A Blue Empty House.

Oh God...my back is killing me. On May, 26th I met the rest of the first Santa Cruz Team ever @ the airport. I've been told afterwards that ACE (the organization I work for) has worked in AZ for a long time and just right now decided to open a branch in Santa Cruz. So I'm really happy to be part of this thing growing and I can really say I'm seeing it at the very beginning. Imagine that in the house we don't even have beds yet. Nevertheless the building itself is beautiful, a blue house on Broadway Street.
The beach is 5 min away as it is downtown. Santa Cruz is a pretty city, I think is the place where everybody wants to be in the summer: surfers, beach volley players, rappers, rockers, punks, musicians (there are plenty of music festivals). It is very expensive though.
So tomorrow I'll be off to go to Coronado Park in AZ for 8 days of hard work (with a fucking desertic climate I'm afraid).
I'll try to keep the blog adjourned between projects, for the moment take care.

On the doorstep again

Last night in San Francisco after 3 really tiring days. I recovered from jet lag only today so I made all my walking tours starting at 7 AM.
Through Chinatown I made the tie knot to a mexican guy who was on his first day of work, then i explored Grant Av. and Portsmouth Sq. when the city was still asleep. I got the vibe better when I went back there in the afternoon, it is a neighborhood that is pitoresque especially for the immense activity in work hours.
From there I walked through Russian Hill to North Beach discovering one or two quite well hidden places which were asbsolutely outstanding. I hope to be able to post a few pictures later because it is hard for me to describe it.
I walked from Fisherman's Wharf through the whole Embarcadero to Market Street (it's been a huge walk).
Then today I saw Mission and Soma which are quite a bit the other side of the city. While Marina, North Beach and the Hills (Russian and Nob) are really posh, beautiful looking and clearly rich areas, these other two are poor. Lots of beggars, some junkies and drunks came to me asking for money. Didn't have any trouble though.
Tonight I made my first sociable night at the hostel, especailly because i didn't go to bed at 8...
I met an Italian Girl which made an italian fashioned coffee, an australian photographer, an argentinian guy called Santiago and a Portoriacn girl that speaks a lot of languages (I actually have doubts about her nationality I believe she has got several passports).
Best guy I met is a chef called Kevin, a New Yorker, that told me wonderful aneddots both about his US life and his Italian Roots (he didn't look really italian at first, but apparently he's got a house in Milano).
Well, that's pretty much it, there other nice things I might write but I do start being tired so i might just go to bed. Tomorrow I'll leave this place which I like, no joke, to Santa Cruz and maybe I'll find out a little bit more about what I got myself into for the next months.

Cheers

Sitting on the dock of the bay

Hey there (as Akeboshi says),

I arrived today in San Francisco after a 20 hours journey that really devastated my body. My luggage got lost so for today I'm stinky and tired, I could shower buying a small towwel but couldn't change clothes...
The first impresison on the city is great, to step in a meal place and have meat loaf made me feel like a movie charachter. All the imagery we have through art, movies, music and novels is now in front of my eyes and for the moment doesn't collide that much with the dream.
More to come.

On the Doorstep.

I write these lines just a few hours before leaving. California is waiting for me and I am so badly excited I'll suggest a few songs I'm listening to countinuously:

Led Zeppelin: Going to California
the Byrds: If you're going to San Francisco
Otis Redding: The Dock of the Bay
xxxx: California (the one going "California here we come" all the time)

Speaking of me, I have thought a little about my feelings before the atlantic step, I do believe the anxiety before departure is much more invasive (even though less strong) than the other times I was leaving, not because of the length of my stay, but instead for the state of mind I reached here in Rome. Last time I was leaping into mistery I needed to. The years in Rome got me so filled up of shit I couldn't really breathe. Now it is a much more voluntary choice, not forced by the environment so in a way I feel really it was me to pick this one.
I hope to be able to write as much as I'd like about this country of real mistery I'm going to. It's been years I wanted to visit the US, I always thought in a way our educational background comes from there so it'd be cocky and ignorant to speak about something without knowing the subject.
My luggages are ready, all familiar faces have been seen and kissed. Only one day away from America.

About to leave again.

Here I am describing the newest anxiety pre-departure. It's been nine months here in Rome, and it was time for me to leave again. Since when I came back from Brussels, my life has taken so many turns.
I don't know if in this year I consider in conclusion I have changed as much as I did during the Erasmus one (or maybe didn't change at all...) but I do believe I understood a few things.
Some of them are definitely positive, such as the belief I have now in chances and opportunities, whose cycle is continuous and never stops. Some bad things I realized is that your past can kill you if you let it. Forgetting, hiding, regretting are dangerous things as well as living of evanescent memories of the past. Apparently things are like a wheel that never stops.



Reading above it might look I converted to Buddhism in the end...who knows, maybe one day I might spend my energies in meditation only. For the moment I am in a big rush to complete all the stuff for the journey. I don't want to speak about California yet, I thought that one week before leaving it was right to write sort of a balance of the last months.