You Don't Know Jack

I just heard the best story. My dear friend, Farah, informed me that her husband, Maarten, made pumpkin soup on Friday night and left it on the balcony to cool down. After a bit, he stepped out to retrieve the soup. At that moment, Farah heard him say, “It’s Just Food.” Oops. He accidentally (obviously) kicked the container and it spilled on some theater-goers lining up downstairs from their building.

He went downstairs and apologized to a woman pulling pumpkin bits out of her hair and a man wiping it off his coat. Thank God they weren’t typical New Yorkers. They actually thought it was quite tasty. Ha!

So it’s been a slushy mess the last few days in NYC. Since I don’t want to ruin any of my nice shoes, I pull out my extremely comfortable and supportive hiking boots. Even though these boots are made for tough mountain conditions, and with vibram soles, are supposed to grip even the wettest surfaces, they don’t do anything on the slushy streets of NYC. I end up taking the tiniest, old lady steps to avoid ending up on the ground. What works in these conditions? Help please.

Diana and Sophie had their second annual holiday cookie party last night. Let’s just say there were a lot of cookies. People were pretty tame considering the amount of sugar in their systems. Also, it was a good turnout considering the horrible weather. I really wanted to make my favorite vegan chocolate chip cookies (no, I’m not vegan) but I don’t have a mixer and didn’t feel like stirring for an hour. I also knew there would be a cookie surplus.

With the rain today, it’s the perfect day to stay in and bang out business school applications. I have been told that many of the U.S. schools have similar essays so it just takes a little tweaking to make one great essay work for several applications. My problem is that I am leaning towards European schools which ask interesting questions but all very different. The one that I’m having trouble with is what I would ask the president and why. There are a lot of things I’d ask, but finding one that’s poignant and well-related to my reasons for applying has so far eluded me.

So I made the switch from Blogger to Wordpress for no more of a reason than I wanted to try something new.  We’ll see…

I texted a few NYC friends this last weekend to inform them how nice the weather was in LA. Of course, they didn’t appreciate the news. I didn’t realize it was going to be that cold and windy in NYC last weekend. Today I walked around NYC with a light sweater, similar to the one I was wearing in LA when I composed the text. I hear tomorrow is supposed to be in the 30s. Something is amiss.

I’m trying to get back on track with some posts. To catch up from, oh, 3 months ago, I’m back in NYC and back at The Orchard. Jessica’s still in Rome trying not to miss me too much. I’m gonna think of a good angle for this blog so check back soon. I also need to clean up my site so it works again. I got hit by form hijackers. It was a nasty experience when random email addresses started signing up for my email list. I checked it out and found out that someone was using my form to send those nasty spam emails, making it look like I was sending it. Ugh. I had to take down the pages with the forms until, as my computer-savvy friend Dan informed me, I get some good form validation.

So we’re back in Rome after our two weeks abroad. We had a great time in Northern Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany. We came back to Rome early because we were hoping to straighten out my visa situation. Unfortunately, it didn’t go as planned and so I just booked my flight back to the US. It’s going to be sad to leave Italy and Jessica, but honestly, I’m tired of trying to find a way to stay. We’ve decided to take one last trip before I leave so tomorrow we’ll get up early to go south to the Amalfi Coast. It is supposed to be gorgeous so we’re excited. I’ll be back in Rome this weekend preparing for my departure early next week. I’ll write more about both trips later.

Today will be our last day of class (it’s after midnight here). We’d like to continue on to the next level, but since my travel papers situation is still pending, we’ve decided to do some traveling in April. It’s a tough decision as we’ve both enjoyed our teachers (the teachers move on with the class to the next level) and our classmates. I find it interesting that when everyone is working towards a common goal, in this case learning Italian, that it’s easy to get along. My class has been a blast. I’m the only native English speaker and feel fortunate to interact daily with people from Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. Yesterday, I joked around with my group members - an engineering major from Egypt, a philosphy major from Tehran, a nun from the Congo, and a businessman from Montenegro. No hard feelings and everyone was entitled to their opinion in how to use cui - a cute Italian word that basically means “which” in English. I think we should get some of our world leaders to take a language class together. That’s my deep thought for the evening.

In the meantime, we leave for Venice on Monday. A couple of days there and then we’ll travel to Padua (Padova), Verona and Bolzano before crossing the border into Austria. We’d like to spend a couple of weeks out of Italy traveling through Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Perhaps we’ll hit up the Czech Republic as well. It’s nice that we can be flexible on dates. We just have to be back by the 22nd as Jessica has a friend visiting.

Any suggestions on places to visit? Post a comment or send me an email with suggestions. Seriously, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Since it’s thunder- storming and hailing in Rome today, I thought this afternoon would be a good time to add a little post. At the top of the agenda (no need for a drumroll), we had our first victim, I mean visitor. There’s nothing like knowing two people in Rome so they can take you around and read the guidebook to you. Yes, that’s basically what we did when Dan Shamir arrived last Thursday. Ok, so the “Jack & Jessica Roman Tour” still needs to be polished - we’ll get there. Dan begged (not really) to have his picture added to the blog, so I’ve complied. Here’s Dan (jet-lagged) and Jessica (not) in front of the Trevi fountain.

Dan helped to break the monotony of going to school every day. Though it’s definitely been good for the both of us. And for those of you wondering, yes, Jessica moved up to the next level.

A couple of weeks ago, before we started school, we took a 3-day trip to Pisa, Lucca and Florence. I mean no disrespect to Pisa when I say it’s boring. We did it in a half a day and that was too long. Yes, the tower is leaning and they had to add a sunken counter-weight a few years ago to prevent it from toppling, but I’ve seen it in enough pictures to know what it was going to look like. More interesting were the bapistry, where the security guard harmonizes with herself every half hour in this echoey cylindrical building, and the Campo Santo walled-cemetery, which suffered extensive damage during WWII but still houses some large 14th century Hell frescoes with devils eating the innards of the newly damned. If you go to Pisa, you have to hold up the tower. It’s intoxicating trying to get the perfect picture. This is as close as we got before Jessica said I was being a dork.

Lucca is a quaint medieval town with a huge fortified wall surrounding it. The wall now serves as a park and we did the evening stroll with the locals before eating in a cute trattoria.

The next day we went to Florence and did the usual touristy things. Jessica hadn’t seen Michel- angelo’s David so we made sure to go the Accademia for that. I forgot how much I enjoyed that place. It houses David and I was, and still am, awestruck by the statue, but I forgot how it also houses some unfinished Michelangelo statues. Some were just started while others are nearly finished. It’s really impressive to see how he brought these pieces of rock to life. We tried to get off the beaten path and so we trekked to the other side of the river for a view of the city. Here’s a picture of Jessica trying not to steal the show from beautiful Florence in the background. Also, here’s what David would look like if he had too much McDonald’s.

So we finally have the internet in our apartment. The company is called FastWeb but the ‘fast’ part doesn’t apply to set-up time. The first woman whom Jessica spoke to was a sweetheart, promising a quick turn-around time and an email confirmation. The only problem was that she forgot to register Jessica in the system. I guess she wrote the info down on a napkin hoping to transfer it after she went to the bar for un caffe. Anyway, we’re now connected and hopefully I can provide some pretty pictures and good stories as they arise. Why not start now you ask? Ok, if you insist.

A couple weeks back, we took a three day trip to Assisi, Perugia and Siena. Assisi would be our first experience with the walking tours in our Rick Steve’s guidebook. We weren’t sure if we would have time to complete the tour if we tried to find the hotel first so we carried our backpacks around with us all day. It ends up that Assisi is extremely small and the hotel was right next to the bus stop. Ugh. We met some fun characters including a man who talked to us about how his dog loves him more than his wife and a monk whot showed us around a small church before vanishing into thin air. Here’s Jessica on the narrow streets of Assisi with the St. Francis basilica in the background.

When we woke up in Siena, it was drizzling. We stepped outside and had the entire Campo to ourselves. Here’s me with my lovely rainbow umbrella. The day cleared up and we had fun climbing towers for views of the city and the surrounding Tuscan countryside.

Yesterday we went to the Dante Alighieri Society of Rome to sign up for an Italian course. Jessica decided it would be good for her to take an advanced class to fine tune her written skills. The test included only a written exam and I wasn’t even sure if I was following the directions properly. Being the show-off that she is, Jessica finished it in two minutes. It took me a good ten minutes. They graded Jessica’s exam and placed her in the medio class. She had misunderstood a section and the woman wouldn’t move her to a more advanced class, even after Jessica spoke to her in her fluent Italian for a few minutes. They looked at my paper and also placed me in the medio class. I don’t even know what medio means. So we will at least start off in the same class until Jessica moves up a couple of levels and I probably fall back one. Tomorrow morning we leave for another three day trip - this time to Pisa, Lucca and Florence - so I better get to bed.