Are We There Yet, Because I Hope Not

So today I was checking into my next few weeks and what my schedule was going to look like, and I had an absolutely terrible realization that we only have 6 weeks left!!!!!!!! That might seem like a lot, but when you think that spring break just ended, and Easter break is next weekend, and after that we only have a month left... well I am starting to worry!!

My Outlook calendar has literally everything I HAVE to do each day as well as my traveling plans, so I thought that I would update you all on some of the travels that I will be doing in the next couple of weeks before I come back to the states. Don't worry mom and dad... all that blue that you see on Monday through Thursday is class that is mandatory... well unless we went out too late the night before, or it is nice outside and we want to go to the park!!

It is sad to think that my time here is over, but I must say that I have really enjoyed my time here. I have had the greatest 7 months of my life so far and am looking forward to these 6 weeks left. I had a great trip to Aosta this weekend at Silvia's (an Italian friend of ours) house with my roommate Marcus, then in a few weeks I am going to go to Cyprus or Saluzzo. The weekend after that we are going to travel to Crete, Greece and rent a villa and Vespas for the weekend, followed by a crazy weekend in Prague for Marcus's birthday celebration! After all of this traveling my family will arrive and we will have 2 weeks to travel Italy before I have to go back to the states!

Still working on a blog post for the opera, the beach, and the usual week in Torino, so check back tomorrow!!

What I have Been Up To Lately

So I apologize that I haven't written a blog post in the last couple of days, but I have been incredibly busy doing things that I HAD to do for school and things that I HAD to do for fun!! So to just catch you all up on what we have been up to this week I figured I would just write this blog post that didn't really talk about anything in particular, but just gives an overall idea on what I have been up to.

First off, and CLEARLY more importantly this week I had an Italian exam, a marketing presentation, a European Integration exam, and I spent about 10 hours working on my internship; developing a database of places to travel, where to stay when you go there, and things to do. Along with all of that, we had normal classes as well. The work load itself is not that much, and really didn't cause me much of a problem except for the fact that they were Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday so I spent every night studying as well as getting sucked in to going out on Wednesday and Thursday night as well.

Highlight of the school week; in my International Finance class this week we were asked to produce a presentation on a specific thing that we had studied in the past 6 weeks. Our group was the only group to actually make a PowerPoint presentation for our presentation. Ironically it wasn't very professional, but that was exactly what made it fun. Our topic given to us by our teacher was on Account Deficit and Country Risk, here are some screen shots of our presentation!

The other half of my week was much more interesting. In fact, it has everything to do with everything I wanted to be doing! After I was finally done with my hectic week of class, Ellie and I spent some time walking around the city Thursday before she left for the weekend. The past week and a little has been really nice here. I have been getting out and walking around the city and hanging out in the park for a good bit of time. In fact right now it is 7:15pm here in Torino and I am writing this blog post on our balcony! In fact, at 7pm here right now it is warmer than it is in Cincinnati right now at 2pm!

Torino and Cincinnati in both F° and C° as well as Crete and Prague.

And because the weather has been so good here this weekend we have spent both yesterday and today in Parco Valentino for the whole day. Yesterday we bought bread, lunch meat, chips, wine, and cookies at our local stores and and brought it to the park and made sandwiches and had a great 6 hour day in the park! Today we got up a little bit later, so we just went to the new panini shop right down the street and brought our paninis to the park.

Quick side note on the panini shop - I was the FIRST customer they EVER had there, and 

we are now like some of their regular clients because we get a student discount. In fact, they

gave us free beer Wednesday night when we were walking by as they were closing, free 

desert occasionally, and they have actually asked us to translate their menu into English for them!

Tomorrow we are going to spend the day at the beach just outside of Genoa and about a 2 1/2 hour train ride from here! I am really excited and looking forward to relaxing on the beach all day long and then coming back tomorrow night to get ready for the school week. I will be sure to let you all know how it goes this week with a blog post about the afternoon and a lot of pictures.

PS - If you see this kid please let him know that although this semester is great Italy and studying abroad in general is just not the same without him!!! 

His name is Matthew Buchheit

Rigoletto

So today Ellie and I are going to go to the opera here in Torino. Since I arrived here in September I have wanted to go to an opera. I put it off a couple of times because some people didn't want to go, or the opera that was showing was not one that was super highly rated or for whatever reason. However, today we have decided to take a few hours out of our day and go and watch what is said to be a really really good opera; Rigoletto.

I just read the synopsis of it so that I have some idea of what is going on while we are watching. I thought that I would add the synopsis for you all to check out as well.

ACT I. Mantua, 1500s. At his palace, the Duke lightheartedly boasts to his courtiers of amorous conquests, escorting Countess Ceprano, his latest prize, to a private chamber as his hunchback jester, Rigoletto, makes fun of her husband. Marullo announces that Rigoletto is suspected of keeping a mistress, and Ceprano plots with the courtiers to punish the hated buffoon. Attention is diverted when Monterone, an elderly nobleman, enters to denounce the Duke for seducing his daughter. Ridiculed by Rigoletto and placed under arrest, Monterone pronounces a curse on both the Duke and his jester.
On his way home that night, Rigoletto broods on Monterone's curse. Rejecting the services offered by Sparafucile, a professional assassin, he notes that the word can be as deadly as the dagger. Greeted by his daughter, Gilda, whom he keeps hidden from the world, he reminisces about his late wife, then warns the governess, Giovanna, to admit no one. But as Rigoletto leaves, the Duke slips into the garden, tossing a purse to Giovanna to keep her quiet. The nobleman declares his love to Gilda, who has noticed him in church. He tells her he is a poor student named Gualtier Maldè, but at the sound of footsteps he rushes away. Tenderly repeating his name, Gilda retires. Meanwhile, the courtiers stop Rigoletto outside his house and ask him to help abduct Ceprano's wife, who lives across the way. The jester is duped into wearing a blindfold and holding a ladder against his own garden wall. The courtiers break into his home and carry off Gilda. Rigoletto, hearing her cry for help, tears off his blindfold and rushes into the house, discovering only her scarf. He remembers Monterone's curse.

ACT II. In his palace, the Duke is distraught over the disappearance of Gilda. When his courtiers return, saying it is they who have taken her and that she is now in his bedchamber, he joyfully rushes off to the conquest. Soon Rigoletto enters, warily looking for Gilda; the courtiers bar his way, though they are astonished to learn the girl is not his mistress but his daughter. The jester reviles them, then embraces the disheveled Gilda as she runs in to tell of her courtship and abduction. As Monterone is led to the dungeon, Rigoletto vows to avenge them both.

ACT III. At night, outside Sparafucile's run-down inn on the outskirts of town, Rigoletto and Gilda watch as the Duke flirts with the assassin's sister and accomplice, Maddalena. Rigoletto sends his daughter off to disguise herself as a boy for her escape to Verona, then pays Sparafucile to murder the Duke. As a storm rages, Gilda returns to hear Maddalena persuade her brother to kill not the Duke but the next visitor to the inn instead. Resolving to sacrifice herself for the Duke, despite his betrayal, Gilda enters the inn and is stabbed. Rigoletto comes back to claim the body and gloats over the sack Sparafucile gives him, only to hear his supposed victim singing in the distance. Frantically cutting open the sack, he finds Gilda, who dies asking forgiveness. Monterone's curse is fulfilled.

I have a busy week up ahead with a few tests and a presentation, but I will try to take some time to stop and write a blog not only about how the opera goes, but also about my spring break trip to Saluzzo.

Spring Break

This video has nothing to do with my blog post, but just a bit of musical flavor that I have been into lately! Enjoy listening to it while you read this blog post about my spring break plans.

You may or may not know that my college experience was about as nontraditional as possible (in my opinion). My freshman year of college I was still a senior in high school. My sophomore and junior years I was going to school two days a week, working full time four days a week, and living at home. And this year, being my senior year, I am studying abroad in Italy.

This also means that I never took part in most of those "traditional" college experiences. One of those experiences is the crazy thing called "spring break" where all college students get the idea that you need to go to Panama or another beach and drink all day and all night and be drunk for the entire week. I am not saying that is isn't fun, in fact I can't say it because I have never done it, but I am saying that it was never appealing to me! So rather I did other things; visit friends at college, relax at home, pick up more hours at work, or even SLEEP... a lot.

Ironically I had planned to spend my last spring break, as a college student, in Greece this year, but with the political and economic unrest that Greece is going through right now I decided not to go. Rather, I will be spending spring break in the same great place that I spent Christmas; at my professors house in Saluzzo. It is about as nontraditional as my college experience, but I am actually looking forward to it.

I never had a brother (although sometimes my younger sister does a great job at being a replacement, its just not the same) and so when I go to their house I have a chance to hang out with 3 boys! We tend to play a lot of soccer outside, shoot fake guns inside, and its always an intensive fight on who will be sitting where at dinner (I was informed last time that there are only two seats next to Nate and 3 boys!). The funny thing is that although this is supposed to be a "break", I am almost guaranteed to come back more exhausted than when I leave today, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I find it interesting sometimes that people can be so similar, but at the same time be attracted to completely different things. I have never had any true desire to spend my spring break like that, but a lot of my friends here and in the states do it every single year. This is also similar to the fact that everyone is surprised that I have turned down the chance to go to Amsterdam twice, and I skipped out on Oktoberfest.

I am not saying that I don't go out here, don't have fun, don't drink, because that would be a lie. However what I am trying to say is that for me the idea of spending time with "family" (or as close as it gets here in Italy) is far more appealing than other options.

Here are some funny "spring break" photos that if you have a student in college and they are at a beach this weekend... well lets just say it probably looks something like this!! It is not that I am better than any of these people, or that what they are doing is wrong, but rather that I have never had the desire to do this, and so for me a week with the boys sounds more appealing to me.

SIDE NOTE: I think I will be working here in Italy this summer in either a vineyard or the fruit fields. Yes, I will have graduated college at 21 with a really solid GPA, and yes I should go out and find a "real" job, but that is just the thing. At 21 I feel like I have a year or two to do the things that I want to do, and experience the things that I want to experience, and working in a vineyard in Italy for a summer is one of those things!!!

Hope you have a great spring break, whatever that may look like for you, and I will write you all about my adventures on Friday.

The Things We Do When We Get Bored

Although it might sound very hard to believe, sometimes living in another country can get tiring and boring. In fact, because Spring Break starts tomorrow (for most students that skipped out on class yesterday and today it started Tuesday), but for most of us, this past week has been absolutely exhausting and draining. The other side of this is that sometimes regardless of what you do here in Italy, you become homesick.

However, in order to make things a bit more interesting and a bit more American, there are certain things that we like to do. For example; once a week I try and have either grilled cheese for lunch or a hamburger one meal or even a hot dog or two. This week we switched it up a little bit!!

This week we decided to dedicate a section of our hallway to the one and only Taylor Swift! Not only is she beautiful, but she is beautiful!! And after my mother told me she wouldn't be nice to her if I brought her over for Thanksgiving... well lets just say I feel like I had to make a swift stand against that (pun intended!).

Taylor Swift

The wall when you enter our apartment

Corso T-Swift (T-Swift Road)

Looking down Corso T-Swift

 

Taylor Swift

Piazza Taylor Swift on Corso T-Swift

About a month ago my roommate Marcus had his friend Brian and one of Brian's friends, Reid, here for an evening before they went to the Cinque Terre. Of course we found a way to make fun for ourselves. I am not allowed to attach it to my blog, but here is the link for Facebook;

Birra Moretti Music

Hope you all enjoy it, and have a great day!

A City Named Buda Next to a City Named Pest

I apologize because I am incredibly late on this blog post, but I wanted to take a moment and talk about Budapest. Myself, my roommate Joe, and Sage (one of our friends here) went to Budapest a few weekends ago and had an absolutely awesome time. We were able to spend some time checking out some of the historical parts of the city as well as check out the nightlife and younger atmosphere. A little background history on Budapest; it is actually two separate cities, Buda and Pest, separated by a river, but because they are so close they are known to be one in the same: Budapest.

The city itself is super beautiful. Ironically out of all of the cities I have been to since I have been here in Europe, I would say that Budapest may be the closest to what I remember America looking like. This may be comical because I just said it was a super beautiful place and then related it to America (which I think is not that beautiful), but that is not so. The space of streets, and modern, but still older looking buildings reminded me a lot of downtown Cincinnati.

The Parliament Building

The Royal Palace

Opera House

Castle in the park

Heroes Square

It was one of the more relaxed trips that I have been on since I have been here and traveling; We walked around casually, and were not always "go, go, go". This type of trip allowed me to enjoy Budapest more than I thought I would. 

One thing that I was blessed for was that Hungarians (for the most part) speak English. Since I have been abroad and traveled around, I have always tried to be respectful of any country that I travel to. I find that showing them respect and learning how to say "Excuse me, do you speak English?" in their language works much better than just asking "Do you speak English?". The truth is, yes, if they speak English they will understand the second question, but the other side of it is that you will always look like THAT IGNORANT AMERICAN, but rather a traveler who is looking for some information in a respectful way!! However, after the few days we spent in Budapest I can safely say that I did not learn a single word. I could not even say "thank you" properly even after people would repeat it for me!!!! Having said all of that.... Hungarian is by far the hardest language I have seen since I have been here. 

The words are pronounced NOTHING like they are spelled!!

Also a little bit of insight to these prices; because Hungary is still on its own currency, after we switched from Euros to Hungarian Forint we had so much money we honestly weren't 100% sure what to do with it all! For example; on this menu a beer is 650.- Today the exchange rate is 1 Hungarian Forint = 0.004505 U.S. dollars. That means that the beer for 650.- actually costs just under $3 USD! So to be honest we drank a decent bit of beer and relaxed in bars and just talked about everything! It was really cool for me to listen to my roommate Joe, as well as Sage, open up about things that I never knew and all of us just be real with each other.

This weekend marks the start of our Spring Break here in Italy. Although this is my senior year of college and I have never been on "that" spring break trip, I have no problem doing exactly what I will be doing; staying here in Torino and working on my internship and independent study. I might take some time to get out of the city and go visit my professor and his family in Saluzzo. O and that also means that I will have some more time to Blog and keep you all informed on what is going on here in Italy.