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