CURRENT MISSION

learn as much as possibly about the world and its inhabitants

ABOUT ME

I'm studying in Bologna, Italy for the year. I love to travel and see the world. I really enjoy museums and learning languages. I study sociology and italian literature. I love music that means something and books that make me laugh. I adore quite corners of the library and walks in the hills on sunny afternoons. I enjoy purposely getting lost when I have nothing better to do. I am a frightenly efficient time-waster. I am notoriously horrible at spelling and i can't really do math, but I know lots about the South African transition out of apartheid and the human rights violations during the Rwandan genocide and the effect of colonialism on Bolivian native politics.

PHILOSOPHY

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
~Moulin Rouge

The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Interests

soccer (calcio, futbol), nice weather, the growth and expansion of knowledge

• animals
• books
• literature
• human rights
• politics
• traveling
• music
• sailing
• soccer
• languages
• mathematics
• sociology
• tourism
• beaches
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: Beirut, Devotchka, No Doubt, Kate Nash, Feist, Gogol Bordello, The Beatles, the Clash, the Ramones, Mika, Queen, Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Movies: Across the Universe, Juno, 10 Things I Hate About You, Swingers, Pirates of the Carribean, High Fidelity, Moulin Rouge

Books: anything written by Kurt Vonnegut, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, High Fidelity, Harry Potter

Teach, Learn, Share

I have learned a lot about how different the United States is from Italy, and Europe in general during my time living in Italy. It's amazing how different two "western" cultures can really be. Also, it's amazing how different Italy is from France and other European countries.

Countries I’ve Visited

France, Italy, Turkey

Countries I’ve Lived In

Italy, United States