Anniversary

Today is a very special day: the one year, two month, five day, and some change anniversary of the last time I wrote a blog post. I believe in some cultures this joyous occassion is referred to as the "Cadmium" anniversary, because it falls between the silver and gold ones. [Note to periodic table nerds - you know who you are - (forgive the punctuation faux-paus preceding and following this sentence): no need to fact-check this one. I looked it up on Wikipedia. Of course there were any number (that is, twentyish) of elements between the two, and so my choice was largely arbitrary. Nonetheless, you must admit that you found it funny.]

On this special day I propose to do one of two things. The first is to summarize what I really feel was the net result of my time in Italy by describing what I consider to be the most important life lessons learned there. The second is to make numerous jokes which will amuse me, which will almost certainly amuse Jamal, and which, when read by normal human beings, will probably provoke reactions ranging from scoffs to snores to uncomprehending stares. The decision has been made: I shall (actually, as you may have noticed, I have already started to) pursue the latter plan.

In all honesty, I did mean to write some variety of reflective, intelligtent, and sensitive post summarizing my time in Italy. As evidence for this, I tell you that while poking around my blog for nostalgia's sake, I found two draft posts, or rather two titles for draft posts with no actual posts in need of titles. The first was called "hell no, spaghetti-o's." I hardly remember now, but I assume that I intended to inveigh against faux Italian food, even though everyone knows ahead of time that Chef Boyardee makes no pretense (pretence if you're British) to authenticity. The second was entitled "Insomma," an Italian word that one could translate as "in summation" if taking the ocular route, as "in a word" if taking the dictionary root [etymology pun!], or as "eh, you know" if taking the colloquial and connotative one. I believe I meant some combination of all three, [or both, if the first two are too difficult to distinguish from one another] deftly expressing: 1) That my experience was over and that I wanted to try to draw some conclusions, and 2) that I didn't really want to do the conclusion-drawing part, for numerous philosophical and lazyosophical reasons about which I am too lazy to elaborate at this moment, as I will be at any and all future moments.

If this revelation portends anything for the future, it is that I shall (hopefully) continue to have dynamic and exhilarating adventures while recounting them in a way that (hopefully) makes them entertaining, while simultaneously stripping them of any sense of significance, leaving you, dear reader, with a figurative peeled avocado of a story. My writing is the green, buttery, delicious flesh, which you will consume in rapture. The reason why is (embedded in?) the seed, which is 1)impenetrable, and 2) nearly impossible to cultivate in any useful fashion, even though it is packed with DNA and just asking to be planted. The figurative avocado came pre-peeled because I could not think of any symbolism for the peel. Anyone who suggests a good one will be forbidden from commenting/trouncing me in the future.

Finally, I warn you not to take the metaphor too far, because, carried to its logical and biological conclusions (as all premises and fruits, respectively, must be!), my story/avocado turns to poop.

where we'll be

here's what jamal and i are doing for the next few weeks:

may 27-28: lago di como
may 29-june 1: Berlin. Hostel: Mittes Backpacker.
June 2-3: Dresden. Hostel: Guesthouse Mezcalero
June 4-5: Munich. Hostel: EasyPalace, or maybe with our friend Anne
June 6-7: Zurich. Hostel: Youthhostel zurich.
June 8: Bern. Hostel: Bern Backpackers.

So, to whomever is going to meet us, either give us a call (i doubt our cells will work outside of italy, ie after may 29) or just show up in that town and leave a note at our hostel or something. adam, as you have read, we will not be in swissland until later in june, you had suggested the 2nd or so. hopefully either you two can hang around and meet us or maybe we could meet up in munich instead. let me know, hopefully jamal and i will check the blogs a time or two during the trip. also, you can find those hostels on hostelworld.com if you wanna try to stay where we're staying. that goes for you too, jeff.

time to go, gotta get up nice and early to catch the old train.

tentative plans

welp, bad news. i was shot down by the countess and it looks like i will not be working in Recanati this summer. and unless i miraculously find a job here in the next 3 days, it looks like i will also not be working in Padova. meaning i'll be back in the USofA.

but before that i've got some traveling to do. this section is mostly for adam. here's what jamal and i are thinking.

this friday - this sunday(27-29): lago di como
30 march - 8 june: around germany and swissland?
9 june - get back to padova at night
10 june - donatella will teach me to make some sweet sicilian food
11 june - kick back
12 june - parents arive
21 june - flight to NY
?22 june - back to ytown
? - out to stl?

so adam...any clue where and when you'll be in germany? usually i like to kind of get my hostels in advance and stuff like that. and will you and andy want to meet us in swissland either at the end of march or will you want to pass through there close to the 6th of june? i'd be more tempted to do switzerland early and then work our way north, then jamal and i can fly to padova from berlin or something like that. who knows.

and anyone in st. louis...have a job for me?

good michele

fine, i will stinking post. i have not really been doing a lot recently though, so that's my warning. i have no clue what i'm going to write about. alright, i guess my last post was about the weekend in recanati and stuff like that, so what did i do afterward? oh yeah, ok, i remember now.

the weekend right after that one, which was i believe the 8-9 or something, we stayed in padova. i probably did some reading and writing and stuff like that.

the weekend after that one but before this one, jamal and i went to Domodossola to visit professoressa bossola, who taught us italian for our first 2 years at WU. so we showed up saturday at the train station, she, her husband, and her 3.5 year old bambino cesare picked us up. cesare is really cute, cuter even than most babies that speak italian, and it does not get much cuter than that. so we got a guided tour of the town, which is really small, kind of nestled-like into the mountains up near the border (the town is 13 km from switzerland). cesare kept wanting to go back to the piazza with the fountain, so we passed that about 3 times, and jamal and i realized how sweet of a gig babies have, they can do whatever the f they want. he also had a toy rifle and he kept stomping in puddles and splashing water everywhere. his mom told him that jamal and i would leave if he kept doing that, and he said in a sad italian baby voice that we had to stay so that we could shoot the wolves. given that jamal and i run around pretending to have bows and arrows and stuff like that all the time, you can see why we would have found little cesarino to be quite a baller.

OH MAN, I HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN. we went to play some bocce. it was quite awesome, except cesarino likes to steal the little target ball and run away, but when he wasn't doing that, i was creaming jamal, i even took a video of this one perfect toss i did. yeahhhhh.

then we walked around this hill with lots of tiny little chapels on it, inside each one was a large statue scene of jesus' passion thing. it was a nice walk.

then we went home and had some dinner with the family and some of their friends, met a guy who reminded me quite a bit of a mix between aaron ross and my dad. it was weird. and then jamal and i slept in the same bed...ugh.

the next day we did some more walking and picnic-ing type stuff. it was a nice break from bigcitychurchart sort of junk. though honestly i am not sure i have been in a museum the whole trip.

so that's about all for that weekend. mostly jstu hanging out with a professor and telling her how people are at wu, playing with the toddler, ecc (that's italian for etc).

on to this week. this was the last week of classes. actually the italian university classes that i have to go to are over already but i am still going because the professor rocks. so anyway i still have had my normal class schedule, i have exams next week, and i turn in my paper next week, but i really have very little work to do. i am pretty sure none of my teachers read this.

so i guess the two most interesting things happened on tuesday and thursday. on tuesday, our apartment was not supposed to have water, since they were doing some construction somewhere or something. Aldo (dad) left me a note on the bathroom door saying (in italian) "mike, after you take a shower, fill up the vasca." i am leaving the word vasca in italian because i did not know what it meant. so there was a pitcher on the edge of the tub and i cleverly deduced that the pitcher must be the vasca, since it is not usually there. though i could not imagine what good 2 liters of water would be. so i dutifully filled it up to the brim. then i got home and aldo fake-yelled at me, "why didn't you fill up the vasca." and i told him that i did. but then it turns out that the vasca is the bath tub...imagine that. they wanted me to fill it up so that they could flush the toilet by takign water from the tub with the pitcher and all that - what a clever family. i thwarted their plans though. nothing is foolproof if you have a sufficiently talented fool, i think i have heard. so that was a fun dinner, aldo tried to make me eat some stinky cheese as punishment and i refused, and instead said we should put it under jamal's bed. he liked that idea. jamal, you should notice it in a few days.

so the second story also has to do with aldo. i was out to dinner with anthony thursday night. actually i will say a little about that. we were in the mood to go somewhere new. oh my lord, the whole screen just went black and there was a tiny white line across it and i was pretty sure the monitor was broken and that i had lost all of this darling post. i told aldo to come in here and he slapped the monitor and it came back on. phew. it just happened again and i slapped it and it came back. so anyawy anthony and i went around the city, tried to get lost, thought we were lost, but then all of a sudden we were somewhere we recognized, so we failed in getting lost. the city is not as big as i thought. so we ate at a new place, and aldo called me in the middle of dinner to tell me about the game show we usually watch, which involves 20 boxes and moneyprizes and the contestant has to keep guessing boxes and stuff like that. aldo has some mysterious guessing ability and my theory is that he watches the show in the AM before i wake up, and then it is shown again at night,and he laughed when i told him that. but anyway he called me to tell me that he had guessed correctly again. what a goofball. also, he just left the apartment, and he said to me "if you need something, (i expected him to say i could call him) take care of it on your own." "this is what i say when i want to seem helpful but i don't want to do anything." so yeah, aldo is cool.

also, i made a cd for giulia and for isabella, giulia liked it so i made her another one, isabella still has not listened to it after like 2 weeks or something, what a lazy girl. but, on the up side, she did get a pet iguana, which is pretty baller but also pretty useless. she got a pet duck about 2 months ago but then they sent it off to the farm house, i wonder if the same will happen to the iguana.

and, i guess i will add on some summer plans. i went to that museum in recanati, recall? when i was there i asked this lady if they needed someone who speaks english to come for the summer, she said i should email, so i emailed, and the secretary responded saying "i called the countess, who is currently out of town and will come back on weds, and she is interested and will call you." but then she has not called me yet, which stinks, because it would be really cool to go to that museum and translate and stuff like that for 6 weeks. but if that does not work out, i will be back in ytown or stl, who knows.

as for post-semester, pre-summer, may 30-june 21, i do not know what i am doing. wait, from june 12 on the parents are here and also jamal's mom, so i know what i am doing then. but from may 28 or 30 to june 10, we do not know for sure. mabye some germany and switzerland and lake como action, hopefully.

i hope you slobbery hyenas are satisfied.

RIP Gabe

i regret that it is my duty to inform you all that a great tragedy has befallen us. our dear friend Gabriel Bartholomew Appledumpling Robbins has moved on to a higher plane of existence. according to my belief system, that is; according to his, he has become reincarnated as the toothfairy.

Gabe's life came to an unexpected end on the 19th of June, 2034, which happened, ironically enough, to be his favorite day of the year. Gabe was swarmed by a pack of rabid hydrophobic oversized ducks, which were ironically his favorite animals. (ironically, gabe was not a big fan of irony.) in fact, having already become rich, he had dedicated the last 6 years of his life to wild-duck conservation efforts. alas, his boundless generosity proved to be his tragic flaw: the flock to which Gabe was reading a story suddenly revolted and then proceeded to beat him senseless with their foaming bills. unconscious, Gabe could offer no resistance as the crowd of tiny carnivorous beasts reduced him (and his skeletal structure) to mincemeat, which they then ate.

i'd like to take a few moments now to look back at gabe's life. he was born in toronto, canada, on the sixth of october, 1984, and at the age of six his family sold him to a fleet of pirates. it was on the high seas of lake michigan that he developed an interest in japanese and maybe some other scientific things. he proceeded to scallywag his way into a nameless midwestern university, which granted him a useless diploma. unable to obtain a standard job, and unable to reunite with his old pirate clan, gabe decided it was time to reveal his secret prowess for acrobatics.

gabe went into hiding for a brief six weeks of intense physical training; upon completion of his regimen he joined the circus. from his humble beginnings as a tricycling bair, he worked his way up the circus ladder, becoming a tall clown that fits into a small car, and then a lion tamer, then briefly a caged monstrosity, and finally a cannonball-imitator. it is in this last incarnation that g.b.a.r. made a name for himself. somehow gabe defied the law of physics and was cabale of achieving a terminal velcity nearly twice that of any other man, or any other physical body of his mass and dimensions, for that matter. not to mention that his fire-resistant (albeit not duck-proof) skin contributed to many a dazzling spectacle.

however, gabe's myriad talents passed even beyond the boundaries of the big top. i'm sure you all remember his uncanny punniness, and jeff stepp would have us remember that "the species gabius robbinsus is extremely intelligent in determining appropriate football teams for which to root." i really don't know what jeff is talking about though, because he and gabe always picked the redskins, and i'm pretty sure the redskins have not won a game in the last 7 seasons. and in the words of bob, "gabe... if only he didn't love gerbils so much, perhaps we could have spent more time together" because bob was not a big fan of gerbils, and sometimes even refused to learn their names. sorry for getting distracted, my focus should be on gabe, who is dead. what a stupendous cribbage player.

yes, gabe, wherever you are, under a pillow in some strange land, know that we shall all miss you to a larger or smaller degree, most likely a function of how many circus acts we have attended. a hyperbolic one. goodbye dear gabe. may your mincemeat rest in peace in the stomach of those wild carnivorous ducks.

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.

italian word for lewd

this is a two-part entry. the first is hilarious. the second is my class schedule.

last night i ate at jamal's house. jamal lives with a grandmama named franca. with franca lives a lady named giuliana, 30ish, who is working in padova. this weekend, her fidanzato (long term boyfriend), massimiliano (maximilian, sweet name) came to visit. he is one of the funniest people i have ever met.

first off, giuliana is a little tiny pale lady, she weighs just about 100 pounds and is pretty pale. she's funny but in a quiet i'm-smarter-than-you-and-you-don't-even-understand-me-when-i-make-fun-of-you sort of way. so we like her a lot. massimiliano, on the other hand, is pretty big, something like 200 pounds, really dark and hairy, you know the type. so first off they look like a strange couple. i knew we were in for an interesting dinner when he started smacking her butt.

we started eating, and popenews was on the tv, so he asked us about our religions. then i asked him and he told me he was a catholic atheist. far from the strangest part of the evening.

i don't really remember the order of the madness, so i'll just start with this quote: "that movie makes my balls sag." i asked for clarification. he stood up, bent over, and cupped his hands between his knees, and said that the movie made his balls move down there. that the movie we watched at school, the leopard, made his balls sink to knee-level, but the lord of the rings, which jamal and i are watching tonight, made his balls sink all the way to the ankles. which is all well and good - but what the f does it mean? well apparently it means a film is boring. or maybe you can use it about a book. or even a weblog......................

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did that do it?

just kidding

anyway, so on to other weird things. m talked a lot about how scrawny g was. he kept picking up her wrist and examining it. then he said that the only fatty thing on her was her nose (which is not actually that big). so he kept rubbing her nose for good luck, so he says. and he also would lean his shoulder down by her head, because according to him, she gets tired of holding that nose up and needs somewhere to rest it sometimes.

not lastly, but the last in my memory, he said that he was always afraid of hurting her when they were sleeping together. and then he said that written across her back was "use with caution." at which point jamal and i started blushing and franca started hooting and howling for about a minute. so that's about all of that guy. but man am i looking forward to a couple weekends from now when he comes back.

oh, i remembered something else. jamal was going to make a phone call to a certain lady friend back in the US. m asked jamal if they were...you know...and then made a kissy face. jamal and i both answered no. he asked if jamal was trying to...you know....and he made the kissy face again. we said no. he asked if the girl wanted to kissy face and we said no. then he asked why the hell jamal was calling her. then he did this thing where he picked up the phone, and he made up a little dialogue.

j: hi. i'm in italy

girl: oh. cool. (bored face)

j: it's nice here. i like it.

girl: great. (sighing.)

jamal: it's pretty.

girl: uh huh (falling asleep)

jamal:how's school?

girl: fine (head on the table)

and so it went for a bit. man was he funny. the end of that dinner.

as for my schedule, here it is:

M/W 9:30-11 current macroeconomic issues (writing intensive) (bleh)

T/Th 10-11:30 Euro Intellectual history (awesome)

11:30-1 Open economy macroeconomics (italian professor - maybe cool)

1-2:30 Contemporary continental philo (cool)F: Intellectual discussion section at some point.

Also an italian independent study and maybe a german ucollege night class. woohoo.

basically, somehwere between 13 and 19 units.

what a funny old man

just a quick excerpt from aesthetics class the other day:

Professor:...so you all see what it means to be reified.
Student question: so then, is Adorno reified?
Professor answer: no, Heidegger is reified! HAHAHAHhhaahahahaha (continues laughing at himself for about a minute. the entire class remains silent.)

though actually, it is kind of funny, maybe more because he found it funny than because it really was funny.

maybe you just had to be there.

budino nella tua faccia

well, i can't say that a whole lot has happened during the last week. except that time i went to a bingo hall for no real good reason (other than that it was a rainy sunday night and i needed something to do with justin horn and his roommate in england, though actually from oregon, james) and then i won 100 euro. that is, 135 dollars. so i guess i can talk about that for a while:

well actually i'll start with the rest of justin's visit. he showed up on saturday morning, we walked around padova, then went to venice to meet james and also some other american-students-studying-in-england that justin had met on the train from vienna. so we all met up, i walked them around venice, we split up, came back, saturday ended.

sunday justin and james took themselves to venice, did the museum thing, did the buy a cheap umbrella to protect themselves from the rain but the umbrella decides to turn inside out a lot thing, then came back, and we went out to eat at a place near my house called "groovy music pizza." inside they do have, indeed, groovy music and pizza. so james ordered a pizza called the fat ass, which had ham, sausage, and hot dog. then, walking home, we decided to stop at the bingo. we went in, had a seat, the waitress (yes, there were waitresses that ran around taking people's money in exchange for bingo cards between rounds) gave us some cards, and realized we were american and so stuck around to help us out. pretty soon she was saying "damn it, damn it, damn it" (in english) then she took our cards, ran over to a little computer, punched in some numbers, and made me go sit down with her. then she said to me that i only needed one more number to get the bingo. then she said "fuck you, call bingo." and i said "huh?" and she repeated herself, so i called bingo. then someone brought me 100 euro on a plate. i took it. justin and james and i played a few more rounds, justin won a line (and 15 euro with that), then we left after 5 rounds. definitely came out ahead. though i guess that will make up for next time when i lose.

other than that, not much...just reading some cool books and some uncool ones. i am probably not quantitatively keeping up with adam, but i bet my stuff is cooler. also i went to see a movie today called "the love manual" because someone told me it would be good, and it was atrocious, and i'd rather not speak of it. and...yup. nothing too crazy other than the bingo. no old man beating me up in a train station after eating his finger or anything. maybe if i go somewhere this weekend we'll all get lucky and that will happen.

vacanze dolcissime (sweet sweet vacations)

gad, this post has the potential to be huge. i will start with an itinerary:

day 1 (weds march 23rd or something): train to naples, spend the night there
2 - hang around naples
3 - went to herculaneum and pompeii, i think
4 - more naples
5 - more naples
6 - day trip to capri/night train to sicily
7 - cefalu'/beach
8 - palermo, cefalu'
9 - agrigento and the vally of the temples
10 - siracusa
11 - taormina
12 - taormina
13 - day trip home(monday)
14 - back to school(yesterday)

so now, i kept no notes of exactly what i did. i'm trying to get kristin to reveal her diary to me, but who knows if that will happen. anyhow, here's an attempted rundown to get you up to date:

1: took an afternoon train, something like 7 hours long, got into naples at 11pm or so, some cabbie in the station tried to scam us into paying 40 euro for a ride to the hostel, so we went and found another cabbie who charged us 15, like he had said, even though the meter only said about 8. at the hostel that night we met some Canadians, Norwegians, Japanese, and brits playing cards, they all got in trouble for being too noisy. We hung out on the terrace for a while and went to bed.

2: the hostel owner, Giovanni, was nice and for the same price as the hostel took us to a 4-person apartment that he rents out, so we stayed there for the rest of the break. We had our own bathroom, though it was kind of messy and the shower leaked, and we had a kitchen, and jamal and I had single beds, and the girls shared a larger bed on this weird loft thing that was built into the apartment. As for what we actually did in naples, I have no clue, at least not on a day by day basis. We went to lots of churches, walked around the city, checked out the university (the philosophy building had this huge sweet courtyard), and went into some castles and stuff. Jamal and I made lots of stupid (that is, awesome) jokes about ninjas and kings flipping out and killing people and who knows what else. Half of the time we don’t even know what we’re saying. All in all, pretty baller.

3: got up in the morning and went to the train station, where I tried to argue with the lady selling me a special tourist card that we should count as EU citizens since we have a residence permit and all, but she wasn’t buying it. Apparently students from EU countries get half off at just about all sweet places they want to visit, so we were a little miffed that we couldn’t get lo sconto even though we’re students (two of us anyway) at an Italian university. Nonetheless, we got a different sort of discount then went to Pompeii and Herculaneum. Now, I will not describe these cities to you, except to say that they are perfect for running around, finding old rooms and crevasses, and pretending to shoot each other, which is what jamal and I did. To the chagrin of the girls, who so frequently fell victim to our snipering skills. So that was Herculaneum. Then the girls wanted to go to Pompeii, but jamal and I had already been there, so we decided to go climb Vesuvius. The girls left on the train, we tried to find a way up the mountain, but there was no bus and the taxi was costly, so we decided to go to Pompeii. Of course, we didn’t tell the girls. So we got to Pompeii (which is large, mind you), and just about immediately ran into the girls, though they didn’t notice. So we started following them around, planning to scare them or something, but then in our paranoid fear that they might see us, we lost them. So we ran around the ruins for an hour or two, sending them text messages to make them think we were at the mountain, all the while failing to find them. Then we were in this one alley that dead-ended, jamal peaked out, and yelled “oh, crap.” Then he darted into a cell of some sort, but I was placed a little differently and had to charge up the alley. But the girls recognized my backside (I blame the bright orange shirt) and so jamal and I subsequently revealed our ninja selves. The girls were creeped out. We went home and probably played cards and made dinner.

4: I’m not sure what we did this day. Probably some of the stuff that I have mentioned for day 2 or will mention on day 5.

5: we wanted to go to this pretty, versaille-like place called caserta. This was easter Sunday, by the way. So waiting for the train some old, half-toothless man came up to us and tried to give us some little cards with saints on them. This is a pretty typical trick – if you grab the card, then they try to make you pay them. Being silly, the girls took the cards, and when they tried to give them back, the guy got a little angry. He wouldn’t talk though, he just moaned. Anyway he took the cards back, then he started chewing on his index finger in a fashion that was very creepy because of his lack of teeth, and then he punched me in the arm. I’m not sure why. It didn’t hurt. Then we got to the place and the gardens were closed so we walked around the palace, which was decent, nothing special by italy standards though.

6: Capri is pretty. We took a large, shaky boat to the island, and for some reason the boat was entirely filled with middle and high school students. There was lots of drama, running around flirting, etc, oddly mixed with lots of vomiting. The four of us managed to make it through safely, by which I mean we did not vomit nor were we touched by the vomit of others. Once we got onto the island we walked around, marveled at the majesty, sat on rocks, argued about spelunking, and stuff like that. then we had to go back to catch our train.

6.5: night train. The daggone ticket seller man had given us tickets for the wrong day, even though we had specified multiple times that we needed them for the night of the 28^th. Of course we didn’t know that until we tried to board the train and they told us no. but we found a nice train worker guy who let us on, though we still had to pay for the tickets again in part, for the reservation. Then we slept in train-bunk beds. And yes, this is the train to sicily, which means at some point the whole train gets placed on a boat and is shipped across some body of water. But you are in the dark the whole time, so you don’t know what’s going on, except you know that you don’t know.

7: sicily. We arrived at something like 5:30 am, so we went to the little train station café. Jamal and I tried to find the train station bathroom, walked laps for about an hour, and then gave up. The girls then found it pretty quickly – but I’d like to point out that signs and people all told us to go left at the tracks, and the WC was on the right. What a great start to a day. Then we went to get our rental car (we had to wait until 8 for the place to open), and when we got there he told us that the car we were supposed to get had been in an accident, so another was coming. This was a good thing because we didn’t know if we’d have space for all our bags (2 large backpacks, 2 small ones), and we ended up getting an upgrade. The car was pretty much like a civic, but some euro brand. So then we left that town (messina) and drove to cefalu. We had been a little worried about driving but it was only moderately death-scary in the cities and very calm on the highways. So we drove to cefalu, had some trouble finding our apartment, then found it but the staff wasn’t there, so we went to the beach. We picknicked and played Frisbee there, then went back to the apartment, which was extremely sweet. Way nicer than the naples one – kitchen, 2 bedrooms, balcony, bathroom, other balcony, all very clean, well-equipped, etc. we went out to eat for umrao’s birthday, then hung out on the beach at night and went back home.

8: Palermo. We drove to Palermo the next morning, but instead of taking the highway I took some smaller road that went through lots of town. I feared we were lost a few times but we made it – the only incident was that time I hit some other car’s outside mirror with my own. That and the family I ran over, but whatever. So then we went to Palermo, walked around a bit, came back to cefalu, and then the sweetness ensued. The girls went to walk around the town, which is a lame sort of thing to do. Jamal and I decided to climb up into the mountains and besiege a castle. We climbed up this pretty long path, bombed the north wall to enter (hahahaha, you are a dork if you get that), and walked around the walled perimeter pretending to shoot arrows at invaders. Nevermind that 20 minutes beforehand we were pretending to be the invaders. So up in the castle, it smelled like horse, and we kept finding little patches of sand/dirt that had quite obvsiouly been peed on. It all became clear when we stumbled upon a sweet flock of sheep and their old deranged toothless hermit shepherd who tried to give jamal a card, bit his finger, and punched me. No wait, I’m mixing up stories. There was no hermit shepherd. But jamal and I did get sissy-scared and we crept around quietly to this cabin thing, which was actually part of the castle, and there was no evil hermit inside. To finish off the evening, I took some pictures of the sheep, and then they started peeing. I guess the flash scared them. It was weird. Jamal and I descended from the castle (oh yeah – it was way high up and the view of the city was nice) and then my host mom called me. Apparently she was worried that I had died, because she worries and because I hadn’t called. so I apologized for that and told her when we’d be back.

9: agrigento. This was a long day. We left cefalu, drove to enna, the highest city in sicily, and scoped out the castle there. Then we doubled back to go to the valley of the temples, a place filled with old greek ruins, which were cool to see, especially after so many churches. Jamal and I, by the way, were trying to go into a church only if we went into a castle as well. We failed, but only because we had already been to so many churches when we started the game. Anyway, after seeing the greek ruins from 6 bc, we were planning to drive along the coast to siracusa, but I thought it’d take to long, so we doubled back again, passed enna, and drove to our hostel. Just to give you a time schedule, we probably spent about 6 hours in the car that day and 4 seeing stuff. We pretty much did half a lap around sicily, or at least half of the circle of the big highway that connects the 4 largest cities.

10: siracusa. The city was really nice. We just walked around it a lot. I don’t remember anything. Oh, except we went to a castle. And the duomo (main church), which was actually a greek-temple converted into a catholic church. Very cool.

11: taormina: we drove to taormina the next morning. On the way, we stopped at mount etna, hoping to figure out if we could climb it the next day. We found our way to some tourist info center, but it was only open on Wednesdays. So, out there in the middle of nowhere we taught Kristin how to drive stick. She didn’t even stall out her first time getting into gear – that’s how awesome of teachers jamal and I are. So then we went back down the mountains (oh yes, I was the one driving up, and I had to do the whole emergency break so as not to roll back and crush the guy behind you on the hill gig) and I made jamal drive instead. He got us to toarmina, this tiny city on the coast with lots of switchbacks on the roads, etc. we checked into our hostel, which was nice, then went to eat and went to see an old amphitheater. There was a castle jamal and I wanted to go to, but it was being renovated and prepared for visitors. Jamal and I decided that in that weakened state the castle was not worth attacking, so we let it be.

12: taormina again. It was pretty ugly outside, so I think I stayed inside almost the whole day, at least until dinner time or something. I mostly rested up for the 12 hour train ride the following day and started translating some poetry by Leopardi, which I really enjoyed and I have a new favorite poem called night song of a wandering shepherd in asia, but let’s not discuss that now. So that’s the end of that day. Also, that was the day the pope died. I think.

13: last day of the trip. We left taormina at 830, thinking that we could make our 1045 train since it was supposedly a half hour drive. That is plenty of leeway, right? WRONG – jamal and I arrived at the train station about 4 minutes before the train left. Let me tell you why. First off, getting back to messina was longer than we had been told. Then, once we were there, we had no clue how to get back to the car rental place. Or rather we thought we did, but we really didn’t. so we drove around the city for a while, got some directions, (all of this very frantically), then jamal and I dropped the girls off at the train station with all 1000000000 pounds/kilograms of luggage and immediately got stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the rental place. By now we knew where we were. So finally we get to the place, and the one guy who (usually) works there was not there. I called him and told him to hurry up (in Italian) and in the meantime jamal drove in circles trying to get to the parking lot. He tried to take a left into it, but the cops whistled at him, so then he had to go make a u-turn and try again. While he was doing that some guy parked in our spot, so I had to try to convince him to leave and stuff, which he did, how nice. Then we made the car rental man drive us to the station, frantically thanked him, frantically bought some croissants, and boarded the train.

14 hours later we got home, and I went to bed, woke up, went to school, came home, went to bed, woke up, went to school, and wrote this.

It seems that I remembered more than I thought. Cool. I hope you had the patience to read this, especially all you punks who annoyed me into posting. 2600+ words. That’s for sure longer than the total number of words in the total number of my papers this semester. And I don’t mean so far – I mean in total. Man is that cool. The number of castles seiged is greater than the number of papers written. How many of you can say that? jamal, you don’t count.

So I think that’s just about all.

Oh, except Justin horn is swinging by this weekend. So those of you who know him…well now you know he is coming here. I guess I will have to go show yet another person that Venice place.