I woke up today to Giada loudly playing Andrea Bocelli's "Vivo per lei," which was immediately followed by "Con te partirò. It was a wonderful way to start the day.

So I made my first pasta dish ever today! I made pasta carbonara and am really proud of it! It was good, too (although I did put a bit too much pepper for my taste). I felt legit Italian too, because right before I started cooking the only ingredient I was missing was pancetta, so I just went downstairs to the local macelleria and purchased the exact amount I needed.

While we're talking about food (and pancetta), I ate one of the most delicious pizzas ever yesterday. It had fresh mozzarella and pancetta on it and was fantastic. I ate the whole pie (which, by the way, was cut into 6 not 8). I'm definitely going back to that place. First, because I really want to try the potato pizza they have. And second, because they were advertising that on certain days of the week they have all you can eat pizza and beer (I don't like beer, but still, good deal) for 10 euro. All females also get a free dessert of some sort, so I'm going to have to bring some of those with me and hope they share.

After my pizza yesterday, I had a meeting with my language partner, Giulia. She's really nice, but she speaks super fast and knows zero English, so sometimes it's hard to communicate. Like trying to explain to her about how in America after you finish your undergrad, to get your masters you need to apply to a schools masters program was a mess (that's mainly because in Italy they have the 3 plus 2 option where you do your equivalent of undergrad in the first two years and then get your masters at the same university for the final two years). We also talked about bowling, which also got a little difficult to explain (I tried to tell her about how I started a league at Williams - there's no word for bowling league in Italian). But she did say that there's a bowling alley 25 minutes away and that if people from the program are interested she would be willing to coordinate a trip! She also told me that they made a Night Before the Exams II!!! This one seems like it's going to have some Road Trip parallels, which was missing in the first one. Definitely a must see.

After I met with Giulia, I went to the opera to see Orfeo e Euridice (Orpheus and Eurydice). What a freak show. It was a modern rendition and I can't say I enjoyed the way they did it. First of all, I really didn't like that it was in FRENCH. So I was an American, in Italy, watching an opera in French with Italian supertitles. Ugh. Second, Euridice was such a little whore. I couldn't stand it. Orfeo shouldn't have even bothered. Third, as far as I'm concerned, the person who played Orfeo was 12 years old and was a terrible actor (he sang really well though). It was a nice experience though.

When I got home after the opera, I walked into the the dining room where Giada and Ilaria were and they looked at me funny, and said "Tutt'è posto?" which means, "Is everything alright?" I said yes and gave a sort of puzzled look, when Francesca came into the room and started laughing hysterical. Apparently, when Francesca got back from the opera (she got back before I did), Giada and Ilaria asked where I was and she told them that I was drunk. So drunk, that I climbed onto the stage during the performance and they had to briefly stop the opera. Now you would think that after meeting me (and this is in fact what Francesca expected), no one would believe this story. But nope, they both believed it. Not only that, but Ilaria turned to Giada and said "I told you Giada! I told you yesterday that he could be like this when he goes out with friends!" Ha! So apparently I come across as a party animal. Anyway, the fun didn't stop there. So, after I got home and cleared everything up with Giada and Ilaria, Francesca went into Marc's room and told him the same story. She and Ilaria then came running into my room and told me that I had to pretend like I was drunk. Marc then came into my room and was like "Domenico, sei mitico? Hai salito sul palcoscenico? Sei forte?" (Mitico means amazing or legendary and is apparently a slang term for wasted. "Hai salito sul palcoscencio?" means "Did you climb onto the stage?" and "Sei forte?" means "Are you strong?" which is apparently another thing you say to someone who's drunk.) Well, after I did a pretty excellent impression of a drunk person, Francesca high-fived me and they left the room. Then, about 5 minutes later we told Marc the truth and all laughed hysterically for a really long time. So yeah, I really like my apartmentmates.


Oooh! Today, on my way to class (we have class at the engineering school), I saw a guy with a laurel around his head and of course thought, what a freak. But then I saw another guy a little while later. Then, when I was crossing the street to where the actual engineering buildings are, I was nearly rundown by a whole stampede of them (and one of them was dressed as a kangaroo). How strange. As I got closer to the building I was going to, I saw a whole bunch of people (some of them with the laurels, and some of those in costume), laughing, drinking champagne and shouting chants that began with "Dottore, dottore..." and supposedly ended with something vulgar. I was with a couple people from my class and while we were standing around gawking we ran into my professor. She told us that the people with laurels were graduates (we had speculated this) and that some of them were in costume because they have a tradition where the graduates have to dress in and do whatever his/her friends say for the day. There was a person dressed as a baby, one dressed as a clown, one dressed as Gene Simmons, and someone dressed as a window washer. The window washer had a piece of cardboard above his butt that said "Lo prendo" which means "I take it." Who knew they had that expression in Italian?

Tomorrow I'm going to Ravenna! I hear that we're going to really good restaurant there so I'll have pictures and food details to share with you tomorrow!

In the meantime, here are the pictures from the medieval museum that I promised to post days ago:

Tomb of a professor from the University of Bologna hundreds of years ago
Carving of a class in session at the university
Old guns
This is where they kept their gun powder
Plastic model of the city of Bologna
Armor!
An angel beating someone up
These books were written by HAND hundreds of years ago! They're really works of art. People had to attend the university to study how to make them. This one must be a music book, you can see the notes.
Another music book
And another

Can you imagine writing all of that by hand? Every letter is perfect.
Anyone know Latin?
Last book, I promise. I find them fascinating, though.
10 points in the game of life for the first person who can tell me where he/she has seen this person before
They like Neptune here