Afterthought

Ciao tutti,

I just realised I completely forgot to tell you all about the gorgeous Christmas party my employers at Corporate English have thrown! There had been talk of a Christmas party for quite a while but nobody really knew what was going to happen until the last weekend before the start of Christmas break. As you may remember, the staff at Corporate English like to spoil their employees from time to time and after our bi-monthly teacher meetings they usually take us (the teachers) out for dinner and cocktails afterwards. This often means we end up in a very hip bar and dance the night away, while the company picks up the bill!

Obviously, the Christmas party had to top that. And it did! Firstly, partners were included in the invitation so this was a very nice way for Olaf to get to know my colleagues. Secondly, we went to a restaurant near Corso Como which was quite nice - we were actually the first ones there because nobody else was on time, which was quite strange and disappointing as being the first is NOT the fashionable thing to do - and got to eat our fill of a lavish primo and a succulent secondo - and obviously drank copious amounts of wine. It was a very nice evening and we were just a tad tipsy when we left the restaurant.

Obviously, our conversation topics had long since changed to booze, drugs and sex (if I have to hear the phrase 'getting your tits out' one more time I'm going to kill somebody!), so it was by then really time to really partying. And party we did! We went to 11 Store, a very cool and fashionable bar slash disco - although we didn't really know it existed before that evening, how's that for being fashionable?! - where the ONLY table in the middle of the bar was reserved for us. We toasted to the holidays with some lovely lush limoncello and cocktails and just started dancing, dancing and dancing. In the end, we went home far too late (because I had promised our guests Margo and Marieke that we'd be home by 1 a.m. at the latest), but hey, how often do you get to go to a Christmas party?!?!

Anyway, I'm really glad that we didn't have pay for this evening but am wondering how much they spent. It can't have been cheap! I really appreciate their gesture and understand and support their aim - having a good relationship with their employees and encouraging ties between those employees is very important to them and the attempt to make this heterogeneous group of people feel like something like a family is commendable - but it was quite unnecessary to spend this much. We might as well have gone to a regular bar around the corner and then we would have had an equally great time! But then again, I shouldn't complain. I'm just happy I've found this school! Aren't you all jealous?

I'm sorry if this post sounds like me bragging about my fantastic employer, that is not my objective. I just wanted to share this wonderful experience with you. Hope your Christmas parties were great too... As Olaf is in the kitchen working on Christmas and I'm surrounded by lovely scents that act as premonitions about tonight's dinner, I wish you all - once again - a merry Christmas and buon appetito!

Buon natale, Fe

Wonderful Christmas time

Ciao tutti,

Only two more days and Christmas will be here! Isn't it great?! It's going to be a perfect Christmas and we'll have a wonderful Christmas time!

Margo and Marieke's visit was wonderful! I hadn't realised how much I had missed Margo's friendly face, her humour, her hugs, her sweet disposition in general and our talks. We saw the sights, did some shopping, bought some lovely Christmas presents at the market, ate a huge pizza at la Padellaccia and of course went to La Fontanella where the girls showed us what drinking beer is all about...

Aren't they cute together?

Yeah, baby!

This is the way dykes drink beer!

Of course, we also went to see the Duomo, the Castello and Cimitero Monumentale. We had lunch at Corso Como and spent hours inside High-Tech - without buying anything! And of course we admired the photo exhibition in Via Dante. This really is an amazing exhibition - and it's totally free. It's called 'Italia - Emozioni dal Cielo' and features pictures of the most beautiful places in Italy, taken from the sky. I love this exhibition and I've spent many an hour there. Unfortunately, it's only going to be there until the end of the year, so what am I going to do with my free time then???

We had some lovely dinners and played some great games of Cafe International until very late at night, because it is just too addictive to stop!!! They left again on Tuesday because Marieke would get her university diploma that evening and would start her new job on Wednesday. Congratulations, Marieke, and good luck! Welcome to your professional life! As the lovely girls are also moving in together next month, I got them a poster of their favourite picture of the exhibition which will just look gorgeous in their new flat, I'm sure!

And anyway, Christmas break has started, work is over and done with, the shopping and groceries are pretty much done and Olaf is preparing himself for a couple days of work in the kitchen for our lovely 9 and 10 course Christmas dinners. I'm really looking forward to the arrival of my mother and her boyfriend on St. Steven's Day/Boxing Day/Second Christmas Day (whatever you want to call it), because I haven't seen them in a while and I'm certain we're going to have such a lovely time - and there's just something wrong with spending Christmas away from your family. Baby, it's cold outside, so I'm planning on staying in a lot, cuddling up on the sofa and watching some films. Santa Clause is coming to town and I'd really like to see Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, although I'm kind of hoping for a White Christmas to welcome the perfect year, so Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!. I'm pretty sure we're going to be rocking around the Christmas tree, so come all ye faithful so we won't be lonely this Christmas! Run, Rudolph, run and bring the little Saint Nick to make this a Christmas to remember. We're going to put Frosty the Snowman (who we call Margaret) outside and wait for Father Christmas together. Olaf, spending Christmas with you really is my only wish this year. All I want for Christmas is you! So, Santa baby, hurry down the chimney tomorrow night!

Okay, so maybe I have been listening to too many Christmas songs, but that really isn't my fault. That's just what Christmas means to me! *Shit, this really is a nasty habit to break* So before you get too annoyed with this post, I'm just going to end this post now. We wish you a merry Christmas! *damn, I did it again!*

Ciao, Fe

The twelve days of Christmas

Ciao tutti,

This is going to be a very short post because I don't really have that much to say. This week has pretty much been work, work, work. Fortunately, all my classes were cancelled today so I had some time to rest, do some administrative duties and clean the house - preparation much needed for the arrival of Margo and Marieke, two of my friends from Nijmegen. Olaf was also working a lot this week, but has unfortunately still not been able to renew his permesso di soggiorno which is pretty frustrating for him (for his experiences and reactions, see his blog).

But there are also a lot of positive things going on. The weather is very nice, it's dry, not that cold (at least not as cold as I expected - I'm still wearing my autumn coat without a scarf!) and the skies are mainly blue. I love the December sun, it gives you that wonderful, completely unexpected warmth as it suddenly starts shining on you when you pass a corner or a tram moves out of the way. It makes me very happy... And, of course, the holiday season is approaching! Olaf's been working on Christmas dinner for weeks now and he has almost finalised the menu. We've both been enjoying the sights - the lights hanging over the naviglio elicit a magic reflection in the water and the balconies with plants completely covered in multi-coloured Christmas lights are a sight to be seen. Needless to say, we've been listening to Christmas music for about half a month now and it still doesn't bore me! Don't you all love Christmas?

The whole city is preparing for the holidays. There's a big tree in the middle of the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele II, Milan's monumental shopping area next to the Duomo, which glitters with Swarovski glass, dominates the view and takes one's breath away. Every shop is selling Christmas trees, decorations, songs, candy, panettone (Christmas cake), Santa suits and whatever you can think of that belongs to Christmas. And the people are a lot happier too. All the grim faces are starting to smile again, everyone's filled with anticipation for the holidays. Only one more week...

The advent calendar is already half finished, there's a tree proudly standing in the middle of our living room, there are Christmas lights singing songs off-key everywhere, there's an ugly decoration on the front door and there are already some presents underneath the tree. I can't wait to unwrap them... I hope you're all looking forward to it as much as I am!

Good luck with whatever you're doing this last week, I know the time before Christmas can be a bitch! See you soon,

Ciao, Fe

Where does the time go...?

Where does the time go? With the blink of an eye another month has passed and I haven't published a single thing on my blog. Man, my life must be boring if nothing interesting has happened to me for a month...

Fortunately, this is not the case. I've just been too preoccupied with other things to update my blog. It's not that you're not important, really, you're just... not that important! And, in addition, I'm trying very hard to build a real life and I don't want to become one of those people who's completely taken up with his computer and misses all the great things in life because of that. Oh, and I got myself a little computer virus which took me some time to erase!

Anyway, what have I been doing the past couple of weeks? Hmmmm, let's see! I spent a couple of days alone when Olaf was in Cordoba - where he had a great time by the way, although I do think he enjoyed himself much more than he actually learnt from the winter school and the lectures. But then again, getting to know new people, doing sightseeing, eating loads and drinking too much is a very important part of the academic world! We call it networking... Anyway, all this time I was alone and lonely in our little house. I was scared and homesick and actually considered killing myself out of sheer misery...

Well, no, just kidding. I loved finally having some time to myself. We'd been having so many visitors that I really needed some privacy, so Olaf's leaving for a couple of days couldn't have come at a more perfect time. I watched all the movies he doesn't want to watch and, for once, I was allowed in the kitchen! Although I naturally f**ked up everything I tried to cook because I hadn't been in a kitchen for such a long time! As it was a regular working week I didn't do anything special until the weekend. This was the weekend that my father came by and we had a lovely time again. We had some good talks, great food, wine, smokes and did a lot of sightseeing. As my father had a new digital camera, we acted VERY touristy! And to top that, we finally went to see the famous Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. As was to be expected, it was a total and utter disappointment and not worth the money it costs - the extortioners actually wanted E 8,- per person for 15 minutes! - but you can't live in Milan and not have seen it. If you don't know which fresco I'm talking about, here it is

Nothing very interesting happened the next couple weeks my after father left again. Olaf returned, of course, and worked pretty much consumed me. I've got a new extra job now. I'm the 'Hardware and Teaching Materials Coordinator' at Corporate English. This meant that had to do an inventory of all the additional audiovisual and reading material the school has, design and manage a signout system for the hardware, and sort out a lot old folders with teaching materials in order to make them easily available to all the teachers. Now that this is done, my weekly job is to develop new lessons to accompany our DVDs, magazines and newspapers so we'll always have lessons based on current events articles which all teachers can use whenever they like. This is kind of cool, because it means I get paid to watch DVDs and to improve my own knowledge of the news and current events (since I usually don't read the paper or watch the news). And besides this, I also got an offer from one of my students, the editing manager of the Milan branch of a large publishing house. She asked me if I wanted to become a trial reader of manuscripts they are considering to publish. They've got a large group of trial readers but they're mostly female, so I'm supposed to provide them with the male perspective... Well, we'll see what happens! Anyway, it doesn't pay much but it would mean that I'd get paid to read, and read things that are not even available to the public yet!

Last weekend Jorryt and Lilian, Olaf's friends from Groningen, came over and, since they'd already visited Olaf last year and had already seen Milano, we rented a car and went on a two-day road trip! We left quite early on Saturday and drove to Pisa through the Apennines, which is a beautiful piece of Italy. Although you're on the freeway, it seems like you're standing on a mountain side in a grassy meadow with no one around, because the road meanders through the mountains and there wasn't a lot of traffic. Afterwards, we arrived in Pisa where we made a lovely stroll to the central square with its church, baptistry and of course its famous campanile (bell tower), the Leaning Tower. After we had checked the tower on the list (the Tower being one of the wonders of the world was really our only reason for being there), we got in the car again and drove to the neighbouring town of Lucca. Lucca is a lovely well-preserved medieval city with its city walls completely intact. After having some lovely cocktails, a pizza and some more lovely cocktails, we turned in a bit drunk.

The day after we started our way back to Milan, but we didn't take the shortest route. We drove down to the Tuscan coast of Cinque Terre, where we visited three of the five Terre, old fishermen's villages built against the cliffs of the Tyrrhenian coast. It was sometimes really scary to get there, because the roads were really small and the hills very steep (the villages were only supposed to be reached by boat), but fortunately Jorryt is a very good driver. However, overcoming our fears and making it down to each village was completely worth it. The beauty of the towns is indescribable and it's a region I would definitely like to go back to some day. Here are some pictures

Aren't we cute?

I know it's tacky, but you can't go to Pisa and not take this picture...

Sitting on one of the machines the locals use to harvest the grapes from the rocky slopes...

Riomaggiore, one of the Cinque Terre

Manarola, another one of the Terre

Manarola again

Corniglia, perched on a rock high above the sea

A lovely sunset, observed from the little harbour of Vernazza

This week was a short week, as Thursday and Friday were a regional and a national holiday respectively. Thursday was Sant'Ambrogio, the feast of the patron saint of Milan, St. Ambrose (the famous church father), and on Friday it was the day of what Olaf refers to as "The Immaculate Collection, the day Madonna released her 'best of' album" - in reality it's the Immacolata, the day of the Immaculate Conception of Jesus by Mary (only seventeen days before he was reportedly born!). So on Thursday, we went to Oh Bej! Oh Bej!, a famous regional market traditionally held on Sant'Ambrogio with Belinda (who returned last weekend) and her friend Melina. I ended up making a day of it with them, because - while Olaf wanted to go to Arte sul Naviglio (a regular art exhibition around the corner from our house) and the Christmas market - I went to l'Artigiano at the fiera (fair). This was an exposition of hand-made objects and food from different countries from around the world, where we tasted some cheeses, some sausages, some candy and some beers. And I spent hardly any money, except to buy some Egyptian candy which I hadn't had since my last trip to Egypt in 2001...

This weekend, we don't have any visitors so we are spending our time wisely buying Christmas presents, preparing Christmas dinner and writing Christmas cards. Next weekend, Margo and Marieke are coming over and we're going to have a blast! After that, Christmas will be here already! In the words of my boss, 'where HAS the time gone...' We've been playing Christmas music non-stop for two weeks now and I'm ready for the holidays. All the favourites are here again 'Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer', 'Santa Baby', 'Baby, it's cold outside', 'Frosty, the Snowman', 'Little Drummer Boy', 'Come, all ye faithful' and 'All I want for Christmas is you'. How can we spend the rest of the year without them... If you're not playing Christmas music yet, you should start now! There's no better way to get in the mood... Just two weeks more, hang in there! You can do it! It won't be lonely this Christmas!

Ciao, Fe