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.

Nice, France and Monte Carlo, Monaco Yo!

I have lots of stories and lots of pictures to tell of this past awesome weekend trip to my neighbors in the northeast; however, I'm a bit exhausted to post the stories and process all the pictures, so for now I'm posting a couple of commentary videos of my journey (I know you're excited. More to come...

Nice:

Monaco

Crazy Auto Toilet Seat Cleaner in Nice:

Screw Atkins and South Beach...Go on the Italian Diet!

Ok, so it's pretty interesting being a Filipino in the country of Italia. One of my favorite things about that fusion is the change in my diet. I've totally exchanged rice for pasta and soy sauce for olive oil. I've always loved to cook, but I feel like I've taken it to a whole 'nother level here in Rome. It's a lot less convenient for me to go out to eat so I find myself trying to cook something. It seems like every guy here knows at least a little about cooking so I have a lot of teachers. I'll talk a little about my 3 favorite foods: spaghetti carbonara (shown to the left), suppli, and pizza. Carbonara is like my go to meal, meaning if I have nothing else to make, carbonara is the way to go. It's a really simple sauce that combines pancetta (good bacon), onions, parmesan or romano cheese, olive oil, lots of black pepper, and the key ingredient...a beaten egg. The egg is never really cooked but it cooked by the heat of the spaghetti and other ingredients.

Now on to Suppli. If I were to use a piece of food that represented me it would be this. Suppli is a fried rice ball that has tomatoes and mozzarella cheese in it. Something fried and something that has rice (dude I'm asian) has all the elements of MMmmm written all over it.

Pizza is not so much a surprise choice, but not any pizza my friend. Pizza in Rome is nice and thin and is crispy almost like a cracker. My favorite pizza type is capriciossa which has sausage, mushrooms, artichokes, and an egg sunny side up in the middle.

Ok, so I've realize I've eaten a ton of food while here in Rome. I eat so much more than I do while in the States, to the point where all my Italian friends are madly impressed. I take after my best friend Hall. But here's the kicker. Since being in Italy (with the only exercise I really get is walking...no soccer yet, no surfing, no running *sad face*) I've lost 5 lbs. Take that!