Ten crudelty-free years for me.

Today it was a big anniversary, and I wanted to celebrate it with some good veggie food, but I didn't get the chance to. I will soon though. I ended up hanging out watching Italian soccer on real Italian tv live via cable, and the Italian tv news live...I hadn't seen that in a while!
I also got to hang out with A from CouchSurfing, and it was great fun! The house he's staying at is definitely luxurious, in the nicest part of Dallas, with all sorts of fancy amenities...and although the football game was not my favorite thing, I got to eat some good burgers with tons of stuff inside, and mostly chilling in the saltwater hot tub and pool in the backyard. What a hard life!
And night conversations are always interesting. And CouchSurfing rocks. And I bought my flights for Argentina, from Dec 9th to Jan 16th! So my planned trips for now include a weekend to San Antonio, a trip to Monterrey, Mexico for thanksgiving, a probably trip back to Gainesville, and then Argentina (plus Uruguay) for the winter break. I will be making it back to Italy next summer.

Katrina.

http://www.hurricanehousing.org

Please help if you can and live in the SouthEast US, or know somebody who does.

My little empty efficiency is up for grabs if somebody needs it for a little bit.

Mi casa es su casa.

It seems so easy to invade other countries, but when it's time to help a single area, help is not happening very effectively...

*sigh*

I want to travel...badly...

More from Austin...

I thought I would post some pictures from the actual town more than from the Engine Down show!

Austin

Work In Progress.

So I never did post after that dinner...my free connection never came back until now, so I have been pretty much absent from the cyberworld. Now that it works I wanna post and stuff, even though I should go to bed. Ok, so the house is coming along quite well I have to say, I got my office, computer and phone at the school, I start orientation tomorrow morning...then it's off to Austin to see Engine Down and Bella Lea...and hopefully see something of the city...

Dallas so far seems big, much more cosmopolitan than I thought (and much more than Florida so far), car-oriented, sprawled out, a pain in the ass during rush-hour, etc etc They have a turnpike named after one of the presidents of that family that comes out of this state...but other than that it doesn't seem as bad as everybody says, or as I thought...not worse than Florida so far...as far as cowboy hats, I have seen some...not many...as far as huge pickup trucks, very very few: there are way more in Florida! The Sunshine State seems also more religious than Texas...but this is all so far: I've been here less than a week now! There's not much police at all on the road, but some gas stations and stores have policemen hanging out outside...Latinos (mainly Mexicans probably) are everywhere, with large amounts of kids and young parents usually...most things are in both English and Spanish...but there are a lot of people from literally all over the world...I am impressed...maybe all big cities are like this, I don't know! Gainesville was definitely not this multiethnic.

All colleagues seem ultra-nice, school starts in a little over a week so I have to get on the ball pretty soon and pretty fast...I will also start thinking about what to do (read: where to go) during the days off, and find some tickets for the winter break...

oh, and I rented the cheapest car I could and I got...a PT Cruiser!!!

New House.

So I am here, after 14 hours and about 1100 miles, 1700 km, in my new house that looks spacious and clean and nice...except it's super empty! There is nothing besides my belongings...so I need to figure out what to do, probably get an air mattress for the first days/weeks, and then see...luckily, and this is awesome, I can steal somebody's signal and get online wireless right from my house! So I have nothing but the Internet! Pictures later...after CiCi's Pizza will have saved my hungry ass!

Pictures from the road.

OK this is awesome because I can post pictures directly on here, without having to have them uploaded somewhere on the Internet.

Here we go...here are some pictures starting at the bottom with the van at the departure in Gainesville...I love that van! The rest is pictures I took from behind the wheel, mostly around Mobile, AL.

Me.

one, two, three...one, two, one, two...

Hammond, LA

All is well on the road after 9 hours or so behind the wheel...time to rest and eat and shower! Tomorrow I will try to make it in time so that I can at least dump all the stuff in the house before going to look for a bed or futon. It was much harder to leave Gainesville than I thought it would be...surprise!