The Adventure Continues

I had to go to Rome on Friday to renew my passport. I got an appointment as early as I could, figuring that I could spend the rest of the day walking around and seeing the sights. My appointment was at 10, so I had to catch a bus at 6:15 to get there in time and then the plan was to take a taxi to the U.S. Embassy to renew my passport. The Embassy is pretty close to the center, so I was just going to walk from there after my appointment. Well, when the bus was getting to the station, there were several police cars blocking the road and the bus had to go another way to get to the station, which I thought was a little strange. The bus driver got us as near to the station as he could and then told everyone to get off and walk the rest of the way. As I was walking towards the station to get a taxi, this is what I saw.

There were demonstrators literally surrounding the entire bus and train station (at least 3000 people), which is made especially nice since the taxi stand is part of the train station (pretty much at the center of the picture). I waded my way through the crowd, who did not seem very happy to have me walking through, only to find that there were no taxis at the stand and once I asked one of the police officers, I found out that they were all being told not to come to the station due to the riot. So, I decided it was probably a good idea to start walking and see if I could find a cab. I walk for about 4-5 blocks and find a cab who can take me to the embassy. Once I get in the taxi, I ask what the demonstration was about. He tries to tell me, but I guess I haven't gotten to the lesson on riots and demonstrations because I don't understand. He did do the "hail hitler" salute to try and explain which got me a little worried. But when I got to the embassy and asked there, they told me that it was pretty much a labor union upset about the financial crisis. The rest of the day went as planned, and it was a nice day walking around Rome and seeing the sights. I think I have a good plan for taking people around Rome when they come now also, so people need to hurry up and start visiting. Take care everyone, talk to you later.

First, I need to apologize for having not written for so long. Things have been pretty busy and I have been pretty much without internet access, but that is no excuse. I will start with a review of the past couple of months and the major holidays.

Thanksgiving

I actually got to go home for about 10 days over Thanksgiving. It was great to see everyone! We went over to my sister's house in Jacksonville. Overall it was a really fun and relaxing trip, even though I ended up having to come back early for work because a job was supposedly moving ahead of schedule. Once I got back to Italy, the job of course delayed again and I could have stayed home for another week.

Once I got back to Italy and finished the job, a group of us went snow boarding about 45 minutes from Pescara. It was a really nice place and a lot of fun. It had been too long since I had done anything like that though, and the next few days were pretty painful. Luckily there were no major injuries though. I am sure that before the winter is over, we are going to go at least a few more times. I also really want to try to make it up to the Alps for a few days. I hear it is amazing up there.

Christmas and New Years

Christmas and New Years were spent on location again. At least the crew that I was with was fun and we ended up having a pretty good time. Not really much to say about these holidays.

I am still on the same location as I was for New Years. Things have not really been going really well with the job. The client is a small company, and just wants to rush everything, which really just makes everything take longer. Things are finally moving in the right direction and hopefully we will be done here in about 10 days. It will be great to get back to Pescara. One good thing though, is that the location is in a pretty neat place. There are a lot of little towns around that we go to when we have time. One of them was Matera. This is the town where A Passion of the Christ was filmed (It was a stand in for Jerusalem). The town was really neat and I will share the pictures when I get a chance. Also, I have had some of the best Italian food ever since I have been here. There is a woman near location who cooks lunch for all of us. We just have to give her a call and let her know how many will come. Then we all show up at her house and she feeds us. She is a really nice woman and seems to enjoy having us around. It also helps that the food is amazing.

Well, that is about it for now. Not really exciting, but hopefully once I get off of this job, I will have a couple of weeks to disappear and do some traveling. I am really looking forward to that. The list of places I want to go keeps getting longer and longer. Talk to everyone later.

Hey everyone. As you can tell, I finally got my internet at my apartment working. Expect updates to be a bit more regular. As far as what is going on right now, the answer is not much. We have some projects coming up at work that have been taking most of my time. I am planning on trying to take a couple of days off next week and go down to Pompeii. I know that it is not the best time of year, but it should still be pretty neat. I am going to wait a little longer and see what the weather looks like. As far as Christmas goes, I am hoping to be able to make it home for at least a couple of weeks. I am not sure when, nor will I be until right before I go, but hopefully it will work out. I am going to upload some of the pictures from Rome, so take a look. If you want more (and there are a lot), just let me know. Talk to you later.

Well, I finally made it out of Pescara for a trip other than for work. I and a couple of guys went over to Rome for the day. It was about a 2 hour drive and really very easy. I am not going to explain what each place was; I will let the pictures explain that. Let me start out by saying that the plan was to go straight to the Coliseum and see everything around there and then move on to other places. Once we were on the Metro, one of the guys noticed that the first stop was at the Fontana di Trevi, which is supposed to be very nice, so we decided to stop for a few minutes before continuing on to the Coliseum. We ended up staying in that area for about 5 hours because there was always one more thing to see. It didn’t start out so well, though. When we first got off the Metro and walked up the stairs there was this little fountain right across the street on a small island in the street. I got pretty pissed because I thought this little crappy fountain about the size of my parents neighbor’s fountain was the whole reason we delayed getting to the Coliseum. The good news is that this little fountain was not the one we were there to see and the actual one was pretty amazing. We started at the Piazza di Spagna (Spanish Stairs) which were very neat. Then we moved on to the Piazza di Popoli, which was one of my favorites. The next place we stopped was the Pantheon which was probably my favorite place in Rome (so far). After the Pantheon, it was off to the Piazza di Novana. Please note that we still have not made it to the Fontana di Trevi, the entire purpose for us getting off of the Metro at this stop, which by the way is a good 10 km back at this point. After the Piazza di Novana, we decided it was time to finally head to the Fontana di Trevi. (Most of these sites are in a pretty small area, we just happened to not choose the best route and ended up walking much more than we needed to) The Fontana di Trevi ended up being pretty amazing, and well worth stopping to see. As with most fountains, you have to throw a coin in, although in this case, it is not for good luck, or a wish, it is to make sure that you return to Rome (I wonder what marketing genius came up with that one). After the Fontana di Trevi, we actually got on a bus and made our way over to the Coliseum. We would have missed our stop, except for this old man who used to be tour guide in the US for Italian travelers who told us where to get off. It was actually pretty funny, because the guy started talking to us in English and then apologized in Italian. He thought it was really funny that I was actually American and really appreciated his explanations in English. The Coliseum was pretty amazing. It is hard to believe that something of that size could have been built back then. The one thing that did bug me a little though, was that it really felt like a tourist destination. This was the only place that we had to pay to get in (12 Euros) and then it ended up closing about an hour and a half after we got in. It was neat to see, but I am not sure I would be willing to pay again unless I was with someone that had never seen it before. OK, that was pretty much the first trip to Rome. Stay tuned for more adventures. Talk to everyone later and be sure to take a look at the pictures.

Hello everyone, sorry about the delay in writing. I have been without internet since moving into my new apartment and so I had no way of uploading anything. I also have not had too much new going on because work seems to be getting more hectic instead of less recently. So, time to get to the stories.

I think a major lesson that I have learned since getting over here is to take pride in the small victories, like the first time you successfully order for yourself and actually get what you thought you were going to get (I am actually getting pretty good at this one now). Or when you successfully answer a stranger’s question in the train station even though they don’t know you don’t speak Italian (This one could also be a case of they know and are just trying to be nice, but I am being optimistic). Well, my big victory lately was getting a haircut. It sounds a lot easier than it was. I finally found a place that would be open Sunday morning, when I was hoping it would not be that busy, and headed over bright and early. I got there about 5 minutes after the place opened, and had to wait an hour. I was told to come back, and when I did, the hair stylist took me over to his chair and sat me down. Alright, let me take a minute to describe this guy. He was probably in his sixties, nearly bald, and his hands were shaking (which made me a little nervous). Once I sat down, I started to try and explain what I wanted. He immediately interrupted me and made it very clear that how my hair was cut was not in fact up to me; it was up to him (which also made me a little nervous). So he proceeded to start cutting, starting with the clippers like normal (so far, so good), but stops about half way around my head, takes off my cover and tells me to go with him. He wanted to wash my hair (Wash #1). After getting my hair washed and head massaged by this guy, we headed back to chair and he proceeded with the haircut. After the clippers were the scissors and he appeared to be doing just fine until about halfway through the top, he again stops and tells me to go with him back to hair washer for the same treatment again (Wash #2). After the second wash, we head back and he gets back to work. Once he finishes up the top, he starts to double check everything. Making sure the lines are right and the neck is straight and so forth. After about 5 minutes of him checking, he again asks me to go with him for another wash (Wash #3). After the third and final hair wash, I sit back down and he continues checking everything for another 5 minutes, occasionally snipping a hair or two. He then reaches for the hair gel, which I do not like. I have a pretty solid policy against putting it in my hair, and so I said no thanks. I then receive a nice dirty look to remind me that it is not up to me, and he proceeds to put the gel in my hair and make it look, pretty much like I had just woken up ten minutes ago. The thing took about 35 minutes (I could easily get a cut in 10 minutes in the states), although I must say, he did a very good job. I am still not sure about the whole multiple washes thing; I usually didn’t get one wash when I got my haircut. Oh well, it all turned out ok in the end.