Recently

So I have been moderately busy lately.

Nevermind, that is a lie.

However, some cool stuff has happened. Like last night (now two nights ago) on the bus, while Jamal and I were returning home, we were moderately verbally accosted by an old guy. He must have heard us speaking in English, because he turned around and asked us if we were...English. So we said no, but before we could really finish describing what we were doing in padova, he started to lecture us on the importance of history (I think). He started off with charlemagne (carlomagno in italian) then i think moved on to charlie chaplin (theoretically the same in italian, but not when a slobbery old man says it), then to karl marx (carlo marx) and then charles darwin (carlo darvin). So you may have caught on by now that the dude was some sort of history scholar, though apparently he had only read the "guys whose names start with C" section of his history text. Anyway the bus was noisy so we did not understand him too well, and also he mumbled. But he told me that I would not succeed in finding a job when i graduate, and that there were 3 great american presidents (washington, lincoln, fdr, who was like a platonic philosopher-king) and that bush sucks. After his discourse on history, I asked him if he thought I should quit taking my lit class and do history instead. The word for instead is "invece", but he heard me say "inglese," so he went on to describe how english history is the most important, and that I should study that. Because lots of people are buried in england, he tells me. Also, charlie chaplin was jewish, and the jews started communism. Valuable life lessons from the old italian guy on the bus.

Before that happened, Adam (not my roommate, but adam from racquetball club) was here. (adam the roommate will be here in italy this weekend, and then might be back at the end of april.) so his trip was great. it started off with me giving him great directions to padova FROM THE WRONG AIRPORT. so yeah, he landed in treviso and not in venice, and then he eventually got to venice, walked around the city from 1 am till 4 am, got a train to padova at 5:30, walked around padova hotel-searching for an hour and a half, found the hotel i had reserved for him, where he was told that i had not reserved a room, found a different hotel, and fell asleep. we met up at noonish (as had been planned) and just kind of hung around padova on friday.

on saturday we went to venice and in about 7 hours we ate lunch and 4 other meals. then we came back to padova for dinner. sunday we went to treviso again, met an aussie and a swede, hung out a bit, had dinner, and adam went to the airport and i came home. on monday i just did all the homework that i had not done over the weekend. and now i have to go to class.

classes are cool so far. lit class is a little boring and uninteresting, but i talked to the professor and he and i are going to do a little 1-on-1 course on the italian poet/philosopher that i am reading, which i think will be cool. the philosophy class is cool, we just listen to him lecture for a while. i have started to read schopenhauer, an old german guy, in italian, and it is not too tough. and now i am planning out spring break, down south, beaches, other stuff. it will be sweet.