Martedi Grasso and a trip to the snow

10:40 PM Padova - Hey all! My buddy Berm just got in today we are taking it easy tonight as he is a little jet-lagged and tomorrow we are off to Rome so I thought I'd try to catch up...
A lot has happened over the past two weeks... last Monday I decided I wanted to go skiing in the Alps and that I was going to leave after our meeting the next day to go to Livigno to get some studying and skiing in. The next day before our meeting Carina said she wanted to go too so she went home to pack and I looked up how to get there and we left right after the meeting. Halfway there (after two trains and our first bus) we found out that a bus didn't go from Tirano to Livigno after a certain hour so following some advice we switched plans to Bormio and jumped on a bus from Tirano.
What a great decision.
On the busride there we asked a young guy named Marco where a cheap hotel was and he brought us to the "Piccolo Mondo" (small world) Hotel where we met Alessandro and his family who runs it. We went out and got a quick bite to eat and then hit the hay kind of early because tomorrow we were up and skiing!
Wednesday, skiied all day (Carina snowboarded) and then we went to the public baths afterwards. Those were pretty neat they had a water slide and some hot tubs so we were fine but we didn't stay there long we took off to find a place to eat. We were hungry so we asked the locals where a good place was for meat and the directed us to a little hole in the ground (literally) which looked pretty good from the menu. Not thinking ahead we had just come from the baths, our hair was wet, I was in my Granderson T-shirt with the numbers on the back and some sweatpants and tennies we decided to ask to be sweated when we realized that we were desperately out of place. You see, it was Valentines day and it seemed like everyone there was dressed to the max with their special someone and here we come rollin' in lookin' like a couple of goofballs. Liiiitle embarassing but we got over it and made it back to our hotel in time to catch a Karaoke marathon by this group of 50+ year olds from Rome. They entertained us for the rest of the night with Napolitan music and funny stories. Hilarious.
Thursday came and Carina wasn't feeling the ski-conditions so I took off to the slopes by myself while she took a hike with Alessandro. I met a Czech guy named Milan and skiied with him for a while along with a couple of native Bormio-ians(?). I skiied as long as I could and then hit the old time baths with Carina that evening. They were kind of expensive but were a lot cooler than the others as they had some ancient Roman baths and waterfalls etc. with a pretty good view of the mountains and the stars. Just what the doctor ordered, however my prof ordered me to read a book so I had to get back to that after the baths that night.
Friday came and we made our way back to Padova while standing the entire trip from Milan - Padova (about 2.5 hours) due to a packed train. I think it was a mixture of Carnevale in Venezia, people going home from work, and the major protest planned for the next day in Vicenza against the expansion of the US Military base there. It was nice however we met a bunch of cool people standing including a couple students from Mexico studying in France, a guy from Puglia, and a couple of professors from the University of Colorado who happen to be teaching astronomy at Padova this semester.
All in all the trip was a blast and I was able to meet some amazing people. I was very happy I went until I realized that I had a test to take in a couple days. Study. Study.
Test on Monday - went early and had to come back (I was number 119) took it and got a 28/30!
Pretty happy about that I celebrated for the next few nights compounding on an oncoming illness, and then spent most of Thursday nursing myself back to health and doing laundry and then cleaned on Friday to arrive at today when BERMAN CAME!
My train I was going to take to pick up Berman was 40 minutes late so naturally I was too but we found each other eventually and randomnly saw Grace on the busride home. Piccolo Mondo.
Ate a lot of food today, caught up with Mike and watched a couple movies. Tomorrow we are off to meet up with Lisa and Nadia from UofM in Rome and hope to have a good time. More on that to come...
See ya!