January 21, 2007

day 8: steps and fountain

[note: yes, i fudged the date on this post, but it's neater if it matches the appropriate day]

la foto piĆ¹ bella

foto express man
good old Foto Express man

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the day's events:
and more copy/paste, laziness prevails =P

today was my first Saturday here. the most daunting aspect of that is that i'm not fed by the amazing Centro cooking staff. i slept in and once i got up waited for enough people to congregate to make a pizza run. it turned out to be me, Alicen, Kerry, and Kimberly. i got what turned out to be spinach, broccoli, and sausage. it was quite delicious but spinach is a very tricky pizza topping.

down the spanish stepspapal crest detailclimbing on trevithe four of us then went into the city to the spanish steps and the trevi fountain area. we waited an eternity at the transfer stop at p.za venezia for a little shortbus, the 119, to take us there. in that time we could have easily walked the short distance over, but we didn't know. there were mobs of people at both the steps and the fountain, including some interesting characters. we spent a little time at each and then decided to wander back to the bus station and grab some gelato on the way. we made a detour to the supermarket in the monte verde area, but were keeping an eye on the clock so we would get back to the Centro in time to watch the Lazio calcio (soccer) match. while i was standing in the juice aisle of Sidis, the grocery store, some elderly italian lady started accosting me. i didn't know what she wanted so i just kinda shrugged. then i realized it looked like she was asking for help getting down this large bottle of water. i went over to help her, but that just made her angrier. totally confused, i just walked away. i did manage to get my juice after she went to another aisle though =)

Prof. Walsh has us all hooked. he's a huge Lazio fan and now about a quarter of the Centro is rooting for them. he's really surprised at how we've taken to it, so he's going to organize a trip for us to go to the next home game. however, i think he's getting pretty pissed at me and Alicen, because we seem to bring them nothing but bad luck. we've watched three games, all of which have been draws. the officiating was very unkind to Lazio today. two players got red cards, one legitimately but one on a horrible call. another got a second yellow card in a two-game span, so Lazio will have three players suspended next sunday. and finally a close but probably improper offisides call negated a go-ahead goal late in the second half. it's so much fun to watch the games with Prof. Walsh though, because we get to see a completely different side of him. i admire the fact that he'll watch with us, his students, and scream "goddammit!" and "fuck!" when the calls don't go Lazio's way.
that card to Liverani was complete bullshit. a 1-1 home draw to Cagliari was the result. sigh.