Acting Up

Famous Italian writer

When you live in Rome, you find it funny when the Italians treat you like a tourist, although I have found this to be sort of a game to me. After a year you learn what’s considered a “tourist spot” an “American Bar” and the strictly “Italian” spots. I don’t have a preference, you would assume I like to do only what Italians do, but that’s not particularly correct. I enjoy drinking a beer at the Drunken Ship, which is the equivalent of Sharkee’s down south. Drunken kids running around being loud brings a small comfort to my soul.

Aloe Blac

There are times I love pretending to be a tourist, like the night of Vogue Fashion Night. Vogue Fashion Night transforms all the main designer stores into Parties. There are DJ’s and free drinks, Celebrities and Concerts all for the pure glory of fashion, and how could I miss a night like that? For some reason I wore jeans and a white tee, now if you know me and know my love for beautiful fashion, this just isn’t me, at any rate the low key style worked in our advantaged as we met the band of Aloe Blac (I need a dollar dollar-that song), and a professional soccer player that in his elder age was stunning.  Tia and I walked by the Louis Vuitton store and saw a line of 200 people trying to get into the shop. There were live models dressed in French Maid costumes posing in the windows and butlers serving tray passed orderves and champagne. Usually, I enjoy this store, but do not have a desire to enter, but tonight it was the challenge that enticed me. We walked straight up to the front of the line and started a conversation in English with the incredible sexy door guard. He was half black half white, 6’3 in stature and of course the perfect body. I looked at Tia and smiled; at that moment I did something that even to recall such an act causes my cheeks to turn a few shades of pink. I looked straight at this beautiful man and said, “Are all men in Italy as good looking as you, because if they are I could live here forever.” Did I really flirt with the door man at Louis Vuitton so we could enter this private party completely underdressed for the occasion? I sure did, and within seconds we were escorted in with a personal photographer who followed us around the stores taking pictures of us as we drank champagne next to my best friends: Speedy 35, Alma MM, Cirrus PM, and all the rest of the fabulous handbags in the store.

The Girls: Charlotte, Miranda, Carry, Samantha

The following weeks I picked up where I had left off last summer…working during the week, meeting the girls for coffee in the park in the mornings and weekends, well the weekends are sleepless, truly sleepless. Remember living with a family puts a pressure on the weekends. For us girls it’s our time to breathe, get out, and travel around Italy. Although most of the time we spend our weekends at our favorite places in Rome.

There was a famous Dj named Afrojack coming to Rome.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9_QOnADShU&feature=related). I want to say I knew who he was before, but to be honest if it wasn’t for my sister updating my itunes once a year, I would still be listening to Maria Carry. Thanks to a few great friends we had free tickets and our own vip table for the concert. My 3 girl friends and I couldn’t wait to go. The concert was unlike anything I have been to before, maybe concerts have changed, instead it was like a club, but with the best DJ I have ever heard. My dearest friend is from Holland (Afrojack lives in Holland) and so for her a picture with him would be amazing. By the last song she asked me if I would go up to the DJ both and ask if we could snap a quick photo. Our table was close so we walked right up towards the booth. Surrounding the Dj was a few body guards dressed in black suits and ties, I started to chat with one in Italian, puzzled he stared back at me and stuttered, uh do u speak English? I laughed and started to explain how my girlfriend is from Holland and would love just to snap a quick photo with him. He looked at me and said, “I can do better, come with me”. So leaving our friends behind, we were ushered through a back door and into a tiny makeshift hidden room outside the concert hall. Within minutes Afrojack  himself came running through the door, panting and dripping with sweat. Our mouths dropped open, for I had no idea what was happening. I guess my loud mouth pays off, for we spent the next few hours chilling with Nick, one of the most respectable men in today’s music world.

Afrojack

Forgetting that we just ditched our girl friends for hours, they were calling upset, and right fully so because not once did it occur to Nat and I to call them.  Afrojack picked up the phone as Tia called, and on the other end Tia had no idea who she was talking to, and being as pissed off as she was, the conversation went as you could imagine…Can I please just speak to Nicole, I’m already Pissed…. I love to tease her about this ;) Not only was this an amazing night, we were the only girls in all of Rome to meet him, but this night also marks the bond of  4 friendships that grew and will continue to grow for the next year as we simple share our lives in a city, stepping forward into the world with confidence and true contentment that we are exactly where we are suppose to be…

In time..

Starting my third month in Rome, I have to ask where does the time go? Last I knew I was on a plane dreaming of my new life in Italy, leaving everything and everyone I loved behind to embark on a life changing adventure, to breath free of the known, and embrace the unknown…and that was a year and three months ago.

I wish I could stop time, I don’t want to grow another year older, or miss another moment at home, but to experience a life in this world is unlike anything else I have ever known. For instance, everything is a bit scary, every action I make is uneasy, things are new, you feel things deeply and differently, you do things you would never do, you make friends with people you would never encounter otherwise, you experience life in a whole new manner, thus inevitably changing who you are…

This to me is Rome.

It’s an adventure with ups and downs, gives and takes, building life-long friendships, or feeling heartbreak: it’s actually truly living my life.

At times I feel guilty, I genuinely do. Here I am at 27 years-old (yes it’s old) spending my mornings with my girl friends drinking tea and eating cake, taking walks down one of the world best shopping streets, and enjoying four hour lunches that turn into dinners, while drinking bottles of red wine. I have this gift right now, I have the gift of true freedom, at the drop of a hat I can leave for the weekend to Milan, or meet a friend in Venice. When I think of what my life was before, working 80 hours a week, (which kept me out of trouble), but what was life? I was away from my family living in Orange County alone anyways. Working to pay rent, to buy more things, to somehow make it in this rat race of life…Italy is different. Italy is about life, passion; you work to live, not live to work. You have a coffee, and smell the coffee, and add sugar to the coffee, a touch of milk and then you drink your coffee there in that moment, you savor the flavor you feel the hot thick crema in the back of your throat, you truly enjoy and know the pleasure of that coffee. As American’s what do we do with our coffee? We take it to go. We grab it and go, we have places to be and work that must be done and we drink our coffee because we need our coffee.

And here lays the difference in life itself, are we made to take our coffee, or drink a coffee?

For now I’ll drink my coffee and savor every sip because it might just be the last time I will ever be able to drink a coffee in this way…

(the rest of the story...)

So there Tia and I were in Padova at 2:00am, looking for something to do, to our luck our new friends had found a little club called the ‘Q’, and off we went to dance the night away. After a few hours the men from the dirty south of Italy turned a bit too dirty, Tia and I had become a bit worried and quickly encountered ‘new friends’. The club closed at 4:00am leaving us 2 ½ hours before our train to Feltre left. We went sight seeing with our new friends all over Padova, seeing every Piazza and fountain in the city in the middle of the night. Making it back to the station in time for our train and blowing kisses to our new friends, we were off to see the world championship of bocce ball!

Snow White's Village

Feltre

Feltre is a storybook town with small stone streets and petite Snow White cottages lining the streets with wooden shutters, window flowers and potted plants. In the distance lies the world renowned Alps, with their snowcapped jagged edges and deep crevasses, the town felt like a dream. When Tia and I reached the hotel we were greeted by players from all over the world, all professional bocce players. I have to laugh; to me bocce ball is Sunday afternoons with my Nonno, playing outside their ranch in Ramona, California. Who would have thought this game could be taken so seriously? At any rate it was, and we got to experience it first hand; The World National Bocce Tournament in Feltre.