Ciao!

So Wednesday night, I booked a flight to Berlin for the first weekend in March to visit Jenn in Germany. I spent quite a few hours searching for flights, because we had originally planned to meet up in Paris during our spring breaks, but the flight and hostel stay to Paris alone would have been about €200, not to mention how much it would cost for food, transportation, and all the touristy things, like the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. So I will have to go to Paris another time.

I didn't end up getting to go to the RetakeRoma event, because around 3am on Sunday morning I woke up and was sick, until about 6am. I slept on the couch, because I didn't want to wake my roommate up each time had to leave the room. I think I got food poising from a little fruiterria around the corner from my apartment, a few of the strawberries I had eaten tasted a bit weird, and even though I stopped eating them, I still managed to get sick. So I will definitely be going to the next event, because I was really upset that I wasn't able to help out.

I had my first test in Italian 102 on Thursday. I wasn't confident going into the test, but I think I might be okay. A lot of the verb endings still trick me up, especially the irregular verbs. Each verb and noun has a different ending based on the form of the sentence. We're also doing past tense with verbs, which means I need to know if the verb uses avere or essere, and then figure out which form of avere or essere needs to be used in front of the verb. It really isn't that difficult, it's just memorization, but I still struggle with it.

I'm really enjoying my ECPO class, the Introduction to the European Union class. My teacher is Aldo Patania, who is a very interesting character. He lectures in class, and then at the beginning of the following class, he has us close our notes and then he "picks our brains" to see if we actually learned it, or if there is something that was unclear. I'm learning quite a bit about the EU. We've gone through the different types of integration, from horizontal when a member joins the EU, to vertical when an idea/concept is added to the focus of the EU. We've also talked about the four stages of economic integration: Free Trade Areas, Customs Union, Common Market, and Economic and Monetary Union. The only way for the EU to integrate further would be politically, which many countries are against. My teacher told us that Federalism is "the f-word" of Europe. But regardless, it's a good class. Even though I think my teacher is a bit of a neo-liberal when it comes to economics.

In the MUN class today, we practiced informal caucusing and consensus building in class. We, in the scenario, had to determine which of two crises the General Assembly was going to create a resolution for. The first crisis was ISIS threatening to behead another hostage, unless they received the ransom. The UN resolution would require all governments not to pay ransom for hostage release. The second crisis was about climate change, and that one of the principal obstacles to addressing are the structures of governance, even though there is a growing consensus scientifically that it is a real problem now. The UN resolution would define the way forward that addresses structural weaknesses in our system of governance at every level to address climate change. We as a group came to the conclusion the climate change was the issue that needed to be tackled first, after quite a bit of discussion. I'm getting more and more excited about the actual conference, the more I learn about India and the more we practice.

I'm also going to the Vatican tomorrow. I'm very excited to finally see Michelangelo's paintings, and to tour the museum. I'm going by myself, as most of ISA is travelling to Venice for Carnevale on Saturday, but it's probably for the best, because seeing a Michelangelo in person is a big deal for me, and I want to be able to just take it all in, without having to worry about wasting anyone else's time. I'll probably post a separate picture post from the Vatican.

Until next week!