In which I am definitely sick, and some Italian history

So I woke up this morning and yep, I was right. I am indeed sick. It's nothing bad, just a cold. I suppose it had to happen eventually. I mean, when you've got six people sharing one tiny kitchen and one person gets sick, you're bound to have a few causalities.

Last night was another quiet night. I think all the running around is finally hitting us all. We all went to bed early. At home, I normally stay up until two or three, but here eleven rolls around and I am out.

I'm at this very classy little cafe this morning. I don't have class until two, so it's a nice place to come work and sip at a cappuccino. It's really nice, cozy and warm and homey. My friend Dan discovered this a few weeks ago and dubbed it a good spot, and I agree. I'm going to come back here more often. (Side note: a difference between Italy and the US- here, you can just order a caffè corretto, which is something that you can't get in Starbucks. It's coffee with a shot of liquor in it. I have not ordered it, since it's 11 am and my life isn't that out of control quite yet.) The only downside is that it's down the hill, which means I do the stairs twice in one day. But that's good, I tell myself as I face down the stairs. This is a good thing.

The other night I went grocery shopping (I like to do it on Mondays) and picked out what I thought was chocolate milk powder. I mean, it was Nestle brand, and it had a picture of hot cocoa on the container. Great, right? Well, I'm not entirely sure it's meant to be hot cocoa. I don't know if it's meant to be baking cocoa, either. I don't know what this is. It dissolves well in milk, but the drink is just more bitter than what I'm used to. But not as bitter as baking cocoa. I don't know what exactly I bought. Maybe this is just how they take cocoa here. Either way, I mixed in a spoonful of sugar (which I also bought by accident) and it tasted just fine.

I've been learning some Italian history in my mafia class and my Italian culture class, and it's really crazy when you actually hear it. I've always thought of Italy as such an old country, while the US is so new. But Italy as Italy is actually younger than the US. Italy the land, and the culture, is of course far, far older than America, but it was colonized that entire time. By the time it was unified, it was in 1861- almost 100 years after our constitution was signed. And even then, people weren't so happy about being one country. The North and South of Italy are drastically different and even now they consider themselves different. And Sicily actively opposed joining Italy. It hated the idea. It had spent so long being colonized that it saw no difference between being owned by Spain and being owned by Italy.

Then as Italy was trying to learn how to be a country together, 80 years later, World War II came, and with it, Mussolini. Or, well, the other way around. By the time Italy sided with the allied forces, the King went to the south for his own protection, while Germany, unhappy with Italy leaving, sent troops to occupy the North. So here's the South, chilling with the King, while the North is involved with these German troops and having to organize its own forces.

The North wanted a republic. The South wanted a monarchy. Sicily still wanted to be left alone.

That isn't to say that Italians today are squabbling. They seem pretty united. But there is still a divide- are you a north Italian, or are you from the south?

Meanwhile, the mafia was in Sicily, taking advantage of the unstable government to put in action its own kind of justice and honor. But that's a whole other story.