I know. I’m sorry, okay?

I know I never post anymore. I know I am neglecting all of you, my dear cyberfriends. But let me just say this: If you were in Italy, and you were insanely busy doing everything you could to have the time of your life and you were succeeding quite brilliantly, would you have time to blog?

No. You wouldn’t. So you should be insanely grateful that I’m even blogging now.

Essentially, a lot has been going on that involves being out almost until midnight every night, at which time the internet shuts off, which is why I never blog. But it has been wonderfully fun stuff that has been an absolutely whirlwind of wonderfulness and I’m keeping running tabs, just like I did for free travel, so that eventually, you’ll get to hear all about the Fantastical Adventures of Kellum Tate. Like next semester when a post would normally consist of, “Today I went to class and fell asleep because the teacher was terribly boring and then I went to the caf where I threw up all over the place because the food was terrible instead of legit Italian and then I went back to the room and took a nap so that I could dream about Italy.” You’ll be spared of that because I will eventually get around to adventure-sharing.

Anyways, I’ll give you a small update, even though this doesn’t even begin to touch everything that has been going on…. As you all know, yesterday was the fourth of July, so to celebrate all of us HUFers (still no luck on finding a better descriptive noun for what we are) went out to this old Medici villa in the countryside that has since been turned into a very nice park, with wide sweeping green fields surrounding by bushes and trees and old statues (including a gigantic giant statue leaning out over a little lake by Giambologna, a sculptor almost on par with Michelangelo, that some of the people in our group deemed worthy to climb all over like it was a McDonald’s Playplace… it’s wonderful to hear an Italian mutter, “This is why I hate Americans” and Robbie say, “THOSE IDIOTS!” when someone finally told him). Anyways, rant aside…. The Tuscan-American Association threw a party out there, so there were tons of immigated Americans and their Italian friends (and tons and tons of little kids!) in attendance. We helped set up the various games, as well as cook and do other sundry things… I, for instance, got the wonderful privilege of being The Official Photographer Thank You Very Much, which I loved every minute of and got many amazing pictures, of course.

So that the Internet doesn’t shut off before I get done (okay, whatever, it probably is anyways and I’ll have to post this in the morning anyway), here’s a list of the occurences in no particular order:

1. I did sack races and spoon-and-egg and three-legged races with Julia Rose and Stella, the two little girls who belong to the staff sponsors, Lisa and Terry Engel… and Chelsie and Austen and Austen’s cousin Dorah. The two who are supposed to be the most adult…. Right.

2. Austen later took off his shirt and made his shorts really short and put on a flag-decorated garbage bag as a strapless dress. It was terrifying.

3. I saw a ten-year-old kid with a mullet that was absolutely beyond comprehension. My mind was blown from here to America and back again.

4. The Tuscan-American Association had booked a dance troop, so as we never seen any sort of dancing or choreography except in Spring Sing, oh bane of my existence, we were all quite excited about this as we were positive they would be really good. Well… let’s just say about three routines in we were all looking at each other and trying to figure out what in the world was going on…. Someone decided it was Spring Sing gone wrong, and I personally thought it was Spring Sing Cosmo-ified… First off, almost none of them could dance, and they were all totally off—even though I will admit their costumes were, for the most part, incredibly cool—but worst of all, every other routine out of about fifteen was utterly and completely and totally and undeniably raunchy. One actually featured girls dressed as prostitutes, writhing all over the stage, and another consisted entirely of girls in colored wigs and skanky outfits strutting around the stage with cocktail glasses and real cigarettes. Julia Rose looked up at me at one point and said, “They really aren’t doing much dancing, are they?” and “This one is the worst because they’re smoking.” It was bad news bears.

5. The lameness luckily decreased dramatically after the horrible dance troupe—although I will admit that they did afford me quite a few cool pictures, in my opinion anyways—when a country band took the stage, and although I usually don’t like country all of the girls (and Robbie and Terry) started dancing, so this upped the fun level quite a lot. The band was really interactive and fun, and almost everyone thought the lead singer was cute (I didn’t, but it’s whatever), and they played lots of fun country music.

6. There was a lottery drawing, and two people from our group won two-night stays in one of the most expensive hotels in Italy and the other in an ancient castle out in the middle of the countryside. Oh, and a Ferragamo scarf (whatever that means, it seems to be a big deal) and a big box of chocolates (now that is a language I speak).

7. Then the fun shot to a level almost never achieved by normal human beings when a classic rock band took the stage, followed by another classic rock band. My camera had long been stashed in Mona’s car and we literally danced from about 9:00 to midnight. I know that your brain is probably melting and pouring out of your ears into a sad little puddle of horror on the ground at the thought of a bunch of white Church of Christ kids trying to dance to AC/DC, and honestly, this reaction is probably totally legitimate and merited. However, I cannot even begin to convey to you what amazing amounts of joy and happiness can be discovered when everyone around you suddenly jumps clear over their carefully constructed walls of self-consciousness and just lets loose. No one cared and everybody danced. For three hours nonstop. Choreography rocks, and so did the bands, which were actually pretty good—I say this not on my own retarded musical knowledge, but based off the enraptured looks on the faces of the more musically inclined members of our group. So fun, so fun. TOP NIGHT.

8. On the way back to the bus from the park, I tripped or stumbled or had a massive leg muscle collapse or something and fell flat on my face. No big deal—my camera was fine.

9. On the bus ride back to the villa, Meghan somehow got ahold of the intercom and played Disney all the way back—Little Mermaid, Mulan, Lion King, Pocahontas, and of course “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga which is not at all Disney but is nonetheless a HUF themesong this semester. The entire bus was still so psyched and adrenaline-pumped that every last single person was singing along the whole time like a bunch of elementary school kids.

10. We drove back through the most gorgeous little slice of countryside, all lit up with pricks of electricity here and there like a gauze veil of tiny orange flames. Bad metaphor aside, I could feel something swelling inside of me with all the happiness and beauty, like a balloon that never has to pop but can just keep growing and growing and growing. (Again with the freaky metaphors… argh….)

11. I took a shower. I can’t tell you how wonderful this was. Kelsey and I practically sprinted back up the hill.

Essentially, the entire night went down as definitely the best fourth of July ever, as well as probably one of the top three nights of my entire life, and I can’t even think of what the other two would be. Every last single one of us was drunk, drunk on life and love and music and sweat and Dr. Pepper and dancing and each other, swinging and swirling from one pair of arms to another, jumping and leaping and hollering and singing and laughing.

Somewhere in all of this, between traveling and friendships and language and learning and singing and laughter and even dancing, I’m falling in love—not with Italy, or with another person, or anything like that (not to say that I’m not, with Italy, that is, sorry to get your hopes up), but simply with being alive, with having arms and legs and teeth and a smile that is all my own, with just being me. And as cheesy and as you’ve-been-watching-too-many-B-rated-inspirational-films as that sounds, it’s true.

And I love it.