American Invasion, Part Ten

The weather in July was pretty hit and miss. Some days, it was unbearably hot and muggy; other days, we were granted a blissful reprieve by summer rainstorms. With not so much school stuff going on, I filled the days watching World Cup matches, walking around the city, reading, and doing English practice with my small base of clients. A lot of my colleagues had already gone back to their hometowns for the summer, but there were still a few of us left. As mid-July rolled around, the remaining students were about to take off for the summer, so we decided to have one last get together to put the exclamation point on the first year of our masters program.

We made reservations at a (relatively) fancy outdoor nightclub located on one of the hills just outside the city, but first we would meet up at Riccardo's place for some grub. I invited Jessica, my new American friend, to come along with us, so we met up beforehand. Along the way to Riccardo's, I just had to show her the amazingness of the flaming shot bar, so we got a few fun-filled shots there and proceeded to dinner. We made a huge collective pizza order, and all dined together in the giant banquet-hall-like room at Ric's place.

The club we were going to that night was pretty far away, and since we all planned on drinking we of course had to call some taxis. We opened up some bottles of wine while waiting for our chariots to arrive, and finally they showed up. It was a veritable fleet of taxi cabs, maybe five or six in total, there to carry us away. After a lengthy ride, we arrived at the place and more or less proceeded to party the night away.

It was a bittersweet send off for the end of the year; not only would we not be seeing many of our colleagues for another few months, but quite a few of them would be spending six months to a year studying at other universities all around the globe. We definitely made the most of the night. Though we were pretty well  organized for getting to the club (all those management classes, ya know), we unfortunately were significantly less organized for getting back home. It turns out you couldn't just go out and get a taxi since we were so far from the center, and there were quite a few adventures had by all in trying to return to the city. On the way out, Jessica and I were lucky enough to run into Saar and her boyfriend who had come to pick her up, and they graciously gave us a lift home. Some others weren't so lucky, and ended up walking all the way back to the city - probably a good 45 minute walk when sober, and they definitely were not. Tales of blisters, rolling down hills and falling into bushes circulated the following day, and the next time we all met up the battle scars were exhibited for all to see.

Clearly the day after was spent recuperating, but the day after that I took a little trip with Jessica. She wanted to see a nearby town, and I ended up going with her to Ravenna to show her around a bit and give her a very unprofessional tour. We went through all the cool old churches there and she got herself lots of nice pictures of the beautiful mosaics. I wanted to take her to the place where I ate the best piadina (a kind of sandwich) in the history of the world, but it was unfortunately closed that afternoon, so she would just have to lead the rest of her life deprived of such awesomeness. We spent the afternoon there, but she had to be back by the evening for something with her internship. She was leaving in a few days and we probably wouldn't have a chance to hang out again, so once we got back to Bologna we said goodbye, or rather 'arrivaderci'.

That same evening I went to Saar's place with some others from our class to watch the Netherlands play Spain in the World Cup final. There was homemade tagliatelle and ragu, and plenty of beer. We were all pulling for the Netherlands since Saar is Dutch, but unfortunately it was the Spaniards that came out victorious that evening. On the walk home through the city center, there were massive gatherings of all the Spaniards resident in Bologna, mostly students, roaming the streets, waving flags, making noise and celebrating. Even though our team lost, it was still fun to watch the goings-on. There are an awful lot of Spanish students here in Italy (and Italians in Spain, for that matter), and they definitely know how to party. We didn't join in the celebrations though; we just watched from afar.

I had a test coming up in a few days, so in the meantime I hit the books pretty hard. While there is no class activity at the University over the summer, there are usually (as in this case) additional rounds of tests for students who did not take them the first time around, or want to retake a test. That is one of the big differences between the US university system and the Italian one: students usually get three to five tries to take any given exam, during different parts of the year. Heck, you can even take an exam several years after the course it is associated with has ended. In my case, I didn't take this particular exam the first time around because it was when Alee and Ryan were here with me. I studied hard, did well, and afterwards we celebrated with a nice aperitivo, as is our usual tradition.

After that, things continued to wind down for the summer. The following weekend was really the last hurrah for any kind of big group activity for the summer. One of our classmates, Marika, was leaving to study in India for ten months so her friends put together a going-away party. We gathered up a bunch of food and drinks and headed outside the city to spend the evening in the fresher, cooler air of the hills. It was nice, but like the outing the week before, it was bittersweet to be saying longterm goodbyes to classmates which we had come to know over the last year.

Still to come gentle readers - more belated updates from the summer! Current classes have kept me super busy, but I'm ever so slowly getting there and hope to be caught up soon! Stay tuned.