Gotta love the fam :]

January 30, 2011

Today is Sunday, which is another pretty laid back, boring day. When our landlady came over she told us that our internet connection would improve if we got an Ethernet cable to plug our computers directly into the internet modem, so this morning while Danielle made us some delicious french toast I was looking up places to go that might have Ethernet cables. However, here in Italy they don’t just have a Walmart that has everything you’re looking for. No, they have individual specialty shops that cover all the different streets – you think this would make it easy to find what you’re looking for, but believe me it’s not. I wrote down two hardware stores, two computer stores, and three internet stores as well as their addresses which were fairly close to each other, hoping that one of them would have a cable. So Danielle and I got ready and set out in the rain with our umbrellas to find these shops. We found the streets that I wrote down perfectly fine, but in Italy there are blue numbers along the street indicating residential places and red numbers indicating the business places. It can get extremely confusing because it can go blue 12, blue 14, red 46, blue 16, and so forth if there are a bunch of blue numbers in a row it’s hard to figure out if you’re on the right block for the store you’re looking for or not. We ended up realizing that a bunch of the stores we were looking for were closed – haven’t I learned my lesson about stores not being open on Sundays!? Some stores we were searching for looked like they weren’t even in business anymore, and the one store that we did find to be open was an internet café place where you just go in and pay to use their internet – not quite our meaning of an internet store. 

We ended up just giving in and coming home because the rain made things quite wet and miserable. When we got home I took off my new boots I realized that there was a crack in the back of my boot and my sock was soaked as well as the entire bottom of my boot…not cool! But that makes sense why people say to not buy the more expensive boots unless you’re saving them for home because the unevenness of the cobblestone has been ruining all of my shoes as well as my long toes! I swear my long toes are broken because they are the only part of my feet that will typically hurt! After warming up for a little bit I went grocery shopping at Conad (what’s new?) because I knew a couple of their sales were going to end soon, and I wanted to get a couple more of those 1 euro pizzas as well as some of their soup that happened to be on sale. Walking on my way to Conad I noticed this little internet shop kinda like the one I had stopped at earlier, but this one had different little adapters and trinkets in the window, so I stopped in and asked if they had an Ethernet cord. The little lady looked at me, looked at her husband, grabbed an Ethernet cord, handed it to me and said “7 euro.” I was pretty stoked I was able to find a cable right down the street from my apartment when I was walking all over the town for a cord earlier. I got the few things I wanted from Conad, and right before I checked out I noticed that these cakes that all of my roommates gaze at were still on sale, so I bought one as a little treat after dinner – 2.90 for a whole little cake that we are going to split is a much better deal than spending 2.50 on your own cup of gelato! (Although I would never replace gelato with cake in my ranking system of deliciousness!) 

I ended up cooking this soup for dinner which was like a dry mix inside of a packet that you just boiled with a certain amount of water – it was so delicious! I also found some Ritz crackers, but here they are all thrown in one large bag inside of the box instead of individual sleeves. It was a perfect dinner for a cold rainy day! And then was the moment I had been looking forward to all week – skypeing my entire family! My mom invited my entire family over for lunch, but before they ate she was going to bring me up on skype so we could all see each other and they could ask questions and whanot…it was awesome! It was so funny to see everyone and to hear the questions they had, and I’m pretty sure they were entertained by my answers as well. One thing I have to do though to please them: take more pictures of the cute boys I’m with, learn how to use the bidet, and take pictures of the apartment! I also need to write a list down of the things I wanted to say because once I saw them I forgot everything I wanted to tell everyone! I can’t forget to tell Aunt Maryann that I found Pepperridge Farm cookies here! I was so excited when I found them, but refuse to pay that much for them! I hope we can arrange more family skype dates in the future because I definitely miss them! :]

p.s. I guess my search for an Ethernet cord was worth it because mom said my picture on skype was much clearer and our connection remained at a good level for most of the time!