october!

As of yesterday, I have been here for a month. Hard to believe right? Yeah. It is.
So here are some things I have learned so far / still surprise me

1. You cannot get a coffee bigger than 8 oz. I'm into the glugger coffees at home. Or I have like 3 cups if I make it myself. Here, you cannot order one that is bigger than a cup and coffee pots in people's houses do not exist. Hence why I am drinking instant coffee as we speak. yuck. A girls gotta do what a girls gotta do.

2. Women do not run around here. Especially girls my age. Whenever I go running I either don't see anyone or see a couple men. On the rare occasion that I see a girl I have to refrain from smiling at them like an idiot.

3. The men here are strangely obsessed with American girls. It still shocks me. They literally hang out their windows and yell "Ciao bionda!" (Hey blondie!), stop you in the street to ask you to go to a cafe with them (um no), a man in Spain got down on his knees and sang to me in Spanish (that was an interesting experience), and my favorite was when we finished our run to Assisi on Friday and this guy told us we looked beautiful (wait. are you blind? we just ran 14 miles and God knows I look disgusting). I'm not quite sure what they are seeing here...

4. I now know why our street is called Via del Cane (dog street). Because literally, at all hours of the day there will be a dog barking from one of our neighbors houses. Usually the one next door. TAKE THE DOG FOR A WALK. It actually drives me crazy. I've had more than one stare down with the thing from my window. It always wins.

5. My sister is actually going crazy without me being home. Yesterday on skype she shared her talent of being able to lick her elbow. Which apparently is supposed to be impossible to do. (Sorry kit, just sharing your talents with the world! you go girl) We are not related.

6. I still like to wait until the last minute to leave my apartment to go anywhere. Right now would be a perfect example. So now I'm going to have to do the speed walk to school. People don't speed walk here. As a result, I get weird looks on a continual basis. Their thought process is probably this "God that blonde American girl needs to relax and slow down." Then they'll say something to me in Italian and I just look back at them like a deer in headlights because 7 times out of 10 I have no idea what people are saying to me here.

okay. gotta go. HAPPY OCTOBER!