STUDENT MAIMED AS MARSHMALLOWS BURN UNCONTROLLABLY
"We wanted to make s'mores," student Melissa Schantz recounted, nothing that the idea came to them as they dined one night on salami sandwiches. "[Translator] Antonio Mansi had never had one, and we thought he needed to try them. We thought we'd sell them for a euro each."
The junk-food-deprived students made their way to the Conad grocery store on the edge of town, where they bought multicolored candies resembling marshmallows. They then created small signs which they pinned to themselves, reading 'Venice or bust'. Room-mate Kim Schurtz came to the rescue with bobby-pins.
The students, four in all, along with Mansi and a pair of local Cagliese, made their way to a desolate part of the Italian wilderness, where they attempted to start a fire.
"All the wood was wet and slimy, though," Greg Cavaluzzo told me. "But we brought something else."
The would-be s'morse-muchers recounted how Cavaluzzo purchased a number of "Diavolina" firestarting logs, which he lit, resulting in a toxic cloud of smoke which had the most unrepentant smokers fearing for the state of their lungs.
That's when the bake sale went bad.
"Within two minutes of setting the logs alight, the smoke was out of our fire," Schantz told me, shaking her head in disbelief.
"It was a bad incident," she continued. "Greg got a really bad blistering burn. He ran and stuck his hand in a pool of stagnant water. And Allie's hair caught on fire-- I noticed a glowing ember. Alyssa even got marshmallow on her pants."
As if to add insult to injury, the catastrophe came to its pinaccle when Antonio Mansi got marshmallow in his beard.
"The marshmallows weren't even any good," Schantz said. "They had a fruity flavour."
"They were similar to sugar-coated Peeps," chimed in Kim Schurtz.
"And they got all carmelized, with a fruity aftertaste," complained Jen McNamara.
Still, at the end of the night, all agreed that despite the chaos, it was a "bonding experience".
But the question remains: how will the students get to Venice this weekend?
"We're just gonna have to call our parents," one admitted.
