spades are the best symbol on playing cards

Hello, well this is just a temporary blog, because everyone seems to be on the verge of cutting my head off via internet if i dont post anything soon. The thing is, Ive been working on another video but its taking a while because I am on vacation in germany and holland and britain, and i dont have much time to work on it. but be expecting that one in the next week or so. for now here are some photos to hold you over.

Here I am in London, apparantly bowing to the utter beauty which overwhelmed all my senses and brought me to my knees:


Here we are on christmas eve opening some little candy things and me acting like an imbecile:
Here I am with the family (minus Jonas, or Fez as some know him). On my head is the family cat named Helmut...(did you catch the pun?)


Food with mother and grandmother. Food consisted of herring, salat, lachs, tintenfisch, and such...
Here we are outside trying to escape the pressure of the family to drink...but we end up drinking anyhow:


Here the family convinced me to dress up as Goethe (they are so proud of Goethe because he was born in frankfurt), and then i butchered the german language by reading some old poem he wrote in german. it really made everyone laugh, and they made a video of it, but its really boring unless you understand german i think, because it just sounded like me mumbling and wearing this garb that somehow at the time i did not find that embarassing :


The christmas tree had candles that were replaced every few hours because they would just burn like matches. very dry matches:

People Watching

So much has happened here in 'talia since my last post. I have moved to a really sweet pad in the center of town with an italian and spanish chica. For three weekends in a row me and my friend Nicolo'. We went to the Ligurian coast where we slept on the beaches and went swimming in the warm beach water, and cinque terra where we drank a lot. My american friend Michael came along during that trip. Then the next week Nicolo' and I went to Siena and Perugia where we took part in student occupations of the university, went to hot springs, went to a national chocolate festival, you name it. Here is a video that i put together of these trips. Nicolo' did a lot of the filming, and most of it was him wasting film, but i salvaged some very creative shots that he did. For example AND DISCLAIMER towards the end of this film there will come up a part that says "The Matrix" and it is from the center of Siena where Nicolo' filmed random people for a half hour. I added some music to some of the more interesting sections and i like how it turned out, but i do not expect everyone to sit through it all:



The other video is from an italian news program who interviewed americans and italians and their responses to Obama winning the election. I have a short part in it, although they cut out everything i said. I believe what i said in english is "I am happy Obama won because we need many things changed in our country and he represents that change." At which point I went on the explain specifically the war, the economy, taxes, and overall changes for our world image. But they just leave all that out. I also uploaded it onto youtube because its way faster:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qbWLTENSqk

Also here in italy there is a woman way up in the government named "Gelmini" who is responsible for cutting tons and tons and tons of money out of the italian education system, and implacing a single teacher to teach all classes of each topic. Its terrible and therefore there are huge protests across the country in the forms of teachers teaching in piazzas or students occupying different buildings, or mass protests (like the one i took part in which had over 40,000 people). I feel that it relates to me in that i care about the education of the future generations of this world, i care about people standing up for injustices, and i care to see if masses are able to make a change. Therefore on this day we marched through the streets blocking all traffic and buses and ultimately businesses, at one point the police attempted to cut us off and they beat a few students, but after they let us pass where we then went to the train station where we blocked all cars entering and leaving. It was here that there was a huge line of police and i had my trusty recorder (flute) with me so i walked up and down the lines of police playing them a tune in hops of tranquilizing the situation. And a bunch of people applauded and took my picture and one of them ended up in a page of La Repubblica which is italy's biggest newspaper. I tried to find it online, but the quality isnt great, in fact you really have to squint to see me. Dont worry i have an actual copy of it:

http://www.magazine.unibo.it/RassegnaStampa/JQ2/JQ2PI.pdf

Soup

Greetings, as usual I have been magnificently busy with friends, food, and fun. However recently to add to the madness I am also dealing with moving into a new room which has no internet so I am unable to do anthing technological, and classes have started and I am scrambling to find courses which interest me and which also can be useful to my major back home. It is quite hectic. I have started to do Capoeira here and I am doing it 3 times a week, which is much more often than what I did in Santa Cruz.

My friend Aaron (who is studying in Spain) came to visit me for a week and he took a bunch of pictures and I asked him to give me some so that I may add them to my blog. If I had a camera of my own (mom and dad...) I too could take cool photos. I also am going to leave a link to Aarons blog so that you all may see the other photos that he used. Someday soon I will make another video blog, but I dont see that day on any immediate horizon...

Aarons blog: http://lavidaontheflipside.blogspot.com/

So first we have my two friends (both named Nicolò) and my friend Sara. I need a haircut. And I just realized that I have no idea how to organize these photos on this blog program and i dont have time to screw around with it...so here they are in no particular order.

SO much to do

So I hope that the quality of this video is better than the first, because blogspot seems to totally pixelate my videos that really don't look that bad when I am editing them...oh well I will repost if it looks bad. Anyhow I have been super busy every day so unfortunately I must state that these videos (if you havent already guessed) shall arrive very sporatically, perhaps once every two weeks. My days are full of waking early and passing out late. I drink in the afternoon, at dinner, and late at night. I am working on videos, various writing ideas/stories, class searching, house searching, friend meeting, food consuming, wine hounding, bicycle riding, and profuse sweating due to the intense humidity. I have met a few local poets whose poetry I am translating and (according to my mother) the U.S. government will pay me for my work. Even if they don't I believe that I am appreciating this poetry much more than I would have if I had just read it over once. You all would have a blast here....

In this video my friend Valentina helped me film some things, but she went back later and deleted all the scenes with her in them, but I managed to squeeze some in of her. I also had a very ambitious idea for a fun film that I could post, but it was taking so long that I gave up and just inserted what I had in a random fashion. I did save some other fun stuff for my next video however. Enjoy! Oh, and keep it coming with the posts, its a nice way to connect with you guys.

My abode

Here is a brief look into the life that I am easily becoming accustomed to. I just took a few shots of my house and slapped some music over it. For those who do not know, I am living here for a month or so basically alone because my Italian friends are all still on vacation. So if anyone is in the area, stop on by and we shall drink wine and be merry. And for some reason even the food tastes better when made in the kitchen here... italia...