Quick Update and Follow-up

Buon giorno, buon giorno!

I'm afraid this will have to be a short blog today. My mind is going about a hundred directions (or as a former employer would say, I'm going 100 miles per hour with my hair on fire). Next week is our "spring break" if you will, so Clay and I are very busy getting all our last minute plans in place. We're headed to Venezia, Firenze and Roma (Venice, Florence and Rome) for the week, and we leave on Friday. We've had the planes booked for awhile, but this week we're booking hostels and getting together a more concrete game plan on where we're going, what we're seeing, etc. Needless to say, Sono impegnanta (I'm busy).

As for the weekend, we had a slow weekend. We said bye to Benjamin on Friday night, along with some other students. We walked around Taormina on Saturday, and I took a nap! I hadn't slept well at all last week, so I was tired all weekend. On Sunday we went into Catania to look around in the stores, which was a pretty dumb idea since it was Sunday and most things were closed. Oh well. We got in our exercise in a different setting at least. We also ate lunch at this really cute restaurant, so all in all it was a good trip. I didn't take my camera because I thought we'd be focusing on stores more, and I didn't want to lug it around. Next time I head back to Catania, though, I will definitely grab some pictures. The older buildings there look gorgeous.

As I said, I've got a million things to do this week. The three other students living on my floor at the house left on Saturday. The two English kids were really nice, and we had fun talking about the differences in our countries. They were both juniors in high school and interested in the American university system, so I think I helped them out there some. And they explained soccer (or calcio in Italian, futbol elsewhere) to me, which was helpful because Clay and I have been trying to find tickets to a Catania game, but are clueless about how much we should pay/where to get them, etc. I hope when we get back after next week, we'll get a chance to go see a game!

While I enjoyed the company last week, I am glad I have the whole floor to myself this week. I've got laundry to do, and I can get well-rested for next week, so this will work at well. Plus, Gerhard is still at the house, living downstairs, so I still have company! It's the perfect arrangement.

There were two more food items I wanted to add to Friday's blog, so I'll do that and then sign off. I failed to mention the pizza here. I eat pizza about half as much as I eat pasta, which is a lot since I eat pasta every day. The first time I ordered a pizza, I was told they were personal pans, so I should order one for myself. When the brought out the pizza, however, I was shocked. The thing was huge! Probably about 8 inches across! But I ate the whole thing! I can always finish a whole pizza, which I realize makes me sound like I'm either starved or a pig, but they make the pizzas different here. The crusts are so thin, that it's the equivalent of eating probably 3 slices back home. Seriously. And they're much healthier as well. I don't ever see a puddle of grease chilling on my pizza. The Europeans all eat their pizza with a knife and fork, which I suppose is the proper way to do it. I've tried that before at Mellow Mushroom and it's disastrous and somehow messier. So we still cut our pizzas into slices and use our hands, which means you can pretty much pick us out as American in two seconds.

The other food item I failed to mention is a dessert that we often have at the Ferraris. Or I guess it's technically a dessert. The Ferraris like to offer us biscotti dipped in Marsala. Biscotti is semi-sweet bread, or maybe technically a cracker. Anyways, it's not overly sweet, and I don't normally eat it on its own. And Marsala obviously isn't something you drink on its down, but somehow the two together are pretty good. Although after they've used a glass to dip the biscotti in, they usually finish the Marsala and just drink it straight. I don't much care for that part, but the biscotti is good.

Anyways, enough for now. I hope to get some more blogs done this week as I have a whole list of things I wanted to get done by the "halfway point", which is this Thursday! On top of all we have to do, we have two culture classes this week, which last an hour in the afternoon. And the Internet is going exponentially slower with each passind day. So I say all that to give an excuse in the event I don't blog much this week. Ok, ciao ciao!