Cusano Mutri, Karaoke, Benny and Calcio

Well, this has been one hell of a week, one of my favorites so far, and that is saying a lot.
This weekend i went to cusano mutri, a tiny little mountain town where they hold a mushroom festival for 3 weeks a year. The first thing that sticks out in my mind about the trip was the amazing food. Mushroom veal, chicken, spaghetti, and some delicious sausage and bread. The three meals i ate at the festival are among my favorite meals of all times, even including the one i almost died during because of the most brutal hangover i have ever experienced. I met some really cool people i hadn't had a chance to get to know too much yet, and the group in all was just awesome to spend time with. There were two paleontology museums we went to while there (something about an ancient lagoon that lead to perfect fossilization. It was really interesting but looked like a 8th grade science project. apparently there isn't a lot of funding for tiny mountain town paleontology museums in the world.

Tuesday night was one of the most fun times i have had in my entire life. There was karaoke in rinaldo's, the snack bar and rec room area of campus. They gave out two beers per person, but most of us could afford to spring for our own alcohol for such an event. It seemed like the entire campus was down there, and everyone was singing along to every song, while dancing like it was 1897, but at one of the seedier establishments of the gilded age. girls were twirling and dipping and singing and generally looking great, while the guys were sweating and shuffling our feet and trying not to look like we possessed two left feet. it was so much fun.

The hits just keep on coming, because a lot of us woke up early and went and saw his holiness the Vicar of Christ on Earth Pope Benedict XVI. It was a great great experience to see how much he meant to all of the people there, and i really have never seen anything as impressive as st peters square full of people cheering, with a full papal entourage in front of the most impressive church i have ever seen and il Papa sitting right there. The woman in front of me burst into tears and the audience was incredible. They did everything in 5 languages (italian, german, french, english and russian) and the man who spoke in english had one of the coolest voices i have ever heard in my entire life. The experience was one i will truly never forget.

wednesday night was our first calcio game, and was it ever awesome. Calcio means soccer in italian (or so i've been lead to believe) and there are 10 teams made up of JFRC students, SLA's, administrators and teachers. The first games were interesting, because it seemed like everyone was so rusty or had never played soccer before. Based on my history of body building and marathon running, it was decided i should probably play goalie. I was nutmegged for the first goal against my team, but after that i kind of held my own. it turned out that i was not that big of a factor in the decision, as one guy on my team had 5 goals, and another had a hat trick. We ended up winning 11-6, and no other team scored more than 5 total. I had a really flukey goal about a min and a half into the game when i lofted a kick down the middle of the field and the other goalie didnt judge it right and it went in. it made me feel bad for the other goalie, but hey, i got my goal for the year, so i'll be fine.

tonight i have a party set up by my philosophy teacher down in trestevere (the bad spelling continues) which is one of the coolest places in rome for late night partying. i am really excited about it, but i am disappointed heading into the weekend because THE snoop d-o-double-gizzle was supposed to play rome on saturday but the show got canceled today. bummer. I am still going to stay in town this weekend, so maybe i won't bore you to death with another monster post like this next week. Hope you are all having the time of your lives like i am, and feel free to drop me an email (jwarmuth@slu.edu) or a fb message any time.