Seeing that One-Legged Stool

I can't believe I never posted this but over a month ago there was a protest down this main street here in Milano against Silvio Berlusconi, the current Prime Minister of Italy. It was, from what we could tell, a conglomeration of a bunch of student groups from Cattolica (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, where I take classes) and they were really making a scene with noise cannons, music and shouting. It was very cool to witness this because it sparked a really interesting discussion with our Italian professor(essa) who studied in the US and just moved back to Italy. We didn't know it was happening beforehand, though, and the first sign of it was a rather loud noise from a noise cannon that really scared the crap out of me and frankly I could have done without. And I still don't even know what a noise cannon is... Another post on Italian politics and Berlusconi to come! Pic taken from our classroom window.

Midterms have arrived for us here in Milano and I have to say I am definitely not liking this whole "studying" and "worrying" thing... that's why I'm STUDYING abroad! But on a more serious note, I really do have to study for two of my classes - Italian and International Financial Markets. I have a media and communications that isn't too rough and an EU class I really quite enjoy, so I am not worried about those two. However, the finance class is more like a microecon class on currency markets - and the midterm is tomorrow - so I need to get back to that. My sister was just pestering me about not writing more so I thought I'd update this really quickly. I keep trying to tell myself "grades don't transfer" because I am getting unnecessarily stressed out but it's weird to try and fully process that the letter grade really doesn't matter all that much - I just have to pass! Such a complete 180 from the Lehigh atmosphere and it s...

1. The only things on time in Italy are the trains. Being 5 minutes late is ok for everything EXCEPT for getting on your train. 2. Run towards the city center. In Milano running on the sidewalks doesn't really happen. Therefore, when running I am no longer going to run away from the city center because, even though the sidewalks are less crowded, people are less and less used to see people running. The closer you are to the center of the city, the less stares you get! 3. The universal pickup line - "Do you have BBM?" Got to love AT&T and their worldwide network! 4. My current 5 food groups are pasta, bread, oil, cheese and wine. 5. The furniture in my Grandma and Nonno's house finally makes sense. Kind of an odd revelation but now that I've been in the houses of their family here I finally understand why they have the furniture they have and decorated the way they did! 6. You actually can find any movie and TV show on the internet. 7. Euros finally...

Wouldn't you that absolutely nothing can be easy? This story is embarrassing but far too entertaining to keep to myself so I'll give an abbreviated version. As some of you may or may not know, about a year ago I had an incident on a dance floor after which Rachel Bochner's mom, who is a dentist, helped me out. Well February 25th was the lovely 1 year anniversary of that evening and in proper fashion I celebrated with carelessly drinking from a water bottle and subsequently making myself look homeless in the tooth sense. This brought about another trip to the dentist! My savior was Seb and his family, who have a family friend who was able to squeeze me in the next day. It was like an angel sent that dentist to me (or Seb's mom). Here is a picture of me, embarrassed in a dental chair in Rome.

In high school I took four years of Latin because the teachers were amazing and I thought it would be a great basis to have for learning languages in the future - especially Italian! When I arrived in Rome it finally hit me that I was going to be able to see all of these amazing things that I had read about and studied. I was so excited!!! Seb and I spent all day Friday and Saturday walking, riding buses, and seeing these amazing places. Here are some pictures with little stories beneath of the highlights! I apologize if they are pretty standard as far as "what to do when in Rome" goes, but hey, how could I go to Rome and not see all these places!  The view from one side of the top of the Altare Della Patria. This building is BEAUTIFUL and was the first thing we did in Rome. You can see 360 degrees and it was a great way to start off the sightseeing because I was able to get a sort of "lay of the land" as far as where things were in relation to one a...

This past week was women's fashion week here in Milan and it really was quite exciting - tents around the Duomo area and people talking about the shows. My roommate even got to see a show that was done publically and another girl in my apartment was able to attend many shows (including) because of the internship she has here. For a great website to see show photos, go to http://www.style.com/ . Also, there are a bunch of designer studios around my neighborhood, including Alexander McQueen (NEAT), and a lot of models can be seen walking around the streets. At this point I am an expert model spotter! I’d have to say that I enjoyed men’s fashion week more than women’s week… male models are pretty androgynous but pretty cute nonetheless! They all wear the same basic uniform: very tight, dark jeans, boots that are sleek and without a lot of seeming, fitted pea coats, scarves, a messenger bag and a distinct haircut that is Justin-Bieber-esque but with less layers. Also, when walki...

So from Febbraio 13-15 we went to La Thuile with my program for a ski trip that was wonderfully painful! La Thuile is an adorable Italian town on the border with France and you can actually ski to France but I'm not that good so I didn't make it to France. Next time perhaps! We got the bus at 8 am Sunday morning and drove the 3 hrs there... or what should have been 3 hrs. I slept for the first hour and a half and when I woke up we were in the wonderful valley with snow-covered mountains rising up around us and it just took my breath away. I couldn't sleep for the rest of the trip because I was too busy looking out the window! Then things started to get stressful. We are in a giant bus climbing mountains on narrow roads that make a 330 degree turn every 50 yds or so... and we take up the whole road to scale the turns so the cars that are coming have to hit their breaks hard to avoid crashing into us. I'm in a window seat so at points I can just look out and see the dro...