Ok, let's catch up...

So I've been slacking a bit on my blog posting since my return from France. Let's see what has happened.

- Teaching has still been going well, although I am looking forward to having a little break from the students. Most of them are pretty good, as I've stated before. I think I'm just a bit anxious to go somewhere else and see a little bit of family. I'm really excited to be traveling the next two weeks or so!

- So yes, in fact, I am going to England for Christmas for those of you who do not know. I'll be spending time with my cousin Perry and his wife a daughter. Since I am not going home to America for Christmas I think it will be really good to see some family. they live in a town called settle, in the yorkshire dales (northern area). I fly out tomorrow morning from Milan and then have to take a bus to their town. It will be a long day of traveling, but it will be worth it.

- I'm also currently making plans for New Years. It looks like I'll be heading to Ireland and spending it with someone that I studied Italian with from the U of O. A couple days after christmas I think I'm going to head to Belfast and stay in a hostel for a couple of nights to see the city and a bit of northern ireland. Then i'll find my way down to dublin on the 30th or so to meet my friend. I'm really excited to see Ireland. Everything I've heard about it seems wonderful. I'm also looking forward to some good pub life and Guiness.

But Matt, what else have you done?

- good question! This last weekend there were two Christmas hash parties, one on sunday and one on monday. sunday was in the 'countryside' of milan. there were about 25 of us. we did the trail (my group got lost for a long time looking for our 'beer stop') and then went to a nice italian restaurant for a late lunch. the food was really good and we had a gift exchange (like White elephant for you family members) and one person even brought a guitar and we sang a bunch of songs (just famous well known english/american songs). It was a lot of fun. We were the only people in the restaurant and we were all singing along to songs like 'Sweet Caroline' at the top of our lungs. Good times.

The next day we had another Xmas party, this one for the people that live in Milan proper and run every week. I got to set the trail (or be the hare) with Stevie. We met up over an hour before and then set the trail through Milan, found a good bar to stop at during the run, negotiated a discount and then ran it again with all the other hashers. I wore my santa claus hat with blinking stars and a 'Buon Natale' (merry Xmas) sign as a tail. After the race I was baptised with my very own 'hash name', or what other hashers call you. generally you recieve your name after hashing for a number of times or setting your first trail. My new hash name is '5 Star Porky'. Now, let me explain... during our beer stop on Sunday someone brought a snack called Mr. Crackly or something, which I dug into. It was in fact pork rinds, which I didnt know, but it didn't bother me. Then on Monday I wore my santa hat that had five blinking stars on it. So, combining the two events I got the name '5 Star Porky', which sounds like it has a much worse story then it actually does.

Oh yeah, I also went to a free public concert in piazza duomo not too long ago. It was to celebrate Signore Morricone's recieving of the lifetime achievement oscar. Morricone is the man who created and conducted (practically) all of the music for the spaghetti westerns (My name is Nobody, Good bad and the Ugly, etc). It rained a fair amount but was still quite enjoyable to hear some live orchestra/choral music, especially because it was free.

Ok, I have to run b.c I have a million things to do tonight before I take off for England tomorrow morning! This will probably be my last post for some time b.c. I don't know what type of internet access I'll have, so let me say 'Merry X-mas and Happy New Years' if I don't talk to ya or manage to post before then. I miss you all!

A petite recap on the French weekend

Well, I'm back in Milan after a three night stay in the south of France. Talk about a beautiful place! We stayed in a town called Aix-en-provence, which was really cool. I met up with Steph and Jenna (who I know through my cousin Mike (hey cuz!)). The first day we made a day trip to Marseille, which I've been told is the drug smuggling capital of Europe. It is a neat port town but it rained cats and dogs and ferrets and even hamsters almost the whole time we were there. Of course, I didn't bring an umbrella or anything water proof either, but that's all good. We still had a good time trudging along. A short recap of the next two days would go like this:

- good weather in Aix. It seemed like it was fall because there were fresh leaves on the ground
- there were awesome markets in aix. so much fresh food, fruit, veggies, cheese, olives, etc. there were clothes, artisinal goods and more too. Being a bit of a foodie I could have spent hours just wandering through the food market in a trance.
- the boulangiere bakery near the apartment. they had these awesome little croissaint like pastries with chocolate. perfect way to start the day.
- me trying to speak french, with varying success and disasters
- me breaking a water glass in the Thai restaurant with my giant chopsticks
- doing french style spanish tapas the first night (with a seafood salad that was to-die-for. octopus, shrimp, fish, calamari and vinagerette = yummmy yummy yummy I got love in my tummy)
- realizing how much I miss french fries
- randomly meeting some kid from Vanderbilt, going back to his ridiculous apartment, drinking a lot of wine, having some good laughs
- waking up the next morning after 4 hours of sleep
- hanging out with two really cool people and getting to know them better

I know there is more to expand upon but this is what comes to mind at the moment. All in all it was a really fun trip. I also got to see Nice during my stop over for the train to Milan. I wish I could post some pictures. When I first saw the beach from the train (something that I love about riding the trains near the coast, sometimes you are literally no more than 30 meters from the water) the first thing that popped into my mind was how if I was rich I would own a house their. A couple of movies came to mind that have scenes in the south of france. It is really hard not to just fall in love with the coast.

Well, tonight I'll be going Hashing again with the Brits of Milan. Before that I gotta go find some decent running shoes that don't cost an arm and a leg and get ready for the day (yes I slept into noon, traveling can be tiring). Take care everyone!

Passport Club and Hashing (no, not the reefer...)

So to follow up on my last post I'd like to recount a little of what I did last week, social wise. First off, on thursday night, I went to an international get together called Passport Club. People come to practice different languages like German, French, etc. I, of course, played a part in the Italian group. this was clearly the smallest group as most people there were Italian and didn't need to practice speaking. I did meet two interesting people that are both in Milan for teaching. One is a brit named Richard Tinsley or something of the sort who's lived here for about three years. He barely speaks a lick of Italian. Real nice chap (as the brits say). Had a nice chat with him while walking back to the metro and he gave me some good advice on traveling cheap in England. The other was a woman from Florida who speaks Spanish, so she understands Italian fairly well and can guess more or less how to get the general idea of things across. We had some beers and dinner. It was nice to meet some other folks and I think I'll probably be checking back in in the future.

Now, 'the drinking club with a running problem'! The official name is 'Hash House Harriers'. I suggest you use wikipedia and do a little research because it is really interesting. In short, and I don't remember if I explained this or not, it is a group of expat brits and some italians that get together for a run and brews and dinner once a week. Instead of just everyone running together there is a trail. Actually, it comes from the tradition of tracking hares in England. Long ago in India or something some brits wanted to keep this tradition going but had to figure out a different way. So they decided taht one person would be the 'hare' (or rabbit). this person sets a trail of flour, globs about 20 meters apart or more, for the others to follow. They call this 'hashing'. No, there are not any illegal drugs, just beer. This hare (or trail setter) can choose to make false trails, set trails through the muck, so on and so forth. So the hare starts the trail with a headstart of about 5-10 minutes and the others follow behind, trying to figure out the trail. It's not always meant to be easy, either. Of course, there is all this lingo that goes along with it also. So the other night I was running around the city of Milan, chasing a mysterious trail of flour and yelling things like 'On-on!' when I found the trail. this diffently weirds the Italians out. Some of the faces were priceless. But wait, I haven't even told you the best part! You can tell from the motto of the group that drinking beer is esential. That's good for me because I'm prety sure I'm a better beer drinker than a runner, that's for sure! So, along the trail at some point the hare can choose to leave a circle with a big 'BN' in the middle. That means 'Beer is Near'. So somewhere close there is a pub which the trail leads to. When you find the pub everyone goes in, has a pint and chats for a couple minutes. Then, it's back to running the trail! Generally you finish near where you start, which is near a restaurant that the hare (taril setter) has chosen for dinner. When you arrive at the end of the trail they have something called 'The Circle'. this ominous sounding event is when everyone forms a circle and more beer is consumed. People give out awards (called down-downs) for whatever they please. Some songs are sung, beer drank and then it's off to dinner. Last night we ate at an Indian restaurant taht was pretty good and good value for the money (11 euros for the dinner and yes, some more beer). I don't want to give you the impression that this group is a bunch of alcoholics running around like mad-men. It's probably not as crazy as it sounds, but it is a lot of fun. In fact, I found out that there is a hashing group in Portland! I hope to keep this up as it's a great way to get a little exercise, have some unique fun, meet people and get to know the city a little bit better. I think I was drawn to this in part for the same reason I was drawn to ultimate frisbee. Some exercise, new people and a new experience. Something a little out of the ordinary but a lot of fun. I've kind of missed that since I stopped playing ultimate. It's nice to get that kind of feeling/experience when you are far away from home.

So those were my major activites of the week (besides teaching of course). This week I'll be heading off to France to meet some friends and I'm really excited! I've never been to France and there has been some problems getting all the details figured out up to this point but the dates have been set and problems resolved now. Tomorrow I'll go to the train station, buy my ticket and start practicing my terrible french accent. My philosophy on speaking French without actually knowing anything about it is this: take off the last 5 letters or so of each word and then pronounec accordingly. I'll let you know what that goes.

Ouiveoiu (or something like that...buh bye!)

p.s. - my apologies to all you francophiles out there. judge me not, for i am only an ignorant italian speaking american. mercy be upon me. ;-)