It's been a long time since I rock and rolled now

Well my friends, it’s official. I suck at keeping up with my blog. I think it’s been a whole week and a half since I wrote you last. A lot has happened since then, but I can only keep you updated with so much.

Moral of the day: Karma (don’t be an asshole)

We went to Perusia today for Eurochocolate: a huge chocolate festival that draws people from all over Europe. All my friend were going to go to this festival today and they had booked through this company that will take care of all details for daytrips for you. They plan travel to and from, and get you access to any events you need access to. It was 38 euros for the day: this included roundtrip travel expense, (18-20 euro value) a Eurochocolate card that got us free chocolate tastings at a few stands at discounts at many more, (5 euro value) bus fare between the train station and the festival (2 euro value) and a team of guides to help us with the traveling. So when you do the math, it adds up to 25 euros, which miraculously leaves you maximum 13 euros short of the price I paid. I was reluctant to buy this because of this 13 euro gap, but with the insane amount of school work I had recently accumulated, I didn’t have time to look into train and bus tickets and all of the details. It turns out that as part of the guided traveling, they also reserve us two entire train cars (yes there were that many students going on this trip). After our day of immersion in chocolate, we were waiting at the station when we ran into some schoolmates of ours who ridiculed us mercilessly for booking through this travel company. They told us how stupid we were and what a waste of money the entire program is. This isn’t a very nice thing to say. I explained to them the cost break down and let them know that it was really only 11-13 euros that we end up paying for the labor of booking the trip and taking care of all the details so that all we had to do was show up. This seems reasonable to me. They ignored my argument and we boarded the train. They ended up sitting in our reserved train car and when we got there, our trip leaders told them they had to move. They refused. They made our trip leaders track down the paperwork saying we had the cars reserved (which we really did) and made a big fuss about it. As they were leaving disgruntled, I commented loudly to my friend, Stephanie that 38 euros sure WAS an awful lot of money. Oh well, at least I have these lovely seats to sit in. It was great. I think they just went and found other seats, but I kind of hope they had to stand for part of the journey. Karma. Gotta love it.

The chocolate festival itself was lovely. We got pudding and truffles and chocolate bars and hot chocolate and chocolate pastries and watched chocolate chess played with huge chocolate pieces. List of chocolate consumed:

+ Milk chocolate bar
+ Chocolate truffle
+hot chocolate
+chocolate pudding
+ vanilla pudding (I needed a break)
+88% dark chocolate square
+ some unknown chocolate truffle-looking thing with delicious gooeyness inside
+ Grand Marnier sample w/ chocolate square
+1/2 white chocolate-covered apple
+chocolate cookie w/ chocolate gooeyness inside
+ What looked like a sweet hotdog bun filled with chocolate and topped with whipped cream

Now I have a tummy ache

I would say it was worth the money I spent.

In other news, I did about 15 hours of research this last week for a 20-minute women’s studies presentation. I was so thorough that it ended up being closer to around 35 minutes, with interjections from the professor and discussion with the rest of the class. It went better than I could have possibly hoped for. The topic, you might ask? The changes in the styles of secular, painted wedding chests and birth trays in 16th century Europe. Riveting, I know. It was actually a lot of fun, and I would love to present my powerpoint to anyone when I see them next.

This week is midterms and I’m going to be positively swamped with work. I have three finals, another powerpoint presentation for women’s studies and a take home research/analysis essay for women’s studies. It sucks. But then, I’ll be off to London, Paris and Amsterdam for the fall break where all sorts of fun will ensue.

In brief, this is likely the last blog that will come for the next two/ two and a half weeks. Try to contain you disappointment: it’s overwhelming. I love the feedback on the blog. Thanks to all who read. Hopefully I’ll survive the next two weeks and have some wicked awesome stories. Until later, my friends.

-AJC