Busy, busy, busy. I must apologize for the several day break from this blog. As I mentioned, I had a paper hanging over my head, but thankfully I am finished now. This, along with what was essentially in midterm in my Engineering Economics class, occupied the majority of my time over the last few days. Because of this, a lot of what I did has run together a little bit and I can’t recall exactly the way things happen, but I will do my best. On the same note, I also was prevented from doing any real exploring, so there are no new pictures.

Okay, so I believe I last wrote on Tuesday afternoon. My plans were to work on my paper for the rest of the night, and for the most part I was able to do this. Of course, there were distractions, such as the mini basketball hoop that we have in our living room. It’s amazing how entertaining and addicting such a simple game can be when there is work to be done. Then, there was Lost, to which I can now confess to be an addict. However, I am trying to pace myself, and as of now have watched the first eight episodes (of 24 total). So, that was about it for Tuesday night, perhaps with a late night gelato stop at my local favorite, Millenium gelateria. No new flavors to report though, I went for comfort and safety and got some of my standbys.

Wednesday, also known as the last day for me to procrastinate on my paper, seemed to come and go in a flash. I believe it rained in the morning, making classes comfortable and cool. In writing we began to discuss our next assignment (no rest for the weary), which is an article for Illumin, the USC engineering online magazine. We have to discuss and explain some facet or product of engineering that is applied or demonstrated in every day life. I encourage you to check out the website, illumin.usc.edu, as the articles are intended for non-engineers. Maybe my article will soon be there as well!

Engineering economics was again slightly boring. However, I blame the material because I really like Professor Bottlik. Without him this class could be miserable. Anyways, I decided I needed some way to keep my mind from wandering in class. Back home, I use crossword puzzles to keep me focused. This may sound counterintuitive, and I must admit that occasionally I get so absorbed that I miss material, but for the most part it keeps my head out of the clouds and I can still concentrate on the lecture. But, as I forgot my crossword puzzles at home, I was at a loss as to what to do. After some thought, I decided to make my own crossword puzzle. This turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected, and I only got about one third of the way through on Wednesday.

Class ended and we walked back to Via Candia, our apartments, and cracked down on our papers. I had discussed my paper with my professor after class earlier, and he said that my paper was strong, but could use some reorganization. I disagreed pretty strongly, but since he is the one grading it, I decided to give in. It was slow and painful, but I eventually was able to write it in the fashion he suggested. I must admit, it turned out pretty well, but I still like my old way better. Perhaps I just need to adjust to writing for engineers rather than for writing teachers. Anyways, I finished up around midnight and went to bed.

Thursday morning I woke up a little early to get some studying in for my Engineering Economics “quiz”. I say “quiz” because he actually uses problems from old midterms, so it becomes more of attest in my opinion. I studied for about an hour and then headed to class. Writing was more of the same discussion of our Illumin articles, and at the end we actually got out a little early. But there was a catch, as always. We were assigned groups for our final projects and told to go discuss our topic over lunch. I like my group, so it was enjoyable, but unfortunately we haven’t determined our topic. The assignment is to identify some aspect of Italian life or culture that would be beneficial at USC and how we would implement it. The focus is supposed to be engineering, but we have a lot of freedom in general. Then, we went to Engineering Economics and took our “quiz”, which turned out to be pretty easy.

Mike and I decided to celebrate the submission of our papers that afternoon by attempting some laundry. We gathered up our stuff and lugged it over to the Laundromat, only to discover a long line and ridiculously expensive prices. It was four euros for a tiny load in the washing machine and one euro every ten minutes in the dryer! We were thoroughly intimidated and decided to try our luck washing our laundry in the sink. I did the essentials and hung them up to dry, hoping they would be dry by the morning. The rest of the night was spent watching Lost and eating at the mixer dinner our landlord threw at eight thirty. We had pasta and prosciutto and mozzarella and some kind of cake and got to meet a lot of the other residents of Via Candia. At twelve we went to bed for the night, but we set our alarms for three in the morning, because we wanted to try to watch the first game of the NBA Finals. I rolled out of bed and unfortunately was unable to see any of the game, because we couldn’t get it to work on the internet. We did listen to the first half on the radio, but then decided it wasn’t worth our precious sleep and we went back to bed for the night. Good thing, too, because the Lakers fell apart in the second half.

This morning I woke up at seven to discover my still-wet clothes. I attacked them with the hair dryer and managed to get three sets of clothes dry enough for the weekend. At nine, we boarded the bus for Sorrento, which is a four hour trip. At the moment, we are just arriving in Sorrento along the cliffs of the Mediterranean and there is an amazing view. Don’t worry, I took pictures. We stay in Sorrento for the night and take a hydrofoil out to Capri in the morning. We come back in the evening and then Sunday we go to Pompeii before heading back to Rome. I’m not sure about the internet where we are staying, so who knows when I can next update. In fact, I might not even be able to post this until Sunday night. I’ll be sure to take some good pictures! Ciao for now!