Benvenuti parenti

Welcome to my mother, 2 aunts, uncle and grandma and grandpa. They arrived this morning to begin their Italian vacation, and of course to see me.

Since my dad was already here, we headed over to the airport bright and early to greet the travelers. There was not a whole lot of time for chit chat as they had to head to the other airport in Rome for their flight to the Amalfi coast to visit my grandpa’s birthplace. They’ll be back in Rome on Thursday for a handful of days, so I will be doing stuff with them at that time. I’m planning on showing them the good restaurants of Rome, mainly to get a free meal but you know…a guy’s gotta eat.

To recap the last few days. Thursday was my “triumphant” return to class…I only had one class, so it was quite the easy day. Then it was the weekend, so really I got an extended Spring Break. Thursday night I went over to the hotel where my dad was, and since it was St. Patty’s day we had pre-dinner drinks at the bar and ate dinner at the attached restaurant. It was quite good…spaghetti carbonara and some antipasti.

Friday we headed back to campus, did some laundry (since he had only packed for a few days but ended up having to stay). Had lunch with Vice President Emilio Iodice and a few others. I can’t say enough good things about the staff here, they went above and beyond the call of duty and I thank them for that. That afternoon then, my dad and I headed down to the Vatican City (after waiting 40 minutes for the darn bus, I miss the CTA). I showed him the ins and outs of the VC, unfortunately the Pope was busy at the time and could not come to meet us. So we walked along the river for a ways. It was starting to get to be dinner time, so we headed back to campus. There is a very good restaurant not too far from the JFRC and we decided to eat there. Of COURSE I had suppli as my antipasti…(Quite note on suppli: If you don’t know, they are fried balls with rice and good stuff on the inside, about the size of a clementine). Mi piace molti suppli! Annd for my main dish I got a pizza with shredded radishes and gorgonzola cheese (YUM).

Saturday, was a day trip to Anzio for a little tour of a few WWII cemeteries. We saw a German and US Cemetery. The US one was a lot bigger, even though it has fewer soldiers buried there. It was a cool site, the weather was great but it’s still something to think about; a lot of good men gave their lives to make the world a better place…and what have we done with the opportunities they’ve given us? Afterwards we  ate a very good 5 course lunch. It was so much food, but it was so good…capped off with Tiramisu for dessert. The last stop of the day was a museum home to the largest collection of WWII era artifacts (Both war items and toys and such from that time period). All in all a really cool day, I learned a lot that I did not know about the fighting in Italy.

I realize that it wasn’t the most exciting weekend ever, but then I keep remembering that I’m still IN Italy, so even a boring weekend here is still pretty great.

This coming week will be good, I can feel it…hoping for NO RAIN on wednesday so we can get back out on that calcio field. But I’m really looking forward to spending time with my family this weekend. I am certain I will have exciting things to report on about that.

Only 7 weeks left here! Ahh crap…gotta stop counting down the days. I have a feeling it is going to go fast…I’m not sure how I feel about that.