Back to School

Well today was the first day back to class. It was a nice, long, lazy break - with the exception of the week spent studying for an exam during the middle of the vacation. I swear I'll never understand how any kind of bureaucracy or administration works here. Further along those lines, somehow we are still in our second quarter of the academic year. We'll have just one course to follow for the next three weeks (four hours a day, three days a week). And then on February 22nd our third quarter will begin. So, to recap: 1st quarter = October 1st to 31st. 2nd quarter = November 1 to February 21st, with winter break (and a test) in the middle. How does that work, you may ask?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway, the course is on international marketing. It should be interesting, but it's going to be a lot of work. Apparently we're planned to have a debate, a presentation, and two papers to turn in for the three week class. The only upside is it gets out each day just in time for the aperitivo (Italian happy hour).

Speaking of aperitivo, it was another eventful weekend. Now that everyone is back in town, the social life is kicking into gear again. I managed to get out on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, despite the fact that it decided to dump snow on us again - and then turn sunny - and then immediately melt and turn to ice. It's actually pretty funny - I live near a school, and once in a while I'll see a group of kids walking down the street, then they take off on a little running start and slide down the sidewalk like 15 yards.

Ok, I admit it, I tried it too.

But anyways... Friday we went to some warehouse club on the outskirts of town. They had a live band playing rock and 70s disco (???) in this Mad Max Thunderdome looking amphitheater, and a techno club in another room. It was actually pretty fun to hang out there, and we were in a decent sized group so we had a good time. I was pretty proud of myself at first because I managed not to spend any money there - something I'm actively trying to pursue given my financial situation. I'd just had some cheap beers from the market before we went out and I was going to leave it at that. But, then we had to leave the place.... I'm beginning to catch on to a common theme in the clubs here - you don't have to pay the cover when you come IN, but you have to pay to get OUT. Clever tactic, Italy. Not a bad marketing idea. So they still got their money in the end, but I can't complain because we did have a good time.

Saturday night was more of the same. A couple beers first, and then we ended up back at the same place as the night before, but a different club in a different warehouse in the same complex. It was totally the stereotypical European techno club atmosphere - kids with glowsticks, laser lightshow, the works. However we weren't actually there very long because a friend that a colleague brought along with us was working on passing from three sheets in the wind to four, and he decided it'd be a good idea to start mouthing off to one of the bouncers in the place... needless to say, it was decided that a 'strategic withdrawal' was necessary. So the night ended fairly early. But before that we decided we'd meet up again the next day for a little cultural enlightenment.

Sunday evening came around, and a few of us met up at the Museum of Modern Art here in town. A few times during the year the city-run museums are opened to the public for free, so we decided to take advantage of the opportunity - not the least because the museum also has a really good cafe for the aperitivo hour attached to it. It's cheap and they put out a ton of really good food. So we walked through the museum, stared perplexedly at the art for a little while (though I'm convinced some of it was just articles dropped by museum patrons as they walked through and subsequently mistaken for priceless avant garde masterpieces), and hit the cafe. It was very inspiring - not in the sense that the artwork was thought-provoking or particularly endearing. More in the sense that I realized I could go find my old fingerpaintings from when I was 5 years old, claim it's modern art, and probably solve all my financial worries for the rest of my life.

But surely Justin, it can't really be so! Modern art certainly has it's place in the world - this, I'm sure, you're thinking to yourselves at this very moment.

There was a canvas painting, three feet by three feet. It was tan colored, and it had a little red dot in the middle.

IT'S NOT ART IF *I* CAN DO IT!!! Mom, Dad - do you remember that one time, in highschool, when I was taking a photography class... I had to turn in a project the next day which I completely forgot about, and at the last minute I ended up taking pictures of us going to eat at that Thai restaurant? Yeah, that was more well planned, artistic, and skillful than 99% of the stuff in the museum.

Alright, I'll end my tirade there. Actually there were some works that I found beautiful, or at least interesting, to be fair. But they were few and far between, and for the most part, it was exactly the kind of stereotypical, abstract kind of stuff that comes to mind for many when they think of modern art.

We decided to go to another museum (a few blocks away), which is actually a type of memorial for an airplane disaster that occurred here in Italy back in 1980. We found out about the memorial looking at some other promotional material at the Modern Art Museum, and in the material it said the plane crashed due to a missile(!!). Well the group of us that were out were all foreign students except for one Italian, and he didn't know what any of the details about it were, so we thought we'd go check out the memorial to see if we could find some answers - as far as we knew Italy wasn't at war with anyone back then. So we asked the front desk people where it was, and they gave us directions and told us it'd be open til midnight because of the special museum happenings for the day. So, we trekked through the snow to the bus stop in our merry little band, grabbed the bus, got to the general area, wandered around in the snow for a while, stopped and asked for directions again, and finally found the place. Well, it was closed. And it was only 8pm. But really, that is kind of par for the course here. It just wouldn't be as fun if anyone knew what the hell was going on =)

I'm excited for the rest of the week. We're going to do an aperitivo again tomorrow after class at a place everyone says is really good, and then on Thursday morning I'm playing squash! Some of the guys talked me into it. I have no idea what squash really is - as far as I can tell it's just racquetball, but I guess I'll find out for sure on Thursday. So expect an update after that, either from home or from the hospital. Ciao!