My sweet roommates for the week (sorry I didn't bring a real camera).

posted a week late...

Rome is quickly becoming one of my favorite cities. It's combination of chaos and order sits well with me. Bits of remembrance from my childhood in Cairo often surprise me, and the noise of the city is something I almost always appreciate, while the relative orderliness of things keeps me from getting overwhelmed. Cars stop for you when you step into the street about 60% of the time, people are generally friendly, there's pizza on every corner, public transportation is cheap and easy enough to navigate. It's always funny for me to hear people's impressions of the traffic when, in contrast to Cairo, it's quite tame. The history everywhere and the quaint beauty of the architecture and the winding roads make every exploration an adventure.
Of course, one of the main attractions of Italy is the food, and rightly so. We try not to eat out much, but it is hard to resist. We have discovered a number of local dishes which we'd never heard of before but are delicious. I will try to learn the technique during our time here.
Rome's Carnavale is going on right now and we went to a really neat horse show the other night. It was free in one of the main piazzas of the city. Someone's dog got loose during the show and went crazy barking at the horses until it got a swift kick and ran whimpering away (don't worry, it survived). Romans rarely leash their dogs. Many children and adults were dressed up for the occasion and there were all sorts of skits and events going on.
I have managed to find a decent number of tutoring and babysitting jobs to keep me busy and feeling like a contributing member of society between my outings.
Rome is finally starting to warm up this week , but I'm on my way to Sweden to visit my very dear friend, Anna, and have some girl (plus baby) time!
Ciao!

Pizza

No, this isn't what we thought we had ordered. But they were actually really tasty!

2 posts in one day! I know... but I just had to share this. Right now John is trying to take a 6 hour nap so he can stay up all night watching the SuperBowl (yes, he has been informed multiple times of the stupidity of this idea, but he can't help himself) while I am trying to make dinner, do laundry, and clean without making any noise in our one room apartment. So, naturally, I have given up on the idea of the cleaning - it can't be helped, I'm doing it for my husband! I know he isn't sleeping though, because every time I walk by him he is smiling and starts laughing and telling me to stop giving him a hard time, even though I didn't say anything. We'll see how this night goes...

UPDATE: After sleeping for 1.5 hours, John woke up and checked his email -- unbelievably work was cancelled for Monday due to snow!! So we got to stay up all night after all. Happy ending!

snow update

woke up yesterday to this!

It's snowing!

I guess this is the coldest it's been since 1985, or something like that. Back when John and I were just wee little babies. Full size slushies are falling from the sky right now, and we decided to cancel our weekend trip. We were going to a somewhat obscure hilltown which will be getting loads more snow than we are getting and it's a bit of a trek (train, bus and then a 30 minute hike in) so we postponed it until next weekend. We didn't come very prepared for snow and everyone here is shocked at the weather. It's actually been raining buckets for the past day or two and we do have some water coming in to our little apartment here. Really missing the convenience of a dryer right now, since everything is soaked. I think a big pizza and a movie is in order.

Here's the view: