Friday, September 5, 2008

I meet Carin at Bar Biscione, where we’ve been meeting for class. It’s directly across the way from the UW Rome Center and I managed to get the password for their wireless network so we can jack internet from them, even though they’ve shunned us and won’t even let me in to puke in their bathroom…

Cortney is supposed to be meeting us too, but after an hour of waiting, we figure, she must be sleeping. No big deal. As I check my email and all that good stuff—wasting time, like one can only do on the internet—I get an email from Cortney, who did oversleep and feels awful. So of course, being the hardworking genius, she immediately gets tough on our sonnet and starts sending me all of these incredible solutions she’s had for some of our problems. With Cortney’s long-distance help we are able to finish a much stronger draft of our sonnet.

We linger around this café enough that one of the servers makes friends with us, especially when we learn she’s from Columbia and she learns that most of us speak Spanish! Wendy is her name and she and I hit it off immediately. She invites all of the girls to come out dancing with her tonight. She and I exchange phone numbers and make arrangements to meet later.

I do nothing but homework until it’s time for dinner. Paola is surprised to see me home early and comes into my room to ask me if I’m okay! She’s so sweet and I try to explain in my faltering beginner’s Italian that I have piles of homework. She understands and offers to make me some coffee!

I eat with just Alice, Davide, and Paola tonight, Jennifer has left to stay at a friend’s apartment until her husband, Alan comes to join her and the other American student, Dave, is eating out. We eat ensalata buffalo which is basically fresh tomato and mozzarella and amazingly enough I think the tomatoes are really good!

Then it’s time to get dolled up and hit the town!