Karaoke, Calico, Gelato and dinner with a Priest

Monday came around, and that annoying thing called “class” took place. The bummer about having 3 monday classes is that I have 3 midterms coming up in less than 2 days. Good news is that spring break is less than a week away. Anywho, monday night consisted of installment one of Karaoke night. A good start of the week stress reliever. At first everyone was reluctant to get up on stage, but after director of students Mike Beazley sang the Backstreet Boys, the party was on. Now myself, not being afraid to look like a fool and get up in front of people, I signed up to sing Blink 182s “All the Small Things” Everyone was singing along with all the songs anyway, so it didn’t matter if you could sing or not. Overall, great time had by all, can’t wait for next time…any song suggestions?

Tuesday, clearly wasn’t important enough for me to remember, so onto wednesday. Calcio game night. That’s all I really need to say. My squad, Gang Green (the guac’s) was taking on Brown. They feature an actual Div 1 soccer player from SLU. But surprisingly he was not a factor, I blocked all of the shots he took (jamming my thumb on the turf/concrete on one save). However, Brown found every possible way to sneak the ball in the goal. Including a freak header on a corner kick. It was quite a defensive battle that ending a 3-5 defeat for us. Oh well, had to lose that first game sometime, and now that its out of the way we can regroup, and move forward. The tradition of a glass of beer and pizza helped take the sting (and actual pain) out of the defeat. Intramural calcio is taken very seriously around here, as you have probably already guessed.

Thursday night, a number of us signed up to have a delicious (and paid for) dinner with the campus minister, Father Al. I love that the weekends start on Thursday here, I am going to be in for such a shock when I have to go back to Chicago and 5 day weeks, what madness! So the dinner took place at a restaurant called “Taverna Parione” near Piazza Navona, I highly recommend it if you are ever in Rome. Ordered some typical ‘antipasti’…suppli (fried rice balls & cheese), fried veggies and bruschette (with tomato). Obviously wine was involved. And I’ve found that the house wine at italian restaurants can be very good, and cheap. And more and more I am finding myself a bigger fan of white wine rather than red. Red can be too dry at times for me, not fruity enough (I’m clearly my mother’s son, at least when it comes to wine). For my main dish I got a calzone with ham, egg and cheese. Weird combo? No, delicious combo. And apparently there was another large party at the restaurant at the time, and they had tons of extra food, which the waiters brought to us. Needless to say, we were stuffed. Before we left, however, we had a typical after dinner italian drink Limoncello. Now when I say we were full, I really didn’t mean that. There is ALWAYS room for gelato. And this restaurant just happened to be close to the best gelato in all of Rome. A hole in the wall gelateria called “Frigidarium”. This place is so good it even has its own flavor called Frigidarium, not sure what flavor it actually is but its delicious. PLUS they dip your ice cream in chocolate and put a little cookie on top before giving it to you. I am now craving this gelato simply just by writing about it, thanks.

Friday was a school sponsored trip to the scavi at Pompeii. I signed up because last time I was in Italy we went to Ostia instead of Pompeii. My grandpa always has said that Pompeii is just “a bunch of old bones” and he couldn’t have been more right. I guess I had higher expectations for Pompeii based on what I’ve read about it. I assumed there would be plastered bodies everywhere, not the case. There are still a number of them, and its kind of chilling to see, but that’s not the ONLY thing Pompeii is about. Also I felt like the the ruins looked a lot like those at Herculaneum, which makes sense as they were both destroyed by the same eruption. Either way, it’s amazing just how preserved everything is. The paintings on the walls, the marble. Kind of gives you a great insight to how these people lived. And staring at the daunting volcano in the distance is a bit unnerving. Scientists say its due real soon for a big eruption, rivaling that of the one that destroyed Pompeii. The highlight of the day was probably evading the Carabinieri (military police). Basically if you don’t have a license to give tours you can’t give one. And the professor who was with us obviously didn’t have one. So we had to kind of sneakily walk around Pompeii so that he would not be arrested.

I have to say (and I’ve said this before). The time is going really fast. I’ll be in Greece real soon. And then when I get back my time will be over half way done. Yikes. I’ll try to update before Greece so you don’t have to go too long without hearing from me. But we shall see how midterms treat me. Wish me luck, and good luck on your tests and whatnot.