crimper.co.nz

Well, 6 weeks now. 2 without James. All is good.
Life: life is fairly easy and although certain things are very different to NZ, it is no that much different overall. I get around onmy little silver bullet- the basket is great - it can fit your groceries, or your climbing gear, or a whole ream of paper worth of scientific papers to read at bed-time, or ...no, i won't tell you how many bottles of wine...
Certain things never cease to amaze me though. Like biking to work - although there are road markings (like a centre-line), no-one really takes much notice of it. Cyclists cruise along on either side of the road and down the middle. Italians have a different idea about safe driving distance - they work in mm's as opposed to NZers, who work in m's. So I am fully used to feeling the breeze of passing wing mirrors!
There is no such thing as 'Italian-host' - service in shops is appalling by NZ standards. So when you go to get something, you have to allow plenty of time - things happen at a different pace - so as long as you are chilled, it's all fine. They don't even acknowledge you while you wait - it's like you are invisible. makes me laugh. And allows time to soak up more language...
Speaking of which, i have been a bit slack on that front for the last week - I pick up a bit climbing (although it is predominantly NOT the kind of language you would use elsewhere, if you know what I mean!) but at Uni, all the students speak to us mainly in english, because our Italian is so bad, it's hopeless. But learning lots of vocab - it's just making sentences that is a challenge.
Study is going really well - full-on into it now. Spend the evenings scouring pubmed - my favourite place to get lost. Yes, I am a geek. And chatting to various people to the wee hours of the morning - so getting used to functioning on little sleep. We are doing some trials in the lab, and I am hopefully going next week to padova to see skeletal muscle cell culture in action - it's where they grow muscle cells in a dish, basically - not into ears or anything, but it enables you to study what is going on in the cell to some degree. Enough geek talk.
Climbing is great - going down to the boulder wall and have some friends down there, so all good. Heading out this weekend (if the weather holds), although apparently there is abig cave that is ok in the rain. Routes start at 7c I've been told - arrgh. Trivial.
Have my road bike too - Aukje gets hers this weekend, so we wil be off into the hills after work in the evenings (when i'm not climbing). And my MTB of course - very cool trails round here, which have been making great run trails in the mornings too. Very rocky and chossy, so quite exciting. (translate to: emma walks her bike a fair amount of the time and connects with the ground often, hence nice bruises on her shins and knees)
Pizza tonite. Yum. And i bought a 1.5l tub of Chocolate, hazelnut and vanilla gelato. I am very disciplined though. It nees to last until James gets back, so I can blame him for eating the last bit! Being on my own is OK so far. Only had cereal for dinner once. And funnily enough, the house seems a lot tidyer...
it has been stunning for the last two weeks - beautiful clear days, reaching about 26-27 degrees. But it has just started to rain - meant to rain all weekend. Hope it is fine next weekend - big excitement here - the Giro d'Italia (for non-cycling fans, that's like the Italian version of the Tour De France)is coming to town. And they head off on the biggest Mtn stage. So Aukje and I are going to watch - we will head up and camp somewhere to watch...gotta dig out all my black NZ gear to wear to cheer on the Kiwis.

So that's about it for now - i often think of random things that i should write up on here, but cannot think of them when i sit down to write. Like the fact that there are 9 semi-wild cats that hang round the apartment block. They are all brothers and sisters/mothers and fathers (or some mutant combination there-of) cos they all look alike - mangey and annoying. Some person keeps feeding them. So they get a hurry up when I come flying in on my silver bullet at night. it's funny cos i speak to them (in english obviously) in a nice soothing voice and they look at me inquisitively - little do they know I am cursing their flea-ridden existance - maybe they know english?? - I hope they don't pee on my bike....