m o n 02.28.05 | afternoon
this last day of february

i have shy asian girl syndrome. i've tried to get over this and have made great progress but still it haunts me. i was called on today: half idiot, half brilliant. i raise my hand except for grand lectures of more than 100 people, those i still cannot do. word vomit is inevitable.

february, the shortest month, has ended. i am one month closer to summer and the pope is one month older. i'm obsessed with popewatch. i love that old man. i walk by his big house and his tiny country every day and i hear people praying for him.

i bet if you ask any asian girl if they took piano lessons when they were little, 90% will say yes. i always wanted to take guitar and drum lessons secretly. my dad wanted me to too.

i'll be 21 next month. i'm pretty sure i'll be spending the night of my 21st alone so send me good vibes, please.

rome is cold and lonely. in celsius, the temperature here is half of what it is at home. but i do like the crackly sound of snow underneath my feet.

02.23.05 | m i d n i g h t
when we kiss they're perfectly aligned

i feel as if i've completely settled. people told me that the novelty will wear and that the things i once walked past and found extraordinary will soon fade to mundane. and i don't find that a bad thing.

although at times i have doubts, my choice to come here, in the end, will be a good one.

it's tourist season already. i walk past st. peter's square every day and i have to file past hundreds of oncoming faces.

it's often raining and windy here. i still feel mostly alone. and that isn't necessarily a bad thing either. i think i am changing and i hope that it is for the better.

there is nothing more terrifying that i've gone through on this trip than being completely alone and lost on a dark night in a foreign city rome or others and somehow i always manage to make it okay. i always find my way to a warm, safe place.

i can't wait for this month to pass. a month from today i'll be one year older. the present is a present.

true it may seem like a stretch but it's thoughts like this that catch my troubled head when you're away i am missing you to death

s u n 02.20.05 | 6:41 am
bang bang, my baby shot me down

i never thought i would think of rome as my home but after travelling and using a shammy as a towel, sleeping in dodgy shiite hostels with 15 other beds in the room, sleeping in airports, wearing dirty clothes, not showering, and stretching thirty pound for three days... i am so happy to be here. i wanted to kiss the ground. this flat the size of your living room is the ritz.

i am in love with london. if i ever studied abroad again... unlikely... but if i did, i would pick london for sure. and i'd take ro bear with me so we could speak english and eat fish and chips and hang out with the beatles.

in camden town you can buy fresh (no, not dried) shrooms on the street. 10 pounds for 10g... 40g... something like that.

i had a very interesting 10 days on the go but i'm very glad to be home again. in a month i'll be 21 and some yees and a bear are coming to visit me. i'm very excited for that. that will be the best birthday present for me.

i'm completely exhausted from travelling. i don't know how i'll do this for a month straight come may. i love all of london especially teera and the ashburn garden kids. i love dublin pubs and the guinness brewery. glasgow is kind of boring but edinburgh castle is nice. and thank god these places serve things other than pasta and pizza and paninos.

i'm home in rome. i can't wait for this next month to pass.

s u n 05.27.02 | 6 p m
london calling

i heart london. i heart teera.

i wish i could explain things better but i really needed this and i really needed to come here. i wish i could just stay for a while longer.

i need more pieces of home. this is amazing and i am trying to stay in the moment but i know that when i get home i will be so grateful to just be there and to have things be normal again.

everything is new again. i can make it a little longer now until june. the other day i really just wanted to hop on a plane and come home but i feel much better now.

i went to abbey road yesterday. it was amazing. it made me think of my dad and ro bear. mawrmawrmawr.

t h u r s 02.10.05 | 1:22 pm
still you don't regret a single day

i feel completely foreign here. as soon as i leave my room, people stare at me. i don't mind being alone all the time. sometimes it's better to be alone, as soon as people hear you speaking english or hear your poor italian, you're drawing the wrong kind of attention to yourself.

i don't really like being alone at night and completely lost. i tried to take a shortcut home but ended up at a train station i didn't recognize. i tried to take the metro home from there. i ended up on foot. i usually walk towards the dome of st. peter's. you can see it from almost anywhere.

if i can find the tiber i can usually get home too. i walked by st. peter's and i wanted to sit down and listen to music and draw but the square was empty. it was all blocked off and there were news cameras, carabinieri, and crowds of people. i guess the pope was coming home.

i don't want the pope to die while i'm here. i really don't.

i don't know why i thought it would be easy. i don't know how i could complain about getting this opportunity either but i just really wish i could go home right now for even a day.

i don't want to read or study or sleep or eat or pack and with this apathy, you wouldn't be able to tell i'm leaving for vacation tomorrow. i hope i will find teera. i'm arriving in london around midnight and we have no way of contacting each other in case things go wrong.

i don't think the people in this program particularly dislike me for any reason but i think it's more this strange tendency i have to believe that people dislike me even when they don't... or so i've been told.

all these big cities full of people and i'm still so completely alone. not much has changed since i left except i have nothing to comfort myself with here.

t u e s 02.08.05 | 4:17 am
i've a drowning grip on your adoring face

i seldom remembered my dreams at home. i'm sure they were there but i didn't miss them. but every night here they are so vivid. i wake up alone in a foreign city and they just hang on my breath as if their only purpose was somewhat cruel in intent.

everything is so different. better or worse depending on my attitude.

i don't know what i expected it would be like before coming on this trip or if i even anticipated anything at all. i'm not unhappy here and i'm not complete either. i feel torn between something i want to experience and things i left back home.

my birthday is approaching in a few weeks, not too close, and not that far away either. the excitement is somewhat diminished because i cannot spend my 21st with people i've known for more than a month.

other than that, everything is fine. i'm going to london, dublin, and glasgow for 10 days next week. pub crawls, mind the gap, castles, great british pounds, leprechauns, faux-hawks, everything.

l e s s | m o r e