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

Bad music & British guests

Ciao tutti,

This weekend we had a visit from Matt and Antony, two friends of ours from Coventry. After we had both finished work on Friday, we quickly went to do groceries, cleaned our apartment, got a take-away pizza which we ate standing up and rushed out to get to Mike's birthday party. Mike is my coordinator at CTL and he had been nice enough to invite us his birthday and even though I don't know him that well (all our contact so far has been work-related and he's leaving Italy in a few months anyway), I thought it would be a good idea to pay a little visit from a networking point of view (After all, the boss might have been there, but he wasn't). Even though we really didn't have time to. We stayed there for about an hour and, since Mike was busy greeting his friends and on his way to getting really drunk, we had a good time drinking and laughing with Stefano (CTL secretary) and his girlfriend Elke. We even got a little glimpse of poor, sick Caroline (my boss at Corporate English and one of Mike's friends) who had dragged herself out of bed to congratulate Mike and his friends and who arrived just as we were leaving.

And then we left in a hurry to get to Centrale to pick Matt and Ant up from the bus from Bergamo. That night we went to the birreria and got quite drunk. We had a great weekend with them sleeping late, playing 'Celebrity Identity' (or something, the English version of the Dutch 'Wie Ben ik?'), shopping (or well, window-shopping anyway) in the golden triangle and drinking wine at a hip bar which was unfortunately infested with chavs watching a football game. On Saturday night, we went for pizza at La Padellaccia and afterwards to the already infamous Johann Sebastian Bar with Marta and her boyfriend whom we had never met before. We obviously got completely hammered and I don't remember much from that moment on, except for kissing the crack-head barbie DJ who didn't know what was going on anymore goodbye and Ant falling on top of a woman on the way back. We spent Sunday relaxing and getting a tan in the park, as the weather was incredibly lovely. After a very early dinner at Más we took Matt and Ant back to Centrale and put them on the bus. We were knackered because of their visit and we very happy to be able to go home and watch 'The Queen' - which is really good by the way, I recommend it to you all.

During this weekend, someone at some point mentioned Whigfield and this triggered a trip down memory lane. We listened to her album and started wondering what ever happened to her, as you do (Why, what do you mean? Do you never wonder what's happened to those one day flies from the nineties?). As it turns out she's 37, still in the music business as a singer and a producer and has been releasing songs nearly every year for the past fifteen years. Who would have thought... Her songs are still infinitely childish and nonsensical of which her latest hits 'Boom Boom' and 'Who's your Daddy?' are ample evidence. She's said to be pretty famous in hip countries such as Colombia and Venezuela. Moreover, she has apparently also composed and recorded Panama's new national anthem (we are sure she was paid by the Panamanian government - or at least by the tourism industry - for writing and singing a song of which the lyrics consist of solely one line, the repetitive 'Welcome to Panama'). Isn't that interesting? Who ever knew what happened to her??

To round this post up, I received a really weird call from Elisa, a receptionist from the Corriere della Sera who was really lovely and occasionally used to have a chat with while waiting for my students. Apparently she didn't work for Corriere della Sera anymore, but wanted to send me her mother's love (I have once had a conversation with her mother who was waiting for her to finish work while I was waiting for my student. Se also mumbled something about an incorrect number in their computer system, which I found extremely strange since she didn't work for that company anymore. She hardly spoke any English but didn't want Veronica, the school's secretary to translate but just wanted to speak to me. She kept going on and either she didn't say what she was calling about or my Italian is just still too shitty. The call really freaked me out. It seemed like she had been going through a lot of trouble to get a hold of me and Vero seems to thinks she's in love with me... Anyway, I still don't understand the call.

Oh, and by the way, it wasn't my student who died, fortunately. Although I am genuinely sorry for whoever it was, I'm just really glad my student is all right. That's all for today. Tootles!

Fe

My very first hangover

Happy Cuddle Day everyone! Cuddles from me to you all....

Yesternight was a good night! After having worked all week and having gotten a rest on Saturday morning it was definitely party time yesterday. Olaf had gotten it into his head that he was going to try to make sushi himself for the first time, so we invited Idil and Meghan for dinner at our place.

Olaf had been in the kitchen all day - and I had been enjoying myself reading and watching movies on the couch as I wasn't allowed in the kitchen - and he succeeded admirably, of course (I hadn't expected otherwise). And he didn't just make sushi, but he prepared a four course 'fusion' meal. We started off with artichokes with three different dips, which I think he did for me because I absolutely love artichokes prepared this way! Then we had Japanese miso soup in the very cute new little bowls we had bought at the international food store on Thursday. The sushi itself was wonderful! Olaf had prepared some pieces with salmon, some with tuna, some with shrimps and some vegetarian ones with spring onions and they were gorgeous and tasted divine. The last course was a lovely home-made pineapple carpaccio which was the perfect end to a perfect dinner. However, we didn't stop drinking when the meal was finished, obviously.

Of course Olaf had prepared way too much, so he's having some pieces of sushi a snack while I'm typing this. So would I, if I wasn't so f*cking hung over. At the moment I'm experiencing my first official hangover since I have been in Italy. And it was about time. I have never gone that long without a hangover! Well, not since I was eighteen or so anyway. So I'm hurting but really proud of myself right now. We went out to the Johann Sebastian Bar (Don't you love the name? Yes, it's as 'fout' as it sounds!) again and it was as crazy as the time we went there before when Bastiaan and Anne were visiting. The fifty year-old eastern European botoxed barbie doll DJ singing in her incomprehensible accent to famous songs was livening up the place and the transsexual/transvestite was entertaining all the dirty old men who were obviously there to get laid by one of the not-so-pretty and not-so-young women. It was a blast, of course! We drank way too much, I smoked way too much and Meghan kept falling over because she was really drunk. The transsexual/transvestite (I didn't have the heart or the linguistic capability to ask him/her what he/she really was) and I actually sandwiched Meghan on the dance floor. On the way back I had to walk behind Olaf and follow him closely in order not to fall over or lose my way. It was lovely. I enjoyed that immensely.

So, today, my head hurts and doing all the dishes was horrific but that's all finished now. I'm happily settled on the couch thinking back on a great weekend. We're just going to stay in tonight, get some kebabs and watch a movie. That's the only thing I'm capable of right now. What a night...

Have a good week, everybody!

xxx, Fe