Drunk Italians and Rock&Roll

Its 2:45am and a bunch of drunken Italian men have been singing at the top of their lungs outside for the past hour. Its driving me crazy, so I've decided to put on some headphones and listen to loud rock music.
Meanwhile, I'll write my second blog entry. Today (or yesterday, rather) was somewhat uneventful. I wasn't feeling very good, so I decided to skip the museum trip (I've already seen it anyway) and use the day to recover from the previous week. After a nice shower and filling breakfast I went to studio to work for a bit.
A couple of hours passed and I found myself thinking about the fact that we will be going on our first study tour in about a week. I anticipate doing a lot of walking, but of the two pairs of shoes I brought, one offers no real support or padding, and the other pair are falling apart at the seams. Planning ahead, I decided to get a new pair and use this week to break them in. I asked Marina where to go to get a new pair of walking shoes and she suggested somewhere along Via del Corso. Unfortunately, finding a size 13 shoe in Europe is much more difficult than I thought!
It took me 3-4 hours of walking up and down Via del Corso before walking into the Puma store which had shoes in sizes above quarantasei (46)!

One thing I noticed while walking is that everyone appears nicely dressed. Although I do find the puffy, reflective, plastic jacket trend absolutely repulsive, for the most part, everyone is well put together. I think this may have something to do with demographic differences between the states and Europe.
From what I understand and have observed in the US, the less wealthy lower class tend to live in the inner city while the middle and upper classes live in the suburbia’s surrounding the city. In Italy, it is exactly the opposite. The wealthy upper class live in the heart of the city and the average wealth decreases the further one goes from the center. This could account for the surprisingly large number of people driving fancy cars and wearing designer clothing and the surprisingly low amount of poor and homeless in Rome.

I saw a guy wearing sweatpants that said "I <3 NY” today, It made me laugh because someone from New York would never actually wear pants like that. You see the same thing in the states all the time with those “Firenze” purses that girls carry. Just more proof that all people are really the same I guess.

-BJC