Springtime in Rome

Oh springtime (that's primavera in Italian) is in the air. We might as well call it summer cause it's HOT. One nice thing about the springtime coming is the Spanish Steps. If you've seen postcards of the Spanish Steps or have visited Rome this time of year, the picture on the left shouldn't look surprising to you. You may not know that the steps don't look like this for 80% of the year. It's just steps with a lot of people sitting on them. Cause of the Festival of Spring (Festa di Primavera) they put all the flowers out making a really beautiful scene.

Another thing about springtime are the changes in coffee choices. They start whipping out Cafe Freddo. What they do at the bars is they draw a bunch of shots of espresso, add some sugar to it, and refrigerate. So it's a cold drink but they usually serve a half glass full of it (which is like 3 shots of coffee), even though the concentration of the coffee is exactly the same. I just had my first cappuccino freddo which is like cafe freddo except the rest of glass is filled with cold milk. It tasted a lot like a iced frap (for you Starbucks lovers). I am wired like crazy right now. Anyways below are a list of things that make you know you've been living in Italy for 8 months:

• You throw up inappropriate Italian hand gestures at drivers when they try to drive through a crosswalk while you're walking through it
• You are late to everything and find any excuse to justify your tardiness (doesn't help that I'm Filipino either...lol)
• Any free opportunity, you want to juggle a soccer ball
• Your body feels incomplete without 3 shots of espresso

Today, We Are All Hokies!

Many of you might have heard of what happened yesterday on the campus of Virginia Tech. Although the events occurred and have surely affected the community of Blacksburg, Virginia, they were events that have hit the whole nation, particularly college students everywhere.

I heard about the events as I returned home from a weekend trip to Barcelona. After being disconnected from the internet for a weekend, I usually peruse the news that I may have missed. I was actually on ESPN.com when I saw a news alert. It was about 4:30 pm here in Rome, making it about 10:30 am back in the States. At that time, the severity of the event kept continuing to worsen as minutes passed. As a college student, one immediately thinks "I can't believe this is happening at a college campus", especially one like VT. My next immediate thought was about all my friends at VT. Through all my years in college I've met many students from VT at internships, conferences, you name it.

My biggest connection was through the two Materials Science & Engineering Departments at UF and VT. One of the most popular professors at UF's MSE took the department head job at VT's MSE just a few years ago. Through that connection, MSE students (including myself) from both schools had the opportunity to page at a yearly conference in Cocoa Beach which was organized by this professor. We always looked forward to hanging out with each other, and I had the opportunity to do this for 3 years, often seeing the same faces year after year. One year, we even exchanged school shirts and some days I'd proudly wear my VT shirt around UF.

It just so happened that the main building of VT's MSE is connected to the building in which many of the shootings occurred. It's one thing to know that such a horrific event happened, but it's hard to imagine it more when you know some of your friends could have been involved. Thankfully all the friends I know were OK. One friend of mine would have had class in the very building the events occurred at the same time the next day. Another friend of mine should have been in the German class where all but 4 people were shot, but happened to be skipping class that day.

Although all of my friends are OK, I know a lot of them lost close friends and knew others who were wounded. It is also hard to get over that 33 families have to deal with the loss of their loved ones. I know I join other college students around the nation and world in being behind all the VT students and community. Our prayers and thoughts are with you!

Buona Pasqua Da Roma

Yes I know. It's been a long time since the last post. I promise I'm not turning into one of those people who have a blog and choose to post only like once a month. I'm going to fast forward a bit, but don't worry...I'm still going to play catchup with what has happened in the past month, which includes my trips to France (still) and Ireland for St. Patty's Day, having best friends visiting, and perhaps the best year in sports I could ask for.

Buona Pasqua means Happy Easter in Italian. I wasn't quite sure what to do for Easter in Rome. I thought about doing all the festivities with the Pope, as I did with Christmas with my family. I knew there were a lot of things to do which centered around the Vatican, but I gathered the average Roman doesn't go to the Vatican for Easter stuff. So for Easter, I figured I'd "do as the Romans do". I spent Holy Thursday and Good Friday by going to mass at the American Catholic Church in Rome. I wanted to get some Easter services in English.

On Friday, Francesco invited me to come with him and some friends to his seaside house for the rest of the Easter weekend. This is where the "do as the Romans do" comes in. The Easter weekend (which includes Easter Monday) is more a holiday in which people go on a short vacation and spend it with family and friends, often at the seaside. So we went about 90 km outside the city near the city called Civitavecchia (literally, "Old City") to spend a weekend retreat at Francesco's house. For you history buffs, Civitavecchia was heavily bombed by the Americans during WWII so most of the buildings are newer looking. On Saturday morning, Francesco and I went through the local markets to get all the food for the weekend, which included a ton of cheese, a lot of sausages, lamb, various breads and cakes including Pizza di Pasqua which is actually more like a sweet cake, and eggs. My stomach got really excited.

Once we got to the house, it was pretty much a "do as you wish" sort of thing. After unloading all the food from the car and unpacking, I took like a 2 hour nap outside overlooking the Mediterranean. After I woke, Francesco left me to pick up more friends (and food) at the train station. I took the opportunity to read my Bible outside during the sunset. I figured it was best fit to read about Christ's resurrection on the eve of Easter. The 3 nights we were there, we had 3 awesome sunsets.

Sunday morning Francesco dropped me off at the local church so I could attend Easter Mass (in Italian). Luckily, the Gospel reading was the same one I had read the previous evening so I understood most of it, even in Italian. The church I went to was actually small but really famous because it had a statue of Mary that somehow shed tears of blood a few years back. I definitely stood out at church but all the people were really nice. After the service, the eating commenced. For Easter Sunday, the typical food includes all that cheese, the meats (Lamb is a must), and the Pizza of Easter. Easter Monday food involved eggs (the must of the day), the rest of the cheese, and whatever my hands found. (BTW...everyone was amazed how much I ate during the weekend. I literally ate my way through the weekend)



Being out here kind of made me homesick. I thought about my home seaside and all the things I would be eating and doing for the Easter weekend, which probably would have included lots of eating, Easter Egg Hunts, and probably even some surfing. But I was really blessed that on Easter that I had the company of Francesco, some of his friends, and some of our friends from school. It was awesome for our Easter Sunday meal we literally had 7 people eating from 7 different nations (Italy, USA, France, Tunisia, Egypt, Serbia, Brazil). At the same time, I thought to myself how awesome it was going to be when I had the chance to share with Francesco all the things about Florida that we have during Easter and the rest of our holidays.