BLEHHH!

Well I've had my third piss-ass crap day in a row. I went on a pub crawl last night in Rome, hoping to meet some people, since all my friends are gone. Everyone was - you guessed it - 20 years old, Australian, and just out to "get wasted mate." This whole trip I have been surrounded by the kind of people I worked very, very hard to avoid all through college. I like to think that one of the wonderful things about getting older is that you start to find people whom you can groove with. People who nourish your spirit and ride your kind of waves, know what I mean? I was very lucky to meet the four friends I have been travelling with, but I think I am out of friend karma at this point. I have been thrown back into this hell of frat parties and spilled beer - and I'm just talking about at the hostel, let alone the bars.

Anyway, I woke up with quite a throbbing ankle since I stupidly walked on it all night last night without my crutches (didn't want them to get in the way of meeting people). I decided that it was time to go home. I told myself, Melanie, you've had four good weeks of independent travel. Enough is enough. Go home. So I got my hopes up as I waited anxiously for the office I needed to call to change my flight to open.

Finally, after missing my walking tour through Rome and doing nothing but hanging around the hostel all day, I could call. With visions of comfortable beds, clothes neatly folded in dressers, Amercian dollars, and all my friends and family dancing in my head, I called to find out that I cannot change my flight. I begged. I pleaded. I cried. Nothing. People that work at airlines have hearts of steel, my friends. My only option would be to purchase a brand new one way ticket which is obviously out of the question.

So I did the only thing that a girl in my sort of predicament can do - I hobbled back to my room, scratched every mosquito and bed bug bite on my body vigorously and without shame for a full 5 minutes until most of them started to bleed, and then cried until I fell asleep.

Now I am awake and trying to see the bright side of things. I am in Europe. I am in Italy. They have lots of cool stuff here. Yippee. I would go into the city now to try and take my mind off of things, but there are several reasons why I can't. First, my hostel is 40 minutes outside the city and the public transportation stops at 6pm (it's 5:30 now), so I would have to take a taxi back which would cost at least 15 euros. Second, my ankle has just now stopped throbbing, and if I want to do this walking tour to the colosseum, parthenon, and all that tomorrow, I shouldn't walk on it any more today. Third, I don't feel like it.

So I will now book the accomodation for the rest of my trip and, as my friend Melanie would say, "put on my big girl pants." This will most likely come in the form of getting rather inebriated tonight. All alone. That's not pathetic or anything.

Hopefully I will have a less pissy blog entry for you soon. Right now you are just getting brutal honesty. Take it for what it's worth folks.