Happy birthday to me!

Ciao tutti,

Guess what?! It's my birthday! Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy biiiiiiirthday dear Fedor! Happy birthday to me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyone who'd like to wish me the same thing, please leave a comment. ;-) Well, as I'm not really celebrating today, there is really no reason to tell you how I'm spending it. Because I'm not doing anything, except for trying to get rid of my hangover. Wanna find out how I got it? Keep on reading or just skip to the end the text!

Life's going well. Not much to say really and I can imagine it gets boring to read the same things over and over again in every single post I publish. So, in order not to lose my precious audience - that is growing smaller and smaller as it is anyway - I won't bore you with phrases like 'I'm enjoying my work' and 'I've got interesting students'. The only interesting thing I have to tell about my job is that I'm in need of more work. Several of my courses are ending over the next few weeks and I suddenly realised I don't have any new ones to compensate for that. Need to work on that!

Moving on to happier topics, I finally managed to go swimming. I went at a time when they were actually open and I didn't have to wait at all, how amazing is that???? I'm not really happy about the time because it's at 9.30pm but at least I now know that there is at least one hour a week I can go swimming. It was really busy though, which I initially didn't really like because swimming with 12 people a lane in a 25 meter pool just isn't perfect. But on the other hand it forces you to get into a certain rhythm and makes sure you can't pause too long. So, in the end it didn't take me as long as I had calculated it would take and it was really good exercise. So, I guess we'll continue doing this.

Last weekend, my uni friend Fomsjk (Femke) and her boyfriend Ruud came over for a visit. They were the first visitors we had had in a long time, as the last ones were Bart and Tineke who visited us in August. We were definitely ready to open the hotel doors again, although I don't think we'll be as busy as last year. We had a lovely time, did the usual tour of Milan, ate a lot, drank well (but not too much) and played loads of games. I didn't win any of them, but I did enjoy original Cluedo, the Cluedo card game, Trivial Pursuit and Café International. Here are some pics:


On Thursday, Olaf left to go to a conference in Utrecht and my parents, my little brother and his girlfriend arrived to celebrate my birthday with me this weekend. My mother arrived early because she had been on holiday in Pisa before taking the train to Milan and this gave us a nice chance to catch up before meeting the others. Their plane arrived very late and we didn't have time to spend more time together than an hour of two because I had to go home relatively early in order to get enough sleep to be able to work the next day. They spent Friday sightseeing in the rain while I taught my last lessons and we went to La Padellaccia afterwards for some ginormous pizzas. I have to admit that - to my surprise and shame - I just wasn't able to finish my pizza. We finished that evening at the vineria and drank some really good wine.

Yesterday, we went to the city centre and my parents and I visited Cimitero Monumentale after that, while Ward and Machteld went shopping. Olaf came back that afternoon and we had dinner in a lovely restaurant where I had never been before. It was relatively cheap and the great thing about it was that drinks were included in the price and you could drink as much wine as you wanted!!! As we are proper Dutch people, I doubt they made a very big profit... We continued at our place for a lot more wine and I don't remember anymore at what time we went to bed, but it was a great night!! This is the reason I'm hung over today but at least I didn't have to do anything. My poor family had to catch their flight back home. I can only imagine how they must have felt...

And of course there were prezzies. Beautiful candle holders, Dutch St. Nicholas candy, a book and money to spend on a trip to a destination of our choice to visit another one of Hillman's wonders were much appreciated, but the most amazing gift of all was given to me by my beloved hubby. Olaf actually got me a vacuum cleaner, a proper Hoover! Hoove! Hoove! Hoove! (Yes, I know that I have to turn it on and not just make the sound, thanks Eddie...). I am such a housewife!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

XXX, Fe

Travesty

Ciao all,

Life has obviously gone on since my last post, so I thought it was time to write something again. As the year is ending and summer is approaching a lot my courses have finished or are finishing, so I have been busy with end of course tests. And besides this, it was scorching hot for a few weeks, which was absolutely lovely but also didn't make me want to do much except lying in the sun and getting a tan. Stefano, CTL's course manager, started at Corporate English to help out as well and he has been a nice addition to our team. It's always nice to have people around you who are nice and know what they are doing, so I'm very happy that he is now my colleague at both my companies!

The Wednesday after Mignon and Sander left, there was a teacher meeting at Corporate English. As I have told you before, this is usually just an excuse to - after the necessary hour or so of getting updated on everything that's happening and exchanging teaching experiences to learn from each other - go out, have dinner and get drunk, completely paid for by the boss. I had to work at CTL until 21h30 that night, so I joined them for cocktails. It was lovely to see everyone in a social setting and to meet my new colleagues (as Corporate English has been expanding a lot), even though this was the night of the champion's league final between AC Milan and Liverpool. Because AC Milan won, the city obviously went crazy. There were people shouting and blowing their horns all night which on the one hand sort of diminished our quiet evening out, but on the other hand increased the atmosphere immensely. I am no football fan, and if I were I certainly wouldn't support AC Milan, but it is nice to see people this excited and laughing all the time. Maybe there's something about football I just don't get after all... Anyway, I had to get up early the next morning so I said my goodbyes around 1 o'clock to get my much needed five hours of sleep. The others stayed out until 4am though and judging by their faces the next day, I was very happy I had made the wise decision. It was hard enough to fall asleep as the italiani di merda didn't stop shouting and honking until late.

That Friday I went to the theatre to see a rendition of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew by Propeller, an all-male English theatre company. It was hilarous, as the male and female roles were both played by men which of course incited a lot of laughter and comic situations. Combined with the fact that the play is a comedy anyway, I of course laughed my head off! Although the play is not considered by everyone to be completely politically correct (in the end the shrew is tamed and transformed into a goodly little housewife who obeys her husband in everything he asks of her), I thought it was nice - though a bit harsh at times. The important thing is to remember that the whole thing is a play within a play designed to entertain a drunken madman, so it's not to be taken seriously but as a malicious joke played on the drunk guy, which makes up for a lot even if Shakespeare doesn't make clear that the play is, in fact, meant as a joke.

That Saturday Olaf's mother Ingrid and her friend Hennie arrived and we spent some lovely days together. Unfortunately the temperature dropped phenomenally and it rained all the time, so the visit wasn't as optimal as it could have been. However, we made the best of it and amused ourselves with food (La Padellaccia and Mas on the weekend and Olaf took them to Wasabi on Monday when I had to work), drinking, games (Uno rocks!), Cimitero Monumentale, High-Tech and of course the antiques market on Sunday, which was one of the main reasons they had chosen that weekend.

The week after that it rained, rained, rained and was cold, too cold if you ask me - although the Milanese didn't seem to mind. I mean, not that I was disproportionally cold, but it's just not the kind of weather I moved to Italy for. Anyway, last weekend was another free weekend, meaning without guests. On Friday evening we went to Dominik's goodbye party (Dominik is a visiting student at Bocconi and one of Olaf's friends) and on Saturday we didn't do anything. We slept really late and decided not to go out that evening because it was raining - even though it was Notte Bianca (or "White Night", which means all the shops were supposed to be open). We just stayed in, cleaned our house and watched movies that evening. We also finally had time to plan and book our holiday, so we spent some lovely hours on that! It turned out that the prices of all the flights to Russia had gone up which took it out of our price range to go there as we had been discussing for a while. So, this is our itinerary: on 20th August, we're flying to Bucharest in Romania from whence we'll take the train into the Ukraine (possibly via Chisinau in Moldova) to Odessa, Kyiv and Lviv and will end up near Krakow in Poland. From there we'll take a plane to Holland on 3th or 4th September where we'll stay until 10th. So, for anyone who's interested, we'll be in Holland again very soon and will stay for almost a week!

On Sunday, we went to Cimitero Monumentale because there were a lot of arty performances. The weather turned out to be lovely and it was an unexpectedly very hot day. We saw a jazz choir, some theatrical dance (the performers of which might have been presenting existing statues at Cimitero, but we're not sure) and waltzing on stilts between the graves, which gave it all a magical effect. And as has been said many times before, by me as well as other people, there is no way that words can be as powerful and comprehensive as words, so please just look at the pictures. I hope you'll be able to catch some of the magical and mysterious atmosphere:

The jazz choir which was amazing

A couple of theatrical dancers pretending to be.... well, zombies was all I could thing of!

Another theatrical dancer working herself into a sweat imitating what seemed to be a bull scratching its hooves on the ground in preparation of attack

It's amazing how the waltzers could coordinate to dance the familiar patterns while being on stilts

It wasn't just a dance but also a little show, with mock sword fights and balloons

Olaf has got me hooked on Facebook, which is like Hyves but a more mature version, and although I haven't gone as bonkers as he has about it, it is most definitely a nice way to communicate with friends who are far away. After writing the rest of this post, I had a short interview with my boss at CTL who wants to talk to me about extending my contract and 'making it a bit more definite' and we're meeting two weeks from now, which has put me in a good mood!

Ciao a tutti e buonanotte, Fe

PS By the way, if you've ever wanted to chat with God, try to ask her some questions at http://www.titane.ca/igod/, it's hilarious....