Calcio, presentazioni, esami, football (ancora)

10:45 AM Padova - Hey home! As always I have much to say so I'll get right down to it.
Having the Internet at my house has been great. I am able to talk to whoever I want using skype and I have a webcam so we can see each other. I'd love to talk to you, too - Add me as a skype buddy my name is "schragoo".
Well last weekend I went to Milan to go to the Roma - AC Milan game. As Dario pointed out, it has been 20 years since Roma has won in Milan at San Siro and they took the game 2-1 thanks to two goals by Francesco Totti a true hero according to the Romans. The game itself was great even though were on the third ring of the stadium in the last row haha. It was kind of cold we had to bundle up, but I'm sure it wasn't as bad as what ya'll get to experience in the great state of MEEECHIGAN right now. For the Californians, however, it was something new and exciting! Speaking of Meeechigan, I hear there is a football game this weekend. Can I get a line?
Back to Milan. After the game we rushed to the train station to try and catch the last train back to Padova or Venice. Surprisingly (actually nothing surprises me much anymore) it left earlier than 11:00. We had no hope catching that one so we were in a bit of a predicerment: Do we try to find a hostel and sleep for the night or do we see what the Milan nightlife has to offer? We opted for the latter and went to a disco si chiama "Rolling Stone" where it was Erasmus and foreign exchange student night. Perfetto. They kicked us out just before 6:00 so we went to the train station and slept a little on the uncomfortable church benches. We caught the 7:15 train arriving at 10:30 in Venice where we had our architecture field trip all day. We slept on the train a little, but needless to say we were quite exhausted when we got home around 7:30 at night. Fortunately for me I had time to prepare for the presentation and the exam I had on Monday. AHH!
Didn't sleep much that night either.
Monday: Presentation on the Midterm Elections at 10:30. We went to the study center around 9:00 to go over what we were going to say. The three of us presenting had each prepared a quick 5 minute piece and were a little nervous about actually doing this. We get to class thinking "well, maybe the Prof will forget." No such luck. Right away we were asked to come up and he sat us down in chairs in front of everyone. This is a two story lecture hall, mind you, and here are three foreigners who can barely understand the language let alone speak it well in front of them all. We each presented our piece and were done within 10 minutes or so.
At least we thought.
Nope. Professor Mascia decided to turn this into a Q and A session with the Americans! We were up there for almost an hour and a half (I think Melanie clocked it at 1:24) going back and forth with the prof and the students. We held our own I must say. They fired some good questions at us and we understood most of them and were able to respond to all. It really is interesting to talk about politics with Italians because they love to talk about it and they have different views than we do in America. Per esempio, there is a documentary which they love to play on the TV here (I've seen it once) about September 11th. This documentary paints a pretty convincing story about the Bush Administration's active involvement in the events that occured. Convincing enough that many of these Italian students actually believe that the Administration helped them carry it out. Naturally we were asked our opinions on that conspiracy and questions of that sort. I think that one of the main differences between Americans and Italians is that we have a certain faith in our government which they can't comprehend here because they have had a (recent) history of corruption and ineptitude with their government. But those are my thoughts, not yours.
Anyway we held our own in the presentation -I think we represented l'Usa well.
The test I had to take... well it went. Basta.
Other than that classes are going well, Kristy comes Saturday and the football game is Saturday night. Since I have the Internet now we should be able to watch it at my place. Woohoo! I will be posting pictures from this weekend soon but I'd love to hear from you all. Skype me!
Off to eat and then class -
Stevo