la dolce vita

i hate the italian mail system. its worse than the mail system in new orleans, and that is saying something. I forgot the nice camera back home so mom was going to ship it to me, since im in a photo class and all, but its looking like its going to cost something like €300 to ship the stupid thing PLUS the up to €100 VAT tax when it gets in. so mum and i must talk, but still..i say fie on you italian post! FIE!

In other news my classes are rocking pretty hardcore so far. My photography class looks like its going to be really informative and really interesting. Its just a basic class so we are learning all the basic functions of the camera, how to use them, how to have a good composition photographically, as well as learning how to develop black and white film. That paired with my Cities, Towns and Villas Class (which takes place at in a different part of the city each day with a mandatory weekend trip to Pompeii and Herculaneum, yeah i know poor baby right?) means that I will have (hopefully) fantastic pictures of beautiful monuments and people from all over this city.

My Zen Buddhism class is so far quite interesting. It is composed of the history and evolution of Buddhism and a personal exploration segment as well. sort of a theory and practice type thing. Definitely a fascinating way to look at the world, very different and then not so than the way the West tends to look at it. So many of the things Buddhism says about humans and the way life works are seen in the the works of Locke, Hobbes and the like. Definitely fascinating.
Fascinating in an entirely different way is my Ethnicity and Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Looks to be a wonderful exploration of ancient novels as well as texts on life to analyze the effects and appearences of ethnicity in the ancient world and its works. so.. yes i love love love

We went to the wine bar and cucina next door for dinner last night (we were out of food and too lazy to walk all the way to teh store and back. our stairs are killer. im going to have great legs at the end of this.) Great place with great food. the guys who run it are just awesome and when they found out that we live literally next door they were very excited and welcomed us as "ah, its the neighbors!". very lovely.

tomorrow we are going to invest in some more cooking implements for our apartment as we have:
One (1) mid sized pot
One (1) pan with a broken handle
One (1) wooden spoon
One (1) knife of dubious sharpness and overall usefullness...it fails at cutting bread. its quite tragic really
One (1) collander that is a lovely daisy yellow

soo yes. thats a very sad kitchen and i think we are going to augment it with the addition of a better pan, at least one sauce pan and a larger pasta pot, a bread knife and maybe another knife, a mallet for beating meat flat (we already made milanessas once and likely will do so many more times). and i think thats it. oh and a juicer.
ooh! theres this lovely orange, pineapple, carrot juice that tehy have here and i think its my new favorite thing ever.

as you can tell food is a very important party of our daily routine.

We've been at good alot lately. its just lovely sitting in a small homey cafe with the laptop, chatting with friends and sipping on a caffe latte or a tea. i could get very used to this. sans the hail and rain thats been going on recently. i dont think its allowed to be ugly here. someone should tell the weather that.

tomorrow we go to the vatican gardens! and if i get my stuff together there might actually be pictures in my next post. *gasp* incredible, no? and then there will be an excursion to the bookstore again this weekend to try and find teh lost textbooks of legend. people swear they exist but skeptics are many.

with that i will bid you adieu.. except not becasue thats the wrong language all together.

ciao!

ps. we still dont have a stapler.
pps. AND! i nearly forgot! i met this lovely lady named Paola on the plane from Frankfurt. shes an infectious disease research biologist who specializes in AIDS. She has invited me over to her house, along wtih jaya of course, for dinner to meet her friends and her son and her mother and to chat about our time here so far and to give us advice on teh city. so yes. awesome. im excited. yay homecooked food!