My Semester Abroad

Homework most of the day, then met Chloe, Karen and Momma, who's visiting from California, at a gay hotel for drinks. Chloe and I then departed for my favorite bar, Buller, a micro-brewery. Then we met up with two friends from the program at someone's apartment, where we heard the perfect "Spanglish" song and then we went looking for somewhere to go out, and at 5 a.m., after not finding anything to do, Chloe and I went home. Quote of the day: "Look what I just did for my country!"

Yesterday we took a two-hour train ride to Naples. Want some advice? Don't go to Naples! There's nothing to do and the city is pretty dirty. We did manage to find the Naopli Sistema Museo and see the famous mosaic of Alexander the Great, as well as the "secret room" that you have to be over 14 to enter. I can't really go into detail on a family Web site, but the artwork really showed the libido of the ancient Greeks. In lurid detail.

At night Rome switches on beaming lights that illuminate its monuments. The Forum, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the fountains...mix pale moonlight with yellow spotlights aimed at the sky and 2,000-year-old stones and marble, add in some flashy bar signs and you've got Rome after dark.

Tom and I explored the city today, walking to churches and memorials, temples and statues in the middle of busy traffic circles. Gelato is our new favorite thing: it's soooo cool and creamy and wonderful. Lighter than ice cream, and each mouthful a refreshing reminder what how strawberries and chocolate should really taste when crystallized.

We took a siesta on this little isola (island) in the middle of the Tiber river and basked in the sun while reading our books. I turned rather pink, but that's the curse of being a redhead.

My friend Sarah, a 2003 alumna of Sammamish's Eastlake High School, joined us later that evening. Sarah's studying in Edinburgh this semester and dealing with a fractured foot and removable cast we all fondly call The Boot. She's stomped around Europe, flip-flop on one foot and Boot on the other.

TOM GEGGEL / SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE TIMES

Fontana di Trevi in Rome, Italy, March 28, 2006. If you throw two coins in it means you'll return to Rome, three coins promises a new love in your life.

We went to dinner via the guide called, "Well, it smells good, so why not?" and soon ourselves enjoying ravioli and thin-crust pizza. Tom tried ordering little fried donuts because they sounded really good, but the waitress shook her head and brought him a meat platter instead. That went rather well with the three hulking meatballs he had already ordered. Sarah, the vegetarian, laughed so hard when he tried to get us to help him eat all that meat.

But the man sitting next to us at the restaurant didn't find it so funny. He suddenly turned to us and shouted, "In all my life, never have I heard such a loud conversation! Do you think you are the only ones in the restaurant?" His glare was enough to stifle our conversation. Gulp.

"Can you please move over so my brother can get on the tube?" I asked the little man smashed into me and my enormous backpack. My shoulders were killing me, but I didn't have any room to take it off or shift my shoulder bag to the floor. It was hopeless. The Piccadilly line, which goes to Heathrow, was jammed and there was no way Tom could fit on the train.

A few minutes later, I looked around the tube and saw him leaning against the sliding door behind several travelers. Somehow he managed to get on, and we made our delayed flight and even enjoyed the Pink Panther cartoons on the Alitalia jet.

By the time we got to Rome, close to 1 a.m., the trains and the buses had stopped running. Some men offered us a ride after Tom bartered them down a couple Euro. We were speaking Spanish, which is close enough to Italian so they could sort of understand us.

"Senor, senor, su coche no es blanco" ("Sir, sir, your car is not white"), Tom said, a bit unnerved when one led us to an ordinary car in the dark parking lot, away from the well lit terminal. Taxis in Rome are white, much like the yellow cabs in the States and the black cabs in England. His cab was clearly unlicensed, and we were alone with him in a foreign country. Where we knew no one. And did not speak the language. Go us.

"I don't speak English!" he snapped at Tom, and stormed away, pushing Tom's bag to the ground.

We asked around and finally made it to the hostel over an hour later.

Tom and I went on a walking tour of Shakespeare and Dickens' London in the rain. We learned the origins of all sorts of English sayings, including "the rule of thumb" meant you couldn't beat your wife with a stick thicker than your thumb. "A frog in your throat" is quite literal. If you had a sore throat (and poor you if you did!) a doctor would shove a frog down your throat. The frog, once in your mouth, would freak out and secrete some chemical that had antibacterial qualities that helped sore throats or something, though I'm not really clear on that, because sore throats are usually from viral infections, which antibiotics can't help. Hmm.

My brother Tom came today! He graduated from Mercer Island High School in 2000. I kept the poor guy up for close to 40 hours, but at least now he's on British time.

I met him at the airport at 8 a.m. and, after dropping off his bags at my dorm, we headed off to the Tate Britain (and saw John Singer Sargent's "Lanterns"; he always painted at dusk to capture the orange glow and the dull green of the grass in the dark), Camden Town Market, the National Portrait Gallery (featuring paintings of famous people from Judi Dench to Bloody Mary), Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" murder mystery play, and a party thrown by some friends of mine to celebrate the end of term.

Oh, and did I mention? I'm done with classes! Now I just have a passel of essays to write. Aww yeah.

Today marked 30 years since the last military coup in Argentina. That final dictatorship was in charge of the "dirty war," resulting in the kidnapping and deaths of 30,000 people. Emotions still run high.

Public marches and demonstrations are not a rarity here in Argentina. I'm pretty sure I've seen one every day I've been here, mostly directed at banks and financial institutions, spilling out of the economic crisis in 2001. But today's march was special, because it commemorated something that touched every last person in Argentina. The streets were overflowing with people. I went by myself; it was an experience I wanted to have alone, specifically, without other Americans. On the surface this march looked like a peace march in the States, only with images of Che instead of peace signs. But there was one other striking difference: the police presence, or specifically the lack of one. I saw a total of two officers in the three-plus hours I marched.

People were holding signs of their "disappeared" relatives. One woman had a sign that said busco a mis padres ("I am looking for my parents"). Most of the signs had pictures, names and dates of the kidnappings. The tone of the march was overall hopeful, but there were some messages aimed at more current events.

There were a lot of skeletons spray-painted onto walls and people dressed as skeletons. They represented the half of Argentina's population that lives in poverty, dying of hunger.

Even though I still don't feel I have enough historic background on the old regime, I'm just glad to have witnessed such a peaceful march.

Yasemin and I went to the Prince Charles Cinema, the cheapest theater in town that plays old movies. But since we eternally run late, we only had time to grab dinner instead; we sat a bench in the park nearby munching on noodles and stir fry. It costs extra to sit in restaurants, so we usually order out. A gentleman got to the bench before us, but gestured to us that we could have it, saying; "Ladies first."

Then he sat down right next to us. "So, do you girls speak English?" he asked. I wished Yasemin had answered him in Turkish, "Nice try but you're not picking us up, dude."

I tried really hard to see the stage production "Billy Elliot" with some of my British friends, but it was sold out again.

KEE LEE / SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE TIMES

Geggel and Jane Peng stand in front of Little Ben before trying to buy Billy Elliot tickets March 23, 2006.

The walk to the theater was filled with historical sites at least. We passed Little Ben, the Mini-Me version of Big Ben. The city took Little Ben out of the city during the Blitz to save him from the bombs, but they forgot where they put him in the country and couldn't find him for the longest time. A tour guide told us Little Ben had been chilling in some cave for a couple decades, but now he's back in the city enjoying all the traffic that roars on by.

Oh my goodness, essay writing is going so slowly. I've been researching like crazy for my papers; I have to do a lot more background research at University College London than back at Washington University; everything here is much more independently driven. I woke up in a nervous panic today determined to finish writing my early Middle Ages essay so I could work on my Roman Republic essay on how Rome really wasn't a democracy. Fun times!

Explored Chinatown with some friends later in the day and found that most of the restaurants have minimum fees for sitting down and ordering. Sheesh. But we were so hungry, that ended up not being a problem.

This week I visited Borough Market with some friends from my floor. Borough hasn't got anything on Pike Place Market, since it sells only food, but what food! I got a jar of raspberry preserves and a bag of dried strawberries (way better than they sound), and sampled exotic fare like orange-flavored olive oil from Italy and feta cheese and olives. The market is near the London Bridge tube stop — convenient because I was able to dash off and just make it to Frisbee practice in time to practice dodging drills.

In my Roman Republic class we just held a mock trial and convicted Julius Caesar of power mongering. The student who played Calpernia kindly asked the prosecutors to refrain from insulting her late husband who had just been stabbed to death, and bristled when they asked about his affair with Cleopatra in Egypt. Cleopatra smiled smugly, and the jury furiously wrote in their notebooks.

Waking up early on Saturday to go to Brighton was incredibly hard. The Friday before I went to a party thrown by the Frisbee team — yes, it's nearly as competitive as cricket — and didn't get home until early morning. London's wonderful night buses never stop running, so at least I didn't have to walk!

HREEM DAVE / SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE TIMES

Jamie and Laura On the Brighton Pier, March 4, 2006.

In England, I'm considered a third year, which is the final year for students at university. But even though I'm the same age as the other third years, they seem so much older — they act like college seniors; hunting for jobs and inspecting graduate and medical schools. Actually, the Frisbee team has all sorts of members, first years, alumni, friends of alumni ... so I get to hear all the gruesome details about A levels, the test that all British students have to take to get into college.

Luckily, the bus ride to Brighton was long and quiet, so I caught some shut eye after my late night and awoke to the crashing of waves against rocky shores.

I've really missed seeing the water! Seattle has such beautiful geography that you just don't get in landlocked areas. Brighton has a great windy coastline. True, the rock-castle I tried to make with my friends didn't quite work, but it was still fun sitting on the shore and watching people learn how to scuba dive (though why they would want to do that in the icy waters of March, I have no idea). There were lots of cute shops in the area, but because we had a guy with us, we decided not to make him suffer, trailing behind us in and out of stores.

LAURA GEGGEL / SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE TIMES

The Royal Pavilion, March 4, 2006.

The pier is a real tourist trap, but Jamie still managed to find the famous Brighton rock candy, similar to a candy cane but with writing down the center. We also checked out the Royal Pavilion, and old summer home for the royal family in the 1800s, and marveled at the carpets and chandeliers. Everything would look really nice in my dorm — damn security guards.