A Hard Day's Night

All right, so we all know how incredibly overdue I am for a new post...

First, Italy: my family just spent eight days there, plus two days of travel time. We stayed in Rome, Siena, Florence, and Venice, and stopped in Viterbo, Orvieto, San Gimignano, Pisa, and Assisi. The smaller towns were pretty, clean, and nice to walk around in, although I enjoyed the color and excitement of Rome and Venice, with street performers, Indian guys shooting bubble guns at people, huge fountains, little kids running around, women in formal dresses zooming around on motorbikes... Besides the heat and the long hours spent on the tour bus, I had a lot of fun.

There were certain bad parts: desperate pantomime to communicate with people in some shops, the crazy Italian drivers (we took a cab once and only once, but to be fair, we saw no accidents), the occasional appearance of what one lady on our tour called "squatty potties," gypsies shaking Coke cups of change at you on the street, and so on. There wasn't really anything horrible, though; most of it was stuff we'd been warned about and could deal with. The most surprising part was the food. It's almost expected that Italian food will be good, but there were pretty much three kinds of places to eat: pizzerias/cafes, gelaterias (ice cream), and overpriced formal restaurants. We had a lot of pizza (which was pretty bland compared to American pizza) and ice cream, which sounds good but got old. We actually ended up seeking out a McDonalds in Florence; I was embarrassed when my dad asked Tourist Information where it was (I was very afraid of seeming like a stupid American tourist, which was inevitable, anyway), but I did enjoy fries and a Coke, and I don't even like McDonalds at home.

If anyone's planning a trip to Italy in the future, I would recommend going on a tour like ours. On the minus side, you're chained to what the guide wants, so we rushed through certain things, like St. Peter's Basilica and the Uffizi Gallery. But without a guide, it might be hard to get into those places at all. And there was a lot of down time to spend wandering around just with my family, so it wasn't like we were constantly with the group. Having the group does mean forty or so other people who speak English, with whom you can talk, compare notes, eat dinner, and so on. You spend so much time with them that it's really like a family by the end. I'm sure my sister and I will add to our inside joke repertoire the Asian lady who got lost twice in the same day, the teenaged kid who had a crush on our thirtysomething guide, the lady with bright pink pants who complained constantly, etc.

I think I've fulfilled at least one of my three "challenges" that Alexandra Benson wrote in my yearbook at the end of the school year. I definitely haven't kissed a boy, and there are a lot of days left to eat lunch or not, but if the whole vacation itself doesn't qualify as an adventure, not to mention getting lost in Venice, almost missing the bus because some Italian guys were arguing about how much the tickets cost, and having to jump a fence to get back to our hotel, then I don't know what does.

We got home late in the afternoon on Saturday and went to bed pretty soon. On Sunday evening, I went to a Pub Quiz fundraiser for the family of Rory Zuba, a student and scholastic bowl player at West who died last February from a brain tumor. My buddies from Nationals, Siva and Michael, were there, and so were some of my friends from the class of '04: Laura, Bandy, Melanie, and Adam. In Pub Quiz, you play on teams of four, each at separate tables. A moderator reads questions in sets of ten, which you write down on sheets of paper and turn in. All the points are totaled up, and the top three teams win prizes. Through all this, everyone's talking and drinking and eating, and it's a lot of fun (they have weekly ones at Bacchus, a bar downtown, that I've been to a couple of times). I played with Tyler Kerr, his mom, and Michael Jiang from West. I had fun talking to Michael; he's a Ben Folds fan, and we were arguing about the meaning of the song "Brick." He says he'll burn me the Garden State soundtrack.

We ended up getting third place; the class of '04 team beat us by one point. Afterwards, Bandy asked me if I wanted to go with them to Culver's for ice cream, since they had won gift certificates. When we got there, though, we discovered that the certificates were for four dinners at a different location. After a lot of standing around and talking and calling different people on cell phones, we decided to go to Melanie's house. Karl and Mike came over, and we watched their senior video, which was very entertaining. I had fun hanging out with those guys again. They seem to me to be the perfect combination of intellectuals and teenagers, arguing over the parallels between a John Donne poem and a John Mayer song, alternating references to classic literature with ones to Eighties music in their video. Bandy started an argument over whether the color marigold is more orange or more yellow. They're just really funny and interesting to be with. I don't think most of them really like me, though, except for Bandy, maybe, who always gets really excited to see me.

This afternoon I'm going to Mueller for my follow-up senior picture appointment (I got them back. They're disappointing, but at least there's one that's decent enough for the yearbook). Now that vacation is over, I have a lot of long days of summer ahead. I checked out a huge stack of books from the library yesterday, though, so I'm good for now.

Love You To

Well, another year of quiz bowl is officially over (until Ms. Greene calls us to remind us to study and write frosh-soph tournament questions over the summer). Nationals went well, I guess, although all of us were pretty mad about Adam being excluded from play when John, at the last minute, told Ms. Greene that he could come on Monday, after all. It wasn't John's fault; he said that he was expecting just to come and watch, since it had already been agreed that Adam would play. Ms. Greene was just being oblivious again. Not that John didn't get a few tossups that day, but we lost anyway, going down to Scripps Ranch in the first round of the playoffs. Overall, though, it was fun.

The tournament provided a new experience for me: being hit on by a guy. All right, so it was pretty creepy, but it was a significant step up from Donald (this guy actually seemed nice, not out to insult me). I am so glad that Patrick wasn't there (Ms. Greene wouldn't let him come because he missed some practices for baseball games, but that's another story). He's already made my life miserable enough since the Donald episode, and Siva and Michael (these two freshmen who came along) were pretty bad alone. They somehow found out about the Phil thing during the weekend, and they took every opportunity to say things like, "Hey, Colleeen, how's Phiiiill?"

Although I'm pretty happy about the tournament's end, life hasn't been exceptionally interesting these past few days. I've just been lying around the house and reading "Calvin and Hobbes," mainly. Yesterday I went to see Star Wars: Episode III with Sonya, which was pretty good. It had minimal fighting in space, which is the worst part of Star Wars movies (random pilots saying things like "Roger, Gold Leader" and "Artoo, check the something-or-other"), and it connected to the original Episode IV: A New Hope (the classic Star Wars), with Anakin Skywalker (played by the gorgeous Hayden Christensen) getting the Darth Vader mask and starting that trademark breathing. Since we just watched that first Star Wars movie in world history, I got really excited about some of the stuff it brought together. I'm still not a big Star Wars fan, though; I don't go crazy over the movies. The dialogue was definitely as bad as everyone said; one of Yoda's lines was, "Not if anything to say about it I have," and Natalie Portman, who I think is a great actress, was wasted by doing a lot of walking around draped in big cloaks (her character was pregnant) and saying things like, "I'm scared" and "Oh, Ani, I wish things could be like they were on Naboo." And I kept thinking about Mrs. Longhenry talking about people who like movies just because of the "special effects," which she cackled while rubbing her hands together in mock glee.

I'm still looking forward to our trip to Italy (two days!), but I'm kind of worried. Not to be a party pooper, but it seems like there's a lot of things to worry about, a lot of discomforts. Like pickpockets, for example, which everyone talks about and warns us about. To some people, maybe, that's part of the fun of being away from home, but I'm pretty attached to my own bed and a hot shower and clean water from the tap whenever I want it. And even though I know there will be a lot of great stuff to see, I realize that I hate vacations when we walk around and look at sights all day. (Gettysburg comes to mind; it's gone down in Powers family history as our worst vacation of all time. Of course, there's also the fact that we got lost and it was raining, but even in perfect weather it would have been the most boring place ever because it's nothing but big fields with grave after grave.) On the other hand, this is ROME, not the stupid Crazy Horse sculpture in South Dakota (they never finished it, so it's basically a big hole in a rock, with a little museum that shows you what it's supposed to look like).

Good Day Sunshine

I love just relaxing and hanging out with friends. I've done it twice now in four days; on Saturday, we all met at Aldeen Park for a picnic, and then today I got Steph and Ellen to come with me to my senior picture sitting, and then we went, along with Laura, to Dairy Queen. It's just nice to be able to hang out with them and talk and laugh at the familiar silliness. I'm really going to miss this closeness after high school. I know I'll make new friends at college (well, I hope so), but there's nothing like having known someone forever and being able to share stories about everything that's happened to you together over the years.

Sometimes I hate myself for not just jumping in and having a good time when I have the chance. But Saturday wasn't one of those times; I'm not mad at myself for not playing Ultimate Frisbee, even though all my friends were. I just don't like running around in the hot sun. Stephanie must be constantly high on endorphins or something, though, because she is just so upbeat. And energetic. Like today, at Dairy Queen, we were discussing possible jobs for Ellen (who has been looking for one for several months, to no avail), and Steph suggested being one of those people at Hilander who puts people's grocery bags in their cars for them. "I love menial work! It's so much fun!" Steph cried. That's like saying, "I just love root canals!" or "Colonoscopies are so much fun!" All right, so I'll admit that sometimes I do like good, clean work, but Steph can be crazily happy about everything.

My senior picture sitting went well, I suppose. I hate to sound braggy, and I know teenage girls are supposed to hate their appearances (or at least they do in books and movies), but I think I looked pretty good, sans glasses. (My parents still won't let me get contacts, and I can see that they are something of a burden, so I just go without my glasses as much as possible when we're not in school. I don't need to read notes off any blackboards anymore, so it's okay.) I felt stupid, though, with everyone watching me. I kept getting confused about what the photographer wanted. She asked me to be serious, and up until that point I actually had been when I wasn't stretching my lips into a smile, but of course when she asked that I burst out laughing. She was really nice about it, though.

Okay, news flash: Donald Taylor, captain of Decatur MacArthur name, has my screen name, and he's been using it. It is the weirdest thing ever to talk to a kid I barely know online, especially one who has made comments to me like, "Oh, you're trying out for Team Illinois? Well, this will be good practice for you." Will did say he was hitting on me that one time at Sterling...creepy. I can't wait to tell Patrick about this, though. Will may have been the one who started the whole thing, but Patrick's the one who took that comment and ran with it, constantly teasing me about Donald and various other guys from other quiz bowl teams.

My summer's been pretty lazy so far, but starting tomorrow my schedule's full through mid-July or so. My mom decided to schedule a visit to the University of Minnesota this week, so tomorrow we're leaving right after my quiz bowl practice; we'll get back late Thursday night and then Friday morning it's off to Nationals in Chicago. At least this stuff keeps me busy, so I'm not lying around the house watching Joan of Arcadia episodes constantly. Actually, today I watched Life As a House, a pretty good movie. Sarah, my friend from newspaper freshman year, always talked about it, and I can see why. Plus, Hayden Christensen (better known as Anakin from the last two Star Wars films) is in it, and he is definitely not hard to look at.

Julia

Summer vacation (all one and a half days of it, so far) is shaping up to be its usual string of staying home and watching movies with my sister, or being taken to the mall when my parents are home. Does that sound like I'm complaining? Because I'm definitely not; I love the feeling of freedom. I guess I'm officially a senior now; I'm basing that off of the fact that the former seniors graduated yesterday, so if they're no longer seniors, that must move the class of '06 up. Speaking of which, our class needs to get a slogan, preferably one better than "'05 keeping it live." What rhymes with "six"? Sticks? Picks? Licks? Twix? Do Twix bars have anything to do with the class of '06? If they can make a connection, the Steering Committee or someone could pass out Twix bars at Baccalaureate or something. I like it...

Anyway, my sister and I went last night to see The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It's based on this book about four girls who share a pair of jeans that magically fit them all, and mail them around to each other during the summer while they're all separated. It was a decent film, but distorted the events of the book considerably. There were about a million girls at the movie that were between twelve and fourteen, plus Anne and Jenna from school (who were delighted to see me there, confessing that they'd thought they were losers, going to see a pretty tweenish movie). I felt a little weird there, too, but I guess I don't care. I know I'm supposed to be reading all kinds of deep, classic books (Herman Hesse and Thomas Pynchon and so on), but it's always nice just to kick back with a book I liked from middle or elementary school, like Walk Two Moons, which I recently reread. The reading level might be a little below me, but that doesn't mean it's not a good story. I still cried, like I cry every time I read that book.

Today, my first full day of vacation (well, technically, I suppose, that would be Tuesday, since Monday is sort of a school day; we have to go get our book deposit refunded to us, but I'm counting today as the first day), my mom took Maureen and I to the mall to buy some summer clothes. The word is that in Italy, you can't wear shorts or sleeveless tops when you go into churches, so we had to buy some skirts. I generally like the mall--not in a teenage-girlish, "oh my god, the mall!" kind of way, but just so I can watch the people and walk around and everything. While my sister and I were sitting down, waiting for our mom to buy some nursing scrubs at Life Uniform, we saw this Indian guy, probably about twenty, who just walked right into a sign. It was about person-height. My sister just burst out laughing, and then I started laughing, too; we couldn't help it. He gave us a weird look and walked away quickly, and then I felt bad for laughing at him. That's probably something I would do, maybe have done before. I'd be embarrassed if some girls were laughing at me.

I know being embarrassed by one's parents is kind of a teenager cliche, but I can't help it with my mom. She talks loudly, sings randomly, tries to persuade me to try on clothes that I think are rather hideous... When we were in Bergner's today, I was checking out a brown skirt, and my sister said it was ugly. My mom agreed that she doesn't like the color brown. Whenever we saw a brown item of clothing, then, my mom would go, "Oh, I think brown is so blah." Finally, I said, "I don't know, I kind of like brown." After that, upon spotting a brown piece of clothing, she would say, "Oh, Coll, here. This is brown." My sister picked up on it and started running across to anything brown, stroking it and excitedly showing it to me. It got to be a joke then, and I had to laugh.

I guess I had better take advantage of these few lazy days before everything gets busy. Today my mom called the University of Minnesota and scheduled me for a visit in the middle of next week, and right after that there's Nationals, and then Italy, and then quiz bowl camp, and then my class at Rock Valley. Before I know it, school will be starting again... No. It's only the first day. I don't want to think about that yet.

Rocky Raccoon

I have just about every song from The White Album stuck in my head, as Mr. Longhenry was playing it today during the world history final. A weird bunch of tunes, but I like them.

Speaking of finals, this particular group of them was one of the best I've had to cope with. Calculus was definitely the hardest; I should have studied harder, or, more precisely, done some practice problems instead of expecting that drilling formulas and theorems into my head was actually going to help. We actually got to use a "cheat sheet" on the test, so I was stuck having the shell method and disc method and formula for integration by parts right in front of me, but not having any idea what to do with them. Anyway, I went and asked Mr. Pozzi how I'd done, and I got eight wrong, which didn't seem so bad. He said I'd be fine with the curve. So I got a C for the semester, definitely not something I'd settle for in, say, English or history, but given the way this past semester has gone, I'm very pleased.

Spanish and newspaper were final-less, and biology surprisingly turned out to be one of the easiest tests I've ever taken. We had to do a virtual dissection of fetal pigs online, with partners; my partner was Aashesh, which was actually pretty fun, because he got all excited and we yelled at each other a lot. After that, Mr. Holstein basically told us what we needed to know for the test, and then we took it; I think I finished mine in under two minutes. English was actually pretty hard; we had to read a short story and analyze it in a standard essay. It just took me forever to get through the story and write the essay, and I'm still not sure I did it right. I guess I'll just have to see what happens. History was by far the best final I've ever taken. We made a huge timeline of, basically, all of history, each of us taking a section. I had the twentieth century, which was fun. It took me forever to cut out tons of little pictures and paste them on, so I stayed after and got a ride home with Jenny. She always makes me feel like a little kid, not in a cold, condescending way, but in a kind of "awww, little Colleen" way. She's nice, though; I'm glad I rode with her and not the Longhenrys, as Mr. L. offered.

So...SCHOOL'S OUT! This morning, my dad was singing that Alice Cooper song: "School's out for summer..." It really is done with. (That sounds grammatically horrible, but I don't care.) I keep having to remind myself that I don't have to study for calculus or work on English notes or do anything. The whole summer stretches out in front of me. I have a week of idleness before quiz bowl Nationals, and then pretty much right after that there's Italy. That makes me feel happy.

I always look forward to summers so I can catch up on all the books I need to read and movies I need to watch and projects I need to complete. Somehow, though, that never seems to work out. My mom used to have a sweatshirt that said, "So many books, so little time..."