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!

You can do Venice in 4 hours, but we did it 20.

This past weekend, I went to Florence as my previous post conveyed. I went out with some of my friends who are studying in Florence and then woke up early the next morning to leave for Venice. I went with the brave souls in the picture below (shout out to Alex, Chris, Nick, Andrew, Angela, Ayla, and Lindsey). I call them brave because when we left we had no idea what kind of adventure we were embarking on. We went because Venice is the home of Carnivale, like the best 2.5 week festival pre-Lent. The event was full of people dressed in costumes and traditional masks as shown on the picture to the left. San Marco Square also had a big stage which was the center of all the events. On the day we went, there was a costume party for the kids and then a bunch of different bands.

It ended up being an adventure because we had assumed that the Carnivale would be something on the scale of Mardi Gras in New Orleans and that it would be this all out party that lasted way into the night. So we thought we would hang out until like 10 pm and leave on the 10 pm train. Our other option was to stay longer and leave at 3 am. Well the Carnivale ended roughly around 10 pm and there was no train at 10 and the train at 3 was sold out. The next train was not leaving for Florence until 6:30 in the morning. So we had to consume ourselves with doing something for roughly another 8 hours. A lot of the time was spent trying to sleep in random stairs and in the train station. All of us were exhausted by the end of the "short day trip".

Sono Americano yo!

So I just arrived in Florence to visit my friends Nick&Danny and I got a little bit of a nice welcome from the police. Two cops decide to stop me right after I step out of the train station. In Italian, they just started pelting me with all these questions like, what's in your bag? open it up? what do you do? where are you from? let me see your passport? Ok so I'm doing really well in Italian, but when two dudes with guns and handcuffs are suspisious of something and insist on speaking in Italian to you, your Italian kinda goes blank. Luckily my Italian was on even though I probably could have crapped in my pants.

Ok so the irony of this story was that right before I left, I was about to pack my passport but I asked my buddy Briggs if he thought I needed it. Briggs spent a year doing the same program in Rome as I'm in now. He's staying with me in Rome while he visits a bunch of his friends for his post Ph.D graduation vacation. He was like...in the whole year I was here I was never asked for my passport. So I was like...I'll leave it. So when they asked for it I showed them the copies of my visa and passport and my original (thank god) permesso (permit of stay). I think the fact that I was conversing with them in Italian helped cause after I found out I was a student in Rome they started to ask what I studied etc., but while they were still searching my bag mind you. Evevything ended up ok and they eventually left me alone and with a smile said "Buenasera". I was like....right...same to you.

One more piece of irony. While Briggs and I had dinner at the train station right before I left, the cashier spoke to me in english and in Italian to Briggs. I told Briggs it was like a kick in the balls to be automatically assumed as not part of Italy. If the Fiorentine police had just thought I was American initially, this wouldn't have happened. Oh wellz, off to Carnivale in Venice bright and early tomorrow.