My first night on the town

So my writing stopped quite abruptly last night not because I had to, but because in all that I had written yesterday, that was only what had happened until dinner. So I will pick up where I left off. At dinner there was a celebration for one of the Villa students, Fabio, who had just received his PHD in mathematics from Rome University. His family and advising professor were there along with all of the Villa administrators and some of the girls from Villa. It was very cool. Francesco explained to me that when there is a celebration for you, it is tradition that you bring things from your own region. I really had no idea how different the regions of Italy are. For example, when they all speak in their own dialects, they cannot understand anything of what the other is saying, they’re just that different.
So the celebration was grand the food quite plentiful. The wine from Fabio’s region almost smelled like vinegar, but it was quite sweet and aromatic. Not particularly good for eating, but still good. The only thing that was more plentiful than the main food, was the desserts. There were at least eight different kinds of biscotti (which in Italian means ‘cookie’, so get the idea of long flat dipping sticks out of your head, although there were those too), some kind of flat pie filled with berries, and tiramisu cake (as if tiramisu couldn’t get any better, eh?). Then to was it all down, we had champagne. Again, stuffed.
After dinner I was invited to accompany Francesco and his friend who lived across town (actually about two blocks from Torre di Babele) to see the new X-Men movie – in Italiano, of course. The ride over was fun because I am now trying my hardest to speak as much Italian as I can, whether it is correct or not, I’m just trying to get it in my mouth more. Francesco, like most of the others, is very patient and willing to help and correct me and it was comforting when he would ask me questions about his English. If you have never been to Rome, you might not know that all of the main streets are in circles. This isn’t like New York where the streets cross one another and split the city into neat little blocks. No, this is FAR more confusing, although I would not understand just how confusing it can be until after the movie; but that comes later.
Francesco’s friend was hilarious. She did nothing but laugh and had a ball stumbling through English (which was peppered heavily with Italian when she didn’t know the English equivalent) and we had fun trying to understand each other. The movie was interesting but Francesco explained to me that before he come to study in the States for a year, he knew very little English and so he taught himself by watching lots of movies he had already seen, but in English. There is a very large video library in Villa and he suggested that I start watching movies in Italian without subtitles and that I would be amazed at just how much I remembered after about 10 movies – I have my homework cut out for me! I was pleasantly surprised by how much I understood from the movie and actually walked away with a pretty good idea of what had happened (of course it helps with watching what is going on).
After the movie we went to a bar and got cappuccinos which were… how would we say… amazing? Not only were the only 1 Euro a piece, they were splendiferously delicious. One thing I have noticed here in Italy is that people eat and drink extremely quickly. At every meal I have been to so far, I am always the last one to finish each course. I think Francesco drank his entire cappuccino in about 2 sips (mind you, they aren’t that big, but still). We walked his friend home and then the real fun began. We could not, for the life of us, remember where we had parked. We had driven around and around for about 20 minutes just trying to find a spot and now we couldn’t remember which streets we had driven down and which we hadn’t. After about 40 minutes of looking, we finally lucked out and found the car. I couldn’t help but laugh at how silly the whole ordeal was. We got back to Villa at about 1:15 in the morning.
Wire from downtown excitement and of course cappuccino, I decided that since it was only 7:30 back in the States, it would be a good time for some Skype-ing, blogging, picture uploading, and of course, Facebook-ing. I was SO happy to find that Alex was online and we ended up video chatting for half and hour. During that time I uploaded my friend album of pictures onto Facebook, updated my blog (as you have seen), and talked to Christine and got scolded by my Mother for being awake at 2:30 am.
Finally I decided that it really would be wise to turn in, I headed back to my room and amazingly, fell asleep… without setting my alarm. Damn. Oh well, I still woke up relatively early and read for a while. Then went to take a shower and didn’t realize until I came out that I had kept the cleaning lady from cleaning the bathroom – great, I’ve been here three days and I’m already a typical American jerk. *sigh*

More later tonight! Ciao ciao!
Sam