this post will be wiser than the last ones

i guess i have a bit of catching up to do. but listen, i was busy, i have to sleep and eat and walk around the town all the time and stuff. so don't give me any lip.

i'll start with the most recent thing, i.e. the huge failure that i call this weekend. here was the plan
friday: ancona
saturday: recanati, conero peninsula
sunday: pesaro, urbino, home

and what we really did:
friday:ancona
sat: recanati, porto recanati
sunday: bologna (not on the list above, is it? nope.)

so friday afternoon we left padova and went on down to ancona. we almost missed our train connection, but maybe it would have been better if we actually had. just kidding. we got down to ancona, walked around, the town was pretty much ugly as mess, but we had a good time making fun of it. we climbed up to some castle/church on top of a hill, watched the sunset together, stuff like that. then we went back to the hostel, where we had a 6 person room to ourselves, and went to sleep.

saturday the plan was to go to recanati, which is where leopardi lived. leopardi is this italian poet/philosopher i've been reading and writing about and stuff. so i wanted to go see his house. we managed to get a train to "porto recanati" which i suppose is like a sister city. we had no clue how to get to the real place though, so i just wandered into a 4star hotel and asked how to get to leopardi's house. the lady then copied a bus schedule for me and gave me about 5 pamphlets. very nice of her.

we had to wait a bit for the bus, so we went down toward the beach in porto recanati. there happened to be some big bike race or something and there was a marching band with cheerleaders. it was strange, they played YMCA. the beach was composed of small rocks, but not sand, which was cool. they were really smooth, not stabby at all. naturally they were perfect for skipping, so we did that, and we also threw the frisbee until bus time.

got on the bus, went to the palazzo leopardi, took the tour, took photos, read an exhibit, took a bus back to porto recanati. then the bus to take us to the sweet peninsula didn't come, so we just played frisbee and rockskipped and read on the beach. some italian girls borrowed our frisbee and then skilllessly threw it into the water, and i had to go retrieve it because i happened to be in swimming trunks and they all had jeans. man was that water cold. then they kept playing, then gave us the disco back. immediately afterward, a group of pakistani guys asked to play with it, so we let them, and we talked to some of them for a bit. then we ate dinner and i almost lost my jacket but the waitress brough it out to me as i was leaving. thank, waitress. so the day wasn't bad, just not as we had planned.

we got back to the hostel to find that two stinky guys had been placed in our room and were already asleep. (man, it's like i'm living with jeff and adam again!!!!) (just kidding boys, i know you don't snore like these fellows did.) the one on the top bunk snored quite loudly. moreover, he only stopped snoring when he needed to hack and cough. needless to say i got an excellent night's sleep. though it was mighty nice of them to vacate the room at 4:30 in the morning, or rather to set their alarm for 4:30 and to succeed in shutting it off at about 4:37.

we woke up at 9, realized we had to check out of the hostel within 30 minutes, quick-showered, dressed, packed, and left. then we took a train to pesaro, with the intention of finding a bus to urbino. well, may 1 is a holiday, so whoops, no busses. so then we figured we'd go to bologna because hey, the girls said it was cool. so we bought tickets and then realized HEY, WE ALREADY HAD TICKETS. tickets that we had bought in advance a few weeks ago. so i tried to make the lady in the ticket window give us out 13 euro back but she wouldn't do it. because i had already validated the tickets. but then she cancelled the validation and gave us the tickets back and said we could re-use them whenever, just at the same route. i don't know why she could cancel the validation but couldn't give me the money. anyway we just revalidated the tickets, despite the huge cancelled stamp, and got on the train. let's just say it confused the crap out of the ticket checker man.

so we got to bologna and were pretty lazy. we could have walked around and seen churches and the university and a tower or some other razzamatazz, but instead we stopped at this park, after we had eaten, and threw the frisbee and read and just hung out. for several hours. then we left bologna early to come home from padova. actually right now, according to plan, i would be walking home from the train station. so you are all lucky that my plans went awry, since it culminated in the writing of this very phrase. and if any of you wished for this to happen and your wish came true, you suck, you ruined my weekend, and it was probably jeff. omg i'll post whenever i feel like it, ok?????

just kidding jeff. i'm glad you read and desire madly to hear my updates. that's also applicable to anyone else who reads and desires madly to hear my updates.

so now the week before that i didn't do much. read, wrote, class, went to office hours for the italian university class, talked to the professor, that was cool, no problems at all really. and the weekend before that, (oh yeah, i turned 21), we went to the other coast of italy, the west one. jamal's blog will tell you a little about that. though he left out the part about the rabid killer iguanas that chased us around the whole time until he and i grappled with them and we all plummeted off of the cliff together but luckily jamal and i grabbed a rock outcropping on the way down and just barely saved our lives. i almost didn't live to be 21. and yeah, i think that's just about it, like i said, other than that, nothing else too noteworthy.