Monday, January 31, 2011

I'm moving in tomorrow!

FINALLLLLYYYYYY!!!



In the meantime, I have been observing how people wash their dishes... or let their dog wash their dishes.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

A change of pace


It's time to turn over a new leaf here at onlyonemartha. 

As it may have become obvious, I am not up to speed with my posting these days. It started with me having too much fun in life to be bothered with blogging about it, then moved to me traveling around for a bit with no real chance to sit down to write or upload photos, and then the nail in the coffin of my blogging habit (at least the one I attempted to start this fall) was coming home. Everyday life in west chester/philadelphia is just not nearly as inspiring or exciting as Italy. Well, more that there is a lot less subject matter than before. 

So I am officially home. In limbo, so to speak, of housing/cultures/language/school. I've been commuting to philly for school for the past two weeks, and battling with the snow is not helping one bit! BUT, things are going to get a lot easier soon. Thanks to the miracles of craigslist I found a place to live. An adorable studio in center city. I should be moving in within a week. Hopefully this will mean I can stop spending all my time thinking about how I am going to decorate the place and actually be about to concentrate on things... Needless to say, I am looking forward to this. I am super into the minimalist living right now. I don't want to deal with so much STUFF. It's just suffocating to me right now. Just well made and well considered essentials thankyouverymuch. 

Being back in PHL means martha is going to go in a new direction. No more blogging about Italy. (well... more about that later). I am switching gears. I don't want to abandon this project altogether, I got myself into it, found an alias I actually like, have all of what three readers? No stopping now. This means that I will be continuing to post here, HOPEFULLY MORE OFTEN (I say that caps more for myself then anyone else). Onlyonemartha can be a space to share what I am working on in life and school. A place to show off my projects. And you know, as they are going to drill into our head in the next year of school: create an internet presence. Blahblahblah. But (!) when I have a portfolio site up and running, I promise you it will be linked here.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

THE END OF THE SEMESTER AND WHAT I WAS DOING WHILE I WASN'T BLOGGING











I'll admit it: I had a rough start with Florence. I went into the experience with such a different perspective from everyone else around me. For many people this was their first time in Italy, and definitely their first study abroad experience. Every time I explained how and why I knew Italian I felt like I was cheating. I'd done this before, and it was much more difficult. I had this jaded attitude towards study abroad. Been there done that, and at 17 too boot. It took me a little while to get over myself, to put it so brutally. I needed to accept Florence for what it is (Disneyland Tuscany) and get on to enjoying it already!

What I need to realize about Florence was what no one ever told me while I was figuring out my whole year last spring: It's a tourist town. The local 'Italian" culture is just not the same as place more isolated from the crowds. Florence exists for the tourists and the students, and the lifestyle and better part of the city have adapted to that. You go into a shop with blonde hair and they will speak English to you. But right now I am done with the complaining, I've done enough of that. Florence was much different than Lecce, another world of difference. But one thing that both of my study abroad experiences have in common, which ended up taking me by surprise, was the friendships. Granted these are two very different groups of friends, but great friends just the same. As I've written about before, I've got my girls in Lecce, and little did I know it, but I had my girls in Florence too.

It wasn't until the end of the semester that I realized just how blessed I had been in my roommates. I must say that roommate karma paid off. I had a downright nasty experience freshman year of college, add mine to the long list of horror stories of college roommates. But this semester made it all worth it. For six girls to be living in one rather small apartment, considering how many we were, and never have one fight is something just short of a miracle. We ended up getting along so incredibly well, with each person incredibly different with their own contribution to the friendship. I won't wax poetic too much about the beauty of union in difference, but needless to say, I will really miss these girls.