Breve e Dolce

Yesterday, I gave up café e dolci  (coffee and sweets).  I am very happy to have them back today!  Well, I’m giving myself the coffee back, but I may keep the embargo of sweets active- they are just way too plentiful in Naples, and I am too much like the kids in Jimmy Neutron (when they didn’t have parents anymore to force them to make good decisions, they ate and ate sweets until they were all sick).  I’m still remembering a couple of days ago when I ate sweets on 7 occasions throughout the day, and I’m not remembering them as being as appealing as I’m sure they had been at the time..

The rest of the day wasn’t anything exciting (except for the phone call I made to Karen from church… I will be meeting her in Pozzuoli on Thursday to ride :) ); up for breakfast (w/ no coffee or any of the left over baba)…although rum-soaked bread in the morning doesn’t sounds particularly tempting..), to campus for my foundations class (I was having a hard time focusing without my coffee), a quick lunch from carpe diem (a giant hunk of bread rolled and baked around slices of ham, salami, and cheese), and to the other campus for my Italian course (I definitely didn’t focus in this one- I also considered leaving halfway through because I was afraid I would fall asleep, but I popped a piece of gum in to keep me awake and stuck it out).  After class, I was complimented by one of the other students on how well I speak English… yessssssss! 

Following class was a lazy afternoon- I finalized and posted yesterday’s blog, showered, watched half of a movie, and skyped Dan for a bit.  Dinner was very excellent.  After not allowing myself to eat a snack in the afternoon (as an attempt to start to control the absurd amount of food I allow myself to consume), I was famished and completely ruined my afternoon’s progress in self-discipline by taking seconds of everything. (1^st- pasta in oil with bits of zucchini and tomato, sourdough bread and vinegarette. Main- breaded fish fillets, more “vegetable,” and some fries. Dessert- mandarino). During tertulia, one of the girls talked about the Opera, which she went to on Sunday, and I actually understood what she was talking about because I researched the Naples Opera several days ago because I want to get to at least one while I’m over here (as a student, you watch a dress rehearsal for only 7 euro! I’ll probably have to do that since I don’t have any clothes that are fancy enough, and I can’t borrow anything to wear from the tiny girls I live with..)

This morning I happily welcomed my good ol’ TI-89 back into my life.  Zuzu did not seemed pleased with our loving reunion…it must be an engineer thing.  I pulled my old friend out because need him for the problems that I was assigned on base-isolation for my research!! (not technically MY research.. right now it’s just independent study so that I’ll know what the grad students are talking about, should I ever get around to helping them with anything.  This whole “research” thing has really just been pretty awkward.)  Dr. Myers has asked me to type up a brief abstract of the work I’m doing over here- it should be not the least bit interesting.  But if any of you are keen on read it (probably only Dad) send me an email and I will send it back.

I drank a liter of coffee for breakfast, and I feel very ready for the day.  It’s nice to know what I can actually keep these things pretty short.  Hopefully there will be another brief one coming soon- I don’t want to have to play catch-up again, or receive anymore angry emails demanding more posts (I’m making myself sound more popular than I am so that you guys will think I’m coooool.)

K, ciao!