First Day of Class- Pizza with Tony!

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Well we had our first day of class today, History 3444 (History of the Renaissance and Reformation). Our professor's name is Tony Marotta. He looks like the old man from Disney's movie "Up" ... but taller, and skinier. He has the sickest combover I have every seen on a man his age... I mean seriously that thing is good. Though his accent is clearly Italian, Chicago is his native town. He also speaks Polish (his wife is from Poland and they met in Canada), Italian, English and a little French and German. When he teaches he literally jumps all over the place, there is no systematic flow, but hey. I think we covered 1000 years of history the first day of class. Regardless, the subject material is intriguing and it will correlate well with our trips to Florence and Rome. At the end of class he said he would get pizza with whichever students that wanted to later that evening. After class I hopped on a bus with some girls into town to buy a cell phone. After that, I came back, bought plane tickets to Greece for the 14th of April (yes I'm going to Greece!) and ran on a treadmill in the gym. Pizza with Tony was fun, we all ordered our own from his favorite local place called "Amalfano"... about 20 of us ended up joining and we ate in the class room on the main floor of the apartment. My pizza was called "Ferrari" and had pepporonis, peppers, and black olives (but not sliced olives... the entire olive, pit and all on top!) I sat next to the old professor and he asked me some questions regarding the email i sent him (he asked all of us to send him a pre class email so he could get to know us and understand us a little better). Throughout our conversation he would make complaints that only a local with developed taste buds for Italian pizza would make... "see they have loaded mine up with too many ingredients... they were too generous with the toppings, you can't savor the taste 'thees' way!" I wouldn't have known... its tasted great to me! In our conversation, I told him about my trip to Egypt and a little background into my faith. It was interesting hearing him trying to process it... he asked the denomination and theological affiliation, digesting it so he could get an idea. I responded to his questions as best i could and asked him some in return. I told him I bought Augustines "Confessions" and was trying to read it though it was rather difficult, he nodded in affirmation. He ended up telling me he was a "liberal catholic" and believed in justification by works. It was nice getting to know the guy a bit and I look forward to continue to get to. One of the things I really wanted to do before coming on this trip was to take more initiative in getting to know the professors, with the setting this trip offers, it looks like that is going to be made possible. I'm jet lagged now... its 3 am (i got four hours of sleep already, gonna go try for more.) This concludes the first day of class entry. Tomorrow... we go to a nearby winery to do some local tasting with Martin. Hopefully the sinuses clear up. Buona Notte!

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