girl that is parsley 

a list of all the weird/stupid things i have done so far on JTA (in case i forget)

i’m pretty tired right now because i just came back from italy and the bologna airport. i say those are two different things because one of them is something i truly, really love (italy) and the other one is a weird and grueling experience that is the reason for the creation of this list (bologna airport).

i wanted to list down all my memories on trips, like my itineraries etc first, but since i’m not that masipag yet and am prone to laziness and forgetfulness, when writing this came into my head, i was immediately more excited to write it and i decided to just go for it. so here it is, my weird list of Things I Wouldn’t Have Done If I Weren’t On JTA (alternatively, Things I Would Never Have HAD To Do if It Weren’t for JTA).

- sleep at an airport. this takes the cake, really (so far -- i still have morocco to go!). i guess it was also in the choice of airport i decided to sleep at, but let me tell you, Bologna Airport should not be high up on your “Airports to Sleep At” list. Really. I don’t consider myself very snooty or fresa, and I’ve braved through a lot of gross things. But this. I couldn’t take it. I guess it was through this that I realized I’m not that type of person who can just sleep anywhere. I need to be horizontal, man. It doesn’t even have to be a bed, just something I can lie on. We arrived at bologna at around 1:30, found a cab (ooh, that should go on the list too...more details later) and arrived at around 2am. I tried to sleep. I really did. I just couldn’t. I slept for, at most, an hour, between 2am and 6am. I was sitting, trying to position my backpack and my Italian plates (which were pasalubong and I still have no regrets about buying) while trying to get my upper body and lower body in a comfortable enough position. It just wasn’t possible. Maybe I’m just too long ? which sounds funny, but rly. neither my upper nor lower body could fit in one seat of the chairs, and if i curled myself up on the chair it was just ... difficult. so i ended up sleeping like i would on a bus, except it wasn’t a bus and i was bothered that i had to sleep this way at all. this may sound really angry, but to be honest, i’m not at all. really. i can’t really describe what i felt, it wasn’t really frustration, it was just...grueling. which isn’t really a feeling but...it is what it is. so there i couldn’t sleep, and then when the airport opened and we went past immigration, we found more comfortable seats (these ones actually had cushions on them -- oh yes, the ones we were trying to sleep on at first had no cushion, just metal. it was those chairs you find right in front of check-in counters) and i could sleep better, even if i was curled up and was using my backpack as a pillow (which i had put on the seat beside me...i think at this point i just said fuck it to stranger danger, pickpocketing, stealing, and thieves. i just wanted to close my eyes.) so i slept a little bit more, having 30 minute naps. and then we boarded, and i slept the whole flight. and i tried to go to class. but that’s another point, i think. for this one, it’s very simple: chelsea can’t sleep all night at airports. or chairs.

sidenote: bianca slept fine. i’m truly amazed

- walk around bologna at 1:30am figuring out the cab system. it was quite a stressful early morning, even before the whole airport situation. i didnt know how taxis worked in bologna, which shouldnt have been a problem because they should work like anywhere else in the world, except they didn’t. apparently you’re supposed to call one in advance, and its not common to just flag one down on the street. happy ending for this one though, because on my 2nd try we got one! God BLESS that man. idek how true the whole “u can’t flag one on the street” thing is, but if it is, TYG for this not-so-ugly/kinda cute (he wasn’t cute, but he wasn’t what you’d call pogi) taxi driver. and he had CARD

- oh yeah...which leads me to number 3: pay for a 10euro gelato. guys. it wasn’t even that good. bianca and i were going around florence, looking for cheap gelato. we went to 3 different stores, comparing prices. 4 euro for the smallest size was too expensive for us. so we got excited when we saw this place had gelato for 2.5. steaaal!! we got cups, but then it was only after that i realized that he didn’t get the 2.5 cup...he got the 10 euro cup. :---) and the cannoli, which the dude said was only 1 euro, turned out to be 7 euros. :---) maybe he didn’t say 1 euro, maybe he said 7 but we didn’t hear...either way, i ended up not having cash on hand anymore for the rest of the day. and that was around 11am. :---) and that is how i found out the hard way that most Florentine stores only accept cash. i CRY for my 13.5 euros. it would have saved me a lot of grief later on.

what type of grief? the grief i am currently in as i type this. ok, it isn’t grief. but let’s call it that for now. as i mentioned on my finsta-finsta IG, aka the mobile and easier access version of this blog, I didn’t want to sleep in the afternoon because it would mess up my sleeping sched, so i decided i would go to my spanish class at 3pm. too bad i ended up taking a nap and waking up AT 3PM. which was fine, i mean all spanish people are late and its not uncommon to have people come a little later than usual, even to classes. but i still had to buy a T-10. i had prepared for this -- i had both my card and 50 euros so i could buy a card. neither worked on the machine. i’m kinda worried about my card, it didn’t work on the airport machine either (bianca had to double use her T-10, bless her), but whatever. it worked on the bologna taxi...should be fine. anyway, by the time i tried all 3 machines and decided to give up, it was 3:15 and i felt that even if i did go to class, it would be waaaay too late, even for the spanish. so i called it a day. i broke my 50 by buying ben&jerry’s, bought a T-10 with the loose change (so i wouldn’t have to go through this shit again) and went back to the apartment. like i said on my ig, ben&jerry’s is my alcohol. 

but i digress

- get fined. ok, this one’s on me. and bianca. we deserved it. we were so aware of how much we deserved it that we didn’t even get mad anymore. I mean, we really deserved it. so rewind to 2 days before the gelato and the airport, and we’re in rome. we’re on the bus, and we notice that absolutely no one is validating their bus tickets, and the bus is packed. the driver doesn’t even know who goes in or out. so we decide to just not punch in our cards. big mistake. really, BIIIIIIIIIG MISTAKE. out of all the buses, the police decide to climb on to ours (ok fine..it was crowded, we were otw to Vatican which meant a lot of tourists, etc. etc.). and of course we were caught with unvalidated tickets. so we had to pay a fine...54.9euros to be exact. TYG it could be paid by card or I would’ve cried, because the fee of paying it somewhere else other than the time of getting caught was around 100+ euros. well i already felt bad about losing 54.9 euros, but again, I deserved it. so take note, kids ! be good citizens, ALWAYS ! validate those cards!

- run like hell to catch a bus. i had the paris incident in mind, but i realize that that’s happened a lot to biancs and i. but the paris one is GOLD -- we wanted to watch the eiffel tower sparkle, and we calculated it would sparkle at 8pm. Our Flixbus (best company tbh) was schedule to leave at 8:42 pm. accdg to google maps, it would take us 40-42 minutes to get to the station. so we had to be quick. at 8:00 sharp, the lights sparkled, we gasped, took some pictures, then RAN. i can still visualize the scene. a live performer was playing “can’t help falling in love”, it was already dark (of course), and there were so many tourists milling around. there were also a lot of street sellers. through all of that, suddenly one of the 7 of us (i think it was me tbh), shouted “run run run!!!” and OFF WE WENT ya’ll. through that thick crowd, 7 girls just darting around like mice. we kinda separated a bit at the metro, cause some of the girls thought our entrance would be different, but me and some others stuck to the one we were already going down on. the other girls ran all the way to the other side. when we got down to the station, the girls were also getting down, just on the other side. basically, pointless to go around. trust me, if i wasn’t paranoid about missing the bus, i would’ve laughed. it was actually pretty funny, the whole thing. i remember running the length of the station (our bus stop was at the back) and feeling like i would die. i had never run so fast in my life (i think). we made it, just in time.

- which leads me to another moment i thought i would die: going through Amsterdam’s King’s Day crowd. that shit was wild. that’s as precise as I can be. it was WILDT. that was some stupid, crazy shit. we had just met up with parsley, gabe, shar, and christine. or to be more precise, we met up with the first three and the latter was just pissed to see us. (more on that ...soon lol) and ...ok to be honest, i don’t even remember where we were supposed to go. all i remember is, Gabe or Shar started the navigation, and it led us to the edge of this street concert party thing. when I say “street”, I mean the whole street was occupied with tall white people. the street was actually quite narrow, which made everything worse because the King’s Day people had erected a stage there, so there was a concert going on, and what seemed like a live broadcast of that concert. PLUS, on the other side of the stage, the street was lined with bars. and it was King’s Day. you can imagine the complete chaos. everyone was either drunk, high, or both. it was incredibly crowded. the street was packed, there were people from the bars who were coming out to join in, and there were people who were trying to move through the crowd. we were one of those people. i’ve been through incredibly ...sticky and crowded situations in my life. I’ve ridden the MRT at ultra mega rush hour, I’ve attended enough rock concerts. I thought I would be prepared for something like this. I wasn’t. the crowd was iba, I had never experienced anything like it. It was kind of like MRT at that rush hour, except everyone was MOVING, and you didn’t really want to stay there. at least in the MRT, when ur pushed against other people, no one really moves until the next stop. here, everyone seemed like they wanted to go somewhere else, or were moving to the music or whatever. there was just too much movement. at one point, i wasn’t even moving my legs. the crowd was swaying me along, and yes, I mean swaying. we were going from left to right, kind of suffocating-pushing our way through. oddly, i felt like the band was just repeating songs, and their reactions were being controlled or something. whatever -- all i know is, it was crazy fucking scary. i try not to curse anymore (haha, i know) but i can’t describe King’s Day without expletives. it was just too...WILD. I’m still thankful I even made it out alive. I really thought I would die at some point. 

- ah, amsterdam, what else is there to do? oh yeah, get high. this seems pretty basic considering everything else on this list, but really. I don’t think I would’ve ever tried weed if I hadn’t gone on JTA. I didn’t really wanna do it, plus it was still illegal in the PH and I didn’t wanna get caught up in that. but hey, it was Amsterdam, it was totally legal. I actually wanna amend my earlier point and be more specific: get high on a boat. that was actually kind of fun. we were doing this canal tour thing, and we had eaten the edibles an hour before getting on. to the merit of biancs and i, i think we were still very good clients. it was the nighttime tour on the canal, so everyone else was either drunk, high, or romantically involved. trust me, biancs and i were the most behaved ones there. we would pretend to listen, nod and laugh when we felt it appropriate, and converse with the hosts. it was a good experience. even better? the food and wine on the boat. there’s no better way to say this, but we demolished that buffet. 3 plates filled high with sausages, crackers, and cheese and we only left some for the others (the others didn’t seem to mind though, because like i said, they were knee-deep in the other 3 reasons above). there were free-flowing drinks too, and biancs and i shared with 3 other girls, and i think we had 5 bottles all in all. so like...one bottle each. it was a good time. i felt myself getting slower once i was hit, but wow. i thoroughly enjoyed that. the host even gave me a lei at the end of the tour! maybe he appreciated our participation. or maybe he just knew we were high.

i was high when we were going through the King’s Day crowd too, but that was less...enjoyable. i think that once we were in the crowd, i kinda snapped out of it and focused on not dying. yeah, that was kind of a waste. but hey, generally i had a good time.

- get drunk on 1 euro carton wine. this was actually super fun. its one of those things that become tradition immediately after you start it. it started when bianca bought carton red wine. i think we got pretty drunk off of it, and i vaguely remember going back to the supermarket (yes, the supermarket was still open, which meant...it was pretty early) to buy another one, which we also finished. then all hell broke loose. we started getting noisy, we called pars and gabe, we went to the kitchen and stole strawberries from one of our then-flatmates, Maria (who was honestly really nice), and I accidentally turned on the lights in Marion’s room while she was there. she actually came out and told me that i had turned it on, and all i kept saying was “sorry, sorry”. this was all before the flatmate drama, i think. (lol that’s another story too, i guess). oh and this all happened while we were on the phone with sina gabe. bianca went inside the “coat room” of the apartment and stole someone’s hat (at the time we thought it was manon’s, but it could actually be javier’s??? still don’t know until now, tbh). then we went back into our room and...decided that we wanted to sleep in the empty room beside us. so we tried first to enter it through the adjacent balcony, didn’t work. so we got the keys box and started trying out different keys until we found the one that fit and we just....slept there. didn’t do anything nasty, didn’t trash the place. just...fell asleep. i don’t know if i should be thankful or confused that drunk chelsea and bianca’s idea of a wild night is sleeping in an empty bedroom right beside ours. not even a hotel or another flat, but literally the one that pretty much looks like ours. yeaaah, i don’t know either. that was pretty fun though, biancs and i got to bond and i guess it solidified our reverence for the carton wine. it tastes like shit, but it does its job.

- have trashy tinto-vodka nights with raya. this is steadily becoming Chelsea’s JTA Greatest Hits list, but whatever. i’m enjoying this trip down memory lane. to be fair, i only had 2 trashy wine nights with Raya, when she was still in her old condo and my parents hadn’t come/bianca and I didn’t have a trip on the weekend, but it was one of the best nights. it was honestly really fun, just getting to know and bonding with Raya. I hadn’t known her so well pre-JTA, and when we were thinking of getting a room together (me, bianca, and Raya), I wasn’t so sure how that would play out. but after bonding with her, I realized that Raya and I vibed pretty well. we were into the same stupid shit and laughed at the same nonsense things. so sleeping over at her place and getting drunk was honestly really fun. it wasn’t even wild or anything, it was just...~ hearty fun ~. we’d try to invite bianca sometimes, but she’d always say no LOL mainly cause raya’s place is quite far from us and she didn’t want to sleep over (but biancs is totally fine sleeping at an airport?? i don’t understand, but hey, you do you.) and raya and i would also cook sinigang! ok fine, we cooked it on one day only, but after having it for lunch then getting tipsy, we decided we wanted more so we made another batch at around midnight. we both agreed it tasted a lot better. gooooooood times.

- having to walk Amsterdam alone at night. sorry i jumped back into amsterdam, i just totally forgot about this. this was actually a big deal for me, even though in summary it wasn’t so special. i had had to wake up at around 3am that day so i could walk and catch the bus that would bring me to the Flixbus station. i was worried because amsterdam had had shit weather the day before and i was contemplating taking an uber, but in the end i decided to walk. it was only a 20-minute walk, which in daytime wouldn’t have bothered me. but since it was nighttime and the airbnb wasn’t in city center, i was kind of afraid. i’m matatakutin pa naman. i imagine shadows becoming figures and am generally uneasy in the dark. but at the time i thought, u gotta do what u gotta do, right? so i trudged on. and honestly, it wasn’t bad at all. i saw no one on my walk, and i realize in hindsight that if i had walked in the morning, i would have enjoyed it a lot. i got to see the river and some pretty cute, homey houses. there were parts where it was eerily dark and quiet, but overall i didn’t feel pressured too much. i don’t know why this is a big deal for me, and i feel like it’s silently a landmark experience for me. i guess because it was something i had no choice but to do alone (bianca had left earlier, gabe and pars were asleep and staying another day in amsterdam), and i had to face my fears. alone. epitome of JTA, I guess. well, it ended fine though, and overall I think I grew from the experience. I guess I realized there that I have some of my own inner strength that I can rely on, and that what scares me sometimes is...nothing, really. that I make things up in my head and I’m too praning, but really, there’s nothing to be afraid of.

- get in trouble with an airbnb. technically this wasn’t me, because it was under parsley’s name, but we all felt this. amsterdam really was something else...

anyway, parsley booked the place, but she only put it down for 2 guests, when we were...six. everything was going well until the owner apparently saw parsley and the lille girls going out all together, and the owner messaged pars about it saying that she (pars) has to pay a fine of 25E/night. the owner only saw 4 people though, so i guess that was a silver lining? so that added to the general stress of amsterdam, post-Heineken Experience. christine made pars tell this lie about the other 2 people only staying a night, but the owner then said that she saw four bags in the airbnb. which was weird, considering our airbnb was separated from the main house and was locked, so that meant that the owner went inside to check herself. invasion of privacy right there...the owner even made up this story about a socket burning out in our airbnb, which is why she had to go and check. though when we went back, everything was ok...well, we were also in the wrong anyway. we told the owner that the other bags did belong to 2 people, but that they would soon leave because they had early flights, which technically wasn’t a lie. so it ended up that we had to strategically get in and out of the airbnb. it would all be fine by sunday, because bianca was leaving sat night and pars, gabe, and i were leaving early sunday morning. we just had to time our ins and outs so that if ever there was someone checking on us from the main house window, s/he’d only count two people. it was pretty intense, the tension in that place. not just cause of the owner, but also cause of some people in the airbnb. but that story, maybe for another time.

- getting drunk on port wine. oh, PORTO. I love that place, really. it still has my heart, 6 countries and 9 cities later. it was a great first trip (that i should probably recount soon, before memory fails me and i forget the tiny things about it that i loved). one of the reasons why it was so good was because of port wine. and all i can say is...beshie. sarap shet. really, nothing quite like it. i still remember that one of them tasted like maple syrup, no joke. the others tasted....i don’t know how to describe it anymore, but one was incredibly fruity and one was oaky without tasting outright like a barrel. it was amazing. it was delicious, the best wine i’ve ever had. it was also 20% alcohol content. and we had 3 glasses. we got pretty hit after that, and what made it kinda go away was our mad rush towards a building tour that wasn’t that good anyway. but nonetheless, it was extremely good wine. I still can’t forget it, and at the nearest opportunity I jump at the chance to go back. Porto definitely isn’t one of those cities that a lot of people think of instantly when you say “Europe trip”, but I say it should be. One of the cheapest, beautiful, and most relaxing trips ever. I never would have considered it myself, were it not for its close proximity to Spain.

- see how the french dance. this is more of an afterthought, and honestly not as hard hitting as the other things on the list, but wow. the french dance weird. i will forever laugh at that video of gabe and pars copying them because it’s so spot on. it’s really some sort of robotic, zombie move thing that’s equally fascinating and equally scary. I definitely would not have known about it if I hadn’t been on JTA, going to clubs with my friends.

- tried to make coffee without water. yep, this goes on the list of stupid for sure. so javier has this coffee maker that i’ve never even seen before, and when he explained how to use it, he didn’t mention anything about putting water in the bottom. so when i tried to do it on my own, i did exactly as he told me. of course, without water, the thing just started burning. i think i was too late to realize it, because i had already begun to smell the burning. when i took it off the stove and laid it on the towel, the towel just straight up burned. as in the coffee maker scorched a hole through the damn towel. i felt pretty stupid in that moment, and honestly really scared for my life that Javier would be angry and would rethink this whole “letting us stay for an extra 3 months” thing (yeah, I realize now that I’m actually a pretty paranoid person). thankfully, he just laughed it off and cleaned it for me, and was even nice enough to make a new batch of coffee for me. God bless the man. the next batch of coffee still tasted burnt though, so i had to thoroughly clean the coffeemaker afterward. phew, that was a close one though. I thought I had really fucked things up at that point.

- lost money without explanation? this is a question mark because i don’t really know how this happened. it started when i was short by 200 euros after my parents left, even though i didn’t use any of my own money when my parents were here and they had given me more cash. i let that go and just offset it. then the next time i counted, i was missing 50 euros naman? like HUH ? I can get pretty magastos, but when I’m cheap I’m cheap af. I knew I hadn’t spent that money anywhere, yet here it was being missing. I don’t know either, maybe there was something off from my counting from the beginning? either way, I’m still sad I can’t find it anymore :///

- thought i lost 20 euros to the laundry machine demon. i straight up didn’t go to that laundry shop for like 3-4 months because i thought the machine had swallowed my 20 euros when all it needed was 3 euros. later on, i found out that there was actually a lot of balance left on that card, because the 20 euros wasn’t swallowed up, it was charged to the card! TYG!!!! i was really happy the day i found out. also kinda sad cause i spent a looot of months hand washing or just not washing because i didn’t want to go to the shop.

- sleeping in hostels. ok, i know i said i wasn’t fresa, but i never really would’ve considered hostels and been so positive about them if it weren’t for JTA. I’m honestly really loving the hostel vibe. the people are friendly, its communal, its pretty clean, and you get cheap accommodation. i guess this isn’t really a weird or stupid thing to do on JTA, but I just find it...cool how much my perspective has changed on traveling. (maybe that should be my next post?) and again, i don’t think i would have done this if not for JTA. so thanks, JTA, for letting me experience that :)

I think that’s it...for now. We still have morocco next week, and amidst the polarizing opinions about it (”it’s one of my greatest trips, u should go!” vs “be more careful, there are more sketchy people there”), I’m kinda excited. I hope I get to relax a little more, because I think that’ll be our last out of Spain trip. I can’t believe we thought of going to Germany pa after Morocco. I would’ve died of tiredness. anyway, that’s all I can remember for now. soon, I’ll try to add pictures and finally start recapping our trips. I think it will do me a lot of good in the future if I at least record my JTA experiences.

ciao!