1st/2nd of May 2011

I'm going to do something I've never done before and blog out of order. My apologies for confusing anyone. I left you all off at last Thursday and have yet to blog about my day in Tivoli Friday and at the Beatification ceremony Sunday morning but as soon as I opened my laptop at 10am this morning in bed, I knew it was a special day.

A lot of things seemed odd. Twitter was blowing up and updating constantly and a ton of friends were on FB chat. This is odd because around 10am my time when I wake up, the internet is normally dead except for the occasional tweet by Chad Ochocino who seems to miraculously tweet at any hour of the day all the time. After a quick glance at the trending topics on Twitter (the only way I know what I should be concerned about - which now at 11:30pm means I should be concerned about Jack Bauer, Fred Weasley and Geronimo - all trending topics) and reading Matt's post on my wall I figured it out. After jealously watching the videos and pictures of celebrations back home I started working on my paper while listening to my favorite patriotic songs.

We've been wanting to have a cookout here for awhile now, considering our built in brick grill and massive patio that has been unused so I messaged my roommate (and fellow Terp) Juan and we met up to go grocery shopping, of course after I picked out my fitting outfit of blue jeans, lynyrd skynyrd shirt and O's ballcap. I haven't dressed so out of place since my Canary Islands vacation. Since all the supermarkets by us don't sell cookout stuff we had to make a trip up to the end of the tram line to a store called Conad that actually sells charcoal. They also had an extremely limited selection of buns, burgers and hot dogs that we choose from. Unfortunately, they, along with the rest of Rome, don't carry large size solo cups, only small ones so again we had to make do with them. I can't wait to drink from a plastic cup that holds more than a drop of liquid. Grocery shopping complete. I stopped at Panino Planet for my late lunch then came back here to do a little more work before walking over to school for my 5:15pm class.

Got to school around 4 and hung out in the garden with Michelle and her fauxhawk hair experiment, sorry don't have a picture haha but it was incredible. Finished up my Italian homework and went to Italian class where my incredible teacher who you all read about in the last blog brought in copies of her book for us! I got my autographed copy and plan on starting it tonight. It's called Tenere and I hope that I'm smart enough to comprehend it (it's for 7 year old children). We'll see how that goes.

Prepping the flames

Now the fun starts. Cookout time. Our grill has an interesting set up but I managed to build a pyramid of charcoals and get them lit just like my father taught me. It took a longggg time for them to get heated up, but they finally did and cooked the first batch of burgers just right. Dave made french fries and we sat out on our patio enjoying our meals and Budweisers next to our gigantic flag. Second round of burgers took a bit longer because the charcoals were burning out but I made do with it. Started the grilling off with Lee Greenwood and his Proud to be an American hit and then had my classic rock playlist rocking the whole time with Born in the USA, Jack and Diane, Red White & Blue and all. Hung our big flag outside too. Great night overall just enjoying the night, food and talking about the USA with my roommates. Also, now my clothes reek of charcoal grill smell which is perhaps my favorite post-cookout treat.

Yummm.

Successful Night

Anyways, because I don't feel like proofreading my papers yet, I used this as an excuse. Blogging seems to always be a good excuse to not do something.Tomorrow I'm going to the Museum of Criminology over near Piazza Navona (my favorite spot) at 9am for Bodies and Burials on-site class so I'll make sure to hit up my ice cream joint sometime before I venture back to campus for the rest of my day which doesn't end until 7pm. Bleh. Should be a fun experience though at the museum. It's crazy that this is my last Tuesday of classes. For being as long of a day in class as it is, I really don't mind it that much, school at AUR is pretty good.

Anyways, time to start getting ready for bed. Proud to be an American today. It made the front page of all the newspapers here and consensus seems to be that Italians are also very happy, albeit not celebrating in the streets like in DC, but they're happy about the events that occurred last night in Pakistan. Of course the State Department issued a warning to all overseas Americans but I don't forsee that affecting my Eurotrip coming up in a couple of weeks. Who would ever want to attack innocent little Brussels anyways? Gadhafi's off his rocker lately though, and Rome is a little to close too Libya geographically for my liking. I have my faith in Berlusconi though. I definitely can't say my stay in Europe has been uneventful. Week 1 was the start of the Egypt riots, and now this and everything that happened in between. Thank God for CNN.com (& Twitter) still keeping me updated in English on the other side of the Atlantic.

Enjoy your week, tutti! Remember not to forget all those who have died for your freedom.