Insistent upon ignoring Randall Munroe's cautionary tale, I've decided to go ahead and move on from Ubuntu. Ubuntu was great until I had used it for too long, which meant that I would have installed some programs without removing them, or I would muck with the system a bit and end up breaking something or other. I'm moving on to Gentoo. Or should I say, I've moved on to Gentoo. I've successfully compiled the kernel and now have a basic CLI (command line interface) upon booting up. Not too shabby. Hopefully at the end of today I'll have enough time to compile GNOME and have a full X environment up and running. So far I really like the customization options. The USE flag is basically a dream come true for me: upon the installation of a program, you choose what programs you want it to have support for. On Ubuntu, it installed support for everything, hence the speed issues.
Another beneficial factor of having to compile everything by myself is the fact that I'll be lazy about installing programs and hopefully I shouldn't install one unless I find it absolutely necessary. Of course, I'm installing a GNOME environment because I have no idea what I'd do without one. I'm still not entirely Ubuntu free, mostly because I've been spoiled rotten by GNOME-Do and Docky. I realize that not choosing XFCE probably leads to a bit of a slowdown, but I'm giving it a try anyways and seeing what it's like. One thing that I'm somewhat concerned about is the boot time, I've looked at it and it hasn't been as stellar as I would have hoped. Ubuntu was really fast. Like, really fast. Clean installations booted in less than 15 seconds. Gentoo seems to be a bit slower, mostly because the dhcpcd client keeps looking for dhcp servers on the network, of which it finds none because eth0 isn't and probably never will be connected when I start up.
Which brings me to the other issue. Wireless. I'm going to emerge wicd when I get back home today, but for now the OS doesn't allow for WPA or WPA2 wireless authentication. That said, it could have been a lot worse seeing as iwconfig actually sees my wireless card. Only time will tell, I'm still in the early stages of building it and hopefully I should have a running GUI by the end of tonight. Another concern is the fact that I'm actually doing this during the week before finals. I always seem to have these huge projects that pop up during high-stress times. Probably for distraction purposes, and I have to say it's working a little too well. Ah, well.
I really, really want a website of my own. Having a wiki would be awesome, and not dealing with Blogger would be awesome...er. And yes, in case any of you are wondering, I haven't posted to my French blog in ages. How exactly am I supposed to explain compiling a kernel in French? My vocabulary doesn't really go that far.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Universities
So yeah, I know that I haven't posted in a while. It's mostly because I haven't found it really worth it that much. But do not worry, because I am posting now! Besides, this blog started out as a daily thing and it's definitely not going to stay that way, so this has turned into more of a whenever-I-feel-like-it kind of shindig. I suppose it's mainly the fact that I have 5 different social networking sites and Facebook always seems the most appropriate, seeing as it's in my bookmarks bar and won't require more than 200 characters per post, as well as the fact that I'm not willing to devote my valuable precious free time to typing, it'd probably be more something along the lines of sleeping.
Bref! I've decided to develop my own website for this stinky blog because it hasn't been fun managing two different blogs for whoever wants the french or english version of my posts. Hell, the posts that I put up usually aren't even about the same thing! So I'll develop it into a website and switch over to it. Haven't really figured out how I'm going to manage an RSS Feed and Facebook link functionality, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.
So some of you might be asking, "Jack, how was France?" And to be honest, words cannot describe the amazing experience that I had there. Photos can't even describe the sheer awesomeness of my friends, their personalities, the breathtaking nature of every single monument that I've visited and the experiences that I had had there. So I'm going to answer to you, dear reader, as I have to everyone else, that it was simply amazing. It sounds boring, and you may want to ask me more, but I honestly can't fit all of it into words. I will never stop missing the amazing friends that I made there and the wonderful people and teachers that I had met. I will definitely be going back there someday and without a doubt I will try by all means necessary to make it there during this summer.
So that was my one paragraph on France. I'm sure it deserves more but I'm not going to give it more because if I did this post could be stretched around the earth several times. On to the real meat of this post, which was explained by the title: Universities! That's right. As a junior half-way through the year, I now have the right to start worrying and biting my nails over a very scary prospect: Applying to universities. On my list currently:
Bref! I've decided to develop my own website for this stinky blog because it hasn't been fun managing two different blogs for whoever wants the french or english version of my posts. Hell, the posts that I put up usually aren't even about the same thing! So I'll develop it into a website and switch over to it. Haven't really figured out how I'm going to manage an RSS Feed and Facebook link functionality, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.
So some of you might be asking, "Jack, how was France?" And to be honest, words cannot describe the amazing experience that I had there. Photos can't even describe the sheer awesomeness of my friends, their personalities, the breathtaking nature of every single monument that I've visited and the experiences that I had had there. So I'm going to answer to you, dear reader, as I have to everyone else, that it was simply amazing. It sounds boring, and you may want to ask me more, but I honestly can't fit all of it into words. I will never stop missing the amazing friends that I made there and the wonderful people and teachers that I had met. I will definitely be going back there someday and without a doubt I will try by all means necessary to make it there during this summer.
So that was my one paragraph on France. I'm sure it deserves more but I'm not going to give it more because if I did this post could be stretched around the earth several times. On to the real meat of this post, which was explained by the title: Universities! That's right. As a junior half-way through the year, I now have the right to start worrying and biting my nails over a very scary prospect: Applying to universities. On my list currently:
- UCLA
- Berkeley
- maaaybe Stanford
- Harvard
- Tufts
- Amherst
- EPFL
- Carnegie Mellon
It's quite a list. On the top of my list is EPFL, an engineering school in Lausanne, Switzerland. Not only is it in the French-speaking part of the country, but it's also halfway between Paris and Rome. Can it get any better? Yes it can. The school is positioned right across from Lake Geneva and will be just a train ticket or two away from my French besties, probably two if they've landed in England. I'm going to Boston next weekend to check out Harvard, Tufts and maybe Amherst if we have the time, considering that we only have two days to visit all three of them and I've heard that Amherst is a bit of a drive away. Also, only to twist the screws, all my EABJM buddies will be going to Boston this weekend, not the next to attend a mock-Congress at Harvard. I wouldn't have minded maybe a 4-week distancing, but one? C'mon life, that was a bit too much.
With that I resume developing my awesome new blog. I hope all of you are doing splendidly, and have an awesome day / night / dight / nay wherever you are.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
So Far, So Good
Not much has been going on lately, we've all been getting used to living in Paris and a few things still need a bit of ironing out, but I think we've got most of it down. School this week was all right, other than the 45-minute commute and the scary administrators. All of the kids I've met (so far) are really nice, and I know that it's going to be pretty hard to leave them all behind in December, as awesome as my friends are back home. Each morning I wake up at 6:30, leave the house at 7:15, wait for a bus that will take me to the La Défense subway station, then take the RER A to Charles de Gaulle-Étoile, then take Metro line 6 to Dupleix, then walk for about 5 minutes, and then I'm at school. It's quite a trek, and I always end up surprising my friends when they ask me which Arrondissement (basically sector) of Paris I live in, and I tell them that I actually live in the suburbs. That said, could you blame us? There's no way we'd cram all 6 of ourselves into a postage-stamp Parisian apartment.
Anyways, since Monday (30 Aug) we've been entertaining our grandparents, who were flying in for a conference in Berlin but decided to stop by while they were on the way. We checked out the Centre Pompidou, ate at some really nice restaurants, and rode the Bateau-Mouche (which taught me that if I am to ever do that again at night I am to bring an extra layer). It was nice to actually go out and explore after having lived there already for 3 weeks. In driving to all of these places we also went through the Étoile exchange a couple of times, which is (and I may have posted this already, excuse my amnesia) a giant roundabout with at least 12 spokes, 6-8 lanes wide, no lane lines, and a speed limit of at least 40 mi/h (that's 65 km/h for the metrically inclined). I'll post both a video of the Centre Pompidou and us going down the Étoile in this post.
Hope everyone's enjoying themselves! Use my QR code to contact me if you're interested.
Anyways, since Monday (30 Aug) we've been entertaining our grandparents, who were flying in for a conference in Berlin but decided to stop by while they were on the way. We checked out the Centre Pompidou, ate at some really nice restaurants, and rode the Bateau-Mouche (which taught me that if I am to ever do that again at night I am to bring an extra layer). It was nice to actually go out and explore after having lived there already for 3 weeks. In driving to all of these places we also went through the Étoile exchange a couple of times, which is (and I may have posted this already, excuse my amnesia) a giant roundabout with at least 12 spokes, 6-8 lanes wide, no lane lines, and a speed limit of at least 40 mi/h (that's 65 km/h for the metrically inclined). I'll post both a video of the Centre Pompidou and us going down the Étoile in this post.
Driving on the Étoile from Jack Biggs on Vimeo.
Fontaine Stravinsky in front of the Centre Pompidou from Jack Biggs on Vimeo.
Hope everyone's enjoying themselves! Use my QR code to contact me if you're interested.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Sorry, Guys.
I realize that I haven't posted in a while. Yes, that's right. I'm turning into the least interesting person in the world. Actually, what's happened is that I'm becoming progressively more lazy as the school year draws near, something that I'm sure won't play out well for me once I start having classes in French.
We spent all of twelve hours in Geneva (by the way, the couple in the room next to us was having very loud sex... so much for a good impression of Switzerland), and then it was off to Paris. We arrived about two weeks ago, and since then we've been getting to know the neighborhood. We live about 3 minutes away (by bus) from La Défense, which is essentially an enormous square filled with shops and restaurants. It also happens to be the Terminus of Line 1 and a stop on the RER, so it's a straight shot right into the middle of Paris if we ever get bored (we technically don't live in Paris but rather Courbevoie, which is essentially right on the outer border). We've been poking around the city, mostly getting used to our surroundings (we still have a hard time believing that we're actually living in Europe) and figuring out how to get where using the Metro.
Recently we went up the Eiffel Tower, although I forgot to bring my memory card that day so I was only able to take 3 pictures saved to the internal memory, and I can't find the proprietary cable to hook up to my camera to salvage them. Honestly. Why can't they just stick to Mini-USB? I left my house and I still have 2 or 3 of them floating around, for Christ's sake! I did take a video on my Nano, though, and I happen to have that proprietary connector, mostly because it's everywhere. So yeah. Here it is:
We spent all of twelve hours in Geneva (by the way, the couple in the room next to us was having very loud sex... so much for a good impression of Switzerland), and then it was off to Paris. We arrived about two weeks ago, and since then we've been getting to know the neighborhood. We live about 3 minutes away (by bus) from La Défense, which is essentially an enormous square filled with shops and restaurants. It also happens to be the Terminus of Line 1 and a stop on the RER, so it's a straight shot right into the middle of Paris if we ever get bored (we technically don't live in Paris but rather Courbevoie, which is essentially right on the outer border). We've been poking around the city, mostly getting used to our surroundings (we still have a hard time believing that we're actually living in Europe) and figuring out how to get where using the Metro.
Recently we went up the Eiffel Tower, although I forgot to bring my memory card that day so I was only able to take 3 pictures saved to the internal memory, and I can't find the proprietary cable to hook up to my camera to salvage them. Honestly. Why can't they just stick to Mini-USB? I left my house and I still have 2 or 3 of them floating around, for Christ's sake! I did take a video on my Nano, though, and I happen to have that proprietary connector, mostly because it's everywhere. So yeah. Here it is:
Climbing up the Eiffel Tower from Jack Biggs on Vimeo.
I mentioned some pictures in my video and if I'm not mistaken, not everyone on the interblags is friends with me on Facebook so I'll post them for all of you. They don't do it justice at all, it was a really cloudy day and my camera couldn't cover the entire building, so the few shots that I actually have of the entire Arch make it look kind of tiny. The panoramic photo I tried to make didn't turn out well at all, so we'll have to let that one slide. Here's my best photo:
So that's that. I'll embed the Vimeo video when I get the chance, for now I'm waiting in line until my video gets processed.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
On the Road to Geneva
Well, this road trip has no doubt been one of the longest I've ever been on. Thanks to the fact that I didn't sleep poorly enough to actually spare myself from part of the ride, as was what had happened the last few times, this ride has been the longest 6 hours of my life, if it's even been 6 hours. It feels more like 7, which wouldn't surprise me considering we had to wait in a really long line to get into the Mount Blanc tunnel, and thanks to things just taking longer than they normally should. So We're all still in the car, I'm about to lose my posterior, and the moods are not warm at all. We did get to drive through the mountains, though, although in Europe they take a more literal approach to the experience, they literally drive through the mountains. No slopes, just bridge-tunnel-bridge-tunnel. The few views you get in between, however, are really stunning. I'm pretty much just posting this because I'm bored out of my mind and want an excuse to publish the awesome photos I took.
Before we left for Geneva, we toured Florence one last time to "run some errands", which in code apparently meant do some last-minute shopping, because the only real errand that was ran involved packing our car. My mom bought a whole bagful of ceramics, my dad bought a cool guitar-handbag for my sister, and we toured the Florentine stationary shop, where I bought a surprise gift for my friend. It's unlikely this certain friend is reading this, if this certain friend can even guess that it's them. Excuse the previous grammatically incorrect sentence, it was a thinly-veiled attempt to hide the gender of this certain friend. I was tempted to buy everything in that shop, because not only did they sell beautiful stationary, but they sold leather-bound books with calligraphy parchment inside, fountain pens, ink, stands, and quills. Sadly, though, I only had 15€ left, so I had to settle with a bit of stationary, and then we took off. Adding to the "fun" was the fact that I had twisted my ankle fairly badly on the curb, so instead of enjoying the views as I walked back I had the priviledge of limping the entire way. Fantabulous. Whatever, here are the last few photos I took of Florence.
Update: As it turns out, we crossed into Switzerland right as I was writing this post, so here's the incredibly unexciting video of us crossing the border. It was our 3rd country in 3 hours. Only in Europe, Baby.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
The Longest Recap Ever
Well, I guess I have to pay for putting off my next post. Having not written anything for the past 9 (10? 15?) days, I have a virtual lifetime of experiences to write down, and I doubt I'm going to be able to remember any of them. It's a shame, my guess is that I've been chickening out about the whole translate-into-french thing. It takes up a lot of time and has caused me great amounts of stress while writing the english version; I'm fearful I might not be able to translate certain things! No matter. The point is to write this down so that I can remember it later on, because my grey matter has not served me very well in the past. So here we go.
First, I wanted to talk about my little journey I had in Ugo's SUV. While I was strealing their internet, I heard him get up to go leave, and he asked me if I wanted to go down to the well with him (they fill up water bottles from the well every so often because the tap water tastes really nasty). I said yes, then asked my brother if he wanted to go. Addicted to the internet as he is (he can't stop reading manga), he said no, so I went out with Ugo to the well, or so I thought. Since Charlie had decided not to go with us, Ugo decided to make him regret it, so instead of getting in his little Nissan, we went in his big Nissan: A 22-year-old SUV. Unbeknownst as to why, I got in and we drove down to the well, filled up the bottles, and put them back in. Ugo then proceeded to tie them down as securely as he could in the back of the car. Being the idiot that I am, I didn't take this hint and, once again, blindly climbed into the car. I finally realized that something was somewhat different when, instead of turning around, he continued down the road we were going on and eventulaly veered off of the mountain road and onto a little sheep trail. The bottles, meanwhile, were making the biggest racket I've ever heard; had he not lashed them down, I have no doubt that all of them would have shattered.
So we continued down the road, it getting progressively rockier and rockier, and Ugo explained to me that the road's no longer used; not too long ago everyone walked their cattle down this road to go and graze. As this was no longer the case, the road's slowly deteriorated and is continuing to do so. Thankfully it wasn't that much of a problem for the vehicle we were in, because the view once we got to the top was absolutely stunning: You could see all of Angoli from one side, the bordering village from another (I was told that that was where my great x 2,000 grandmother came from), and the rest of the world if you looked straight ahead: Everything laid out for miles and miles. I think if I had been about 100 feet higher I could have seen my house. Maybe not. But still. It was absolutely stunning.
After that day, we all went to the festival of Saint Joseph. Apparently, as I learned recently, the actual day of the festival was in March, but since around that time of year it's still cold and yucky, they decided to have the celebration in August, when the weather was (a bit too) warm, and all of the inhabitants had moved back to Angoli for the summer (during the other seasons, they're all elsewhere for work). It started with a church service, then turned into a parade: They took his statue out of the church and paraded him around the village, saying their "Hail Mary's" (in Italian) and setting off cannons the entire way. By the way, when I say statue, I mean statue. They're hauling a one-two hundred pound statue up and down a mountain in 90 degree weather. It was absolutely crazy.
One opportunity that came along during the parade was the chance to meet the priest. Apparently, being a South African doesn't give you the best skin color when you're in a southern-Italian village of 300 people. It's not like he had a choice in the matter, though; he was assigned to the village by the Catholic church. So, upon showing up, the villagers stopped showing up to church. And then they all started to accuse him of stealing the offering. Talk about a warm welcome. It's better now, although I'm sure many villagers still aren't very nice towards him. He was a really nice guy, though, and happened to speak French and English along with Italian, not surprising considering those were the two official languages of Togo, where he grew up. Sadly, though, he had a parade to run, so we only got a few minutes with him. Shortly afterwards, we left the parade; not everyone enjoys walking up and down mountains and I have to say I share this sentiment. So we went back to Ugo's house and ate dinner, then went down that night for the fireworks, which were loads better than the ones we saw at Bastille Day. After all of that, we walked to our house and went to bed.
Sadly, that's the best my memory is going to serve me. The rest is a blank, anything after that begins with our leaving Angoli, which was a very sad occasion. As a parting gift, Ugo gave Thomas, my brother, an Italia baseball hat, and he gave my dad a Mussolini watch (some Italians are still big on Mussolini: The only reason we as Americans consider him a bad person was because he was associated with Hitler. Mussolini established a universal language [before there were only dialects], created roads, and completely unified Italy during his time in office, even though he killed a lot of people.). After some good-bye's, kisses, and tears, it was time to head back to Rome. So we all piled in the car (my dad did a great job of putting essentially everything into the roof compartment, so it was nice and roomy) and headed to Rome with one extra: Sara was coming with us! The ride back was a lot faster than the ride there, mostly thanks to the absence of the enormous traffic jam that we had the pleasure of experiencing on the way there.
Once we were there, we all headed straight for the beds and crashed. Well, at least, the majority of us: me and my brother were pretty happy to find that we actually had internet that we could use without feeling guilty, so we took full advantage of it. After dosing ourselves to a satisfactory level, we all headed out to the Vatican to go see St. Peter's Basilica. It really was incredible, sadly I didn't bring my camera so I didn't have a chance to take any pictures. I'll see if I can steal some from my dad's iPhone some time, but it's unlikely that they'll be any good. Oh well, there's always postcards. Plus it gives me the excuse to come back again.
The next day, we all went out for a drive to tour Rome after having dinner at a really great restaurant. We saw the Roman Colloseum, an Arc of Triumph (Evidently there's more than one) and some other... things whose names escape me, because I'm American and they don't seem important to me. That and my memory really stinks. I'll publish the photos we took though, one of the coolest things I saw that I could actually get a good picture of in the dark was the "Face of Truth": A rock with a face carved onto it, with a room behind the face. In the Roman times, you'd stick your hand in the mouth and tell a truth or a lie, and if it was a lie then your hand would be cut off by "the face of truth", who happened to be the person sitting inside probably guessing whether or not the dude was telling the truth. Maybe he just got a kick of cutting off people's hands (Caaarl!).
So, now that I've talked about chopping off hands, I'm not going to bother to put on a transition because I really have no idea how I'm supposed to. The day afterwards it was back on the road to get to Florence. That's right, Florence. On the way back to Paris, we've decided that we're going to go to Florence and then Geneva on the way. Geneva! I've really always wanted to go there, and really the only thing I'm hoping is that I won't be severely disappointed. Apparently we won't be visiting much, which makes me kind of sad, I'm not likely to go back there for quite some time. If there was an LHC museum anywhere I would totally go for it. Anyways, Florence. After making the 3 hour drive to Florence safe and sound, we visited the hotel briefly to drop off our bags, then got right back out to go tour the city. It was absolutely marvelous! We saw the David (I snuck a photo of it even though it wasn't allowed), 2 huge cathedrals (one made completely out of colored marble) and Dante's Inferno. We also went on a bridge, whose name yet again escapes me, where there were actual shops. Above the shops, you could see a corridor that went from the now-gone royal family's offices, all the way across the bridge, down a block, into a tunnel, and back up again, which would lead them straight to the palace's grounds without having to touch the commoner's road. While I think the idea of avoiding the commoners isn't necessarily the best thing for a government to do, I did think the whole concept of an enormous passageway was pretty cool. At least their society contributed perspective. I think that's worth a distancing government or two.
So that's the total recap. I think I just broke my keyboard from all of this typing, we're off to Geneva tomorrow and I'm likely to try (and fail) to translate this post along the way. I think I'll make it halfway. Hopefully I'll have free internet there so I can translate words I don't know, they charge a ridiculous price for the internet here. 5€ for 30 minutes, 8€ for an hour, and 15€ for 24 hours, per computer. Insane. Sorry, Frenchies, this might take a while.
One last thing: I'd just like to make a note of how adorable the trucks here are. That said, it's a miracle how any of them get anything done given the tiny trunk space they must have, but still! Don't you just think they're so cute?
First, I wanted to talk about my little journey I had in Ugo's SUV. While I was strealing their internet, I heard him get up to go leave, and he asked me if I wanted to go down to the well with him (they fill up water bottles from the well every so often because the tap water tastes really nasty). I said yes, then asked my brother if he wanted to go. Addicted to the internet as he is (he can't stop reading manga), he said no, so I went out with Ugo to the well, or so I thought. Since Charlie had decided not to go with us, Ugo decided to make him regret it, so instead of getting in his little Nissan, we went in his big Nissan: A 22-year-old SUV. Unbeknownst as to why, I got in and we drove down to the well, filled up the bottles, and put them back in. Ugo then proceeded to tie them down as securely as he could in the back of the car. Being the idiot that I am, I didn't take this hint and, once again, blindly climbed into the car. I finally realized that something was somewhat different when, instead of turning around, he continued down the road we were going on and eventulaly veered off of the mountain road and onto a little sheep trail. The bottles, meanwhile, were making the biggest racket I've ever heard; had he not lashed them down, I have no doubt that all of them would have shattered.
So we continued down the road, it getting progressively rockier and rockier, and Ugo explained to me that the road's no longer used; not too long ago everyone walked their cattle down this road to go and graze. As this was no longer the case, the road's slowly deteriorated and is continuing to do so. Thankfully it wasn't that much of a problem for the vehicle we were in, because the view once we got to the top was absolutely stunning: You could see all of Angoli from one side, the bordering village from another (I was told that that was where my great x 2,000 grandmother came from), and the rest of the world if you looked straight ahead: Everything laid out for miles and miles. I think if I had been about 100 feet higher I could have seen my house. Maybe not. But still. It was absolutely stunning.
After that day, we all went to the festival of Saint Joseph. Apparently, as I learned recently, the actual day of the festival was in March, but since around that time of year it's still cold and yucky, they decided to have the celebration in August, when the weather was (a bit too) warm, and all of the inhabitants had moved back to Angoli for the summer (during the other seasons, they're all elsewhere for work). It started with a church service, then turned into a parade: They took his statue out of the church and paraded him around the village, saying their "Hail Mary's" (in Italian) and setting off cannons the entire way. By the way, when I say statue, I mean statue. They're hauling a one-two hundred pound statue up and down a mountain in 90 degree weather. It was absolutely crazy.
One opportunity that came along during the parade was the chance to meet the priest. Apparently, being a South African doesn't give you the best skin color when you're in a southern-Italian village of 300 people. It's not like he had a choice in the matter, though; he was assigned to the village by the Catholic church. So, upon showing up, the villagers stopped showing up to church. And then they all started to accuse him of stealing the offering. Talk about a warm welcome. It's better now, although I'm sure many villagers still aren't very nice towards him. He was a really nice guy, though, and happened to speak French and English along with Italian, not surprising considering those were the two official languages of Togo, where he grew up. Sadly, though, he had a parade to run, so we only got a few minutes with him. Shortly afterwards, we left the parade; not everyone enjoys walking up and down mountains and I have to say I share this sentiment. So we went back to Ugo's house and ate dinner, then went down that night for the fireworks, which were loads better than the ones we saw at Bastille Day. After all of that, we walked to our house and went to bed.
Sadly, that's the best my memory is going to serve me. The rest is a blank, anything after that begins with our leaving Angoli, which was a very sad occasion. As a parting gift, Ugo gave Thomas, my brother, an Italia baseball hat, and he gave my dad a Mussolini watch (some Italians are still big on Mussolini: The only reason we as Americans consider him a bad person was because he was associated with Hitler. Mussolini established a universal language [before there were only dialects], created roads, and completely unified Italy during his time in office, even though he killed a lot of people.). After some good-bye's, kisses, and tears, it was time to head back to Rome. So we all piled in the car (my dad did a great job of putting essentially everything into the roof compartment, so it was nice and roomy) and headed to Rome with one extra: Sara was coming with us! The ride back was a lot faster than the ride there, mostly thanks to the absence of the enormous traffic jam that we had the pleasure of experiencing on the way there.
Once we were there, we all headed straight for the beds and crashed. Well, at least, the majority of us: me and my brother were pretty happy to find that we actually had internet that we could use without feeling guilty, so we took full advantage of it. After dosing ourselves to a satisfactory level, we all headed out to the Vatican to go see St. Peter's Basilica. It really was incredible, sadly I didn't bring my camera so I didn't have a chance to take any pictures. I'll see if I can steal some from my dad's iPhone some time, but it's unlikely that they'll be any good. Oh well, there's always postcards. Plus it gives me the excuse to come back again.
The next day, we all went out for a drive to tour Rome after having dinner at a really great restaurant. We saw the Roman Colloseum, an Arc of Triumph (Evidently there's more than one) and some other... things whose names escape me, because I'm American and they don't seem important to me. That and my memory really stinks. I'll publish the photos we took though, one of the coolest things I saw that I could actually get a good picture of in the dark was the "Face of Truth": A rock with a face carved onto it, with a room behind the face. In the Roman times, you'd stick your hand in the mouth and tell a truth or a lie, and if it was a lie then your hand would be cut off by "the face of truth", who happened to be the person sitting inside probably guessing whether or not the dude was telling the truth. Maybe he just got a kick of cutting off people's hands (Caaarl!).
So, now that I've talked about chopping off hands, I'm not going to bother to put on a transition because I really have no idea how I'm supposed to. The day afterwards it was back on the road to get to Florence. That's right, Florence. On the way back to Paris, we've decided that we're going to go to Florence and then Geneva on the way. Geneva! I've really always wanted to go there, and really the only thing I'm hoping is that I won't be severely disappointed. Apparently we won't be visiting much, which makes me kind of sad, I'm not likely to go back there for quite some time. If there was an LHC museum anywhere I would totally go for it. Anyways, Florence. After making the 3 hour drive to Florence safe and sound, we visited the hotel briefly to drop off our bags, then got right back out to go tour the city. It was absolutely marvelous! We saw the David (I snuck a photo of it even though it wasn't allowed), 2 huge cathedrals (one made completely out of colored marble) and Dante's Inferno. We also went on a bridge, whose name yet again escapes me, where there were actual shops. Above the shops, you could see a corridor that went from the now-gone royal family's offices, all the way across the bridge, down a block, into a tunnel, and back up again, which would lead them straight to the palace's grounds without having to touch the commoner's road. While I think the idea of avoiding the commoners isn't necessarily the best thing for a government to do, I did think the whole concept of an enormous passageway was pretty cool. At least their society contributed perspective. I think that's worth a distancing government or two.
So that's the total recap. I think I just broke my keyboard from all of this typing, we're off to Geneva tomorrow and I'm likely to try (and fail) to translate this post along the way. I think I'll make it halfway. Hopefully I'll have free internet there so I can translate words I don't know, they charge a ridiculous price for the internet here. 5€ for 30 minutes, 8€ for an hour, and 15€ for 24 hours, per computer. Insane. Sorry, Frenchies, this might take a while.
One last thing: I'd just like to make a note of how adorable the trucks here are. That said, it's a miracle how any of them get anything done given the tiny trunk space they must have, but still! Don't you just think they're so cute?
By the way, Blogger Draft is stupid and isn't letting me change the location. This was actually posted in Florence, Italy. Love you Blogger. Not.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Getting Lost in the Mountains
It's been about 3 days since we arrived, and in those 3 days not much has happened. We've met various locals, we went on a tour of the village, we went down to Pianopoli for an awesome dinner, and just yesterday we went down to the beach to go swimming. And that is the subject upon which I'm going to base my post.
First, we headed down to Lamezia Terme to withdraw some money. Easy, right? Wrong. We went to one bank, waited in line, and had a lot of fun translating: Wanessa (pronounced Vanessa, by the way) talked to the teller, translated the Italian into French for me, and then I translated French to English for my Aunt Kathy. Then, she'd think for a bit, talk to me in English, I translated English to French, Wanessa translated French to Italian... Needless to say, it took a bit longer than it normally would for the line to advance. Not only that, but we had to find 2 places after that where we could change our money. After taking an hour more than we should have, we finally got into the car and headed to the beach, which was another good 30 minutes away. By the time we made it there, the stands were no longer serving lunch, so for lunch we all decided to eat ice cream and chips. At least it helped us stomach the enormous dinner we had later that night.
Anyways, while we were at the beach we decided to go snorkelling because the water was literally the clearest I have ever seen. We saw all kinds of fish, and amused ourselves by lifting up the rocks and watching the fish dart forward to feed on what was under them. We also tried to rent a paddleboat, but the person renting them out didn't recommend it due to the heat, so we took a pass. So we continued for a while, and then after said while we all got back into the car and began our way back.
The way back was where the problems started. John Cleese was leading us home during a traffic jam, and me not being content to stay stuck on the same road for the next hour led me to plot a separate route, one which Wanessa had never heard of. I honestly should have listened to her, because we ended up on a dead-end, a gate separating us between the tiny road we were on and the highway we could be zipping home on. Crestfallen, we all turned around, headed back, then, on the way back, we saw this other street that we thought might take us back. So we took that, which led us into the middle of nowhere (before we were on the outskirts of the middle of nowhere, it was legit nowhereness after that). Long story short, we spend about two and a half hours getting back when, normally, it would take us around one. Don't know what that traffic jam would have done to it, though. While we were all utterly exhausted by the time we got back, we all really liked it thanks to the beautiful views we saw on the way home, panicked as we were.
So, that's the biggest thing that's happened to us so far. Today we went to Domenico's house for lunch, where we ate tons of food, as is what happens when you eat at the house of someone who lives here. The view from his house is absolutely wonderful: You can see every single rooftop of every single house, the cars on the mountain roads going by, the ocean towns and the beaches, and the wind farm slightly to the left. If the Angolese have nothing else, they definitely have their views. I'm starting to wish I could extend my stay a bit or even live here, although I'm sure the novelty might wear off after a couple of months.
Glad my non-readers are up to speed. We've been in Angoli for quite a while, although I haven't had much to say about all of it. One thing that I really can't get used to here is the huge hills; I don't think I've ever craved something motorized this much. I also really miss being able to drive. Unfortunately, I'm sure that if I try I'll end up ruining the transmission in our car, due to the fact that I can't drive a stickshift, or at least I definitely can't drive a stickshift that well, especially when I consider the fact that at the moment we're living on a mountainside. Four months left. I still can't believe that it's 1/3 gone already. I might hide in a box when it's time to leave.
First, we headed down to Lamezia Terme to withdraw some money. Easy, right? Wrong. We went to one bank, waited in line, and had a lot of fun translating: Wanessa (pronounced Vanessa, by the way) talked to the teller, translated the Italian into French for me, and then I translated French to English for my Aunt Kathy. Then, she'd think for a bit, talk to me in English, I translated English to French, Wanessa translated French to Italian... Needless to say, it took a bit longer than it normally would for the line to advance. Not only that, but we had to find 2 places after that where we could change our money. After taking an hour more than we should have, we finally got into the car and headed to the beach, which was another good 30 minutes away. By the time we made it there, the stands were no longer serving lunch, so for lunch we all decided to eat ice cream and chips. At least it helped us stomach the enormous dinner we had later that night.
Anyways, while we were at the beach we decided to go snorkelling because the water was literally the clearest I have ever seen. We saw all kinds of fish, and amused ourselves by lifting up the rocks and watching the fish dart forward to feed on what was under them. We also tried to rent a paddleboat, but the person renting them out didn't recommend it due to the heat, so we took a pass. So we continued for a while, and then after said while we all got back into the car and began our way back.
The way back was where the problems started. John Cleese was leading us home during a traffic jam, and me not being content to stay stuck on the same road for the next hour led me to plot a separate route, one which Wanessa had never heard of. I honestly should have listened to her, because we ended up on a dead-end, a gate separating us between the tiny road we were on and the highway we could be zipping home on. Crestfallen, we all turned around, headed back, then, on the way back, we saw this other street that we thought might take us back. So we took that, which led us into the middle of nowhere (before we were on the outskirts of the middle of nowhere, it was legit nowhereness after that). Long story short, we spend about two and a half hours getting back when, normally, it would take us around one. Don't know what that traffic jam would have done to it, though. While we were all utterly exhausted by the time we got back, we all really liked it thanks to the beautiful views we saw on the way home, panicked as we were.
So, that's the biggest thing that's happened to us so far. Today we went to Domenico's house for lunch, where we ate tons of food, as is what happens when you eat at the house of someone who lives here. The view from his house is absolutely wonderful: You can see every single rooftop of every single house, the cars on the mountain roads going by, the ocean towns and the beaches, and the wind farm slightly to the left. If the Angolese have nothing else, they definitely have their views. I'm starting to wish I could extend my stay a bit or even live here, although I'm sure the novelty might wear off after a couple of months.
Glad my non-readers are up to speed. We've been in Angoli for quite a while, although I haven't had much to say about all of it. One thing that I really can't get used to here is the huge hills; I don't think I've ever craved something motorized this much. I also really miss being able to drive. Unfortunately, I'm sure that if I try I'll end up ruining the transmission in our car, due to the fact that I can't drive a stickshift, or at least I definitely can't drive a stickshift that well, especially when I consider the fact that at the moment we're living on a mountainside. Four months left. I still can't believe that it's 1/3 gone already. I might hide in a box when it's time to leave.
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