Snapshot 2006

It's time you met Shawna (okay, one of you has). She is my anima gemella, favorite friend soulmate sista, who realized I'm awesome when I told her my toothbrush had moved in with hers the night I arrived in Italy. She had arrived two months earlier for the same internship, which was teaching 3-week modules of various courses--science, economics, geography, English, history--at a public high school as a supplement to regular instruction in Italian. I'd planned to find my own apartment but we had so much fun that we stayed together in this tiny studio for the entire five months.

I got along with Shawna better than almost anyone I've ever known. Together we accidentally went to the Olympics in Torino (honest), navigated small-town Italy social drama, ate many jars of Nutella and boxes of thin pizza, climbed ancient towers, explored Verona and Bologna, rode single-speed bikes to dinner invitations and over medieval city walls, ran through many train stations trying not to miss train connections, missed trains anyway, drove through the hills of Tuscany, stayed up laughing into most nights. We knew the important details of each others' lives to the point where I already knew her friends before meeting them.

Does this sound like a love story? It is. :)

We both went home in June. I went back to BYU. When I got my mission call, my family was listening to me read it on one phone and Shawna was on the other. I used my graduation money to visit her in her native Chicago before leaving for Australia. She read my mission emails every week and sent me thoughtful letters. Shawna's apartment was a convenient halfway point on my journey from Colorado to Boston. I stayed with her a day longer than I had planned to because I just couldn't leave when I meant to. A friend and I stayed with her again on the reverse journey from New England to the Rocky Mountain west and she was so good to us.

And you know what, I didn't set out meaning to write any of that. I really just wanted to share this photo that epitomizes our time together that I found when I was revisiting old facebook photo albums. Garbage collection in Crema was quite an ordeal: we had to separate our paper and cardboard and put it in a paper bag or box, put all plastic in a plastic bag, put our biodegradable discards in a biodegradable bag, and everything else in a normal bag. They all got collected at different times. If we missed a collection, unwieldy piles would accumulate. This is just another day of us taking out the garbage: 

 
at my apartment in crema: as garbage removal became more and more mundane, we had to create new ways to engage ourselves in the task. which from this point on involved late nights, strange hats, masks, and other disguises. our neighbors called us the crazy americans. we called us the garbage renegades.