everyone's favorite tourist and a reading list

ciao everyone,
do a little dance, spring has arrived! i have red hair. i am not sure why - one moment i was in the drugstore with my sister, who was visiting me on vacation, and the next thing i knew i was massaging bright red mousse into my wet locks, praying it wouldn't turn out magenta. it turned out, well, red. check it out below! those of you that were fond of the blonde will be happy to note that this is a temporary condition that will pass in 8-10 shampoos.

so jess, my little sister, came to visit for spring break, and oh the fun we had. in 9 days we conquered Florence, Rome, Siena, Perugia, Cortona, Arezzo, and La Verna, not to mention my hometown of Castiglion F.no. more pictures from that trip will be coming soon but they are on jess's dinosaur 35 mm and she still has to get them developed. we laughed like hyenas for most of the trip - sisters are good for that - and we even invented an ad campaign (which sadly never came to fruition) that would have starred yours truly as "Vanessa! Everyone's Favorite Tourist!" the ad campaign idea was sparked by jess's observation of my good behavior - I was caught picking up other people's trash, always ordering in Italian, walking lost and misguided tourists to their destinations in Florence, helping a crying canadian student buy a new cell phone in Rome, and supporting the Italian economy by buying my wacky red shoes, among other things. It sort of became our obsession to see how nice we could be. In our minds, there would have been a whole series of cheesy photos with me giving a thumbs-up and a double-row-of-teeth smile to the camera while performing these girl-scoutish actions. How lovely it would have been. C'est la vie.

Books I have read recently that you should too:
High Fidelity (Hornby)
Silk (Baricco)
Fast Food Nation (Schlosser) (holy cow, you really have to read this one).

I am in the middle of three others - I will let you know how they pan out.
Pictures below! Oh, and I am going to be back in Texas and Louisiana for 3 weeks in June, and I am now taking applications for house concerts. Let me know if you want to host one...
lots of love from your favorite strawberry blonde tourist,
vanessa