One more week

I just came back from my trip to Paris and Amsterdam. Paris was beautiful, and majestic. We spent Christmas there, but it didn't feel very Christmasy.. less so than Milan. The Eiffel Tower at night was amazing and every hour the light would flash in blue symbolizing the color of the European Union flag. We didn't do much sightsee this time around, instead, we shopped a lot. Amsterdam was also amazingly beautiful with its northern european architectures and rivers/canals all over the city. It was freezing in Amsterdam though, the coldest weather I've ever felt, the weather channel said it was -6 degree celcius. We stayed right in the middle of the red light district, interesting experience for sure. Came back to Torino this morning, it feels nice to be back to a city where I can somewhat understand the language as opposed to France where I don't even know the phrase "I can't speak French". I'm looking forward to new year's eve, some friends from school is organizing a potluck that night, I really hope it'll be fun.

Merry belated Christmas to everyone, and Happy Early New Years!

snowy Torino

Today was the second snowy day in Torino and unfortunately I had to get up early, go to school, and make a presentation on my paper. It was snowing relatively hard, and the streets, cars, and roofs were all covered in the snow. Even though it's only the second time it snowed, I'm already tired of it. It's beautiful and christmasy, but it makes the road really difficult to walk on. I have yet to find a good pair of snow boots with good tractions. It took me 30 minutes to go to school today because I was being very careful at every step i took so I don't slip. The presentation went okay, I never liked public speaking but it was much easier to give a speech to a group of people whose english comprehension is questionable... especially the professor. I tried my best to talk very slow to drag out the time as well as to be more comprehensible. I was supposed to go to Carmagnola to study for FInancial instrument with a couple of students at Lauren's house, but it was just too snowy and cold for me to make a 30 minute train ride.

On a different note, my housemate Ennio left to go back to Sicily today. We were supposed to go out to dinner with him last night but he had something to do in school and had to pack so we just ate at home. Then the whole night we spent trying to watch the Inter-Bremen champions league game on his computer but the connection failed us. I was very excited that he's going home at first because now I have the bathroom all to myself. But this morning after saying goodbye I felt a little sad. He was my italian teacher due to the fact he spoke almost zero English. We had a lot of fun times together watching and talking about soccer and relationship. He said my speaking and comprehension improved a lot since the first day we met. now that he's gone, I really have no opportunity to practice my italian anymore.

Next week is final, and then Lulu is coming on wednesday. We still haven't really made any plans for our 3 weeks vacation.

uneventful weekend

Today I didn't do much in the morning, but I made plan to go shopping with a Chinese girl from my class Cuiying. We went around Porta Nuova(the main train station) and walked around Via Roma and Via Po (the two streets with lots of shops). I bought a turtle neck from United Color of Benetton. The weather in Torino lately has been around -3 to 6 degree C. Next Wednesday is going to snow again. I don't enjoy the snow anymore because they make it hard to walk. We started around 5pm, and by 7pm all the stores were closing. Everything in Europe closes early and they also take random lunch breaks so it's really a hit or miss with the stores. My favorite store is Zara, a Spanish chain but also very popular in Italy. We have Zara in AMerica, but I have never actually bought anything from there before, this will change when I go home.

some random pictures:

Porta Nuova train station

Via Roma (a lot of high end stores)
Via Po all lid up for the holiday.
Random picture of me at the Potluck a while ago with Peruvian friends Alvaro and Claudia

coming to an end

School is almost over, just 2 more weeks left!! I've done 2 exams so far, one was an oral exam on contract and property law, pass no pass, and I passed it. The other one was written economic exam, and I got a perfect score and the TA even told me my answer was the best. IUC makes me want to learn, whereas Hastings just makes me want to swear at everything I see.

Lulu is coming again in 11 days, I can't believe times went by so fast. I really like it here in Torino and I will be very sad to leave. I really just hope the last month will be the best month ever.

potluck

It's been a while since i last updated. After much delays due to the italian transportation strike, we finally had our potluck on Saturday. It was fantastic, everyone put in so much effort into baking their national dishes. I made turkey and swiss roller just like the ones from costco. It took me 2 hours to make them saturday afternoon, but they turned out fantastic. We had food from all over the world, US, Italy, Montenegro, Peru, Mali, China, Palenstine, Jordan, and India. After the food, we put on some great arabic rap and other music to dance to. All in all it was a great success. It was held at the olympic village which was great because they had good heating.

This morning I experienced my first Torino snow, it was very light and rather invisible, but I still felt it. It's been near zero degrees lately, but it's been very dry so we haven't seen snow yet til this morning. Coming from California where it never snows, this is really cool for me. Tonight there's a Palenstine documentary viewing at school, so I'll hope it'll be a great time.

Halloween in Carmagnola

Yesterday was Halloween, and it is really not a holiday that celebrated wildly in Italy. I have to say though I'm very impressed that almost 80% of the boutique stores have cute Halloween decorations for the past month. Lindsay and Stephanie from Hastings (study at Ireland and Netherlands respectively) came to Italy to visit Lauren, so Lynn and I went to Lauren's house for the first time. She and Luca lives in Carmagnola, a tiny village 30 minutes by train from Torino. It was a very tiny and cozy village, the kind that has like one supermarket in the whole town and everyone knows everyone else. Luca's apartment was very Ikea-ly and very cozy. We hung out and played a bit of wii before heading out to this barn-party literally in the middle of nowhere. It actually reminds me of middle school dance in the multipuprose room except the DJ was wearing just a pair of see-through tights and a big belly. (shocking.. yes) The theme of the party is called "fetish party", and actually a good number of people dressed up in a variety of adult-costume. At one point Luca told us to all go on stage to take picture with the semi-naked DJ, and being the only sober one, I was very embarassed haha.

Tonight is the Juventus-Roma game, and since they are not letting any Roma support to buy tickets, only people with Torino ID could buy them. I'm going to watch the game at a pub near school like last time, and hopefully have a good time tonight.

il Salone del Gusto

Today I went to the annual food fair "Salone del Gusto" here in Torino. It was 20 euro, but you got to try like a million different kind of food, mostly italian, but also other european specialities. We were there for about 4 hours and by the end of it we were bursting full and tired. I tried fondue from Switzerland for the first time, it was soo good. We also tried a crap load of olive oil. They were the best! I've never tasted olive oil so fresh and crisp. Lauren and I both ended up getting a bottle each, for 8 euro, pretty good price I think. We tried wine, hams, lots and lots of cheese (by the end I was pretty tired of cheese), chocolate, and just random qualify foods.