Monday morning had arrived once again. My first class was at 9:45, but I got up at 8 AM because I don’t like being rushed in the mornings. True fans of this blog will recall when I missed the bus four days in a row. Yeah, the PTSD is real. After eating breakfast this morning, I spent most of my time doing planning for my spring break trip.
After talking to my Aunt who had been to Sicily before, I wanted to change up my itinerary a bit. This mainly included visiting the city of Taormina on the east coast. My current plan is to fly into Catania, spend a day there and go to Taormina the next day. From there, I would take a train across Sicily to stay in the town of Caltabellotta for two nights. I would then go to Palermo for a bit, then fly home.
My grandpa’s parents moved from Caltabellotta to the US a few years before my grandpa was born. Fun fact, my grandpas parents were cousins! Caltabellotta is a small mountain top village that’s relatively remote in Sicily. My grandpa is actually named after the patron saint of the village, Pellegrino. Additionally, my Aunt said you can find many people in the town cemetery with my mom’s maiden name, DiGiovanni. I feel like this trip can be an awesome opportunity to explore Sicily and pay respect to my heritage.
I still need to iron out all the details, but I will be booking soon.
Taormina
Caltabellotta
After a bit more fantasizing about my Sicily trip, it was time to head to school.
Differential equations was not terrible today. With the midterm coming up, I really made an effort to pay attention and ask questions. This meant putting my phone in my backpack and not looking at it all. I was successful in this.
Additionally circuits class was cancelled today, so I had a really long break before physics at 3:15. I used this time to pick up my food stipend from the office. I hung out there for a bit with my friends, then headed to the supermarket. I am still very much on my sandwich grind and am trying to save money from my stipend for my trip back to Amsterdam this weekend.
This meant I bought the usual ham, chorizo, brie and baguette. I still had a sandwich left over for from yesterday, so I ate that for lunch. I used my long break today to watch an episode of the Sopranos and do some more trip planning. Before I knew it, it was time to head to class and I hopped on the tram.
I arrived to class feeling especially closer to many of my French classmates, all thanks to our night out to the bar last weekend. Today we were moving onto a new unit. We had finished special relativity and were moving onto nuclear physics. Talk about fun stuff! It was very refreshing to be learning some new material.
Here is a picture from a handout in class. I thought describing quarks by their “strangeness” and “charm” was really funny.
Class went by quickly and I soon was on my way home. At one tram stop, a bunch of tram officers got on our car and scanned everyone’s card to make sure we paid. It is extremely easy to ride the tram without paying, so they occasionally do these busts on the tram. Though this was the very first time I witnessed it in my fifty days here. I have an unlimited tram card, so I had nothing to worry about. Some guy didn’t have a card, so they cuffed him and threw him off the moving train.
Okay, that didn’t actually happen, but it sounded much cooler to write about it.
Once I was home, I immediately changed and headed to the gym. I was going to do leg day, but I wanted to save it for tomorrow because of the beer pong tournament. Last time I did arm day before the tournament and it seriously impacted my performance. I can’t take that sort of risk. This is very serious. As a result, I did arms today.
I headed home and immediately showered. I grabbed all my sandwich supplies and a salad for dinner. I mass produced a bunch of sandwiches for other meals, then ate my salad.
After dinner, I spent some time working on a role play I had to write for French class. We had a lot of freedom, so I wrote mine about talking to a girl at a bar and getting rejected. It was really easy to write because I just thought about my own experiences with this. Harry would be playing the girl, appropriately named “Harrieta” in the role play. I am looking forward to performing this later this week.
After my homework, I spent some time writing this blog and then doing more research for my trip. I also spontaneously booked a ski ticket for Wednesday with my friends. I didn’t want to go initially to save money for this weekend, but I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity. When you live in the alps, you ski. It’s the way of life here.
A little later, I called it a night and went to bed.
Foreign Tourist with No Grasp of the Local Language 
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