Merry Chrismukkah to all, and to all material possessions.
I hope everyone had a great Christmas! My aunt and cousin left Florida and moved in with us, so it’s been a busy and exciting holiday. Chrismukkah went off beautifully, but I haven’t uploaded the pictures yet so that recap will have to wait a bit. Just know that the lunar base was invaded by dinosaurs and it was glorious. We didn’t have a video this year, but I did make a trailer two days ago that I’ll show everyone when we’re together. It’s no Rent, but I don’t think anything could top that video. We only had about 20 movies from this whole year, so I had to use pretty much everything.
Christmas was great, even though I woke up at 2:30. I spent the majority of the day playing with my cousin Ethan, and eating amazing food. My aunt got me some great books, SNL Best-Of DVDs, and the Complete Sports Night.
Here is a little Christmas present from me to you. Enjoy.
Oh, what the hell? Happy Chanukah!
The past few days have been spent in the world of Dawson’s Creek, season six. I’ve rewatched all of them, and am ready to backtrack to season four. I leave on the 30th to go to Marco Island for a week, which should be incredible. It’s doubtful that I’ll update again before that day, so everyone have a Happy New Year!
P.S.
My week in Bologna was incredible. I have posted a lot of pictures on Facebook, so go there to see more. Bologna is such an amazing little Italian town. It has no tourist infrastructure, and no one speaks English. This has preserved it as a cultural and culinary center of Italy. The town is also the most portico-ed town in Europe. When it’s raining (as it was sporadically throughout the week), you can walk around the town without getting wet at all! Bologna is also famous for it’s “Two Towers” that have been the symbol of the city since the days of Dante. There used to be over 60 towers throughout the city, but not these are the only two that remain. The locals are very proud of the shorter tower, which leans more than the tower in Pisa.
friends. Alexia had told them all that my high school nickname was “Ry-Ry”, so they all addressed me as that for the entire trip. Anyway, that night was one of her friends’ birthday, so we went out to celebrate. Alexia and I shared a bottle of Jack, which we finished in an embarrassingly short amount of time.
It turns out that the entire city closes on Monday, so all we got to do was look at the churches and museums. The highlight of the city museum was the wooden bucket that Modena stole from Bologna, starting their centuries-long feud.
course, there was some problem on the line between Bologna and Milan, and every train was delayed for two hours. Fine, no problem. We get on the train, and almost FIVE hours later we arrive in Milan. By this time we didn’t have time to do everything we had planned, but we rushed to the Scala (most famous opera house in Europe), window shopped past all the famous designer stores (5 euro for a Gucci coffee!), and visited the Duomo. The Duomo was one of the most magnificent churches I’ve ever seen, absolutely breathtaking in its scope. The giant columns lining the sides reminded me of the Great Hall in Lord of the Rings. The church also claims to house the nails that were used to crucify Christ. After the church we decided to walk around the city for a few hours, and then had a nice long dinner at a local restaurant. I ordered the Milanese specialty, osso buca, which is a special cut of veal served with risotto. After eating the meat, you use a special small fork to scoop out the bone marrow. It sounds gross, but it’s actually a delicacy, and tastes wonderful.
the morning. Then you wander around Bologna, looking at various churches and playing in parks where bums are sleeping. We took naps in the afternoon, in preparation for the madness that is Italian Thanksgiving. Our Thanksgiving dinner was sponsored by Brown University, and was held at Speedy Pizza (complete with Sonic the Hedgehog logo). They decorated the restaurant with the cheesiest decorations they could find (which they actually probably had shipped from the states). The school encouraged us to all bring our own supplementary dishes, so we had traditional staples such as green beans, stuffing and mashed potatoes. The restaurant started us off with salads, then served two different types of pasta. I don’t know if they thought that was traditional, or just couldn’t go an entire meal without serving multiple pastas. After the pasta had settled, they brought out two full turkeys glazed in some sort of weird chestnut sauce. It was unusual, but still tasted great. We were all really impressed with the dinner, and the fact that it was free made things even better.
e streets of Venice than they do here. The town is really beautiful, but after a week of traveling around small local towns, it was almost disappointing to be in such a tourist location. The train station even had a huge buffet that catered towards the fat Americans! The big plaza by the cathedral in Venice is one of the scariest places in the world. There were easily 10,000 fat pigeons swarming around people with food and shitting all over the place. Of course the tourists all encourage this, buying bird seed from local crazies. Anyway, we did some shopping and then headed off to Padua for dinner with Juan and Alexia’s other roommate Vivi. We got into Padua at 6 PM and realized that the only train back to Bologna left at midnight, so we had tons of time to kill. We went to a great restaurant, and then walked the streets looking for gelato. Padua is a really great little city, and has the largest plaza in Europe (second in the world to Red Square – which I don’t consider part of Europe). The ride home was fun because we snuck into first class and were able to sleep on the ride home in peace, with our own room to ourselves.
The weeks since Bologna have been spent in my room, studying. This semester has not been fun. Who cares, though? Finals are over, and I don’t have to think about school for a month. Tomorrow my roommates are having a dollar party. We give everyone some fake money when they enter, and they dare people to do things for money. At the end of the night, whoever has the most money wins a prize (probably a handle of something). It should be fun as long as we are able to keep the party to a reasonable size and don’t run out of alcohol.
