you know, where that leaning tower is.  I guess I didn't know until this week that aforementioned famous tower is the bell tower for the cathedral in Pisa.  If you did know this I applaude you jealously, but not too jealously because you probably haven't been there, and I have so that makes me cooler. ;)

Southern Italy was just too fantastic!  I have now swam (swum? swimmed?) in the Mediterranean Sea (or the seas connected to the Med. sea) four times despite the biting cold water.  It amazes me how beautiful the sea is.  My favorite swimming site was Isola Bella in Sicily. . . deep blue water, somehow oddly like a vast rippling gemstone, though I don't know which one.  I also loved the island of Capri and the city of Sorrento.  Such gorgeous places!  Those of you who are lovers of history should definitely do your best to get to Pompeii in the near future because we were informed that Vesuvius is due for another catastrophic explosion, so the nice archeological site may not be incredibly visible for long.  And you yourself may want to avoid becoming the decayed remains I looked at of people caught in the first explosion 2000 years ago (wow, that was sick! Perhaps I should not be so morbid). 

Cinque Terre was great!  There is a trail between each of the five cities (cinque=five, terre=land) and the view is gorgeous, plus the exercise makes it possible for you to eat more of the fantastic fresh seafood!  I had salmon pasta and fried calimari and shrimp!  I even got to pull the heads off the shrimp!  It reminded me oddly of bio class. . .

I have less than a week left at the villa which makes me want to cry for about the next 3 years, but I think I will probably only cry for 2 months and then I will have to be a counselor and be the composed one.  I will leave you with these pictures:

This is Grotto Azzurra in Capri!

This is me overlooking Capri.