un po' di italia...

ahh, italy. summer, sun, blue skies. wow, what a novel concept coming from wales... yet internet here has not been a big part of the old roman design (how could they miss such a thing? huge, huge oversight!) and hence i am only now blogging... we'll see how many loyal readers have left in serach o other blogs of trailer parkers that have moved to wales to do math/physics research...

got to hang out with bobbo and j in roma, haven't been to roma in quite a while. well, three years ago i needed some italy in my blood so i came for a quick three day visit, but before that - five years ago and six years ago were decent size trips here... long time. anyway, bobbo and j showed me parts of rome, rather outside of rome, that i had never seen before. such as adrian's villa - all complete with


housing for the servants and







underground passage for them so that they don't 'disturb' the day to day life. in addition, there wasa small man-made lake there which i am quite sure, never had seen a frisbee before. so bobbo and i thought - why not fix that? and yes, the frisbee ended up in the water.









luckily, by the end of the tour - the wind had pushed it to the side. so italy still has only claimed one of my frisbees... that would be bologna, the city of the devil since that unfortunate day....

my italian has come back. i mean, on the bus from the airport, this lady asked me what time it was, and just from my one word response 'otto' she said - you are not italian, eh? nadi was pissed (i forgot the article, l'otto.... but now i am back to usual, thinking a bit in italian, and all.

after roma, i went to visit michela, a friend from ucsd with whom i did a language exchange (i taught her california slang, she told me about italian milk...). the beach culture here is something. they sit there for hours, every year in the same spot, with the same neighbors, renting shade from the beach and lounging chairs. they get so so tan. they made so much fun of my whiteness and the fact that i got sunburned... and of course, michela said that where she put sunscreen on me, i didn't burn, but where i put it - chest and stomach, i did. she was right... italian moms, they are something. her kids are adorable, nino (antonino) is 12 now, and giulia is 6. this girl is a miracle child (i call her miracolosa) she was born on the 25th week!!!