the first real post

(disclaimer: please excuse any spelling errors or nonsense, because i don't give a crap. english is my second language. and also it was written over two nights, so references to time might be confusing)

Well well, the time for the first posting has arrived. It’s about 2:40 in the morning here but only 8:40 on the east coast.

I suppose I’ll start with general details. I live with a Dad (Aldo), a Mom (Donatella), and a 16 year old daughter (Giulia). They’re very nice and pleasantly surprised at my copious speaking and listening skills, not to mention my modesty. There is also a cool neighbor (Antonio) who owns a dog (Mario) and who calls Aldo “testa di ginocchio,” (kneecap head) because he is bald. Hilarity. The apartment is really nice. It’s on the second floor of a complex. I have a bedroom to myself with loads of space that I can’t use because I have under 20 pieces of clothing, not counting boxers and undershirts and all that. The bed is kind of built into the closets, it’s very prefabricated, fancy, yuppyish, and all that. Built into the bed-closet area is a nice bookshelf where I can leave my books, mp3 player, and glasses when I pass out after a gigantic dinner.

So now, on to food. It’s ridiculous – Donatella is amazing. The first night I was here we had some pasta with awesome homemade meat sauce, fried chicken filets and artichokes, extremely good parmesan, and then creampuff style desserts, except the size of my fist. Then last night we went out (we including my family and myself, jamal and his, and another guy, Anthony, and his) and we ate (you guessed it) baby horse. And also adult horse. Both of which were pretty much like beef; one was roasted and the other sliced. Tonight we had a different sort of pasta with meat sauce, as good as last time, homemade bread, some sort of meatloaf with a filling of cheese and ham, some vegetables wrapped in fried ham that was essentially bacon, and some eggplant stuff, which I politely tried and then surreptitiously fed to Mario under the table. Not really, I just left it on my plate. They’re nice about my being picky. Oh, and they love the peanuts I brought them, though the Mom always gripes about how fatty they probably are.

Along with eating comes, obviously, drinking. And the wine is wretched if you ask me. I try a different sort every night but each is invariably disgusting. We were out in one of the piazza (town squares) the other night and Aldo bought me and jamal some spritzes, very popular wine-cooler style drinks that all the kids are drinking these days, so we drank those, though they were still pretty gross. I’m guessing it was about four ounces, but it was enough to make my throat and chest burn and then to give me some wooziness and a headache. Translation: I’m a huge lightweight (excuse the oxymoron). And so I shall remain.

So, though drinking has been an absolute failure, Jamal and I still actually did that thing called “going out.” Not because we wanted to, but because it was a girl’s 21^st birthday and for the sake of not sequestering ourselves too early we decided to go do what the group did. So we went to some irish tavern, met some Italians, they drank, Jamal and I talked, we (that is, the whole group) left, wandered around in the cold for 45 minutes trying to find another bar, went there, and then talked and people drank a little more. We left before anyone succeeded in getting trashed, however.

The people we’re with are ok. Some I’d like to get to know better, some I’d rather do without. So it goes. There are a surprising number of philosophy students that I’m interested to talk to, including my Italian teacher who has a degree in it. I talked to her a little bit right after I massacred the placement exam (in about 1/3 as long as the next quickest person) and told her about the scholarship paper I’ll be writing and stuff like that. Though I haven’t had grammar class yet I’m pretty sure that the teacher (Gaia) will be cool and that class will be relatively easy. Oh, and it looks like I won’t have class until noon. Definitely nice.

Other than class we haven’t done too much yet. Or not class, but rather orientation. We’ve had three days now that have been essentially 8 hour info sessions, icebreakers, group meals, town tours, and administration stuff. Tomorrow is the last day of orientation, then we’ll take a group trip to Venice, then we start intensive grammar training (for which I of course have no need) for a month. Tomorrow Jamal and I are going to attempt to get our bearings around town, and we’ll also find somewhere to play Frisbee. However, until I’ve actually figured the place out there’s not much to say about it. The town is pretty sweet, and we live out in the suburbs, it’s about a 15 minute (1 dollar) bus ride in.

The weather is nowhere near as cold as I had been led to expect. It stays between about negative 2 and positive 10 (Celsius) which is roughly 28-45 F. Nobody understands that I’m OK walking around in a long undershirt, tshirt, and my ever-present wrestling jacket. But I’m capable of holding my own in arguments with them, or at least explaning myself. Though I did have a fake fight with Donatella. She said it was cold and I should put on a coat. I said I was twenty and that she couldn’t boss me around. She said that being twenty didn’t mean I wouldn’t catch a cold. I pretty much shut up after that and put on my scarf, grudgingly. Good thing we were only fake-arguing.

The family and I get along really well. The Aldo, the dad, actually kind of reminds me of a certain Mr. Alan Pruce. He randomly comes up to me and shakes my hand or gives me a weird, wide-eyed stare. He and I are pretty similar though – he also likes to shake my hand when we discover something in common, like how stingy we both are. Also, last night, I was trying to make a joke about going only to luxurious restaurants, that is “ristoranti lussuosi.” But instead I said “ristoranti lussuriosi,” which means lustful restaurants. Donatella explained to me that the first one was “di lusso,” of luxury, but that the second was traditionally a sin. So yeah. It’s fun.

Oh, and as for the daughter, I see her for maybe 15 minutes a day. But that’s OK because her speech is tough to understand. She’s nice to me even though I argued her into trying a fried artichoke and even though I encourage her father to wear a hat that she hates. But she apparently has friends or something, so she is out at nights, and she leaves in the mornings for school long before I wake up. Anyway when I came back from my adventures with Jamal last night at about 2:30 and stayed up until 4, she was still out doing whatever one does at una discoteca. And she didn’t come back that night, she stayed at a friend’s. Apparently that’s the normal routine. What craziness. She did say though that she wants me to meet her friends and also that we should watch the OC. Maybe I can justify it to myself as a learning/cross-cultural experience. But I’m well aware that I’d be lying. Also, she’s cool in that she agreed with me that philosophy is better than politics. And she and the rest of the family did fist pumps when I said I preferred Kerry even though I hated the whole shenanigan. She’s a sort of punk-rock-pinko-anti-globalization-sort of girl. And wears a studded belt.

Oh, and internet. We have ADSL here, and I can get on pretty much whenever I want. That means I can check my email every night and also that I could hypothetically update this page pretty frequently. But of course I’d rather do stuff than write about it. Hopefully every few days/once a week will suffice for all you addicts. And please, sign up and leave me comments or something. Don’t let me be a superdweeb who only gets comments from his mother. No offense, Mom.

And the last thing – I do have a cell phone here. Mom, I put it on your credit card. It will be 12 euros per month plus usage, which is relatively cheap. Especially for incoming calls. The number is 348–150-1757, but I think you have to dial 01139 first. And remember, it’s 6 hours later than east coast time and 7 hours later than StL.

And the actual last thing. I can get mail. You can (and are obliged to) send mail/stuff to

Mike or Jamal (plus last names)

c/o Boston University CIES

Galleria Santa Lucia, 1

35139 Padova

Italia (That’s italian for italy)

And one more thing – our Italian skills are getting quite impressive. We can actually comfortably talk to strangers. We happen to have asked directions when we were lost (but not drunk) at 2AM walking around town, and then I had to argue with some guy about how I was OK in just my wrestling jacket. Lots of fun.

Pictures will come once it gets a bit warmer. And once I know what to take pictures of. But take comfort in the fact that I bought a ridiculously capacious (I wanted to say capacitous but apparently that’s not a “real word”) memory card that can hold 500 nice pictures and over 20 minutes of video. I could probably walk around the four major piazza with my video running and get them all. So, yes, that was my sly attempt to get you all to keep checking up on us.