In Bocca al Lupo

Well, I am very sorry I haven’t blogged in such a long time and I’m even more sorry if any of you have been checking to see if I have blogged and had to look at that last post multiple times. Things have been really, really busy! But now I’ve passed both of my courses, after taking extremely interesting oral exams in both classes- I could tell you more about them but I will spare you the gruesome details, the important thing is- I passed! And even more importantly- I’m done with them! And most importantly- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part II comes out in exactly 1 week!! Life is good.

I put my family on the plane today. The past week was AMAZING! But extremely tiring. I worked them real hard. When the week was over we were all exhausted- I got to come back to the Villalta and take a siesta, they got to start on an almost-24-hour journey with work and sports games waiting for them when they get home. Oops! I honestly would love to blog about everything we did when they were here, but I assigned the task to my mom and she’ll do a much better job than I would, and I actually trust her to write it; with Dan I was just wishing.

Another highlight- I just sent my paper to Rolla. I’m afraid it’s not very good. I don’t want to send it to Prof Serino (the guy in charge of the exchange over here) because he’s also the head of the project that I based my paper off of and I’m afraid I might have gotten some things wrong. Anyway- it’s 23 pages of really (erm…) exciting stuff . If you want to read it, shoot me an email and I’ll send it to you, unless of course you know too much about base isolation systems- in that case you don’t get to read it.

The only thing I have left to do here is pick up my transcript tomorrow so that my courses actually transfer back to Rolla, and to soak up the last bits of Italian sun that I can. Maybe I’ll blog again just to give me something to do, but I won’t have anything to talk about so you might as well quit reading after my mom has posted her blog. Pictures will be coming to facebook soon. Then you can see me in person!!! I leave Naples on Sunday around noon to go to my connect in Madrid, but I have a 20 hour layover, so right now I’m looking into places to stay in Madrid. I think I’ll just look for a place with a pool and I won’t wander far from the airport because I’ve already explored Madrid with a local (oh ya, I guess I haven’t blogged in a really long time… Madrid was grand- I actually got some studying done since Bego and I both had a lot of that to do, and we hung out in her apartment a lot of the time because the three days that I was there were over a hundred degrees. We went swimming in her pool, went to a great park downtown, walked around the city center, saw a bunch of cool architecture (she’s an architecture student- it’s nice to hang out with someone who likes to look at buildings as much as I do), ate tapas, made paella, drank mojitos, and got plenty of sleep. It was lovely.) Anyway, so I don’t feel that I need to explore Madrid anymore, and I’m tired of travelling alone (especially now that I’ve been spoiled by having my family with me….because I’ve gotten used to travelling alone or in a small group, at first I thought it was weird having a line of 5 people behind me like my little ducklings (and usually it was just that…we walked single file for most of the trip since the side walks are too populated to allow for anything else) but it was really nice having people with me that I can speak English to!, especially people I love so much). So anyway, I think I’ll just relax in Madrid on my way home.

Speaking of being spoiled with company, I think I had some tour guide withdrawals on the way home from the airport. I was waiting for the Alibus and a family looked very confused and was standing in the middle of the spot that the bust was going to come up in. I was listening to my headphones but I thought it looked like they asked someone how to get to Salerno. I wasn’t planning on being helpful, but they just kept standing in the spot that my bus was supposed to pull up in and I didn’t want to be delayed by tourists! So I asked them if they wanted Salerno, they said yes, so I showed them where the correct bus was. Once the people around me found out that I speak English and I know where I’m going, I started getting question after question for the whole time that we were waiting for the bus and for the bus ride. By the time we got to Garibaldi (the main square), I had 10 people following me and I led them to the train station and told each of them where they needed to go. It was quite funny. They kept joking, asking me where my umbrella was (the tour guides over here all hold umbrellas up in the air so you don’t lose them… in Rome it was hard to see the sites through all the umbrellas… just kidding.. but really.) But it was nice to finally be helpful to people for a change since I was the one relying on the help from strangers for the first couple of months.

Okay! I have to do! My fiancé is calling me on skype! See you all soon!! Byeeeeeee!

P.S.- The title of this blog means “in the mouth of the wolf”. It’s how you tell someone good luck in Italian. When someone tells you “in bocca al lupo,” you respond with “crepi” meaning “croak.” I just looked it up, and it says that the saying comes from the story for Romulus and Remus (how Rome got its name). Romulus and Remus were rescued by a wolf, saving them by taking them into her mouth..but this doesn’t explain why instead of say “okay, sure will” that you say “croak”….
Anyway, they did not explain to me the reasoning, they just told me that in boca al lupo means “put it in the mouth” and they said that you respond with crepi which I thought they told me meant “let him die.” This is a good example of the level of communication that I’ve had over here and proof that you cannot trust anything that I’ve told you I learned from these people!