Wednesday, January 10, 2007

National Champs!! (x2)

Can you believe it? Yeah we are the champions, twice over!! Ok...so I must admit, there is part of me that wishes I were in Gainesville right now, but with all the talk of Gator Nation it brings me so much joy to make up part of the Gator Nation in Rome, Italy. I mean, somebody has to tell everyone here how great it is to be a Florida Gator! A lot of people have been asking me if I was able to watch the game. I'm a Gator...of course I found a way to watch it. I watched it at a place called Scholar's Lounge, which is an Irish Pub that plays a bunch of American sports. There were a few Americans there who just discovered that this was a place to watch the game. So there were a bunch of fresh new American study abroad students. This included some guys from Arkansas who totally had the allegiance to the SEC. There were also some guys from U. of Illinois. This included a dumb a** who claimed the Big 10 was better than the SEC. I was like..."Dude, you go to U. of Illinois. Way to represent your conference buddy." His best comeback was "Yeah...we have the 7th best recruiting class this year." I think he forgot that his awesome recruiter can't coach for crap. Him and his buddies eventually got into a scuffle with some Italians in the bathroom hallway, and afterwards they fled like little babies.

Anyhow...Unfortunately, the bar closed on us at 4:30 a.m. right after the 1st half finished. Afterwards, I jetted back to my apartment and had my family show me the game on iChat via their iSight (shameless Apple plug). Although, the quality of the TV wasn't all that great, it was good enough to watch the bum rush on Ohio State. The game was finished at about 6:30 a.m. I really wanted to jump into the Trevi Fountain, but unfortunately I would have been the only one, and that would have probably gotten me arrested. Go Gators!

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Venezia by Pictures




Firenze by Pictures

Pictures can sometimes say more than words. So here are some of my favorite pictures from my trip to Florence (and Venice in the next blog entry):




Monday, January 01, 2007

Buon Anno e Auguri!


Happy New Year from Rome! Today was a bit of a sad day and a happy day. Early this morning I dropped off my family at the airport, but at the same time I was at the airport I picked up Dominic whose flight happened to get in the same time my parents left. Amanda has been here already for about two days. Amanda and Dominic are two of my friends from my UF days and for their graduations from grad school they decided to take on Europe together. They decided to be in Rome for New Year's. So even though Dominic was jet laggin, we still managed to have a Roman New Year. There really isn't a New Year's Eve thing on TV with a countdown, but the major importance of this holiday is to not be alone at midnight. So people gather together with friends or family to celebrate with a glass of champagne and wine. If we didn't know the time when midnight hit from the lack of a clock you would definitely know from the fireworks being lit off around the neighborhoods around. My apartment felt like it was under attack. Bunch of people set off Roman candles (fitting eh?) off of their terraces. My roommate Eugenio had some sparklers, and Amanda paid tribute to our city. (that effort was fantastic considering she spelled the mirror image of "rome" with no clue where she was in the air). We also gathered together (even Eugenio and his friend) to pay tribute to the year of the Gator!