I do! ...it stands for New England Confectionery COmpany. True story. This information brought to you by the box of Sweethearts Gilli just gave me. Thank you, Gilli. [by the way, who the hell makes yellow-colored things banana flavored? Everyone knows yellow should mean lemon. God.]

No, your internet isn't malfunctioning. The last post was taken down due to complaints about inappropriate content from certain irritating readers [why, hello Dad! love you!], and because when I reread it I decided I could do better. I hope I haven't been abandoned because of my erratic posting.

Let's see, what haven't I told you about yet? Oh, how about my weekend? Excellent. So, I believe I've probably said this enough times to be annoying, but I really haven't been drinking or partying or going out here at all, much to everyone's dismay. They know a party isn't a party until there's a Kunin there. What can I say?

OK, backstory time: about a month ago, Gilli had a friend coming to visit. The day she got here, the power went out in our building, so long story short she had to haul her luggage up 10 flights of stairs. This guy who lives in our building saw her and helped her carry her stuff, sort of introduced himself to us [he spoke very little English] and then about half an hour later came back up and gave us some candles [it was nighttime]. We were super stoked to meet some Italian guys our age, so a few days later we wrote them a note in Italian and put it under their door, saying hey, nice to meet you, let's hang out sometime. Three weeks later, we still hadn't heard from them so we called it a loss and moved on. Then Thursday night we hear a knock on the door, and it was the first guy we met [his name is Corso] with our note in his hand and an apology on his lips; they had been studying for their exams, which are over now, do you want to go dancing with us tomorrow night? Silly question. Friday midday he came by again to finalize plans: we were to come downstairs to their apartment for dinner before all of us and some of their "American friends" would go out to a club. We were totally stoked.
That night, we spent way too much time getting dressed up and ready before heading down the the lowest floor at 9pm [picture above is us in the elevator]. We were introduced to half a dozen of Corso's friends, and then a little later two American girls [one of whom was the cousin of one of Corso's friends] joined us. For some reason we assumed they were making us dinner, but we were not disappointed when we found out dinner was delivery pizza [yeah, apparently they have that here], especially after all the wine Corso kept pouring us. With some liquid confidence in our systems, we tackled the challenge of conversation. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty damn proud of myself. I have a really hard time stringing sentences together and I know my grammar is shit, but I have a decent vocabulary and I could make myself understood, and I helped Sasha out a couple times, too. We spent a couple hours that way, just eating and drinking and talking, before we decided it was time to go out picture, in the guys' apartment]. We assumed we would be taking the bus, and could not have been more excited when we found out several of the guys had cars and they would be driving us to the discotheque. It was scary as hell, as expected, but we all got to the club, Limelight, in one piece, and one of the guys knew the owner so we got in for free [yay!]. We were kind of disappointed when we first got there because the place was basically empty even though there was a line out in front, so we bought drinks [for 10euro/each - ouch] and talked a little more. Before we knew it, people were pouring in the doors and the music was playing, and by 12.30 or so the place was absolutely packed.
Now this was my first time going clubbing so I had nothing to compare it to, but there were two things that stuck out more than anything else: the overwhelming number of good-looking Italian boys, and the even more overwhelming number of disgusting Italian boys. American girls dance very differently than Italian girls, let's just say that, and so I guess some of the guys just kind of assume we're sluts from that and the way we dress, which is again much less conservative than Italian girls, and apparently that makes it okay to put their fucking hands on top of and underneath certain inappropriate places and articles of clothing. I lost count of how many hands I slapped and how many people I elbowed in the ribs with all my strength. Subtle hints were a waste of time.
Aside from that, it was SO much fun to just cut loose and dance - for me it's been a while. Finally, around 3am I think, Emily, Sasha, and I were disgustingly sweaty and had enough molestation for one night, so exhaustedly, we told the others we were ready to go home. Everyone else wanted to stay, so we just took a cab and passed out around 4.30 [below/left, Emily and I at the club].

Saturday I slept in until midday, and I know I ended up walking around our neighborhood with Heather for about an hour, but other than that, I don't think we did much of anything all day. That night some girls in the closest apartment to us were throwing a surprise birthday party for one of their flatmates - a "champagne and Nutella party," to be specific, which if you ask me is one of the top 10 kinds of parties you can have. Maybe even top five. Right before we all were to take our turns hopping in the shower, we get a buzz on our phone from outside the front door: it was our Italian friends [minus Corso, who had to go out of town for about a week], who came to say hi and invite us to one of the guys' houses for dinner and drinks! We apologized and told them we had plans, and they asked if they could come up. We frantically took every second of their 10-flight elevator ride to tidy our place a bit and clean ourselves up, even though when we let them in we were all still in our PJs and our place was a mess. This was about 6.30pm, by the way, and they definitely made fun of us for being lazy bitches. Gilli asked one of the guys the night before about contemporary Italian music, and he brought us a CD he burned for us, entitled "Italian music for American girls." Admittedly, it was much harder for us all to converse that night sans-alcohol, but we somewhat awkwardly managed for 45 minutes or so before we kicked the boys out because we had to get ready.
We made it to the girls' place on time [see picture, below] and somehow everyone there managed to down three fifths of vodka before the birthday girl even came home. The surprise was a success and the party was SO much fun. I was definitely quite a bit sloshed, but I made some more friends with people in our program, had a great time, and kept it classy. The plan was for us all to go out to a club together after the party, but of course somehow the group got split up. Those of us that were friends with the birthday girl wanted to stay with her [it was her party, after all] so we went to this club called Art Cafe [but it's called Babel on Saturday nights], which is supposedly one of the best clubs in Rome, and reputedly hard to get into. We arrived, and somehow a couple of the girls talked the bouncers into letting our group get in, but then trouble started when they denied our friend Johnny entrance because he had facial piercings. Apparently this is a legitimate reason to refuse someone entrance to a club. We had heard about ArtCafe's dress code, and we were all dressed to the nines, Johnny most definitely included. We fought with and bitched at the bouncers for about half an hour before we just told them to fuck off and went home. Sasha, Emily, and I took the birthday girl back to our apartment, where Emily cooked a delicious 4am meal and we hung out until we passed out, again around 4.30.

After two nights of this, on Sunday I was pretty much done for. All of us were, actually. I didn't wake up until almost 2pm and did little to nothing all day. The weekend was a bit of a waste but it was totally worth it. Some of the people in our program do this 3 nights a week, every week, and I personally don't understand how they aren't dead. I will definitely be taking next weekend off.

Sorry for the lack of more diverse pictures - none of these are actually mine, I stole them from my friends.

Today I gave my poor computer to the IT guy at the Study Center who, with any luck, will have it fixed and back in my hands in about a week. Hooray Sal! And this week will pretty much be spent catching up and trying as hard as possible to get ahead on my schoolwork, because after I return from Spring Break not only does the shit hit the fan as far as essays being due, but I'll have someone visiting me almost every weekend, so I need to be prepared.

Make sure you check out the very bottom of the page for my future travels, in case you haven't seen them already.

Ciao!