Monday, November 27, 2006

A Mighty Wind

"Non altrimenti fatto che d'un vento
impetuoso per li avversi ardori,
che fier la selva e sanz' alcun rattento

li rami schianta, abbatte e porta fori;
dinanzi polveroso va superbo,
e fa fuggir le fiere e li pastori."


"It sounded like a mighty wind, made violent by waves of heat, that strikes the forest and with unchecked force shatters the branches, hurls them away, and, magnificent in its roiling cloud of dust, drives on, putting beast and shepherd to flight."

-Dante's Inferno

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Jesi/International Fencing Tournament

Yes, Jesi is in Italy, east of Florence and near the coast. So let me begin with what happened Thursday night.

Andy's birthday was on Friday, so we decided to celebrate it Thursday evening since two of us weren't going to be there on Friday. So dinner that night was very good, at a place near Faces. If you want directions, just let me know. After that, we decided to go to Michael Collins, and that was packed full of people from NYU who happened to be there the same night. When that bar closed, we went over to JJ's for a little while, then I decided to leave. Since I wasn't willing to spend € 15,00 getting myself back home by taxi, I decided to walk it. I hadn't packed for the weekend trip yet, so I was a little nervous. I arrived back on campus roughly around 2am, and packed in about 15 minutes. I went to bed, all set to go for Friday.

My alarm woke up, and me being my usual self I let myself hit the snooze button several times before I actually woke up. When I did, I took a brief shower, and went looking for the pants I had worn the night before to get my wallet and keys out of them. But for some strange reason, they were nowhere to be found--and after about 15 minutes of searching with the help of my roommates, who had been rudely awoken by my searching, they were still lost. Finally, I got the idea to go looking in the room next door to ours (they're frequently in our room, especially after a night of drinking (ooh that sounds bad--don't take it in a sexual way or anything....wow I'll shut up now). And sure enough, one of the "sister" roommates had taken my Levis unintentionally when she apparently picked up her jacket. Now over 15 minutes later than I had anticipated leaving, I had to run to catch the bus. Of course when you're late, there's always more traffic than usual, so the bus got to the train station just 5 minutes before my train was set to depart. Already exhausted and out of breath, I boarded the train as they were blowing the final boarding call whistle.

After changing trains in Foligno, I boarded a Eurostar train bound for Jesi, my final destination. I sat down and began to listen to my iPod, and I looked over and noticed a woman reading a book. I did a double-take, and I said, "Barbara?" she quickly looked up, and then her eyes lit up, and she quickly said "Hi Christopher!" then nudged Jessica, who was asleep at the time, and told her I was sitting next to them. We caught up with what had been happening in our lives since we last saw each other at Prom, then we talked about how things had been going at NYU and Stanford of late. The train arrived at the Jesi station, and I used my Italian skills (yeah right) to get us to the hotel. We checked in, toured around the town a little, and joined the rest of the team for dinner that night.

Saturday: the day I will remember for quite some time. It was my first time seeing a fencing competition, and an international one at that, so I was pretty excited despite the fact that we had to be up and ready by 6:45 in the morning. Jessica fenced and was unfortunately placed into a small pool of fencers (5 instead of six) automatically lowering her standings overall in the tournament. (The rules for fencing and for the tournaments are extremely complicated, so I won't bother to talk about it too much). But in the end, she went up against the person who ended up winning the whole competition during eliminations, and was thus eliminated, as was most of the USA team, during the first tier of eliminations. Only two USA fencers made it to the third tier, the top 16 fencers. Then the number one USA fencer at the tournament was eliminated, and a rookie that has been showing extreme talent recently at the age of 13, made it to the top 8 international fencers. Unfortunately, that's as far as she made it, eventually tying for fifth place overall with another fencer from Belgium (I think). An Italian fencer ended up beating the French fencer, and the day ended over 14 hours after it had began. We were all dead, and we were just spectators the whole day; I can't even begin to imagine what the fencers felt like.

We went for some quick pizza to go from a local place that was recommended by the bellhop of the hotel, and it ended up being pretty good. After that, we called it a night since we were deadbeat tired, and I woke up this morning, got ready, arrived at the train station without a hitch, and got back in Florence around 12 o’clock.

Now, time for work, and time to hunker down until the end of the semester. But I did download a bunch of Christmas songs, so I’ve been listening to those, getting me in the mood of the season and making me anxious to go back home.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Procrastination

I thought it would end after high school, but it only gets worse. Here I am writing this, and I have a two-page essay due the day after tomorrow (with other 6-7 page essays due not too far in the future). And I plan on going down to the gym to work out later tonight. I've had since Thursday night (well, maybe Friday because Thursday nights are always party nights anyways) to do all of my work, and I've decided to wait until after nine on Sunday to start my work. I guess it's really true that I do work better under pressure...but it feels like I'm always pushing the limits. Usually when you feel that way your behavior changes, but procrastination has the opposite effect on you--you end up doing it more and more, seeing how far you can push yourself, always starting to work later and later and challenging yourself more and more. That's what I see it as: my life doesn't have enough challenges in it at the moment, so I have to wait until they build up and then use them all together to fulfill the needs of my extreme version of a Type-A personality that I was born with. So now would probably be a good time to start writing that essay, but I'll probably just let Facebook take up the empty spaces left in the time between now and when I go to bed.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Gratzie Roma, e ciao!

Weird, spontaneous, and random freewriting:

I look outside the window and see pitch black. It’s too early to worry about what time it is, and I have to be at my meeting place at roughly the same time that my train arrives. Not happening.

Two red lights stare back at me from the outskirts of the train station as we are departing, most likely a train being serviced. The wheels grind against the cold steel rails and vibrate the car I’m in; we’re slowly but surely gaining speed. A train just passed, but it wasn’t a blur so I can tell that we haven’t been cleared for full speed yet. We just passed through the second largest train station of Florence, “Firenze Campo Marte.”

Thinking about later today, I realize how long ago it has been sine I have confessed. I’m going to try to do that today at the Vatican. So many people asked me to pray for them at school yesterday. I’ll keep my promise.

The woman seated across from me looks as though she has been having personal problems lately, and also looks like she’s headed to Rome for business. She’s trying to sleep in an awkward position, as anyone who has ever flown an overnight flight or train well knows that the seats aren’t the most comfortable things in the world. Her husband just came back to comfort her, possibly after the loss of a loved one.

It’s amazing to me how many people on campus call themselves religious, yet none of them go to their churches or synagogues or temples. Sometimes I feel as if I’m a lone piece of debris, scattered by the religious bomb that hit the world the generation before mine. “It’s amazing that you go to mass every weekend. I can’t even remember the last time I went. Maybe for Christmas last year.” Phrases like that are not all that uncommon anymore. It’s scary.

The train is moving along at top speed now, and I have to look into the distance in order to see things without having them blurred. There is an eerie fog that settles like a blanket over the ominous lake outside, and the first light of the sunrise is just beginning to utter its first breaths. Numerous cypress trees in the distance line the roads and stand tall like proud soldiers waiting to bravely serve their country.

After a nap, I realize that we’re here, in Rome already. The train operator announces the obvious, that we’re entering the Rome Termini station, in Italian of course. Time to put this laptop away, to rush off of the train, find a taxi, and see the new Pope in person for the very first time.

Grazie Roma e ciao!

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Politics abound: cafeteria food, the elections on tuesday, and my classes for next semester

First and foremost, the story behind the cafeteria food. For those of you who aren't on the Florence campus, or who don't eat here, let's just say that I'm not the type to complain, and for me to be complaining about the food here is a big statement. On tuesday, after getting absolutely fed up with the food here on campus, I decided to finally write and put into action the petition that I had promised my fellow roommates and students on campus to write. I wrote the whole thing in a day, and went around knocking on doors that night getting signatures. All in all, we were able to get 83 signatures out of the roughly 100 students on campus, with only two students who were asked to sign refusing to do so. So I think it was a general concensus that something had to be done about the food on campus. We were so successful in getting attention from the university community that it hit back home, and an article was published in the Washington Square News, NYU's newspaper. (You can see the article here, which is cool because it mentions me towards the end). Alexah Farah and I met on friday to discus what could be changed (within reason) and what could be added to the food to make it more tolerable. So hopefully in the next few days we'll see some drastic improvements in the quality and variety of the food here on campus.


That said, since this is a blog about politics, I would be a fool not to comment on the election results on Tuesday. For me, it's bittersweet: my home state, California, re-elected Arnold for Governor, which was definantly a good thing; but I'm afraid I can't say the same thing about the House or the Senate. Now, America, we have a psycho liberal left-wing extremist who is third in line to run our country: Nancy Pelosi. For those of you who had Coach Klein with me last year, you know the famous talks that he gave about Ms. Pelosi, and how he pointed out specifics about here that made it almost impossible for anyone in class to see any good qualities or values in her that could prove to be beneficial to the country as a whole. But ignorant America too busy with their own lives to care about politics followed the stance of the liberal, agenda-seeking, biased media and voted Democrat. I must say that the Republicans had their fair share of screw-ups, from Rush Limbaugh's attack on Michael J. Fox (I disagree with the way he worded what he had to say, but still think it carries some clout), to the Florida scandal, to Rumsfeld's handeling of the war in Iraq (which happens to be blamed solely on Bush by the liberal media, by the way). But these are all very personal problems, and if the american people would have taken a second to step back and to see this point, I think we would have had a very different outcome in the elections. But the bottom line is that the decision has been made, there's no changing it now. I just hope the people realize that they elected the party, especially in the house, that is in a phase of radical extremism behind Pelosi, and the power they trusted them with to completely devalue and screw up our country. Can't wait until 2008!

And lastly, my registration for next semester is a little complicated. I've decided not to take Italian next semester, as I have already taken 4 years of Spanish in high school and can test out of the language requirement for NYU's CAS next year. So in its place, I've decided to take a rigorous poli sci course, "European Union Policies and Politics" taught by one of the two original professors here at the Florence campus, Roberto D'Alimonte. He is the main contact for any political news for CNN, MSNBC, FOX, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and his class isn't offered back at the NYC campus. So I've decided to include that information in my petition that I have to write to our dean, explaining to him that a) I can indeed place out of the language requirement and b) I have significant reasons why I want to take this particular course in place of the Italian class.

So, bottom line, my life has been filled with politics and the political processes involved with them lately, and I'm loving it.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Train Tickets, Hostel Reservations, and Bank of America Fiascos

After finally deciding between going to Rome and visiting my great Aunts and Uncles or going to Germany (specifically Munich) and Zurich (in Switzerland), I decided on Rome. So I went online and bought my train ticket last night, and after researching many hostels in Rome, I had picked out the ideal one. The train ticket confirmation email came, with me (supposedly) leaving this morning at 7:53 for Rome on a high speed train. I went downstairs to print it out, came back up, and when I tried to book the hostel, it said that my credit card had been frozen and that I needed to contact my bank. I thought it was just a glitch, so I tried again, and the same thing happened. Well, then I tried to book the return train ticket, and that didn't work either. I started to get worried, but decided that I would try in the morning, thinking they put a hold on the train ticket for a short period of time.

I woke up in the morning, went online, and tried again. I checked my balance, just to be sure, but I had plenty of money left on the card. But no, it still said that it was frozen. So then I panicked, and not realizing what time it was, I called my parents. My mom helped me through it, and after moving the train ticket to tomorrow at 7:53, using her credit card to pay for the hostel, and getting the fraud freeze taken off of the card (which, by the way, took 2 hours, because you can't exactly dial toll-free numbers from Italy, and the credit on my cell phone ran out from talking to my mom, and and and....it was horrible.).

What a great way to start off the month.

So, now I'm leaving for Rome tomorrow morning at 7:53, I have a hostel reserved, and I can use my card again in about two hours once California processes the info.

But the morning wasn't a total loss: you know how sometimes you have something important to ask someone, but you don't really know how to ask it? Well, that person asked me what I've been meaning to ask for quite some time, and now I feel so much better, finally coming down from the clouds and standing on solid, hard ground.

I'l post again when I get back!

Ciao!