ciao bella

ciao bella = hello beautiful

I enjoy the saying.
It is a beautiful day.
I am trying to learn Italian.
And Ciao Bella is the name of some wonderful gelato. Yum.

Unfortunately, even though it is beautiful day, it has been a tough week. Not only are midterms still lingering, but there was also a tragic hit and run accident involving two USC students early Sunday morning and the student body is filled with sadness and shock. The car hit two students; killing one and the other student remained on the car until the passenger and driver decided to remove the boy from the hood. I am utterly disgusted by their actions and I hope they get caught. My roommate got hit by a drunk driver last year, fortunately she was only bruised and we caught the guy. Hit and runs involving people are terrible situations, and it is heartbreaking that this one ended in death. Both students are in my thoughts and I wish their friends and families the best.

I wish more people would do good deeds in the world. Everyone is always so wrapped up in their lives that they forget little things that can be done to make things better. Compliment people, smile more, hug your friends... simple things like that can make you and other people happier.

I recently discovered freerice.com. It's an educational web game and for every answer you get right, 10 grains of rice are donated through the UN World Food Program. The internet is my favorite method of procrastination, so if I can claim I learning or doing good things for the world, I can rationalize my wasted time. Last night, while avoiding one of my research papers I practiced some math, geography, art history, and most importantly Italian. By the end of the night I raised over 1,500 grains of rice. Go me!



This summer I will be studying abroad in Rome for 5 weeks, so hopefully I can master some more Italian by then. When reading Time magazine this morning, I saw on their Pop Chart that "Rome plans Ancient Rome theme park. Get ready for Crucifixion Cove." For those of you that don't know about this Pop Chart, keep in mind that it is full of sarcasm. This theme park is not going to be like The Hold Land Experience. For example, under shockingly predictable on the pop chart, "Kiefer Sutherland to enter either season, second week of 24." (I thought that was pretty clever.)

Apparently, this theme park idea is inspired by the film Gladiator. (Great movie!! I remember being angry when it didn't get two thumbs up.) The city of Rome needs tourists and this is their solution to the Euro Disney competition in Paris. But I feel like this is the wrong solution...



"The planned park will strive for historical accuracy while offering family-friendly attractions based both on life during the Roman Republic -- which ended with the assassination of Julius Caesar and the civil war -- and during the Roman Empire."

It seems right up my alley, but it's hard to compete with Mickey...

"Mommy Mommy, can I see Caesar get assassinated again?!"

Bad.