Quick Week

Sunday morning I woke up before my alarm at around 6:15 in the morning. I checked out of the Wombat hostel, went over to the main train station, and rode up to the Munich airport. I found the arrival gate, and waited for about an hour until my parents and Tim walked through. They looked fairly well for having been on an airplane for hours, which was explained by my parents when they praised Lufthansa for handing out free booze. Good strategy: get people to sleep.

Tim and I talked for awhile while our parents tried to get a bigger car than the “minivan” we were given, because we had five bags or so that didn’t seem to fit. Well, no dice, so we took a little while to shove all of our bags in. I had no space to move side-to-side in the backseat; I was a little sardine in a can of a car. The drive was fairly painless, though. We pulled into Kirchberg in less than two hours, and we did not pass through any customs or anything. From there, we checked into the Sporthotel, which is this cute little 3 story building on the side of the mountain. It’s very reasonably priced, and they provide two meals a day. After getting our ski equipment, it was back for a nap, before our first Sporthotel dinner. That night the ND people who were already here got in from a daytrip to Salzburg, and everyone pretty much crashed after a late dinner.

Monday was a great day of skiing. It is fairly warm for skiing in January, and the sun was out softening up the snow a bit. There hasn’t been any new snow here for a week, but all things considered it isn’t too icy. The mountain has plenty of slopes that work well for me, because they are wide open and steep, meaning I get to go fastly, and fastly is how I like to go. We got in yesterday, and I napped before a big Christmas Eve feast. After that, everyone here went to Midnight Mass in the town church. It was in German, so we experienced a minor Christmas miracle when the priest did not say a homily. There probably would have been sleepers in the group, myself perhaps included.

Tuesday morning we woke up to a pleasant surprise of a Christmas brunch (we slept in… bedtime was 2 AM) that we expected to start at noon (it was supposed to end at noon. Key distinction there). From there we hit the slopes, but the skiing wasn’t quite as nice. No sun made a big difference. We did get in some pretty good runs, though, and had a lovely lunch on the mountain. Austrian skiing is less ski-intensive, more chill-intensive. I like it. Everyone is drinking beer on the mountain, and there are way more places to chill out and eat. Very relaxed makes for serious fun.

Christmas evening was unmemorable. As of Thursday evening, I could not remember off the top of my head what we did. My brother reminded me that we spent the night watching the first three episodes of The Office from this season before we passed out.

The next morning most ND kids left, except for this ND kid. We skied on a different mountain that was on our ski pass, and it was good. We left early and picked up my mom at the lodge. After that, we dropped off our rental equipment and we headed over to Kitzbuhel, the more-famous area near Kirchberg. Not much to see, so we decided to go explore Kirchberg. Not much to see there either. Dinner + more The Office = time for bed.

Thursday morning we got up, ate, and drove out to Salzburg, home of Mozart and the cold. We walked around (a good bit), saw the sights (kind of), and got cold (very). We had a delicious lunch at a little place Rick Steeves (Notre Dame parent!) recommends. My mom had some especially delicious goulash, and the Vienna sausages we ate were better than Koegels. Seriously. Also, we went to the Augustiner beer house, where Tim outdrank me. We took a circuitous route home, because we trusted the GPS map, but it was plugged in wrong. We were yelling at the map and each other. It was like the scene in The Office when Michael uses the GPS to drive into a lake. A scene I just watched two days before.

Friday morning we woke up, had breakfast, finished our packing, and said our goodbyes to the fine folks at the Sporthotel who had treated us so well. It took us a while to get going, with packing all our bags in the car, and then my dad temporarily losing his passport. But get going we got, so by 12:30 we were into our hotel rooms in this swanky airport hotel in Munich. Very swanky, but crappy wireless. That’s no good: even the hostels I’ve been to have solid wireless.

We bought our tickets on the S-Bahn (after a bit of struggling with the machines) and headed into town. The first thing we did was get into the main train station and I struggled with train machines again to buy my ticket to Zurich for tomorrow (Saturday). Eventually I figured it out and bought the cheapest ticket, with 4 changes, for 55 euro. Next up was a walk through Karlsplatz and Marienplatz to the restaurant where Max and I got delicious food last Friday night (wow, that was a quick week). We got too much food and now I am stuffed. Most delicious was pork knuckle. Who would have guessed? We then strolled up to the Haufbrauhos, and then we walked around the main area before jumping back on the S-bahn back out to the airport. And now I’m back with mediocre wireless. I hope this post works.

Post #101

Today was another good vacation day. We woke up around 9:45, I jumped on the internets while Max got ready, and at 11 we joined a tour of Munich that was “free” (tip requested). We saw some sights for about 2 ½ hours, and then we went around to a park, followed by a trip to the main train station so Max could buy his train ticket to Zurich. From there, we went to some museum (the Munich museum?) where there were a bunch of science exhibits that I did not find especially interesting. Next was dinner at a bratwurst and fries place in Max’s guidebook (nothing special), followed by a really cold trip to the soccer stadium of Bayern Munich. Actually, any time we’ve been outside since we’ve been in Germany it’s been freezing, and I don’t really deal well with these temperatures. My fingers drain themselves of blood (they become even whiter than I normally am, believe it or not) and I cannot feel the extremities. Not good.

Anyhoo, after the trip to the stadium we rode public transpo back to Marienplatz (the main square), got to walk around the Christmas market for about half an hour, then headed over to the Augustiner brewery beerhouse, where Max and I both got a liter of beer and promptly downed it, along with a pretzel (when in Munich…). If you are wondering why this post is so poorly written, that is why: I just finished off my last sip of beer about 30 minutes ago.

In other good news, I got a single in Dillon for next semester. Lucky lucky me.

Other good news: my parents and Tim Tim are coming tomorrow. Austrian Alps “skiing” trip. I doubt I’ll ski more than 3 days. I need a break (too much traveling and stress related with that), so I expect it to be an Austrian Alps sleeping/chilling trip. And I’d be very happy with that.

Munich day 1

Yesterday morning I woke up on my own, after spending a good chunk of last night (I was probably up until 3:30 AM) waiting for Max to get back from barhopping. I probably only got about five hours of sleep, which rarely happens to me. My body did not like that, but I did wake up on my own. Weird. Anyways, I woke up Max at 9:15, and it really did take the dude 45 minutes to get ready to leave. More, actually. I have no idea what he was doing for all that time, because I was downstairs on the internets and getting a cereal breakfast. Cereal is delicious when you haven’t had it for awhile.

In any case, we made our train that was at 11 AM, after a little worrying when a bus took longer than expected to arrive. The ride was 5 ½ hours from Berlin to Munich, but it was painless. Train travel in Europe is like that. Plus, this train was especially spiffy. Anyways, we got into our hostel soon after arrival into the Munich main train station, because our hostel is a 2 minute walk from there. Convenient. Max and I checked in, then headed down to a Christmas market in a park south of the city. It was cool, just like those in Berlin. America needs Christmas markets like this, with the Gluhwein (hot spiced wine) and happy families walking around all merry-like. I’m not a Christmas guy (I prefer Thanksgiving), but I would be if Christmas was more of a communal celebration like it is in Germany. From there, we decided to go to this one restaurant because it was the “original brewery in Munich” and it sold “cow cheeks”, among other weird dishes. Plus, it is right near the Hofbrauhaus, the most famous beer hall in Munich as well as our final destination of the night.

The restaurant ruled. I had a bread soup thing with Munich-style sausage (whatever that means), and it was way more food than I anticipated. We also spent the meal talking to Germans who were happy to discuss life with some young Americans. Good times. The best, however, was the beer; it was easily the best beer I have ever had. So, so delicious. I’m not a huge beer guy, but this stuff, an in-house brew, is so good. According a dude we were eating with (the place was packed, and you just sat wherever there was room), locals eat there all the time because the food and especially the beer is so good. Chalk another one up for Lonely Planet. The beer hall was fun as well, but I got no beer, because I knew it would not live up to the previous beer I had just consumed. Max confirmed my suspicions. And now we are back at the hostel, ready for a new day.

Berlin and Barcelona

Wednesday Night: I write this at 11:22 PM, sitting comfortably in the Circus Hostel in Berlin. The last two days have been a pretty good time.

Yesterday, I finally roused Max at 11:30, but it took us awhile to really get going. After that, we walked down Las Ramblas to the coast. We walked around that area for awhile, looking for a restaurant that Max’s guidebook recommended. With a little luck, we found it, and the meal was delicious. The restaurant hit all the key points: in the middle of nowhere relative to the touristy areas of the city, hard to find even when you’re on the right street, packed with locals, and cheap. If a restaurant is like that, you know that you’re going to have an enjoyable meal. Max had some delicious fish, and I had a platter with sausage, pork loin, a fried egg, and some beans. So, so good.

After our meal, we walked over to the Picasso Museum, which traced his development as an artist probably as much as any museum does for any single artist. It had his paintings from when he was a kid. He had skills then too. Max is a really slow museum-goer (he likes to take his sweet time looking at every piece of art, it seems), so that took like 2 hours, even though it wasn’t that huge of a place. We then walked around the Barri Gothic area, but didn’t go in the cathedral. I was/am morally opposed to paying for getting into a church (even though I haven’t held quite true to my principle this semester, I will admit). Jesus wouldn’t approve.

From there, we walked to the hostel, so Max could change. We wanted to go up to Montjuic (=Mount of the Jews; I was disappointed I did not find Rachel Silton and Aaron Gerger on the top), but were nearly talked out of it. We were told that the funicular wouldn’t run at night, and it was a sketchy area. But Rick Steeves says it runs until 10 PM, and we trusted Rick. Rick Steves is a failure; we ended up walking up the whole mountain. In reality, it wasn’t so bad. Good character building, etc. Max got to climb some trees at the top of the hill, and we got to scare ourselves by going into really dark areas in a public park at night after being told it is dangerous. Those experiences are always fun.

After we headed down the Jew hill, we went back to the hostel, because we wanted to meet our new friends from Stanford and Max needed to clean sap off of his hand from his ridiculous climbing activities. We realized that food was an important thing to have, so we walked around the Las Ramblas area in search of a good looking open place. Easier said than done at 11 PM on a Tuesday, even in Barcelona, apparently. We ended up eating fairly well, but our search was worthless: after about 30 minutes, we ate at a place 2 minutes from our hostel. The calamari was delicious and cheap, though.

Back to the hostel to go out in our last night in Spain with our Stanford buddies. We got only one to come with us, and the receptionist at the hostel ended up taking us with her to a club after her shift ended at 1 PM. It was a really relaxing blues/jazz club as opposed to the ridiculous clubs I was whining about last week. A good time was had by all. I was back in the room at about 2:30, but apparently Max didn’t come back until 5 PM. Party party party.

We woke up at 7:30 in the morning to grab our flight to Berlin. After lounging on the internets for awhile while Max took his sweet time, for he doesn’t get hurried too easily. We walked up Las Ramblas to Placa Catalunya to catch the bus to the airport. No problems with the flight, and we were hostel to hostel in less than seven hours. Nice.

Our new hostel is pretty nice. It seems more like a college dorm than a hostel. There are something like 280 beds here, and there is a café and a bar attached. I like it, but it doesn’t have the character as the Barcelona hostel, which was way smaller. Also, it is not was well located. Max and I walked a long, long way to get to the Checkpoint Charlie museum today (excellent museum, by the way. I don’t know exactly what we’re doing tomorrow)

On the way to this museum, we got sidetracked for a long time. Why? There are amazing Christmas markets in Berlin. It seems like they’re at every main area, and they are all huge. Easily the biggest ones I’ve ever seen, all in the same city. Cheap German sausages, hot spice wine, pretzels, Santa… I couldn’t be happier in those markets. We had a blast looking around and watching a group of 12 year old-looking accordion players (about 10 of them, and they were good as a group). However, it got cold, so Berlin wore on me pretty quick once we were out of the Christmas markets. I was freezing and miserable for much of our walking around, but I tried to hide it the best I could. I was thrilled to make it back to the warmth of the hostel. On that note, I think I may run outside to grab some grub.

Berlin Day #2: Technically, since it is 1:24 in the morning on Friday, this is Berlin Day #3, but who’s counting? Last night we went to bed pretty late (3 AM, according to Max). We spent the night chilling in the basement bar of the hostel. I was karaoke night, and Max and I brought down the house (and ended the night) with our version of Piano Man. It was glorious. Anyways, this morning I woke up at 11 AM (I cannot remember the last time that happened… 1st semester last school year, maybe?). I went downstairs and chilled on the internets for about an hour (the wireless internets are not working so hot, that is why I am writing this post in the format I am on Word. I did not want to waste my valuable hardwire computer time on writing blog entries). Max got up at about 12:30, showered, and we went out for breakfast at a place up the road at about 1:45 or 2. How college of us. Anyways, I had a pastry and a badly needed coffee.

After that, we headed down to the Western side of town. We walked around some Christmas market in Potsdamerplatz (I think that’s the name), and then went to this massive department store. Interesting food note: at the Christmas market, we had ½ meter sausages. ½ a meter is pretty freaking long. It was Germany-tastic! We spent a surprisingly long time in this store, KaDeWe, which was apparently a symbol of capitalistic goodness for the poor folks on the East side of the wall for a long time. Some parts are so over the top that there was a 6000 euro bottle of Hennessy there. From there we went to the German Parliament building (Reichstag, I think) and scaled a dome. We then went to the Brandenburg Tower, and got a video of me going “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”. It felt appropriate.

From there we went to a restaurant that Rick Steeves says has the best desserts in all of Europe. It was very classy, reminding me of the Mozart café in Vienna. The Eiscaffee I had (coffee, ice cream, whipped cream) was supurb, and Max enjoyed his first Sacher torte. From there we walked all the way back to Alexanderplatz, where we promptly turned around the headed back to the West side of town, because we wanted to go to this one bar in Max’s guidebook. It said it had cheap food, good beer, and attracted local college students. I figured it was our kind of place, and so it was. Max enjoyed a couple of brews while I ate some chili and good apple strudel. The bar was really smoky, just like the place in the basement of the hostel, so now a good lot of my clothes smell like carcinogen. Totally worth it, though; the place was very relaxing and played classic rock. We were happy. From there, I rode the subway back while Max set out to find some techno club. More power to him, but I am not paying for another damn dance club again, much less one that plays techno. So now I’m waiting for Max to get back, because he forgot to bring his key (Max = super smart, but Max also = super forgetful of small things like that).

I just got the news that I got an A- in my development economics class. That infuriates me: he told me that I got an A+ on my first test, an A on the second, I only got slightly worse on the third than the second, and I did better on a class project. Plus I did extra credit. Something does not compute. The teacher was clearly out of his element when he taught the class, and it’s really bugging me because the guy seems to not know what is going on most of the time. I sent him an email, and I hope to have him change the grade… Arg. I did not go to study abroad to have my GPA go down, dammit. Especially in a class that was easier than some high school classes.

Madrid and Barcelona

So, I´m going to make this a really quick post because my internets time is limited.

The morning after the last post, I walked to my new hostel and waited around a bit for Max. He showed up, and we went to our room, which was small and had its own bathroom, to my surprise. We then went on the Madrid death march, seeing just about everything touristy in town to see, except the castle. We went into the Prado, which was very neat. From there, we walked about 3 miles up a road to get to the Real Madrid soccer stadium. We were able to get the cheapest tickets to the game (25 euro), so we got to watch Robinho, van Nistellrooy, Raul, Cannavaro, et al play some football. It was sweet. Night game, too, so good times. Afterwards, we tried to go out, but the city was surprisingly dead. It was a Sunday. Last note: our other two roomies that night were UNC students who were pretty cool.

The next day we got up, ate breakfast in the hostel, and then left for the airport. Our flight to Barca was delayed, so we got into Placa Catalunya at about 5:30, and checked into our hostel soonafter. We walked around the city, walking up to the modernist area, where we saw the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi´s awesome church that is still under construction. Fun fun. Then we headed back to the hostel, and we met our roomies here: two Stanford juniors, one has a twin brother at ND (in Morressey) and another from one of the Catholic suburbs of Chicago, so he´s been to a bunch of ND games and is well aware of how the school is. They´re both very nice and seem pretty fun, and Max went out with them last night while I crashed. Now I´m waiting for Max to wake up. So that is the last two days, in a nutshell.

Good times, bad times

This morning I got up at 6:15, beating my alarm by half an hour (good thing, too; I would have likely not been on time otherwise). I said goodbye to my roommates, finished packing, and set off. My bag was kind of a pain to get down to the subway, and that was pretty much a constant for the rest of the day.

I lucked out and walked right onto the bus to Ciampino at Anagnina. When I got to the front of the line to check my bag and get my boarding pass, I threw my bag on the scale: 24 kg. Aaaarrggh: weight limit is 20. I need to drop 9 pounds of stuff or pay for my sins. The lady behind the counter was nice, and said she'd let me off the hook if I got 2 kg out. I quickly opened up my suitcase and grabbed the first big group of stuff I could get my hands on (a bunch of shirts and one shoe. Yeah, it was a bad situation). It was about 2 kg. I made some room in my already stuffed backpack; my back is killing me right now. I was carrying laptop + electronic equipments + books + other stuff, plus the clothes on top of that. I still had some clothes left to find room for, so I stuffed them in my jacket. I probably looked like I had a disproportionally large upper body today.

The flight was pretty painless. I kind of napped on the way. In getting into Madrid airport, I didn't really have any idea what to do. The directions on my printout were from a different terminal, which was nowhere near where I was. The metro is not at that airport station. I found a bus that allegedly was to go somewhere near a metro, and jumped on. I lucked out, and got off at a stop near a metro. 1 metro change later (and about an hour from the airport), I found myself at the right place. Okay, that oversimplifies greatly: with my hurt back I was lugging this 50 pound bag up and down stairs for way too long. I was miserable and cursing my decision to stay after instead of going home to Charlotte. So anyways, I checked into the Cat's hostel, which I had to get a space for because the hostel I will be at tomorrow didn't have any room when I tried to book. It's pretty nice, and it has wireless. I can't complain so far.

Madrid is a really cute city. Everything worth seeing is within walking distance, which I love. I went down to the modern art museum (the name is not coming to me now, and I could do a google search, but I am too lazy for this) to see Guernica. Free entry to the museum on Saturdays, so yay for that. After about an hour in that museum (and an issue with my camera and the flash going off unintentionally- seriously, I wasn't even taking a picture- leading to some workers accosting me) I headed out, and walked around a public park area behind the Prado. It was nice to stroll around with the iPod on, just chilling out. I guess I'll have a lot of time for things like that in Zurich, Milan, Florence, Rome when I am by myself.

I then went to the main center city area, the Plaza del Sol and Plaza Major. They were cool to see. It's a very pedestrian-friendly area, with shops and Christmas markets set up right now. It was a nice stroll. I also had a delicious sandwich (I can't remember the names they call them here) just south of Plaza Mayor. They sell these baguettes with some type of meat in them. I got a fairly large fried calamari sandwich for all of 2.30 euro. I couldn't believe that deal, especially considering walking around all the restaurants seemed a little pricy. It was the magic of price competition: there were 4 small little greasy food joints right near each other, and their calamari sandwiches (and everything else) are dirt cheap. Yay.

I'm back at the hostel now. It's early, especially by Madrid standards (they like to stay out late, from what I understand), but I am really tired and sore. I only got 5 hours of sleep last night, my last night in Medag. I got all sentimental when I said my goodbyes to the room. It was a good semester.

So this is what it has come to...

I figured a little food porn would be appropriate for my last big meal with my ND friends. 4 of my other roommates from Medag 123 and I went out to Ristorante Porta di Ripetta, out past Piazza del Popolo. It may have been the best meal I have had since I got here. The place is teeny, and the owner has his own farm where they get a lot of their food, so everything was fresh. And expensive, of course. I paid 36 euro for two courses, one was a delicious linguine with seafoods, and the other was some fried seafoods, as you can see here. That is easily the most expensive meal that has come out of my own pocket in my life. Totally worth it; I shalln't forget. Plus, it has now become immortal on these internets.

The rest of the day was spent being sad in Medag. Not only am I sad, I am really worried about the next 3 1/2 weeks. Very, very worried. My laptop may get stolen, I'm going to be travelling alone for about 8 combined days... so much can go wrong. I hope not.

Quick update on packing

Update: I just dropped off a bag at the architecture studio. It was painless, but it was sad thinking that this semester is really over. I ate my feelings by going over to the Christmas market in Piazza Navona and getting a ciambella (donut) maxi, which is this huge donut that is 3 euro. I mean, that's 5 dollars worth of donut, so you can imagine how big it is. We're talking the size of my head. Delicious.

Tonight we're going out to eat. Who "we" are is a concept that is still up in the air, and where we are going is also an unknown. Then we're (this "we" is more set. I think this we will be the entre group) is going to Old Bridge, getting gelato, heading over to St. Peter's Square, and sitting around shooting the breeze while finishing off a last gelato. Of course, it is not my last gelato: I still have 2 nights and a full day in Rome. But still.

About last night...

Last night was a lot a lot of fun, and then it wasn't. I shall explain. Here are some pictures to provide a little visual assistance to what happened.

Anyways, most of yesterday morning was spent in "preparation" for a test that I had at 3 in the afternoon. I studied in my room, and by study I mean I figured out what everyone in our room was going to be bringing to the party upstairs. We were responsible for bringing some booze and food, as was everyone else. I must say, my bossiness paid off: our room did a good job providing. Anyways, I didn't leave the room until around 1. I still needed to get my Secret Santa recipient a present for our party that was to come, and I needed to pick up some liquor at the GS. At the GS, I found some lemoncello and some random Italian liquor from north Italy that stood out. I also found a "Merry Christmas Barbie" pink Christmas hat filled with candy and also bought my giftee (a girl, though the hat would have been a funny gift for a guy, even more so I suppose) some Baci chocolates as well.

I went down to JCU to take the test. First I stopped at Bar San Calisto, seeing it for what I thought would be the last time (ahem, foreshadowing, ahem). I also said my happy farewells to JCU, or so I thought...

Anyways, I got back around 6, and we made sure everything was in order for the party. It was not. We realized that the eggnog was supposed to take a fairly long time to blend, with an electric mixer. Beating it all by hand would take forever. So we kind of improvised, and used a freezer to cool it for a little while instead of the fridge for a much longer while. We figured we had messed up, but I should have known better: anything that is fat on top of sugar on top of fat is hard to screw up.

Also, Joel and Andy went and got pizzas from downstairs (my brilliant idea, and a total guy move: why make food when you can buy it elsewhere). It went faster than any other food at the party. Yay for that.

Anyways, the party started at 8, and it was a really, really good, festive time. We were loud: our party was two stories directly above my room, and I could hear it from the inside of my room. Fortunately, no one lives between us. All the JCU kids were there, and we had a rocking, Christmasy time. The girls took it very seriously. They were dressed up very nice and pretty and whatnot. Probably the nicest they have dressed other than the trip to the embassy to the Vatican. The guys, on the other hand, went for Christmas corny (ridiculous Christmas sweaters, etc). I was business up top, party on the bottom: I wore my bright striped dress shirt, and then my plaid pajama bottoms, with my comfy, ridiculously over-the-top slippers. I got plenty of complements on my rather unusual attire.

Lots of alcohol was consumed by just about all. We had a ton of stuff, but a lot of it was gone by the end. We introduced the egg nog at about 10 PM, and by 10:45 our huge batch was nearly gone. It was quite tasty, if I may say so myself. I drank it mainly to sober up (ironic, no?): I had only eaten a banana between 9:30 AM and the party at 8 PM. Yeah. Bad life decisions.

The secret Santa thing was fun as well. Highlight gifts included the presentations by the some of the Santas who spent forever composing poems, ding-dong-ditching their gift person and leaving little trinkets around, etc. The men of 123? We wrapped our presents in GS bags. So much for preparation. If it weren't for me, though, none of my roommates would have wrapped their stuff at all. So at least we did that. I received a very cute ornament from Anne and chocolate. I appreciate that. Gifts are a weird stuff. Generally, those are things that I would not have bought with my own money, so theoretically I should be better off with the money that the gifts cost rather than the actual gifts, right? Well, no, because we get the added memories from the gifts themselves as a side benefit. I guess. Anyways, I was quite happy with that.

From there, we decided to go out to a club. Always, always a bad decision. Why did I not remind myself: I hate clubs. Hate em, hate em, hate em: it's everything bad about a dorm party, taken to a whole new level. Shitty rap/dance music, really loud, you can't hear yourself think, and you certainly cannot hear anybody else who is trying to talk to you. Plus, I was in recovery from the party, so the bumping bass didn't help me avoid a headache.

It was a bit of an adventure getting there. We had trouble getting a cab at Piazzale degli Eroi, so we walked down to the Vatican. It's so pretty there at night. I was kind of hoping that we were going to call it a night after that, but we didn't. We found cabs, but I jumped in the cab with a bunch of girls who didn't know where we were going. All we knew is that it was in Trastevere. We got dropped off in Piazza Trilussa, but when we called the others, we were told it was at Porta Portese. Darn. So I led the girls there, lying that I had no doubt in my mind to get there. I actually nailed it on my first semi-guess (at least getting to Porta Portese), so the girls were impressed, and I was lucky. Still, the area was sketchy as hell (this is where we went to that flea market, Mom and Dad. Imagine that area, dark, dirty, at 1 in the morning. It was bad stuff). Still, at Porta Portese, we couldn't find the club. It was way, way down the street. So far, this club thing was going bad, and I hadn't even stepped in. Then there was a 10 euro cover for guys only (I can see why... there were still more dudes in there than women. Are those guys that desperate to get laid? Or do people really enjoy that stuff? I don't get it). Then there was the whole "Oh my God I can't hear myself think" thing, which I put up with for about an hour and a half (I did dance, but, I mean, that does get old fast). I decided to leave on my own, by myself. So I walked back from Via Portuense to Medag. Google maps says that is 8 km, so it was a bit of a hike. Anyways, it took me back by JCU and Bar San Calisto, and the city was so beautiful at night. And very, very quiet. See, that's what I'm going to miss the most about Rome: the beautiful strolls around the city. The best things really are free, not paying ten euro for the privilege of being miserable in a really loud place.

Here is my plan for the next few days. Today: I have to finalize my packing, and take a bag down to the Architecture studio for storage. Actually, I should do that really soon. Tomorrow, I am flying to Madrid in the morning. I have no idea what I'll be doing tomorrow there, but then on Sunday I am meeting Max at our hostel midday. Then, Monday, we are flying to Barcelona, then Wednesday we fly to Berlin, Friday we train to Munich, then Sunday I meet my parents at the airport in Munich. So that's the master plan right now. We'll see how that goes.

Last day at school

I sit here in the Secchia Lab for the last time; I will probably never see JCU ever again. Okay, that may be an overstatement, because I guess I might come back to show it to my progeny as the main reason Dad became so stupid: "It all started here..."

I will not miss much about this school. The dinky library (my high school library owns the JCU library)? No. The smokers? Hell no. Lemon tree courtyard? Not really. The teachers? Kind of, admittedly. I liked my Italian/Philosophy teacher, Profesoressa Aiello a lot. Not that I learned much in those classes. My main education was outside the classroom, for certain. Good riddance, John Cabot University.

No Roma, Roma, Roma

I think, as usual, I have outsmarted myself. I will not be sitting in Curva Sud tonight singing like crazy. I will not be going to the Manchester United-AS Roma match. Why? I thought too much. "Hey, it is a meaningless game. They are literally playing for nothing. Neither team will bring out the big guns. Also, I have an exam the next day. And I won't study for it until the night before (which is, admittedly, still quite true. I haven't started. Problem is, I probably never will, even with all my roommates at the game)" Well, I was kind of wrong. Manchester United is playing Wayne Rooney, who is in my top 5 favorite players. He probably would have been worth the 15 euro alone. Aaarrrggh. And I would have had the chance to dress up, have the fun, etc. Super aarrrgh. At least everyone else important on Man U isn't playing. Then I might have died choking on my own stupidity.

Still, the soccer on this trip was worth it, even only seeing two matches. Mainly, because I got to see my favoritest player, Mr. Clint Dempsey, aka Deuce. Click the link. Seriously: the unintentional comedy is off the charts. American soccer rap: a double-oxymoron (an oxyidiot?)

In other news, today I took two tests, both of which I barely studied for. I did just fine. I think. Also, I got some delicious Old Bridge gelato, but it was amazingly unfilling. I think I may need a pizza for dinner on top of that. Quando a Roma, I suppose. I can eat my feelings sitting in my silent apartment. Hooray food. I'm going to miss this city.

EDIT: Two other notes from the day. I finally shared Bar San Calisto with some ND people. They enjoyed the gelato, while I had a caffe doppio before I worked out. Also, I crossed a new bridge today: the one leading to the Palazzo di Giudizia. It's pretty impressive. I can't believe I haven't gone over there yet.

I love my friends

Me and Packy have discussed celebrating your return with a super classy cocktail party. As a rule, everyone would have to dress up nicely, delicious hors d'ouvres would be served, and the only drinks that would be served would be classy manhattans, martini's, and cosmopolitans for the girls, or any other cocktail that would be deemed worthy of our classy party. Since Reevie and my room is somewhat limited in space, of course the entire guest list would be up to you. And there will be plenty of jazz music! Let me know if you like the idea. If not too bad its gonna happen.

Yours in Ron Paul is Awesome,

Drew Jones

I'm touched.

Lots of the same

I can't really get inspired to do anything out of the norm. I have finals this week, but I'm not really studying for them. Honestly, I'm not really doing anything. I really do feel done with this town, in a weird way. I would think that I would be running around trying to get everything done that I haven't done, but I kind of feel like I've done everything here I've wanted to do. This probably explains all the Dexter.

I took my Renaissance Rome final this morning at 9 AM. It was not too bad, but I got a paper back and I got a 17.9/20. All right, that's not all that bad, but here's the catch: all the comments were "excellent excellent excellent oh my god I love you"-y. I think I got the highest grade in the class. I also don't think my art history teacher knows math (for those of you who do not as well, 17.9/20 does not = A). I really hope she gets to the end of her grading, realizes that she hasn't given anybody in the class a grade better than B+, and grades on a curve. I don't think she will. Darn it, I did not come to Rome with the intentions of my GPA going down. Easy grades are one of the perks of study abroad, right?

Darn

Well, I went down to St. Peter's to do something crazy: go to a Mass in Rome. One of those little things that I really didn't do. The line to get into the basilica was ridiculous. So I just walked around a bit. It was great. A fortunate bad situation, I suppose.

Pretty much I am looking for any excuse not to study. I have an exam tomorrow morning, one Tuesday morning, two on Wednesday, and one Thursday afternoon. I will continue to ignore them.

Another day chilling out in Medag. A few episodes of Dexter, of course. A little studying, a little talking with the parents. I also made what may be my last trip to the GS, after I went to the gym and realized it's now closed on weekends. Arg. I made a little stroll of it though, because it is a 40 minute walk to the gym.

Tonight Dan cooked for me, making up for a meal I cooked him weeks ago. Pesto pasta. That's probably a last. I may only cook myself one or two more meals this week. I want to enjoy some delicious Roman cuisine in my last week. I'm full, but I'm going out for gelato later. I feel like I have to. Only so many opportunities remaining for delicious treats like that.

More Est! Est! Est!

Today I pretty much chilled out in the room all day. I woke up at 8 AM, watched Dexter, studied for 15 minutes, watched some more Dexter, went to Old Bridge for a delicious gelato lunch (3 euro gelato!), watched some more Dexter (5 episodes today. Yeah. That kind of day. And by that kind of day I mean it was an awesome day where I had no responsibilities at all. It is a pretty good show), then napped. After a shower, I went down to check out Dan's photography work that was being shown at JCU along with those works of his classmates, but it was really disorganized and not all that much fun. From there, Dan, Anne, and I walked up Via Nazionale to Est! Est! Est! Red wine + calzone = crazy delicious (Lazy Sunday alert! Appropriate, considering my day). We were ostensibly celebrating a birthday, but I think everyone wants to eat out as much as possible because we have such limited time here. I'm down, of course.

I walked home alone, soaking in the town at night. Everyone else was lazy and got a cab. I figure, eh, only a few more nights to do this, might as well. It's sad.

Bad News Bears

Well, tonight was a bit of a bummer. Actually, the night was very pleasant. Bad news after getting back to Medag is the bummer.

I went to an art exhibit featuring some of the works of my friends who took art classes at JCU this semester. Some were good. Some were great. All were way better than I can do. From there, we went to l'Archetto, one of the more famous pasta places in Rome. Delicious. I walked home alone, because everyone else wanted to metro it, so I passed through the Pantheon and the Piazza Navona areas. Piazza Navona has a Christmas market in there, and it was awesome. I wish I had a camera.

I got home, turned on the internets, and facebook has a message telling me that Sadie is not coming to Europe in two weeks. Damn damn damn. Sadness, etc. Now I have to cancel/alter a bunch of train, plane, and hostel stuff.

Mrs Cohen - I finish class on the 15th, but I am not coming home until January 8. This decision is looking more and more like a bit of an ambitious mistake on my part.

Officially done with the town

So yesterday was my last day of classes. John Cabot University: I will not miss you most of all. I celebrated with a little shimmy outside the courtyard.

This morning is my first study day. I spent the morning walking around, trying to make my way over to Barberini. At that metro stop, there is a church with the Capuchini Bones in it. Eventually I found it, after a detour by the Spanish Steps. That was one of the two things that I have not done in Rome that I wanted to do before I left. I say wanted, because I also did the other thing this morning: I went and hung out in the Borghese Gardens. Unbelievably, I have not done this other than the day that I took my parents over to the Galleria Borghese. It's actually a pretty huge park. Oh well. Some dogs attacked me there, and it didn't seem like the safest place. But I enjoyed my favorite cream-filled pastry from the market and watched an episode of Dexter on my iPod (the show is great so far; I am two episodes in) and studied a bit (15 minutes).

Anyways, on the way home, something happened that hasn't seemed to have occured in months: I got lost in the city. It was north of Medag, where I never am. I felt like I did three months ago. It's been too fast.

Hungarian food

Good fun tonight: Andy and I went over across the way to some of the girls' apartments. We had delicious Hungarian foodstuff, and hung out for a couple of hours. There's another thing I'm going to miss from Rome: we get to play house here. It's not quite the same at ND.

EUR

It's 55 outside right now. Truly a perfect, beautiful day. I'm going to miss this back in South Bend and its 10 below with the wind chill.

Budapest

Budapest was quite the trip. Some pictures from the two days can be seen here.

It began at 4:40 on Friday morning, when we woke up to catch the 5:15 metro to Termini. We took the Leonardo Express out to Fiumicino Airport for an 8 AM flight, which was on time. After touching down, we rode into town on public transpo, and found our hostel. The hostel justified the high ratings on the internets. We paid 12 euro, and the six of us (Andy, Erin, Michelle, Teresa, a girl from Oxford, and myself) took over a huge room with its own bathroom. They even provided cereal for breakfast and free tea and hot cocao. And it was only 20 minutes from the Christmas market. What a deal.

Speaking of that Christmas market, we then walked along the Danube (we were on the Pest side. Budapest is split into Buda on the west side and Pest on the east) and stumbled on the Christmas market, where people were selling little trinkets and lots of delicious looking food. And hot wine. Yummy, yummy, warm wine (it was about 35 degrees outside. It snowed at some point on Friday a little bit). Also, there were a bunch of live performances. From there, we walked up to see the beautiful Parliament building, and we also found some old Communist park area. Very cool.

At that point, the group split up a little bit, and three of us (Andy, Michelle, myself) headed back to the Christmas market to see a traditional Hungarian dance performance. It was cool for a little while, and just as it was about to get a little dull, the people walked into the crowd and pulled us out to dance. The three of us tore up the proverbial rug, Hungarian style. It was a blast.

From there we went to dinner, where we had some great Hungarian food, for cheap. Budapest is the cheapest city I've been to so far. I can't imagine it will be cheaper anywhere else. Anyways, I had some goulash and fried food, and we shared and it was good and filling. At that point, Michelle wanted to go to the hostel and crash, but it was only 9:30 or so and I was having none of that nonsense. I said "hey, let's go climb that hill in Buda!", and so we did. Excellent decision. A highlight of that whole experience was us running across the bridge over the Danube to Buda. The run was long (big river), but exhilarating. I will never forget that. Nor will I forget the sweet view from Buda. Budapest is the "Paris of Eastern Europe", and it was truly a city of lights. From there, we headed back to the hostel, got some tea, and I beat Andy in chess. We went to bed at 1:30. Long day.

The next morning, we left the hostel around 10:20. Most of the group went to these famous public baths of Budapest, but Michelle and I weren't really in the mood, so we explored Buda and went up to a Castle. More great views were seen, etc. We also went into some church. We met back up with the whole crew at this labyrinth area under the Castle, where Hungary installed some kind of fake historical stuff down in real old caves. "Authentic copies", I think were the words on the pamphlet. Anyways, the museum was fun, and it had rocks with fossilized computers from the future and stuff. Odd, but fun. We then went to a sweet art nouveau cafe, took some pictures at the top of the hill, and then went down. The others went to the hostel to pick up their stuff, while I went to the Christmas market for some hot wine (I had my stuff with me all day). We met up at a restaurant near the train station. We had to kill a lot of time, and we milked that restaurant for all we could. We were there from about 7 until 10:30. Good times. Good food, as well. Fried = delicious. There's probably a reason Hungarians didn't look so great. That and the sun not coming out. Not that I'm in position to fault people for not having a tan. Anyhoo, we eventually got on our train at 12:30 AM for the airport (our flight was at 6 AM this morning), but we missed our stop at the airport, so we had to improvise and walk three or four miles in the dark using our sense of direction in random Hungarian streets to the airport. Success. From there, we got on the plane, on time, back home, no problem.

A problem did arise when I was riding the bus back to Medag. For the sake of legality, I will keep this in the hypothetical realm. Theoretically, I might have attempted to free ride on the bus by not stamping a metro ticket, and I might have unsuccessfully attempted to stamp the ticket when a group of transportation people jumped on the bus at a random stop to check tickets. One of those dudes might have noticed, and might have tried to lecture me and fine me, but I might have gotten off because I couldn't really understand him and he couldn't understand me. I might have gotten off the bus at the next stop, in case he changed his mind.

All things considered, it was an excellent trip. That's my last trip before the end of the semester. That's sad.

London pictures

I'm back from London. I really have nothing exciting to add to all that I have written so far. I did sleep on a couch last night. My flight was on time. See? Not exciting.

Slightly more exciting is that I made a picture album on facebook. One could check that out by clicking this link. That's all from here.

London Days 3 and 4

Lots o' fun was had over the last two days. Yesterday was so good that I can't really remember what all I did. Actually, we didn't do all that much. We had a huge breakfast that was semi-English style, because we included beans in the meal. After that, we lounged around for awhile, and a group of us (two kids from the Oxford Program, a kid from Dublin, one girl in the London Program, and myself) headed over to the Tower of London, and after waiting in line for about an hour, we got in and did the whole tour thing. We were led around by one of the Beefeaters, and he was especially chummy and entertaining. We then saw the crown jewels and a bunch of guns in there. Royals, guns, and money.

We then headed to the Cheshire Cheese, which is one of the oldest pubs in London. I had some onion rings there (like 4 pounds... oh God I paid 8 bucks for onion rings) as well as a delicious bitter. The pub was the ultimate English pub. Great fun. From there, we walked back up the road to St. Paul's, where we tried to listen to some choir song thing. I say tried, because a few minutes after we got in, someone pulled a fire alarm or something and we got kicked out. Darn. We rode the bus back to the apartments, and after going to a grocery store, Chad and I cooked a huge feast combining ground beef, onions, peppers, some special spice, and tomatoes. We had no idea what we were making, but it turned out delicious, and everyone who ate it was impressed. So were we. While we were cooking, Durst managed to find some stolen slingbox feed of college football games, so we watched college football all night! I seriously miss that stuff. Chad and Durst went out to some pub, but a lot of us stayed in (maybe 10 kids), because the ND game was on. We won! After that, bedtime.

This morning we headed out to see the changing of the guard at Buckinham Palace at 11. Crowds blocked my view, generally, but it was still pretty cool to see what I saw. From there, we split up, and I headed over to the Westminster Abbey area while the rest of the group went to Trafalger, where I'd already been. I was starving, so I tried to find somewhere to eat. Incredibly, it took like 15 minutes to find a grocery store or anywhere with food really in that area. It felt like forever, because I was dying. Anyways, after eating, I made my way back to the Abbey, only to realize that it is not open for tourism on Sunday. Darn. I met back up with the crew at some pub near Trafalger, and from there we tubed out to Fulham, to watch Fulham FC, my favorite Premier League team (because they have my favorite player, Clint Dempsey He's the skinny white guy in the video. Great unintentional comedy). They tied Blackburn 2-2. Very good time. Me likey soccer. Anyways, we came back, and here I am. I need to go eat.

London day #2

Yesterday was a pretty good time as well. Chad took me around, and we blew through the British Museum in about 20 minutes, then headed to the National Gallery and saw some neat paintings. From there we walked about 200 feet to the Notre Dame London center, which has an unreal location. Apparently Notre Dame outbid Germany or some comparable country (maybe France, I can't remember) for the building. It is very nice, way better than JCU.

Then Chad and I went to this War Cabinet museum that also has a Churchill Museum attached. That may have been one of the neatest museums I have ever been to. The War Cabinet museum is this underground bunker that Churchill and the rest of the War Cabinet made a bunch of their war plans during WWII. It is apparently essentially exactly as it was. A lot of the stuff down there was left by those guys after the war ended, and they restored the rest. Very cool. The Churchill Museum was also very impressive. It is only a couple of years old, and has recently won a bunch of "best museum" awards. It has this long, interactive computer (about 30 feet long) that has all the years of Churchill's life on it. You choose a year, and all the months pop up. You choose a month, and there's practically a fact on what he did at least half the days of his life. Ridiculous amounts of research must have gone into that.

We essentially skipped lunch. It was 3 PM by the time that we got out of the museum, and after walking through Hyde Park (and seeing the Peter Pan statue!), we were back at the apartments around 4. We chilled for awhile, and then a couple of kids from ND that I kind of know showed up from Oxford and Dublin. We ended up hanging out all night last night, and it was a really good time. First we ate some stir fry that Chad cooked up (eating out here is ridiculously expensive... and the dollar continues to make it even more expensive. Jeez, it's 1.49 right now to the euro! Pretty soon my card won't let me take out 200 euro at a time even if I wanted to. Ugh.), and then we went out to some pub. It was packed with ND kids, because some student was having a birthday. From there we went to another pub (the London kids here drink a lot, more than our program. I think they need the energy from drinking, because the food ain't so hot here), and then we went to a hookah bar. We stayed there for an hour and a half, and then walked a few blocks back to the apartments. It was really, really cold last night, so when we finally went inside, it felt fantastic. One of my new friends thinks I have some kind of syndrome or something that she said she has because my hands and feet were whiter than snow by the time we got in. I think I just have low blood pressure. Whatever.

By that point it was pretty late, and we started a movie, but after about 15 minutes I was ready to pass out (and some other kids were already asleep), so I went upstairs. Perhaps the most important moment of the night were those 15 minutes I was sitting there watching the movie, because in front of me was a Physiology book. I was flipping through it, and the only thing I could think of was "my God, I have no interest in this at all." So, yeah, maybe medical school isn't for me after all.

London day #1

So far, so good on the London front. Most of the day was spent in transit, but my flight from Ciampino to Stansted (30 euro round trip!) was actually ahead of schedule. From there I took the Easybus to Baker Street, which is located conveniently near the apartment building with the ND kids. After walking about a half-mile, I called Mark Durst, and he met me outside the building. I went up to his room, dropped my stuff off, and we immediately went to the grocery store. There I bought a pastry and a wrap, because I was starving. Aside from a banana, I hadn't eaten in 9 hours. That's just not right on Thanksgiving. After that, we went back to the apartment, where I rested on a couch in Durst's room.

Eventually Chad, who is my official host of the weekend, showed up from class, so I went upstairs to his flat (floor 9). The rest of the afternoon/ early evening was spent in preparation for the Thanksgiving feast. I had the totally wrong idea of what the ND london dinner was, but that's okay. Apparently, we had to cook, but they provided the food with instructions. Well, we are ND students and all, so we can follow orders pretty well. The dinner was excellent. Truly... it was no Thanksgiving at the hall, but the turkey was actually better. I was pleasantly surprised.

We cooked for 12, and they provided us with a whole hell of a lot of potatoes, turkey, wine (ND subsidized alcohol!), stuffing, spinich stuff, cranberry sauce, gravy, and some veggies, as well as pumpkin pie. I probably ate two days worth of calories in about 20 minutes. It was by far the fastest Thanksgiving meal of my life, and I paid for it (and am still currently paying for it) for the next couple of hours. But it was totally worth it.

London

I wonder who's commenting sometimes. If you do leave a comment, try to remember to leave your name. It'd make things a lot less confusing.

It's 6:23 in the morning here. I did not sleep too well last night. I suppose its anticipation of my trip to London, which will start in a few hours, but I haven't been sleeping all that well recently anyways. Lots of stress about the whole picking classes stuff. Lots of worrying about that, which probably isn't so great for my health/sanity.

I hope everyone has a pleasant Thanksgiving. I'll be with 100+ of my closest ND friends in London. I hope the meal is delicious.

The Evil Empire

Ohio State beat Michigan. Bummer. More importantly, however, Notre Dame is winning the Duke Super Bowl 14-0 at the half! UPDATE: WE WON! Jimmy Clausen is finally looking like Football Jesus, or at least that's what the radio guys are making it sound like. Hooray!

I had a very good time at Abbey Theater watching the game. It was completely packed: not only was the Ohio State-Michigan game on, but also an Italy-Scotland Euro 2008 game. Still, most people were there for The Game. Lots of English speakers. About 10 minutes after I sat down, a kid from St. Thomas in Minnesota sat down across the table from me after I offered him the seat. We had a pretty lively conversation for the first half. The kid is studying to go into the seminary. Very nice kid. As he was taking off, he says "Jamie, it's a pleasure to meet you. Oh, and don't pay for your beer." There was a second of general confusion; I thought he saw the waiter spit in it or something. After he saw the puzzled look on my face, as he walks out he says "I picked it up already". He says this as he walks right out of the crowded bar. He scurried off as I tried to catch up to him. Nice guy.

Also talked to an Asian couple; the guy went to UM. Turns out they're on their honeymoon. "He really owes me," said the newlywed bride.

I love ND

Reason 32345 why I love Notre Dame: I am walking down Corso Vittorio Emmanuele after working out, in my ND gym shorts, just breezily walking along, when through my allegedly sound-blocking headphones I hear a loud "GO IRISH!". I turn around, and I had blown by a family of about six or seven, and nearly all of them are wearing some form of ND gear.

We proceed to have a 15 minute conversation. This is totally normal; when you have ND in common, it is really easy to have a long conversation with a group of complete strangers. In Rome. I would say it it's weird, but at this point I have gotten used to it.

It was some family just on a family vacation. Their kid was an ND transfer, came into Dillon, transferred into Knott (not. cool.), graduated last year. Of course, they seemed like charming, nice people.

Anyways, I just wanted to blog that, because stuff like that happens more often than one would think, and I might forget it. I'm off to go watch Michigan play Ohio State. Go Blue, send Lloyd out with a win. Of course, Lloyd, Mike Hart, and Chad Henne are the last remaining things from my old intense fandom with UM... it'll be odd seeing them go.

Pizzeria Est! Est! Est!

Today was a fairly (actually very) lazy day. Cold, very cold outside, so I didn't leave the room until dinner time. I did watch a lot of the Sopranos, season 5, however. Good stuff. Also chilled out online, talking to some friends in the states. Chris had a hectic day: I was talking to him last night, and he was working on a paper, then I went to bed, woke up, was up for two hours, got online, and he was still at the library at 4:30 in the morning (his time) working on that same paper. That is part of my idea of hell.

Anyways, I was getting a little stir crazy in the room, and I got the other three guys who are here this weekend from my room (Joel, Brian, and Edguardo Pizzaro aka Pizza) to go out to pizzeria Est! Est! Est!, which is supposed to be one of the better pizzerias in Rome. It was, in fact, delicious stuff. I had a calzone, and their calzone was better than Baffetto's. Also, they had an excellent table wine (the Est! Est! Est! is a white wine). And that got me thinking: when I go back home, I won't be able to legally drink for six months. How incredibly patronizing is that dumb law!? Yeah yeah yeah, MADD has those statistic thingies, but who cares about those drunk driving accidents: give me liberty or give me death! Or, in this case, maybe both! In all seriousness, however, it is fairly ridiculous. I'm not a big drinker at all, but, I mean, c'mon people. It's about time that law changed back. Or, even better, make the legal age something closer to, oh, about 12. Europeans handle themselves way better with alcohol than Americans, and that may have something to do with it.

After dinner, I took a stroll by myself back home. My roomies wanted out of the cold, and hopped on the metro before it stopped running. I went by the Trevi Fountain, and nobody was there! At 9 on a Friday night! This city is dead. Same thing with Piazza Navona. It's amazing how few tourists there are here compared to only a month ago when my parents were here (it was a month ago that my parents were here? Oh God, where has the time gone?).

Still here

Yes, I am still alive, despite soccer riots and other Italian excitement. Today I worked and finished a paper for Italian. Also worked out and went down to the library at school and found out a book I need isn't in, so I can't do another paper I wanted to write this weekend. So it was like a day at Notre Dame, except for the crappy library part. If I were at Notre Dame, I wouldn't go to the library. I've only been 2x for academic purposes in 2 years, after all.

Another (not so) lazy Sunday

This weekend, aside from the Tivoli trip, was very quiet. Lots of going to bed early, waking up early, and getting work done. I wrote three papers. I despise you JCU, you and that work stuff.

I really wish I had something more exciting to blog about. Aha, I do! Last night, instead of going out (admittedly, this isn't starting off so exciting after all), I was online and set up my travels with Max and Sadie. PDS Europe field trip 2007 will involve stops in Madrid (where I fly into December 15th, a day before Max and Sadie get there), Barcelona, Berlin, and Munich. Munich should be especially fun, because they have a bunch of Christmas-y stuff. Though I guess I haven't looked into things like that in the other cities, maybe it will be there as well. Total accomodations are going to only be about 120 euro (which is about 15 dollars more expensive now than when I got here. I will just suppress my anger about this for now. Damn you economics, damn you.), but travel is surprisingly expensive: the train from Berlin to Munich is 70 euro. Luckily, we found a flight from Barca to Berlin for 30 euro. We still need to get the ticket from Madrid to Barcelona. All things considered, however, it will be good fun for a reasonable price.

Now all I need to do is firm up plans for after the ski week with my parents. I'm not all that sure that I need to go to Switzerland any more. I had my permesso di soggiorno unintentionally stamped while traveling to the Czech Republic, which may have been a blessing in disguise. I believe that makes me a tourist now, and my tourist visa works for 3 months after I got stamped back into the Schenegen zone, so I should be fine... but I may want to go to Switzerland anyways. We'll see. These are things I need to discuss with Konstantin. He, however, did invite me to stay with him in Stuttgart, and I think he meant the entire week. We'll see. Either way, I'm excited to see Spain, Germany, and the Austrian and maybe Swiss Alps after the semester. This semester abroad has been quite the lucky blessing. Not to mention not having to go through the ND football season this year...

Tivoli

So I spent today at Tivoli and Hadrian's Villa. Very, very neat ruins. I liked them more than Pompeii. The picture comes from the Villa d'Este, which may have one of the coolest backyards ever. Very worthwhile trip.

Another highlight of the day was the meal we (a group of 7 JCU students, 2 archies, and Maria Younes, the ND contact for Rome) had at the expense of Mr. Nanovic, the benefactor of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at ND. Anything we wanted at this really nice restaurant in Tivoli was on the house. My meal probably cost over 40 euro, including wine/water/bread. Hooray for really weathly people subsidizing at-least-somewhat wealthy people! I had steak for the first time since getting here, and red meat tasted delicious. Also had a tiramisu for the first time this trip (I'm not quite sure why that is the case; I suppose gelato has been doing just fine so far), and it was easily the best tiramisu I've ever had. Three cheers for Mr. Nanovic.

The rest of the weekend is not looking so promising. I wrote a paper yesterday, and I have 4 papers to write in the next two weekends, so I'm hoping to finish one tomorrow and one Sunday. We shall see how that goes.

Class selections

Okay, I will admit: the whole "reading maps" thing was rude. Moving along. Actually, everyone was fairly responsible and compentent on the trip; we never really lost anybody for an extended period of time, which meant minimal worries, which made life really nicer than it would have been otherwise. Apologies.

Internet is down at Medag. We are again reminded of how reliant we are on the tubes. Life is way more boring without them, and my email box fills up way too fast when I am getting online only 2 or 3 times a day, instead of the normal constant checking. Also, the google reader fills up too. Too many things to do; too little time with the tubes here at JCU.

Class this week was painless, once again. I have five papers to write over the next two weekends, but they are reasonable, I suppose. I want to finish them off so I can travel to London over Thanksgiving weekend and then Budapest the following weekend without worries.

The big development of the week is that the classes for next semester have been released. This is leading to the annual Jamie McGinnis Existential Crisis (copyright 2005). I, of course, have no idea what I want to do with my life. Actually, I am currently doing the only thing I have ever wanted to do with my life. It's going really well, but unfortunately it seems that there's not really much of a future in it. So, pretty much, I am at a crossroads. I have some options.

Option 1: I could do Physics 1 next semester, Organic Chem next summer (this is recommended by Shauna, a girl who is studying here now), Physics 2 and bio senior year, and I would have all the premed requirements. I would have to take a year off after school to take the MCAT/ apply to med schools, but that isn't the worst thing in the world. Doing this would not really eat into my schedule, because I'm doing fine on my major. If ND made me do some science electives to pick up the Arts and Letters Preprofessional major, I would probably have to go an extra semester. I don't think they would make me do this.

Option 2: I could try to pick up a Poly Sci major as well. I would probably have to overload, because I would have to take 9 poly sci classes, 3 econ classes, write my thesis, and 1 art class before graduating. This is still not unreasonable, because even if I took a normal amount of classes, I would have 15 classes left before graduation. It's certainly doable. With this option, I have no idea what I would do next summer. This is what I call the Law School-likely option.

Option 3: I could simply finish out my Econ major. This would be unbelievably easy. I would have 3 econ classes, my thesis, and an art history class to graduate. Spacing this out over three semesters, I could do this in my sleep. If I do this, I really have no reason to go to 2nd semester next year, because I will almost certainly be done by next December. This is the Law School/private sector/ econ grad school/ minimal-thought-required option. Here I would probably try to get an internship with some consulting firm over the summer, to see if I like that.

Usually, I am fairly decisive. Not with this. Any thoughts? Leave some comments, or email jmcginni@nd.edu.

Vienna

I have a test in less than 2 hours that I feel completely unprepared for. So study? Nah. I'll blog.

Our first night in Vienna, Dan and I went out and got some kebabs while everyone else settled in. We then went to bed. Whooo hooo party.

The next morning, the whole group went to some sweet arty cafe in the Old Town area for breakfast. The cake and coffee were not especially memorable, and the price was even worse (7.50), but it was still worth it to have a very Viennese coffee morning. They even had the newspapers out and the dudes in ties serving and whatnot. After that, we split up. Dan, Michelle, and I headed to St. Stephens while the girls went out to go see the horses prance around in the Hofburg Palace, the old home of the Hapsburg Dynasty. We saw a sweet view of Vienna (pictures are two posts back in the picture post), and then went down to go see if we could meet up with the girls at the palace. Success. We then went into one of the palace tours, where we saw a whole lot of plates and other silverware (and goldware, I suppose, if that is a word), and saw some other old imperial rooms. They were really, really loaded. It was fairly disgusting.

Dan and I blew through the exhibits, mainly because we were bored and one of the things was this really long exhibit on some old Hapsburg princess who reminded me a lot of Princess Diana. She died young (she was assassinated) and people ascribed far too much meaning to her life post-mortem. Also, she spent a lot of time on her appearance and whined a lot about how hard it was to be a princess. Actually, she was exactly like Princess Diana. Anyways, Dan and I went out and explored for a bit, and the girls finally came out of the museum about half an hour after we were done. After that, we played around in a park in the Hofburg. Tons and tons of leaves were on the ground, so it was war. Good times, good times.

After eating delicious hot dogs, brats, and kebabs, we headed to the Belvedere Gardens, where we looked at some pretty flora and whatnot. Any time we can get some stuff like that, we take it, because Rome has very little green. Sadly, it is November, and a lot of plants were dead. Still, it was all right. After we split up at the Gardens, we got lost as a group. It took us a good hour to all meet up, and from there we decided to go to the Opera, because we weren't sure how far ahead of time we had to get there to get the cheap standing room only seats.

Luckily, we arrived early enough. There was already a pretty big line when we got there, about an hour before the tickets went on sale around 6:20 (they should have gone on sale at 6, but it is a government-run Opera house). We ended up getting 2 euro balcony tickets to the show, Tosca. What a steal. And by steal, I kind of mean it: the whole thing is totally subsidized, so my cheap opera experience came on the backs of the Austrian taxpayer. Hooray!

Between getting our tickets and going to the show, we ate at the Mozart cafe, one of the two swankiest cafes in Vienna (that and the Sacher cafe, as in Sacher torte). The cakes there were pretty expensive, and I paid five euro for an apple strudel with hot vanilla creme sauce, but it was totally worth it. We were the only people anywhere near our age in there, and a lot of people were dressy. We were not.

Speaking of being underdressed, we went from there to the Opera house. Some people were really, really dressy. We were chilling in jeans and polar fleece. We didn't quite fit in, but we had a blast with it. I mean, what do you expect if you sell 2 euro tickets to the Opera? The building was ornate, and seeing the building made it worth the price of admission. Our view was pretty much entirely obstructed, so we amused ourselves with the actual dialogue of the opera in English translation (hilariously corny), and trying to see if we could catch any Italian phrases we understood (not really). We left after the first act.

From there, a group of nine went out to ride the famous Vienna ferris wheel. No success there; the famous old one was not up and running. Fortunately, at the base of the old wheel is a really creepy, 1960s type old amusement park. Being that it was November at night and freezing, the place was a ghost town. Totally, totally creepy. There was another ferris wheel (smaller but faster), and we rode that (check the pictures... I think there are some). We went from there to the Bermuda Triangle, a bar area that was not so cool, so we headed back to the hostel. From there, we went out to a really late dinner. Dan and I tried Weiner schnitzel (sp?) for the first time there. I figured it was appropriate (Wien = Vienna). I ended up having some for lunch the next day, too.

The next morning, we went to another swanky cafe and got more expensive cake (see the food porn pictures... they are amazing). I paid over 6 dollars for a piece of cake. Oh God. But it was delicious. From that cafe, we went to Starbucks, where a lot of people got their American coffee fix. From there we broke up with the understanding that we would meet at 6:15 at the hostel, because our train home was taking off at 7:35 (we double-checked this time). My rest of the day was pretty much exploration. Michelle, Teresa, and I went through a beautiful park on the East side of the city to some incredibly weird but awesome house that was built without straight lines or flat areas. Yeah. It's way cooler in person than in theory. It's all painted up and everything... wow, my descriptions are worthless, but check the pictures. That might help.

After that, we split up. I was all alone for the rest of my time in Vienna, which was actually really nice after a lot of hustle and bustle. I rode the loop tram around the city once, which provided some cool peoplewatching opportunities. Then I got off, and let myself get lost a little bit. Fun fun, but really cold too. Eventually, I wound up at a Metro stop, so I went back to the hostel.

After everyone got back on time, we set out for the train station. Not as much worry as the last time, for sure. We got there with plenty of time to spare, and got on our train and in our seats. The setup was nice for a night train: 4 to a compartment, with two drop down beds on each side. For the first 2-3 hours of the train ride, we thought that maybe there was not going to be anybody else in our compartment (we had two full compartments, and Dan, Emma, and I were in another), but some chatty African dude jumped on. He had been everywhere travelling as a computer dude for Microsoft. He has Nigerian, Austrian, and American citizenship. Crazy stuff. I slept reasonably well on the train, all things considered. I probably woke up only two or three times. At about 8:50, there was a knock on our door: "Jamie, Dan, we're at Termini". Home sweet home.

Prague madness

I am going to split up my posts about the Prague/Vienna MADNESS 2007 into a couple of posts, mainly because I want to post, but it is late and I have an econ test for which I have studied very little tomorrow. Yay school. Pictures came in the previous post, so scroll down.

Anyway, I took off on Wednesday afternoon trying to get to the Trastevere train station via bus 492 and tram 8, but I never caught the bus, so I ended up hopping on the train to Termini and took the Leonardo Express (2x as expensive as going to Trastevere) to Fiumicino. From there, our flight to Bratislava was delayed a bit, but no serious trouble. Here is slightly more serious trouble: my permesso di soggiorno was mistakenly stamped by the dude going out of Rome, so I'm not altogether sure it is valid now. Also, we had some excitement, because Elise, the girl who more or less put the thing together in terms of planning, left her folder in the airplane. That folder had our train ticket back to Rome, and that would have been an utter disaster.

Anyhoo, our plane to Prague was even more delayed (European discount airlines: you get what you pay for), so we got into Prague at about 10. It was a good 11 hours of travel. We then quickly hopped on some public transpo, and had no serious trouble finding the hostel, Emma Hostel. Dan and I were in a double, and it had a sweet loft area where I slept. What a deal for 15 euro a night.

It was chilly as we went out for a late evening stroll/ bite to eat. We hit a kebab place, where I grabbed a Czech beer and everyone else munched on some doner. We then strolled around in the cold up to some square that Dan wanted to go to. It was cold. Cold cold cold. That is my memory of that night: cold. We headed back to the hostel to rest up.

The next morning, we were up and out very early. Michelle and I split for the group, because we wanted to walk to the castle and everyone else thought the metro was a good idea. I actually lost Michelle along the way (she likes to wander), but we met back up later around the castle. It took us way longer to find the rest of the group, because they took a nice long meal and didn't bother to let me know. Michelle and I, however, got to see a sweet military demonstration/ changing of the guard type thing, and also got to hear some sweet Czech music from a four piece band outside the castle (accordion included! The Ryzners would have fit right in). After we finally met with the other 9 people (I haven't yet mentioned this, so I suppose I should: 9 girls, 2 guys. Good group, etc), we went up the basilica, which had a really bothersome winding staircase. It provided a nice view, so it was worth it.

After that we went to the Old Town quarter, and saw some cool sights. On the hour, every hour, the old clock in the square does this weird little thing where the 12 apostles pop out, and we got to see that. Also, we headed to the Jewish Quarter, which had lots of nice little things to buy. Holding true to the stereotype, however, they make you pay to go into the synagogues, so we didn't do that.

Our evening was fun, to say the least. We went to a Thai restaurant. The food was probably average Thai, but considering I haven't had any acceptable Asian food here yet, it tasted fantastic. Speaking of fantastic, I am not a big beer guy, but the Czech beers on tap were tasty tasty tasty. It went well with dinner. After that, Dan and I did a minor pub search, but we ended up at the bar across from the hostel. Excellent decision: it was really, really dirt cheap. I got some slivovitz, to make grandma proud. I built it up as the worst thing in the world, fire water to the nth degree (which it is up at the Lake), so Dan was somewhat surprised when it went down okay. The stuff we drank was weak sauce, because the stuff we have up north makes your throat want to die. Unweak sauce was the absinthe we may or may not have consumed (illegal in the States): 70% alcohol by volume.

After that, we went out to a dance club that Dan and Elise were talking about for a while before the trip. It is some huge, 5 story club that you can see from the Charles Bridge. It was fun. One story was like 60s and 70s dance music, another was bumping music. All in all, it was a very good time. It was funny, because if there was some sketchy European dude trying to get with one of the girls and they were uncomfortable, Dan or I would get grabbed and dragged right between them. Good times. At about 4:30, we dragged ourselves out of the club and back to the hostel.

Checkout was at 10, so we were up soon thereafter. The day began with an American-style bagel joint that was reccommended in some travel book. It even had American style coffee, which was so very welcome after all the espresso of the last 2+ months. We then split up to do our own things, with the understanding that we would meet back at the hostel at about 4, because our flight was at 7:15... or so we thought (attention: foreshadowing!). I ended up with a group of a few kids, and we headed to the Jewish area again for some browsing, and then we headed to the old square so Dan, Michelle, and I could go to a Dali exhibition. It was all right, I suppose. There was one really cool piece that was two things from different distances, and there is a picture in my facebook album. Anyway, we then went to a market, where I proceeded to blow all my remaining Czech krowns (or however that is spelled) on junk food. We got back to the hostel at around 4.

Being back early and all, I decided to hop online. A few seconds later, I hear a "ummm, Jamie, I think we're going to miss our flight". WHA' HAPPPENED? "It says 17:15 on the sheet here for our departure time". So, yeah, our flight was taking off two hours before we thought (actually, this is the one thing with getting somewhere that I had nothing to do with. I was pretty much the unofficial, self-appointed group leader of the trip the rest of the time, because I can do really impressive things like read a map and use a sense of direction as opposed to nearly everyone else in the group). So, yeah, we scrambled (and by we, I mean, well, me, pretty much. Emma helped, too, in calling the airlines, who proceeded to tell us "yeah, you're screwed") to find a solution, and we (royal we again) found that a train was taking off from one of the stations at 5:35, so Dan and I rounded up everyone, and we were off immediately (by that point everyone had arrived to hear the bad news). We did a death march to one of the metro lines, and then got off at the station the dude at the hostel said would be our train station. Dude at the hostel was dead wrong. We had some more metroing to go. Somehow, I was not frustrated. It was a total zen moment. Anyhoo, we got to the other station with plenty of time, luckily, and our tickets were only like 32 euro. We should have planned on that from the start, I believe.

Anyways, all is well that ends well, and we got into Vienna at about 10 that night.

Vienna post comes tomorrow, or Wednesday... or Thursday. I'm busy busy busy right now. I should have been asleep half an hour ago.

Pictures

I will write a very long post about the fun times in Prague and Vienna later, but I figured I may as well get the pictures out.

Here is the first half of photos, from Prague (the album title is because we missed our flight between Prague and Vienna), and the second half is from Vienna.

I sit in our hostel in Prague, waiting for the girls to get ready to head out for our first real day of the trip.

Point A to Point B, namely Medag to where I am now, took a long, long time yesterday. About 11 hours. We connected in Bratislava, and both flights were delayed a bit. Hooray cheap European airlines not running on time. So predictable. No real highlights of the travel other than that, which is probably a good thing. It did not take long to get from the Prague airport to the center city, which was great.

Last night we ended up eating in this kebab house, because it seemed that everything near us was closed. The food was good, but I need to get some goulash.

That is all for now. Hopefully we are about to go.

News and Notes

A couple of notes: this morning I finished the second season of Rome. 2 seasons in 9 days. Good stuff. After that, I headed out to go to the gym, and from there I went to St. Mary Major and St. Paul Without the Walls. Hooray, I have officially finished the official pilgrammage churches. St. Mary Major was aight, I liked St. Paul's more. Also, I wanted to note this last week, but I forgot: I swear I saw some people from the ranch crossing the bridge over near Castel St. Angelo. It was from a distance, but they both looked very familiar.

Crappy weather here. A good afternoon for a nap, followed by class from 5-8. After that, it's Prague/Vienna weekend! Good times ahead.

New photos

Well, I haven't put up photos in a while, mainly because I have not taken too many great pictures lately. If you want to check some not-great pictures (hey, at least I got the Pope in a couple!), then click here. The blurbs with the pictures might make it worth one's time. But that's not a promise.

Anyways, yesterday I woke up and headed over to St. Peter's Square, where there was a huge mass for the beatification of some dude from the Spanish Civil War and 150 martyrs. Yay death! Anyways, the pope stuck his head out at midday to do his weekly shoutouts to his homies from the balcony. I understood very little of it (my Polish/French needs work), but the English I got. He speaks English like Hans and Franz from SNL ("Iz would like to thankz ze Engliz speaking peopolzz for zier being here"). I was there, though, to see off Chad, Durst, and Jessica, two Dillon guys and a new friend. They're all heading back to London, so I'll see them in less than a month anyways.

After that, it was truly a lazy Sunday. I have nearly blown through 2 full seasons of Rome in the last week (not much to do in terms of work, clearly), and I watched a bunch of episodes of that yesterday. I can't really remember what else I did. Clearly, it wasn't important.

Today was lame too. Lame class and stuff. And I actually have lame work to do. Lame.

The US Embassy... and stuff

I want everyone to know that your hard earned US tax dollars were hard at work tonight punishing the livers of Notre Dame students at the residence of the US Ambassador to the Vatican. The ironic thing is that many of the people there were underage, so the US government (I guess I am assuming that it was on the government's dime... but I don't think I'm making a big assumption here. You'd understand if you were here) was providing a perfect opportunity for people to break the law, considering the residence is technically US soil (for my part... I plead the fifth).

As I said, it was a very pleasant party. The Rooneys were very gracious, and Kathleen looked like she had been to about a million of those kind of parties before. She was constantly like "oh God, my parents are going to kill me if I look like I'm talking to you guys all night. Let's move, and it'll look like I'm getting around the party". A whole different lifestyle than what I'm use to, for sure.

A lot of people showed up. Maybe around fifty. There were some cool people there, too. A couple of priests, and some dude who worked for Ambassador Rooney who graduated from Georgetown in 2003. He was cool, and was hanging around talking to me, Chad, Durst, Gorsche, and Kathleen a bunch. The party slowly but surely drew to a close, and there were about twelve of us who were left over. All the London kids and ND were/are still around, so we took them for a last night out. We headed to some pub/ dinner spot that the archies like to go to (there were two or three archies with us) called Mickey's. It was really, really cheap, and it was also very close to the Pantheon. It defied the laws of economics, like Old Bridge. So, anyway, we had a great meal of delicious cheap food to satisfy our drunken cravings (or sober cravings. Nobody broke the law. We promise.) and we then headed out to Campo. On our way, we stopped by the architecture studio to check it out. A bunch of poor archies were working like mad on some project that is due next week. Poor, poor souls. On a Saturday night at 11:30 in Rome, no less.

So, after that, we headed to Campo. As if they weren't drunk enough from the open bar, a couple of kids grabbed some beers, and we hung out in the square, shooting the breeze, as always. After a while, the Notre Dame and London kids realized that they would be getting up at 7:30, because the ND kids have a relatively early flight home tomorrow (I'll see some London kids tomorrow morning, hopefully). We said our tearful goodbyes. It's sad, but then again, I'll see them soon enough. Of course, I may not be living in Dillon next semester, but I guess I may still see them regardless...

EUR

Wow. I just went down to EUR, an old fascist-era city expansion that stretches out toward the sea (Mussolini wanted to grow Rome all the way out there). The place is totally depressing, stupid, and fascist. Let this be a lesson: central planning= bad idea. "Done right", even in the nonfascist way (you know, with the least bit of aesthetics), it is still done wrong. Thinking of central planning got me thinking: I forgot to pick up an absentee ballot. So, yeah, if you live in Charlotte, do me a favor. Vote to repeal in a couple of weeks. Or if you were planning on going to vote to keep the rail tax in place , just, you know, stay home, and it will be like you voted and I voted. It's only fair.

Notre Dame Kids!

Last night was very, very fun. A bunch of Notre Dame kids are all in from London and South Bend (Chad, Durst, Gruffi, Mary, Kathleen, Gorshe, a lot of others), so it was party time. They apparently spent all day doing the biggest death march ever, seeing a bunch of churches and then going to Villa Borghese.

At about 5:45, I got a phone call from Dan saying to meet him @ Baffetto at 6:30. So I met up with a crew of folks there, sharing some of the most delicious pizza in Rome. Afterwards, we decided to head over to Kathleen's house. And by Kathleen's house, I mean the United States Embassy to the Vatican. I went back to America yesterday! Big surge of patriotism for being back in the good old U.S. of A. That building is nice, too. Your tax dollars at work.

We then headed over to Campo for an evening of hanging out and chilling (not a Drunken Ship or Sloppy Sam's kind of night). We hung and chilled at the statue, enjoying the mild weather. Fun fun.

Today the plan is for me to head down to EUR, the fascist-era city-outside-the-city. I haven't been down there, and I feel like I should at some point.

Scavi tour

Today has been very, very quiet. Got up, hung around, watched 3 episodes of Rome (I started on Sunday, and I'm 9 in so far: good stuff), and then headed down with Andy to do the Scavi tour under St. Peter's, subsidized by the nice people at ND. My mom wanted me to take a bunch of pictures when I did it, but we weren't allowed to. In terms of coolness factor, I'd give it about a six out of ten (it's a 2 star on the Michelin travel guide). What can I say, I'm a tough grader.

Notes of interest: on our way to try to get into the tour last week after the awful Vatican Museum scavi, we blew right by the area of the circus where Peter was killed. It's the area of the first Christian martyrs. Also, there is a little plaque where the obelisk was in the middle of the racetrack before they moved it to the center of the Piazza San Pietro. Kind of cool. You don't get to see the bones of St. Peter, though. Lame.

Perhaps the highlight of the tour was when our tour guide, a ND graduate/priest working in the Vatican now, was talking about how Romans would go out to grave sites with food and wine, and they would take out the wine and pour it over the grave sites. He then said, "you know, like some for my dead homies". Always good to hear a guy in priestly attire giving respect to the "dead homies".

More help from Mom

I'm trying to remember more about Sunday---Dad and I are wondering when we went to Largo Argentina to see where Caesar was killed. We were at Trevi fountain that day--it was so crowded. Remember Dad kept floating the idea that Sunday in Rome is especially crowded because all the tourists have arrived and will be there a few days before heading out to the other places? And we took a break on the steps of the Senate building, which undoubtably has a fancy name and is in a named square. I know we walked through some square with the designer stores--which were all closed.
And when did we walk through Campo Fiorno? We were at Piazza Novaona a couple of times.

Did we do all that on one day??? I do know that pizza at Bufetto was worth the plane trip over. Fun to sit outside at the tables along the street in the evening, sharing the table with the cigarette smoking lady and her fellow, enjoying the vino table, rosso. Fantastico.

The attempts at Italian here are fantastic. We did walk through the "Campo Fiorno" (Campo dei Fiori) and the "Piazza Novaona" (Piazza Navona- My mom tries to hard. With Italian, what you hear is usually what you spell) on Sunday, probably after heading to the Trevi Fountain. Sunday was a very busy day. We did see a lot of the city on the walking tour, aka Death March #1. As one may imagine, the parents off the plane were a bit cranky by the end. But they liked the pizza that was at the end of the tunnel.

As for me, not much is going on new. The weather has changed from perfect to a little cold, which means our marble floored/tiled apartment is really chilly. I did a bit of homework over the weekend, and now I seem to have no work to do for about two weeks. Even after that, it should not be so bad.

The most exciting stuff in my life right now are people coming into London. A bunch of my friends from Notre Dame, most in the London program but also two from South Bend, are coming in for this weekend. They get in tomorrow. One also happens to be the daughter of the US Ambassador to the Vatican, and we're going to a reception at his house on Saturday. Otherwise, I don't think anything is lock-down planned, but I know we'll have a good time.

Also, two of my friends from Providence Day, Max and Sadie (a couple... I think. It's so hard to understand kids these days) are coming over to join me from Dec. 15- Dec. 24. This is perfect, because I was hoping to have some travelling companions for after the semester. We're going to meet in Madrid, so I booked a flight Dec. 15, the day we get kicked out of Medag, to Madrid for 30 euros. Ahh, low cost airlines. Anyways, the plans are not set for what we'll do/ where we'll go after that. I'm thinking Madrid-Barcelona-go see Corey Tunstall (another friend from PDS) in southern France-Northern Italy and from there we'll see. They may want to go to Paris, though. If anyone has suggestions, let me know (jmcginni@nd.edu). But anyways, friends at PDS= friends for life. Good times, good times.

Today is my long class day. But after that, no work this weekend! Hooray. I need to convince some people to go out to try some delicious Roman cuisine this weekend.

Color me irritated. I walk all the way down to Trastevere to go to class, walk into JCU, and find out classes are cancelled for me today. Argh. I walked all that way because they apparently don't believe in the internets.

Not only that, but I have to print something out. I forgot about this in my anger, and now I have to walk all the way down to JCU again to do it. If they had emailed me about this, I could have had somebody in my room print it out for me. Now nobody is here. AAAARRRGGG feel the rage.

And it's really, really cold out. Which means it is very cold in our room. Maybe a walk isn't so bad. That's why iPods were invented.