Posting about Rome wasn't very high on my list of priorities. Even now, it isn't, but I'm doing this as to keep myself from sending E. angry messages on Facebook (what happened in a nutshell: he hurt my feelings, I feel like he should apologize, he ignores me).
so finally, here it is: Part II of my amazing Rome trip!

I think we all understand that dropping 29 juniors in a monestary isn't the best thing to do. Oh, we enjoyed our stay, ofcourse we did. But the French who slept across the hall didn't... Curfew was set at 11 pm, so before 11 pm, the entire hallway was a mess of screaming and yelling and laughing juniors. The French didn't enjoy it. We didn't enjoy their presence either, since they refused to flush the toilets we had to share...
The good thing about our stay was that the guy who ran the monestary, Padre Matteo, was a Dutch guy who kinda liked us. Our teacher's birthday was on the 5th day of our stay and he helped us plan it and get everything ready in time. Though it almost failed because of the 'diversion'. S. would fake a tummy ache, but said she couldn't do it at the very last minute. Roos went screaming after our teacher that S. was having a tummy ache, and when he came to look, she smiled at him and said: 'I'm fine, Envy's the one with a problem.'
And in my head I was like: am I? Oh well, I'll just fake hyperventilation...
For the first time in almost two years hyperventilation came in handy. I felt like I saved the day :)
So we had a nutella cake and balloons everywhere. It was one of the more amazing things we did, because the entire class worked together as a team for once.

Outside of the monestary, things happened. Ofcourse things happened. Give juniors some free time in the Eternal City and you'll be sure that something odd will happen.
On our first free night, we went so Piazza Navona. And ofcourse, one of the first things we saw was a fight. I thought it was quite funny, until the cops came and started chasing the fighters around a fountain.
The fountain was supposed to be the highlight of Piazza Navona, and yes, it was pretty. Then there was a building by Boromini, and yes, it was beautiful. But when we started taking picures, we noticed that we cared more about the clouds than about the fountain and the building. M. kept saying: 'They're so pwetty!'
You've got to admit that it's a pretty picture, even though I'm in it :P From left to the right it's Maze, then me, S., M., and Roos. We spent a lot of time at Piazza Navona. If we had some spare time, we either went there, or to the Pantheon. We liked to mess with the street vendors (their favorite sentence was 'discolight, sexy sexy!, but when you used it against them, it wasn't so funny anymore :P).
Piazza Navona was one of our favorite places and we actually discussed about architecture there, in our own way, which meant that M. said: 'I feel a connection with Borromini. He's my bro. He's Bro-romini!'

The other place where we liked to hang out was the Pantheon. Instead of marveling at it, we marveled at the ice cream parlor just around the corner. We believed that the best ice cream in Rome was sold there. Almost every day we bought ice cream and sat on the stairs of the Pantheon to eat it, where we met come crazy people. There was this one man from Iraq who asked for directions and ended up talking with us about the beauty of Dutch women... We accidentaly send him the wrong way... It was a weird conversation, let's keep it at that.
Then there was this other time when a guy with a camera approached us and asked if he could interview us. As we're all underage, we weren't allowed to do it, but he said that we could say something for the camera. I proposed to say 'ciao from Holland', and so we did. We thought that'd be all and the guy would move on, but he kept recording and talking in Italian. We were all looking at the camera with WTF written all over our faces, when he asked us if we we're enjoying our trip. 'Yeah...?' we said reluctantly. And then he thanked us and strode off. I almost fell off the wall I was sitting on from laughter.

Me writing and M.reading behind me

Not everything was fun. There was a day when I wanted to kill Roos and Maze. We had been walking through Rome without a clue of where we were going and I just needed some time for myself. So did M.
We got annoyed that we kept walking instead of just go to a park and eat food (one of our main activities), when we saw a huge crowd on the corner of the street. We went to take a look and... We accidentally found the Trevi Fountain! We spent the rest of the day there, just reading and writing :) Everyone got sunburnt, except for M.

I could go on and on for ages, but there are just three more things I want to share: the chicken foot, the Batman t-shirt and the 'ninger'.
Ningers, aka 'not really gingers'. That would be me... We had a discussion about my haircolor. M. and S. insist that I'm a redhead, though I'm clearly not. So they invented the ninger. I'm the only ninger known to mankind...
The Batman t-shirt. I've wanted a Batman t-shirt for ages, so when I saw one in Rome, I bought it. When we came back to the monastery, M. and I held a fotoshoot. I had a towel around my neck as a cape and ran up and down to room claiming to be Batman, while M. took pictures and played music fomr Holy Musical Batman. One of our teachers walked in on us. She wasn't surprised. She only laughed and said I needed black trousers, socks and a mask.
The chicken foot was the most disgusting thing that happened to M. and me during our stay. It was cold, so I went back to the monestary to get my sweater and M. came with me. We were walking back to the Pantheon (it was a three minute walk), when I heard a strange noise, like plastic hitting the sidewalk. I initially thought it was M.'s iPhone, which she'd been holding. So we looked down and saw a chicken foor. Someone had thrown a chicken foor at us!

What kinda idiot throws a chicken foot at girls?!

'This didn't happen,' I said.
'Agreed.'
'This did so not happen.'
'Nothing happened, nothing at all!'
'I'm gonna tell the others anyway!'
'Me too!'
They didn't believe us, so we went back to show them. And then a car drove over the foot... It was disgusting, but we just had to take a picture.

Rome was awesome and I could flood my blog with stories, but pictures tell much more, don't they? So I'm just going to leave it at this and show some pics. Hope you enjoy them ;) (Warning: most chaotic photo-dump ever!)

M., S., me and Roos at the Pantheon

Me being an interpreter while that guy reads Roos' hand

Me, M., S. and Maze at Pompei

Forever alone? No, I'll just marry a tree

No idea where this was taken, but it's one of my favorites :)

So... I'm back!!! Eight days seems like nothing, but after six days you start to realize that if your friends aren't there with you, eight days can be a long, long time.
I guess it's a little too much to tell in one post, so I'm going to stalk you with my stories twice :) besides, there are some pictures that I want to show you, but M. and S. haven't sent them yet. Anyways, I present you the cultural part of our Rome trip!

On our first day, we flew to Rome. Most people didin't count it as a day, ssince we went to the airport at 2.30 pm and arrived at the monastery where we slept in Rome at 9 pm. So we didn't do anything that day except for sitting in a plane and watching A Very Potter Sequel with M. Nothing cultural so far, but I can show you the pic of the airplane, which I'm totally gonna do even though I know that no one cares.

Last week I told about this math test that I had probably failed. I haven't heard the result yet, but that doesn't keep my teacher from giving the next test.
It probably won't surprise you that I blew it. I screwed up another test. Yeah, I'm on a roll...

Math tests are usually quite funny in my class, because we're all stupid as chickenshit. It's not that we don't learn, we're just too thick to understand math, so we're on a lower level than most people in vwo.
A 'normal' test includes:

• Maze crying that she's stupid in the last fifteen minutes and fighting over her test when she has to hand it in but hasn't finished it yet
• Me finally understanding math halfway through the test and going: 'Ooh, so that's what all those numbers are about!'
• Roos desperately crossing things out with a pen that makes more noise than a plane taking off
• S.D. trying to kill our teacher by glaring at him
• One of the other girls constantly yelling: 'MISTER MISTER, I NEED HELP, MISTER, I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE TEST'

I hate writing in all caps, but this time I had to. That girl's voice can make people go deaf.
Today she did the exact same thing as I described. I get that she didn't understand the questions on the test, because no one did this time. It was completely different from the things we'd done in the book.
I always thought teachers weren't allowed to help students during a test, but our teacher did anyway.After a while he gave up because the girl didn't understand anything and the whole class started objecting against the test. We'd worked so hard and everyone was screwing it up. 
I worked really hard on this, because I know I'm not a genius, I know I have to learn and so I did. I gave up my training, I stayed at school for way longer than necessary so I could get tutoring. I worked on math on Sunday morning, the entire Sunday morning. I even tried learning today during my free period. It wasn't a succes because E. was distracting me and I suck at ignoring him. It's frustrating to work that hard and fail.

While I was still trying to work on my test, my teacher gave up on us and said: 'If you can't even make this test, then you just can't count.'
Oh wow, thanks for the support.
Everyone growled and sighed, but that girl kept screaming: 'MISTER,  COME BACK YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS BECAUSE YOU'VE CONFUSED ME.'
'He's confused everyone in the room,' was my reaction to that.
My class started laughing. It wasn't even funny, but my class couldn't stop laughing for a full minute and S.D. even called it 'the best one-liner of the day'.
I didn't care if it was funny, I just wanted to go home.
I had been trying to solve a problem, crossed it out and continued on the back of the page, only to get a more idiotic answer. By that time I was so pissed that I wrote a little message on the page instead: 'I did a serious attempt at this on the back of the page, but the only thing I can conclude from that is that I'm a retard.'
When the bell finally rang, I stood up and walked out. I could have stayed there and tried for a little longer, but I wouldn't have been able to finish it, not until hell freezes over.
The last thing I heard someone say was: 'Have fun grading this thing.'
He won't have fun, that's for sure. But maybe it's his own fault, maybe he should have thought first, before giving us a test that was in no way possible to make with the information that we'd gotten through the book.

Last night when I was talking to E. he said I should write a post on what we did that night (I know that that sounds a little wrong, but don't worry, we didn't do anything weird), because it would be 'funny'. I don't really see how I could make it funny and I don't think anyone is interested in a story about us going to a comicbookstore and our conversation in the Kentucky Fried Chicken. My blog is personal, but not that personal that I want to share the entire night (I said some things that were so personal that I could barely say them out loud, telling them to E. was more than enough 'opening up to others' for the rest of the month), though I have to admit that I had a great time. It's really nice to see a guy who holds the door open for you instead of smacking it shut in your face.
Besides, I've got something else I want to share, because, thanks to the people from Teenage Blogger Central, I won an award :)

Rules:
1) Thank the person who gave you this award and copy the rules to a new post on your own blog.
2) Answer the 3 introduction questions and the 4 questions asked by the kind person who awarded you.
3) Tag between 1 and 100 other bloggers aged twenty or younger who, as far as you know, are not already Teenage Blogger Central members or have not already been tagged.
4) Think of 4 more questions to ask your lucky recipients and inform them that they have won an award!

Introduction questions
1)Which 5 words would you use to describe your personality? Is your blogging personality anyway different from your real-life one?
Impulsive, insecure, enthousiastic, curious, unimaginative.
My blogger personality is different than my real-life one, but not that much. 'Envy' is more aggresive, but she also takes her time to think about things and consider other options, while in real life, all I do is rush into things and find myself regretting it later because I usually get myself into trouble when I rush into things. Envy is also a lot more open and honest. I often find it difficult to be open en honest towards aother people, but I'm trying to open up a little more. My blog is definitely helping with that.

2)Where in the world do you live and who with?
I live with my parents in a small place close to Rotterdam. Some people say it looks like a 'farmer's community' because there are quite a few farms with lots and lots of cows around here.
Our town is one of the bigger ones around here, but for a town that calls itself 'big and important' it's quite pathetic that it doesn't even has its own ice-skating rink.

3)When did you start blogging and why?
I started blogging last November, to help me clear my mind. There was so much going on at that time and I just couldn't handle it on my own anymore, so I decided to pour out my heart on the internet. I was still thinking about everything that happened in the summer of 2011 and where it all went wrong, why I was still having hyperventilation attacks. I had no one to talk to, so I wrote on my blog every time I felt the need to talk.

Extra questions
4) What do you hope to accomplish by the time you're 40?
There's so much that I want, but so little that's realistic. I want to become writer, or if I don't succeed at that, I want to become an English teacher. I want to travel the world, and by that I don't just mean visiting the countries I've already been to for the second time. I really want to see Machu Picchu, stand on the Great Wall of China and eat sushi in Japan. No wait, skip that last part, I don't even like sushi... but you get the idea.

5) What song is currently stuck in your head?
'Some Nights' by FUN. It's a special song to me because they used the song in Australia in some kind of commercial to encourage people to watch the Olympics.
Last night when I was in a store in Rotterdam with E., they played this song and it's been stuck inside my head ever since.

6) Have you ever done anything dishonest/foolish? Did you learn from it, and were the consequences funny to look back on?
If running into things and people counts as foolish, then yes. Other than that I'm not really foolish. Since 8th grade T. has been making a list of all the stupid things I've done. They're mostly about me talking to someone and walking into a door/wall/dustbin/table/chair/person. I didn't learn form it, I'm still talking and walking at the same time and crashing into things, but it's funny to look back on all the times I ran into things.

7)Which subjects at school/college do you enjoy/hate most? Why?
I love English, for all the obvious reasons. Speaking English makes me feel at home, and by 'home', I mean Novato, California, my adopted hometown.
I absolutely hate math, but I couldn't quit those classes, otherwise I would have done it, because I fail at every part of it.

Now I have to think of four extra questions. Don't expect them to be serious, because I'm terrible at making up questions.

1)Who's your favorite superhero? (Told you this wasn't going to be a serious question)
2) If travel wouldn't cost time and money, what would be the first country you visit and why?
3) Do you have a childhood dream that you're holding onto, even though people tell you to forget it?
4) What's the worst song you've ever heard?

I can't tag a lot of people, since I've found most of the blogs through Teenage Blogger Central.
I'm tagging Nitzan from Drugs Called Books and Roos from More Than Only Cupcakes (her blog is in Dutch, but I'm tagging her anyway).

I should be working on my history project, but I gave up. If I hear someone, anyone, say the word 'pope' again, I'll go insane.

Going back to school wasn't as bad as I'd expected. There was just one thing that went totally wrong: the math test...

Normal math tests aren't something I look forward to, but this one is far worse than other math tests, even though it's on the same level as the tests I got in elementary school. But if I fail this test, there's a chance I can't graduate. Teachers keep nagging about the importance of this test, but they can't explain if this one is 'for real' or not, so every time I have to face one of these tests, I'm nervous because I have to pass it.
I'm not the only one stressing, everyone is. The test had been scheduled in what usually is lunch break and would take almost three hours to finish - or so we'd been told...
I went in at 12.40, even more stressed than usual and fearing I wouldn't be able to finish it in time.
But at 14.15, I was one of the first to finish it. I walked out of the classroom, went to my locker and almost collapsed; my legs felt like jelly, and so did my brain...
I felt empty, and that's usually not a good sign. It means that I've probably failed the test. I mean, there must be a reason why I was one of the first to finish, while I've got the lowest grades in my math in my class. Somewhere something must have gone wrong. This test was way to easy and I was finished way to fast, it just can't be good.

The test was one of those digital tests, the kind that teachers like just because they don't have to grade them. I don't have a problem with making a test on a computer, but at least make the software work.
I was writing something down, next moment the screen has gone black and all the computers in the room shut down.
It took almost ten minutes to start again and by that time everyone had been telling eachother the answers.
This happened twice during the test, though I was long gone by the time everything shut down for the second time. Maybe there is something good in finishing early.

I was a little light headed after the test, so I started walking through the school. I don't even know why I did that, it just happened. Until I saw my math teacher. I'd finished the test in the middle of a period and could leave the classroom, but I guess I was supposed to go to the other class anyway, even thought it wasn't on my timetable. And as the good but boring girl that I am, I usually go to class in this kind of situation.
Not this time. I thought: 'Screw it, I'm not going.' I turned around and walked away. Minutes later Roos texted me to say that I had to come to class. My head still felt like jelly. And when my head feels like jelly, I refuse to go to class.

Finally, when everyone was finished, we still had to go to one class: Dutch. Our teacher is an idiot who spends more time next to the coffeemachine than in a classroom during our lessons, so we had plenty of time to talk about the math test.
Turns out that if i fail, I won't be the ony one. S.D. didn't know she could use a calculator until the last four questions, L. didn't have enough time to finish it properly and Maze has been crying (I'm not allowed to tell that because it's 'hurtful'), which means that she probably hasn't passed it either.
At least I've got some company if I have to go to the extra lessons, though none of us wants more math than we already have.

I don't know when I'll hear if I've passed the test or not, but if you hear someone swear very loudly or scream: 'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO', then it's probably me after hearing I've failed.