The Nile isn't just a river in Egypt

Ciao tutti,

It's been a while since my theological monologue so I suppose it's time for another update. But first things first. Here is a lovely picture of Cobie and Peter.

Don't they look cute together on our no longer very white couch? Unfortunately this is not going to be a long update because I am way behind on lots of things I have to do. Including updating my blog. So, I'll just stick to the basics and won't start monologuing again - although who knows what happens when I start writing!

Let's start with a little work update. I am a little less swamped this month because I'm trying to avoid another physical breakdown - seriously, I hadn't been ill since high school before last month, and even then it was usually just an excuse not to have to go to school. The last two weeks I've been testing my students at CTL and all of them who were present at the test passed which makes me happy. Mike, the director of studies at that company, is moving to Australia and I'm a bit sad to see him go. He's a nice guy, which is something I can't say for his replacement who is a big, fat, loud Italian with a fake American accent and a horrible use of English. Needless to say, I don't like this person very much but I'm professional enough not to let that get in the way of what needs to be done. And besides, he says he's going to talk to the boss to get us all CELTA courses (official international teaching qualification comparable to TEFL, usually between 1500 and 2500 euros) and seems to value my input and accept most of my suggestions. We'll see what will come of that. I've also started a new course with a woman I like very much, her name is Paola and she works for a cinematographic design firm although she's really an Italian teacher. Even though her lessons are at 9am twice a week, I'm enjoying them very much!

The weekend before last, Olaf went to Izmir for a conference which he enjoyed very much. I had deliberately kept this weekend to myself in order to be able to do some thinking and relaxing. And it was good. I'd really been looking forward to my own personal Pride & Prejudice marathon, which is a miniseries Olaf doesn't like very much even though it has much to be appreciated. On Saturday, I met up with Nina and Antonio and we went for a lovely aperitivo at Yguana where I'd never been before. After some good food and interesting conversations, we met up with Belinda and Melina at a live TRL concert at Piazza Duomo. The concert sucked but we enjoyed some cocktails in a far too expensive bar. The rest of the weekend I spent in bed, on the couch, working out and eating the way I like to eat. I love Olaf's cooking, but I sort of did miss my own traditional penne with red sauce. Belinda also asked me to be her 'Matron of Honour' for her wedding next week. I am obviously extremely honoured to do this and am very happy that Belinda considers me to be matron-like! No seriously, am I???

Last weekend was our free weekend (we keep one weekend a month to ourselves, that is without visitors, to be able to spend some quality time together as this still is the only time we get to see each other), so of course we planned lots of things with other people. On Friday we went to Mike's goodbye party, which also turned out to be Becks' (his wife's) birthday party. It was dress to impress but we didn't really want to dress up. So I wore my grey 70s porn trousers with a white shirt and a grey tie and Olaf wore his black trousers, a white shirt and a black tie. This way we looked like 'Jut and Jul' - for which there is no good English translation, as it turns out - and told people we were a Dutch proverb. There was a guy who had just come back from Russia and who had brought a gigantic bottle of vodka which really needed to be finished that evening. Obviously, I felt called upon and drank way too much. I got the scare of my life at that party when Caroline (my boss at Corporate English and a friend of Mike and Becks') walked in - she was dressed as a bum with a dirty beard, old glasses and was wearing this big raincoat. I didn't recognise her but then she walked up to me and suddenly opened her raincoat. Underneath she was wearing nothing but a small shirt and hotpants with a fake dick attached to it. I swear I almost puked right then and there. We obviously went home way too late and way too drunk. The next day we were invited to Astrid's birthday party in her oversized villa in Brescia, which her family apparently only uses once in a while. You can find more pictures on Olaf's weblog, I was just amazed and jealous. The party was lovely but I was still a bit hungover from the day before and we hitched a ride home with people at 10.30 pm. We tried to stay up for a little while when we arrived home but couldn't keep our eyes open anymore.

The view from Astrid's garden (on the outskirts of Brescia, near the Alps)

Astrid and her mother, a lovely woman and had done all the cooking herself

Olaf and me with Fernanda, one of Olaf's colleagues

The day after that Olaf spent the whole day in the kitchen preparing sushi for the both of us and for Felix and Annaig, two friends who were coming over that Sunday evening. Thus, our weekend to ourselves was filled with lots of people anyway.

April consists of too many public holidays which only cost me money (as I get paid by the hour, I don't get paid when I can't work because all companies are closed). First it was Easter, Tuesday is Labour Day (as far as I remember we used to work on Labour Day in Holland, but I'm not sure) and today it's Liberation Day. As a result of having so many public holidays close to each other, many people take the rest of the time off and go on a short holiday to enjoy the spring sun. Which means that many of my courses on the days between these holidays get cancelled and I don't get paid for those either! And seriously, why do the Italians needs a Liberation Day? In case this wasn't clear yet, this is the day when Italy celebrates their liberation from the Germans and fascists at the end of World War II. Apparently, the official version of history being taught in this country is that Italy was invaded by the Germans and fascists and liberated by the allied forces. That's not how I remember it from my history lessons... The Nile certainly isn't just a river in Egypt!!!!

Ciao, Fe

PS I'm going to be in Nijmegen the weekend of 12th and 13th May and I hope to see a lot of you then!

Ego sum resurrectio et vita

Ciao tutti,

If you're wondering why I'm posting again so soon, it's because it's Easter and I have the time to do it. This gives me the chance of describing things more accurately and speaking a bit more about my feelings and thought strains instead of mainly retelling the things that happen to me. As I've already told you in my last post, Joost and Kim visited us this weekend. I was too tired and me-time-craved to spend much time with them on Saturday, but as of Saturday evening I was all right again. One of the reasons I was feeling better was because we were going to La Padellaccia. Big pizzas always make me happy! I wasn't able to finish my pizza completely though, which proved to me that I wasn't entirely well yet. After we had gone for one drink at the Johann Sebastian Bar I had trouble keeping my eyes open and couldn't wait to get into bed, even though I had slept a lot the night before.

So after another long night, I felt even better on Sunday morning. I was very happy about this, as it was Easter Sunday. We had a lovely breakfast prepared by Olaf (compliments to the chef!), which consisted of boiled eggs (obviously), heart-shaped fried eggs, strawberries on Dutch rusks (beschuit) and of course La Colomba. La Colomba is a typical Italian Easter cake which my students had recommended to me and which turned out to be lovely - in fact it's still lovely, since it was too big to finish yesterday morning and I've been eating slices of it ever since (including this very moment). That night we went out to Wasabi, the sushi aperitivo place and gorged on the nearly free food. Apparently, Joost and Kim are just as much sushi fanatics as Olaf is, so I'm pretty sure they enjoyed themselves a lot. The rest of the evening (9pm - 2am) was filled with rounds of Cafe International, as always... I won two out of the six rounds, but was beaten by Olaf who won three. *grrrr*.

Joost and Kim left early this morning and Olaf has gone to work, so I've got the day off again. I've finally decided that it's time to take up running again, because I'm getting too fat and now that the weather's getting better I can't wear layers to conceal that anymore. So, I went for a run and exercised a bit at home. In total, I worked out for about an hour and a half and intend to do this twice a week from now on - although I realise how easy it is to decide that on a day off when you have a lot of time on your hands... Well, vedremo!

There's one thing that happened this weekend which got me thinking a lot and which I would therefore like to discuss here. I joined Olaf, Joost and Kim late in the afternoon on Sunday as they were descending the Duomo. They were planning to go into the Duomo in order to see if they could see part of the Easter mass. Kim is a practising Christian and I hadn't been to a church mass for years and both of us were consequently quite excited by the prospect. We stayed in tourist area in the back of the church (tourists obviously weren't allowed in the space intended for religious worship during the mass) and were only going to stay for a bit, but I could tell Kim really wanted to attend the mass. I knew Olaf didn't want to and probably wanted to leave and I could tell Joost wasn't interested either. I think Kim was just too nice to say she really wanted to even though it was her valid choice to do so. Picking up on that vibe and being quite interested in the mass myself, I offered to go in with her and act as translator. I think this solution made everyone happy and I enjoyed the mass very much.

I'm not a Christian and definitely don't support the views and rules of the Roman Catholic Church, but I see a large distinction between the spiritual experience of a religion such as Christianity and the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is a secular organisation which has imposed rules based on man-made scientific theology and moral philosophy, rules I don't agree with. Religion, however, is about believing. It's about having the idea that there's a higher supernatural force guiding things and possibly looking over you. It's about finding something whether outside or inside yourself that supports, reassures and/or stimulates you. You don't believe based on any kind of proof but because you have a feeling or desire to do so. This makes a hierarchic organisation like the church completely incompatible with religious spirituality. The experience of mass is therefore different for everyone. It can be individual contact with the supernatural if you believe in a god, it can be the simple but so powerful group experience of sharing something, it can be a time and place for reflection and/or organising your thoughts or for relaxation or even sleep. It can be whatever you want or need. You don't have to take communion or pray if you don't want to or believe. And whereas you can't prove the existence of the divine, you can't disprove it either which makes it a valid choice to believe. I sometimes feel tempted to entertain the idea of the existence of something higher and I suppose I'm agnostic rather than atheist.

You can do all these things and have spiritual experiences anywhere you want but it's easier in a place of religious worship. A church is therefore just one of the places where it's easy to have this experience, but it could also be a mosque or Hindu temple. It doesn't matter, all these places are meant to stimulate contact with something higher and for reflection, be it of spiritual or any other kind. I suppose I could feel the same way I felt in that church on the streets, in the park, at home or even on an airplane but I usually just don't take the time to think about it. For me, churches are just the places that are the easiest to reach and the most familiar to me because I was raised in an originally Christian country and as part of an initially Catholic culture.

Unfortunately I can't share any of this with Olaf. His rejection of Catholic Christianity based on some of its views and rules is too rigid for me. The views I mean are obvious, they're the Church's views on homosexuality, the position of women, sexuality, marriage, abortion rights, contraception, tolerance towards other religions et cetera. And I obviously share his opinions, but I know too much about the origins of Christianity and have spent much time investigating it to judge it negatively as a whole and to dismiss it that quickly. Christianity, like every religion I know of, started out as a good thing. It's all about finding the good in the world when you don't feel good. It's about hope and believing in changes for the better. Even if you're not in trouble and don't desperately need to find the good, it's still a nice idea that you could. This is something I admire and therefore I can't convict Christianity as a whole, even if the history of the secular organisation claiming to teach and rule by its founders' laws has given us ample reason to condemn it. Surely, disagreeing with some of the rules and opinions of the church doesn't necessarily mean rejecting it completely. There are too many people finding comfort in its teachings and in just the idea of its existence to make it wholly bad. Most of those rules and opinions are more or less shared by the Italian government and that doesn't make me want to leave or attack the country. There are positive things to be found in Italy, as there are in Christianity. Fortunately, it doesn't matter that I can't share this with Olaf, as it is a personal opinion and if I ever find my religion that will be a personal spiritual experience as well!

And there's another reason I enjoyed this Easter mass a lot. I understood about 75 per cent of what was said, even though most of the mass was in Italian and only some of the hymns were in Latin. Obviously Latin shouldn't have been a problem for me, although church Latin is quite different from the Latin I used to study, but I was quite proud of being able to understand the speeches and readings in Italian. I realise that church language is obviously very slow and repetitive because it's meant for the masses and that the hymns are repetitive because they are meant to be sung all together, but it still made me feel good about my level of Italian!!!

Anyway, ci vediamo, Fe

My lumps, my lovely lady lumps

Tempus fugit, tempus volat. Has it been that long since I wrote anything? I should really boost the number of posts I write per month, but hey, at least I've got plenty to say if I do it this way. And it gives me some time to reflect on what's really interesting to tell. So, I forgot to tell you in my last post that Lars and Rachel had also brought us a mini ping pong table... A mini ping pong table? Yes, a mini ping pong table! It's a ping pong table for mice. And strangely enough everybody loves it, except for me. So, you can imagine my heart didn't break when Olaf decided to take it to his office where it remains a means of merriment for all hard-working Bocconi PhD students in their building. By the way, if you haven't seen Alanis Morissette's cover of the Black Eyed Peas 'My lumps' yet, should watch on YouTube asap. It's awesome!!! The video parodies the moves and the image of the Black Eyed Peas which is completely in contrast with Alanis' normal behaviour. It's absolutely brilliant!

We've had some visitors the past two weekends and we've got visitors again now. The first weekend, Marie a uni Friend of Olaf's came to stay and taught us the hardships of proper shopping streaks. We shopped until we dropped and she was able to find most of the things she wanted. I was a bit less spendthrifty and contented myself with a nice new pair of trousers. The weekend after that my friends Cobie and Peter came to stay with us and we had a lovely time. I hadn't spoken to Cobie since Maartje's New Year's Eve party in Nijmegen so we obviously had a lot to catch up on. Moreover, I think I had met Peter only once or twice before a couple of years ago and this was the perfect way to get to know him a bit better. As Cobie and I are both board game fanatics (we used to be part of a group of friends that met every week to play games and we continued this tradition in a less intensive frequency with Margo after this group fell apart), we just had to play a lot of games. We did our very best to get them addicted to cafe international and I think we fairly succeeded. Neither Cobie nor I won ultimate risk but we enjoyed playing it immensely. Ultimate risk is the version of risk we used to play on game nights. We've changed the names of the countries, added some new assignments and have altered some of the rules. Consequently, this is a very strange way to play risk and people who didn't use to be part of our group, like Olaf and Peter, usually don't understand its appeal to us. Peter didn't mind because he won and Olaf won the round of trivial pursuit we played afterwards, so I suppose they were both happy - and maybe the fact that it was alcohol galore that night contributed somewhat.

Unfortunately, they also brought a nasty Dutch virus and I haven't been feeling well all week. I'm not exactly ill and don't need to stay home - I wouldn't even if I could, as there are two many public holidays this month and I fear its effects on my pay as it is. I had a splitting headache on Sunday, but that was probably just because of all the alcohol but ever since then my head feels as if it's filled with snot up to the extremities of my earlobes and whenever I blow my nose it just oozes yucky stuff. Seriously, I feel as if I've secreted most of my brain by now.

This has obviously had an effect on my work and it's safe to say that this hasn't been the most perfect week I've ever had. I had to start a new a course which starts at 9am twice a week - which was always going to suck but it was simply horrendous to start this week, because I had trouble breathing and couldn't sleep very well and getting up at 7 or 7.30 wasn't exactly an improvement. I also had to take over a one of Vanessa's courses (Vanessa is a former colleague who has recently moved to Belgium - why is it that everybody seems to be going to Belgium these days? What attraction does Belgium have that I've missed?) and this guy turned out to be a football reporter who specifically wanted to improve his football vocab. Now, I must admit that my knowledge of football is quite small in any language and that I really, utterly, majorly dislike football. So I was really worried about this, but he turned out to be very nice and we get on quite well. A third and last thing about my work is that Yarnie, my overseas boss at Corporate English, is temporarily back from New Zealand and wanted to have dinner with us all Tuesday night. I didn't feel well but I went anyway, because it was a good networking opportunity and about 50 per cent of my courses is going to finish within the next four weeks so I really need them to like me and give me new courses. When I arrived (late because I had to work until 8pm), there wasn't anyone there yet except for Caroline, Veronica, Yarnie and Scout (Caroline's dog which I am in with and which adores me) and they were all bitching on Peter who had forgotten to make a reservation. At that moment I decided to leave and I excused myself to go and get some money to be able to confer with Olaf privately. Fortunately, we had miraculously gotten a table while I was away and it turned out to be an extremely fun night and I got home way too late and a little drunk. This didn't really stimulate my healing process though...

Yesterday, Olaf, Idil and I went out to dinner at Más with Sebastiaan who had come to Milan on a rugby trip. It was nice seeing him again, even though he ended up throwing up in the middle of the street which supplied me with a nostalgic dose of vicarious shame (Non si fa! That is not just done in Milan!). I was really sorry for being tired and unwell and couldn't enjoy my time with him more but that's the way it goes. I have to say I don't understand their way of going on holiday though. There are about 35 of them and each year they go abroad to play a match against a foreign team and they usually turn this into a short holiday. However, instead of going sightseeing they like to sit a park and play drinking games all day. When I met Sebas they had been in Milan for almost two days and they hadn't even been into the city. I don't understand why they don't just invite a local team from Nijmegen to play a match in the park. This just seems like a waste of their money to me. Oh well, different people, different cultures...

I started writing this post this morning and then I stopped to go and do groceries, because Olaf was going to pick up Joost and Kim two of his friends from university from Centrale. When I was outside a disconcerting thing happened. So unfortunately, the last thing I have to share with you is not very pretty. When I had bought a pizza slice and was eating it while I was walking down the street in the direction of the supermarket, I noticed three young Moroccan boys in front of me walking in my direction. It was quite busy so I stepped aside to the wall to let them pass, but they were looking for trouble. They cornered me so I couldn't pass them anymore and then one of them deliberately hit my shoulder with his in passing causing me to launch what was left of my pizza slice into the crowd. It's clear that this was my fault. Isn't it? So when I shouted something like 'hey', he had every right to get angry and hit me, didn't he?! Anyway, I don't hit people, so I just reacted by making a threatening gesture and stepped up really close to him hoping to impress him with my stature (I may not be the largest person in the world but I'm still quite tall compared to most Italians), but unfortunately this backfired. As a result, they ganged up on me and one of them took hold of my head and pulled my forehead against his. He then started cursing me in Italian which made me laugh secretly. I suddenly realised the irony of the situation. He was now trying to scare me because he thought I was a Catholic Italian and therefore susceptible to curses. So I listened to him calmly, kept my hand on my bag because that's probably what they were after and didn't even take my sunglasses off. After that, I pulled my head away from him shook my head at him in disdain and just walked off, my sunglasses perfectly in place as to show him he was miles beneath me. Some bystanders, who - italiani di merda - hadn't even tried to lift a finger to help me, praised me for my composure. The funny thing is that the incident didn't scare me at all. What that did scare me was the thought I had afterwards, a thought I never thought I'd have. It was something along the lines of 'That's typically Moroccan, they are always out to cause trouble and no matter where they are they're always trying to steal your things'. Seriously, this country really does turn you unwittingly into a racist.

So, let's end on a happier note. I've really discovered YouTube now and have found many, many, many interesting things. And I love Tila Tequila, a girl with a name like that deserves to be famous. And her music is great, she's definitely the new Lil' Kim ('How many licks does it take 'till you get to the centre of the ...') or Khia ('My neck, my back, lick my pussy and my crack!'). Oh yeah...

A presto (spero), Fe