strange compliments

today being sunday, official day of holiness, i went downtown to the bookstore to listen to some guy talk about his book called "il pensiero e la vita" (thought and life), a topic that might be a little broad for a 1 hour session and a 200 page book. but anyway one of the most important italian philosophers was there, he's in charge of philosophy at the university here and he was head of the italian philosophy congress or something, and he's an aristotle expert. so anyway he was pretty worthless, but i'm glad to say that i could understand what he was saying, i think, so it will be plausible for me to take courses at the school here. more interestingly, though, some old man wanted to argue with him after the conference, though the aristotle man wasn't really interested. so afterward i went and talked to the old man for a little while. he kept spitting, but other than that it was pretty cool, though i only about halfway understood him. he could understand me though. and then he told me that i looked like a philosopher, especially the way i watched him while he talked. i'm not quite sure what he meant, but i guess it was a compliment.

the next compliments were even weirder. anthony and i had our first run-in with public transportation weirdness. we were taking the bus home (we and some others had met up in the center of town for some lunch) and some raspy, possibly crazy italian lady sat down next to anthony and put her arm around him. anthony is a few levels lower than I am, so he had no clue what she was talking about, ever, and i could only understand about half of it. she said she had a sore throat and couldn't speak well. all the other italians on the bus were kind of laughing at us, probably because they understand how awkward it was. but anyway she told me that i was cuter than anthony and that i had a better name. trying to pass the awkward, awkward time, anthony asked her if she ever went to the bingo hall, to which she replied that if you win, that's nice, but usually "lo prendi nel culo" (you take it right up the you know what). and i think that's all for now.