Skyline After 5 Months: A MOMENT!!

"That was a moment!!"  

This was the only thing that I could say after having Skyline last night for my first time in 5 months. This weekend both my roommate Cesare and Marcus are out of town, and a lot of the other USAC kids have gone traveling too, so Joe, Sage and I had a chance to spend some time just hanging out. Last night I decided to make them Skyline chili as a special Cincinnati treat. To be honest I was looking for a small group of people to test it on, because I didn't want to make a lot of it and then no one like it!! However, by the amount of skyline that was eaten in the shortest amounts of time that I have ever seen, it is safe to say that they enjoyed it!

 To be honest I was pleasantly surprised at how similar to actual Skyline it tasted! I know it has been 5 months since I have had it, but it was absolutely wonderful last night, and I am looking forward to making it for my friends again!

Italian version of Skyline... the only differences are that the cheese is worse but the pasta is better!

Joe ate his faster than I did

My skyline!!

Sage really enjoying her first Skyline moment!

Me licking the last bit of Skyline off of the spaghetti spoon!

 The other thing that Skyline did for me last night while at dinner was allow me to put together a list of all of the special restaurants with specific people that I go and eat at all the time back in Cincinnati. In fact in 4 months I am going to have a lot of rounds to make including Chipotle at least 5 times in the first week I get back!! My list includes some overall classics, but to be honest, the ones I am looking forward to the most are the Cincinnati specials like Skyline and Graeters!

It has been an absolutely awesome weekend just hanging out and relaxing for a change! The super bowl is on tonight, and although I haven't watched much football this year because of how difficult it is here in Italy, I must say that I am rooting for Tom Brady and the New England Patriots; this is mainly because of the photo that Kelly and I took that looked soo much like Tom and Gisele, but also because Tom is just a straight G!!



On a side note, I have been reading The Hunger Games books (right now I am 289 pages into Catching Fire) and if you have not started reading them you need to get on it!!

Sometimes You Just Have To Wake Up!

So since tomorrow and Tuesday are our last two days here, we have finals these next two days. With that being said, today 7 of us got together to study for our Economic Institutions of the European Union exam that we have on Tuesday. The only bad thing about the whole morning of studying was that I had somewhat of a slap in the face "o crap" moment in the middle of studying.

Tom Brady and Gisele (They have absolutely nothing to do with this post at all, but he always makes me feel better, she is gorgeous, and I bought a sweater like that yesterday!!)

However, before I talk about that, I want to talk about this crazy thing that is Google Docs. Today was the first time I had ever heard of it, and obviously ever used it. I will be honest in saying it has its positives and negative. For instance; the fact that 7 people can work on the same word document together all at the same time was awesome. I know that for most of the time we were all able to be writing on different parts of the document at the same time! BUT.... This also means that for someone like me who is slightly OCD about the format of documents that I work on, you can get people mad at you very quickly. This includes when you are going through a paper and deleting all of the extra bullet points to make it less cluttered, EXCEPT when you delete the bullet point that someone is about to write on! It was similar to this, but not exactly:

Jillian Marie Blandino

On a more serious note, after everyone figures this out you can also write each other fun notes when someone is researching something, so that when they return to write it says something like "Tric Trac Trac Fran Fran Troc!" (if anyone can translate this I will buy you Bella Poque Kebab!)


But really though, today when we were working, I looked around and realized although these are my closest friends here right now, they are not going to be here after Wednesday. In fact, I have made some really cool friends here, and they are all leaving, with a real chance of never seeing any of them again. Its always very nice to say something like; "We will see each other next summer" or "In five years we need to have a USAC reunion", but the reality of this is that I have spent the best four months of my life with some really awesome people (whom in my opinion made it the best 4 months of my life) and I will probably never see them again.  People go home, get girlfriends or boyfriends, get a job, grow up, get married and life moves on.


But after isolating myself from them because I couldn't listen to the 6 of them talking about leaving (I was being a small baby), I recognized that sometimes you just have to wake up! I have to rather than dwelling on the people I met here, the relationship I have built, and the experiences I have had, understand that this is a part of life. If I see these people again AWESOME, but if I don't, ITS BEEN AWESOME!! As of 4 months ago, I didn't know any of them, for some of them, I met them just in the last few weeks, but IT HAS BEEN AMAZING!!!! In fact, here are some photos from last night (our last night out together).

Kelly, Hannah, and Matt

Gabe, Jill, and Juliet

Juliet and I

Kelly and I (Tom Brady)

Jill and I trading shoes

Best Christmas Light Part EVER!!

Its been an amazing 4 months, and I would rather have met all of these people and have to deal with the goodbyes that comes with it, than to have never met them at all. It has been awesome, and I am excited to meet the people that I will be spending next semester with as well!

PS - TO ALL THAT I STUDIED WITH THIS MORNING; WE ARE GOING TO ACE THIS TEST AND GET GELATO AFTERWARDS!!