Blog One

Buongiorno tutti,
Here commences the blog. In english, although I would recommend that you instead learn italian to truly appreciate the poetry of the italian language! (sarcasm is difficult with only a keyboard, I guess that's why there isn't really any sarcastic music)

A recount of my weekend: on Friday there was a public holiday - they are neverending in Italy, work is not as important as in other places - and though I've forgotten what I did in the morning, on Friday I went out with some friends from my choir, Alfredo the half-thailander, half-italian, Negin the Iranian, Alessio the Italian, and some Brazilians, an Irishman and a Frenchman. As Negin's flatmate's friend was bellydancing in a cafe/bar, we went to watch, which was interesting and, um, a little strange! Alfredo, who knows all the bars backwards, told me that he hadn't been to this bar for four years because the owner was a bit of a streetfighter and gangster. Try to picture this along with the mediaeval walls and bellydancing and it was, well, a little strange, un po' strano...
After this we wandered into the centre which is always packed with people at night (it's a university town), where the others bought alcohol and I bought a gelato - when you try them you'll know why! It is very normal to see people wandering around at midnight with an icecream, and it's a trend I hope to introduce to Christchurch one day. Broken beercans on the street are a hazard, broken gelato cones are a free snack!
We stayed in the centre until about two in the morning, way past my bedtime! Alfredo told me about his work as a mechanical engineer for Ferrari with car brakes, and about his ideology, which is essentially to make the world a better place, surprise surprise. Maybe I would have been more convinced had I chosen beer over gelato...

The next morning I was very stanco/tired and I went for a walk in the park to clear my head. It was a beautiful day after a week of rain, and I sat down on a bench admiring the view for about an hour. In this time I met two Italians, seperately. The first one seemed very nice and we chatted about this and that for a while. He warned me not to sit on the grass because of poisonous snakes about (I've already seen one or two). The second man who I met half an hour later was, well, an experience: he asked me if he could sit down, asked all the usual questions - where are you from, what's your name, how long are you here for, did you come here by car, would you like to have sex with me, ------------- WHAT?
Well, you can imagine how I felt. Actually, it was strange, at first I simply said no thanks, he apologised and immediately got up and walked off. And about 4 seconds later my heart was beating like crazy. Does he have a knife? Accomplices? etc etc. I slowly got up and walked back to the main road, into the town, and spent the next day trying to calm down! When I told one of my friends he thought it was the biggest joke ever and whenever he sees me, he reaches for my thigh, so now whenever I think of the matter, thankfully, I can't help but smile! Another guy, a gay friend called Bryn, said he would have been flattered!!!

The next day I spent about 4 hours playing music and 2 hours playing soccer. With my music at the moment I'm composing quite a lot, and also learning a piece by Chopin and working on my singing. I'm also in a cool choir as I mentioned (I learnt that Amazing Grace is not a Scottish song but actually a Negro Spiritual, which I still can't quite believe). Soccer was great but my neck is oh so sore today!

And that's all for now!
arrivederci

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