la festa di San Petronio

Today is Bologna's saint day called la festa di San Petronio.  There has been small activities all weekend for kids and families and food all over Bologna.  What this saint day meant for me was that I had an long weekend.  My classes officially start tomorrow, well at least 1 of the 3.  I bet that those of you still in school have already taken midterms.  I have yet to open a book! That's not entirely true, I have been studying my butt off trying to comprehend complex  verb tenses and pronominal verbs. On the other hand, I have been doing this in the park, or looking off my balcony at the rooftops of Bologna.  My little fairytale life is about to end tomorrow with the start of class.  But not before I get to watch fireworks from Piazza Maggiore celebrating San Petronio.  Can we say spoiled?

Above: Me at Piazza Erbe; Below: Graffiti at Juliet's House and her balcony

Anyways, this past Thursday night I went to Verona, the city of love, to visit Azmeen! For those of you who don't know Azmeen, she is one of my roommates from last year at U of I who is also studying abroad in Italy. I went with my roommate Romina and our friend Maried. Its about a hour and a half train ride from Bologna, which we barely caught due to ticket complications and people not knowing how to use the ticket machines (yes, including me) and ended up standing for the first 20 minutes because there were no seats left. But we made it there!

The city itself was amazing. There was an old arena, Juliet's (fake) house, the river Adige circles the city and it is just gorgeous. We had lunch at this cute little place right along the river.  The city itself is pretty unique because there is a lot of graffiti all over it and locks piled up on bridges professing love. It is a common practice for lovers in Italy to latch a lock onto a bridge near water and throw the key into the river. Since this is supposedly the town of Romeo and Juliet, there are locks everywhere! Its actually pretty cute.  We also saw beautiful markets where I bought a scarf that I have seen everywhere lately and now I finally have it!  I cannot stress enough how beautiful the city itself is.  The quality of life is also said to be very high. I could tell by how well dressed all of the people where there. Everyone seemed to

be beautiful, or maybe that was just me getting sucked in.  Anyways, we stopped in Juliet's house to take some pictures.  Apparently, if you rub her right boob you are supposed to find a lover. My roommate and I ran right up there and did it. Now I am just waiting. It was a pretty cool little tourist spot, with people writing on the walls and lovers taking pictures of Juliet's balcony. All in all, it was a really nice trip! I want to start taking more daytrips just to see the smaller towns in Italy. Siena anyone?

I am still having a hard time believing that I am here in Italy.  Probably because my actual classes don't start until tomorrow and probably because I am living in an old castle and not speaking English all the time.  But I always looked forward to being able to move here for an entire year and its actually here! I just cannot wait for everything to happen but I am trying so hard to have it slow down at the same time. 

As promised, here are a few pictures from the dinner party that we had the other night. It consisted of bruschetta, salad, 5 types of pasta, bread, cookies, pastries, and way too much wine.  We feed about 27 people in total I think and managed to teach the Italian's a few American drinking games. For those of you who were there the last time I hosted an American party, it was not as intense and involve a lot more food and a lot less flannel. However, I still think everyone had a good time!!

Starting from the middle with the guy in the hat are my roommates Augusto, Fabio, Romina, Rodolfo and Alessandro