After having a difficult time sleeping on Tuesday night, I overslept Wednesday morning and did not have enough time to get ready and get to my class that morning. When I got out of the shower, I studied the powerpoint for that lecture until it was time to meet Roman at his hotel.

Roman is my cousin that came to visit for Thanksgiving weekend who goes to Lehigh University. I know him the best out of any of my cousins and we have similar interests in finance and sports. We also have a similar ambitions and outlook towards life. However, Roman can somewhat be a workaholic and ties almost every conversation topic back to investment banks. However, this also makes him perhaps the most focused and driven person I know.

I walked towards his hotel called Hotel Greenhouse on the far southwest side of town. I got lost on the way to the hotel, but I found a metro that took me directly there. Arriving much earlier than Roman, I ended up waiting in the lobby and surf Wikipedia until he arrives.

Roman arrived at the hotel and we headed off towards a pizza place on the way to my dorm. We stopped at a grocery store, so Roman could buy salami and kept going. However, it seemed like we were walking for a long time up a canal and I did not see the Navigli which is right next to my dorm. We stopped at a local pizzeria and the pizza was tasty. However, when we saw some traffic signs, we realized were in the suburbs and not even the city. We managed to catch a bus that took us back to the metro and I found my way back from there.

After arriving at my dorm, I rested while Roman checked some things on the computer. We went downtown to get dinner at a good pasta place. On the way I showed Roman the galleria Vittoria and the Duomo and there was some display of giant pink snails on the sidewalk to remind people to relax. The pasta place I wanted to eat at was closed, so we wandered around until we found another place. However, the pasta was sub par for Italian standards. I think it came out of the microwave because I saw something stuck in there while waiting for the food, and the pasta was served suspiciously too quickly. I then got a gelato for desert and headed back to Roman’s hotel. Since Roman had an extra bed at his hotel, I decided to sleep there so I can sleep without being freezing cold (no heat at night in the dorm). After arguing about random things with Roman about random things such as China’s manufacturing and James Loney’s ethnicity, I went to sleep.

Thursday morning began my Thanksgiving, which did not feel like Thanksgiving at all. I ate breakfast at Roman’s hotel and then headed back to the dorm to get ready for class. I gave Roman a Bloomberg umbrella I received from a recruiting event as an early Christmas present and then went to class. My financial markets class covered the operations of commercial banks. Roman fell asleep and it felt strange to have a class on Thanksgiving.

After class, we went to a local place for lunch. I ordered a ham calzone and Roman ate spaghetti. We returned to my dorm and watched the movie The Boiler Room about a fraudulent brokerage house. It was a pretty good movie. After that we went to Pizza OK for dinner. We both ate buffalo mozzarella pizzas, but Roman said that pizza is better in New York than Italy. Roman often compares thing with New York City as his benchmark (even more than I do to southern California). I packed for the weekend trip to Cannes back at my dorm and tried to Skype my family for Thanksgiving, but they were not there. We then went back to Hotel Greenhouse to get some sleep before Friday’s train ride.