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

Pre-holiday exhilaration

Ciao tutti,
Just one last short update before we leave for Romania tomorrow morning. We had a lovely time at the lake with Belinda and Enrico. Here are some pictures:

Belinda, Enrico and me

Enrico and Belinda

Wherever we go we always take exactly the same picture

Beautiful skies over the lake...

And at night, we could see so many stars... It was a gorgeous old house, a beautiful lake and very good company. Friday night, we went to a local festival where the world-famous Valentina band were showing off and rocking the house down. The old folks living in the village decided that it was their turn to shine as well and treated us to some very interesting line dancing. Valentina was quite versatile but it didn't really matter what they played, rock, Italian pop songs, ballroom music, the old people just wouldn't stop line dancing! Olaf and Belinda joined them at some point and were obviously the stars of the evening...

We didn't have any plans for yesterday evening, but then Meghan facebooked that her new Dutch beau was in town and we just had to go out. So we went to La Padellaccia, stuffed up on pizza and subjected the poor lad to a questioning the Spanish Inquisition would have been envious of. Luckily, we approved of him so after finishing copious amounts of La Padellaccia's tasty house wine we decided to go dancing at the Johann Sebastian Bar. We hadn't been there for quite a while but Barbie still knew who Olaf was and we had a great time. Afterwards, we went back to our place to consume some more alcohol until we called the kids a taxi around 5 am. It was a lovely evening.

Naturally, we slept late this morning and have been spending most of today cleaning and preparing for our trip. Gotta go, gotta pack. I wish you all some very lovely weeks and hope you won't miss me too much. I'll be in Holland from 4th until 10th September, hope to see all you Dutchies then. But first things first, it's holiday time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

XXX, Fe

Luglio milanese

Ciao tutti,

It's time for another update and this one is going to be about people and how to spend a Milanese July. You see, it's hot, hothothothothothot, and I love it. So what if I can't seem to dry up all day? So what if I'm never presentable to clients anymore? So what if nobody really wants to take English classes and I consequently don't get to work much? It's summer and I'm in Italy. We've got clear blue skies, there's not a cloud in sight and the temperature is stable around 30 degrees Celsius. I've got enough time on my hands to go swimming, to lie and the park and read Homer (well actually, I haven't done that yet but I am planning to!) and get that suntan I so desperately want.

Work is all but finished. All courses that won't continue in September have ended by now and I have been substituting a bit to earn some extra cash but it definitely isn't a full-time job anymore. Which means I have loads of time to enjoy visitors and exactly those visitors are going to be the subject of the largest part of this post! Steef and Marieke finally arrived many hours later than planned but that didn't matter. We had been really excited and very proud to announce to them that the July sales would start that weekend which made us very happy to hit town on Sunday only to find out that... the sales wouldn't start until the Saturday after that! That was a bit of a disappointment but in the end we decided not to let this discourage us and to continue with our shop-a-thon as planned. I actually bought a lovely shirt to wear at Maartje and Edin's wedding in September (when Steef and I are going to be bridesmaid and pageboy, so we had to make sure we bought matching outfits) and another one for the summer at Zara. And it was a good thing I didn't wait until the sales started, because by the time I got to Zara the following weekend they were completely sold out!

It was Steef's second visit and Marieke's first so we also did some sightseeing. Evenings were filled with dinners at La Padellaccia and Mas and many, many games (I love Skip-Bo!). On Monday the three of us took the train to Como when Olaf had to work in order to join the sunshine from the lake but unfortunately it was cloudy and rained a little. Well, no harm done, because we had a lot of time to talk and catch up which was at least as important as Como. Here are some pictures.

Me and Marieke on the couch at home

Me and Steef

Marieke has such an amazing smile that we even look cute in black and white
I think Steef and I were pretending to be couple... so you can imagine the merriment!

The weekend after that my father came with his Barbershop quartet. Once every year the go to a random town to sing on street corners and see of they can earn some cash. And this year it was Milano, baby! They sang at the Galleria, in front of the Duomo, on Piazza Mercanti, inside the Castello and earned an amazing amount of 8 euros. It was a very lovely visit and I liked his friends a lot, even though I had been a bit worried about spending the weekend with 50 to 60-year-old men! We had some lovely food in the evenings and enjoyed the occasional bottle of wine...

And we also shot some little movies, here's an example

That Sunday there was a free concert at Piazza Duomo. We got to enjoy an interesting mix of Vivaldi's and Piazzolla's Four Seasons (both compositions were cut in parts and the seasons were paired together to emphasise contrast), while dying of mosquito bites and trying to soothe the pain with way to expensive bottles of beer...

That weekend the sales started but I didn't buy anything except for a pair of flip flops. That Wednesday it was notte bianca (when all the shops are open), but that didn't really yield any other positive shop results either. This weekend, Werner and José came to visit and they were well-prepared. They had studied nearly every single guide about Milan in existence and were able to tell me loads of things I didn't know yet. So, of course we had to go and discover. They didn't need much sleep so we spent two long days in the city meticulously investigating the Duomo (2,5 hours in total), the museum of Milanese architectural history through the ages in the Castello, Cimitero Monumentale, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (where I had never been before), a bunch of churches and of course just walking around. It's always fun to have study mates around and being to indulge in those useless interests we were crazy enough to study for all those years. The nights were filled with the usual dinners at La Padellaccia, Mas and Wasabi (sushi aperitivo) and many games I should have won but didn't. Saturday night we went to another free concert at Piazza Duomo. This time it was Giovanni Allevi, a very gifted Italian piano player whose music was able to keep a square filled with smart-mouthed Italians silent... Here are some pictures of Werner and Jo

Aren't they cute? They are convinced they never look good on pictures but I must disagree!

This morning, the took a train to Bologna and are planning to camp their way back via Florence, Pisa and Lucca. Good luck, kids, may the force be with you! When they had left, I was feeling fat and lazy so I decided it was time for a work-out and I went to the pool. Of course, I was really tired and made a little mistake. Even though I was tired, I finished my routine in good time and to reward myself I allowed myself some time in the sun to work on my tan. So I took off my cap and goggles, put them in my locker, closed it and went outside. After I had been lying there for a while, I started thinking about going home and getting my things. And then I realised that the keys to the locker were still attached to my goggles! So there I was, standing in my swimsuit without access to my things! After fidgeting with the lock for a while I decided to cut my losses and do the shameful but right thing. I told the lifeguard what had happened and with a compassionate look he got his pair of 2-meter tongs. With an excruciatingly loud sound he cracked my lock in two, gave me a deservedly sarcastic smile and walked off carelessly swinging the tongs over his shoulder. I couldn't help thinking that he must do this at least 15 times a day... Who designs a lock you can close without a key, anyway?!

A presto, Fe

Uffa nien!

Ciao tutti,
You must be thinking that you must be dreaming to hear from me again, but it's true! I'm back but only for a short while. I don't have that much to say but came across some nice pictures on Facebook which I just have to show you! Scroll down for them.

Uffa nien sta weekend, this is Milanese dialect for 'I didn't do anything this weekend'. Olaf's friend Andrea was staying with us and while they were doing the tour I spent the greater part of the weekend on my own. I slept a lot, read in the park while getting a tan, did housework (being the little housewife that I am) and in the evenings we went out to La Padellacia and Mas. We had a lovely time discussing and grading the men we saw on the streets... And there were a lot of men as tourists have started to arrive in Milan and the terraces have opened so the nice ones can display themselves! It turns out that we have quite dissimilar tastes in men though...

Anyway, I promised you some pictures and here they are. Just to give you an impression of some of the people I've been mentioning but who I never had photos of until now:

Olaf, Andrea and me. Olaf thinks that I look really sexy in this picture, but I can only see my second chin...

Marta, Idil and me at Dominik's goodbye party

Me and Marta at Annaïg's birthday party

Bex, Emily and me (last teacher meeting Corporate English)

Nissrine and me (same night)

With Paola, my Italian teacher and - need I say - a babe!

Ciao, Fe

PS By the way, you need to see this. I found it on YouTube. It's a spoof of an American psychic called Miss Cleo. The voice you're hearing is hers...

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....

Home is where the heart is

Ciao ciao,

Here I am again. I didn't have time to post anything during the heavy week I was telling you about - because it was crazy! - and after that I went to Nijmegen for the weekend. This was actually not as easy as it sounded, because the asshole Italians had of course planned an air traffic controllers strike on Monday and I couldn't afford to come back later as I get paid by the hour (the first available flight after that would have been on Thursday). I was quite close to crying that Friday afternoon, because I was really looking forward to seeing my friends and family again - and I was really tired from the week, which didn't make me feel strong, confident or decisive at all! I looked for some other weekends I could postpone my visit to, but, alas!, every Monday had the same problem. Seriously, why don't those evil Italians just realise that - even though I support the workers right to strike - enough is enough! You don't have to go on strike every two weeks to be taken seriously. And if you do, and you're not taken seriously, just give it up! Anyway, after a lot of deliberation and some tears, Olaf found a train I could take on Monday morning, which would cost me quite a lot of money (although of course not as much as missing all those lessons) but at least it would ensure my return to Italy on Monday. So, I went anyway.

And it was great. I am so glad that I went! I had been experiencing something a good friend of mine described as the expat's wives' syndrome. Apparently, it's quite common for partners of expats to get a backlash between 6 and 9 months after leaving their country to be with their partners. And although I am not the average expat wife - they are generally blond bimbo's who have absolutely nothing to do besides shopping and going to the gym and who don't have any friends except for other expat wives because they don't speak Italian (trust me, I've seen them!), whereas as I have a job, don't go to the gym, hardly ever go shopping, speak Italian and don't know any expat wives - I did come to Italy to be with Olaf. For those of you thinking I forgot one important difference between me and the average expat wives, yes, I realise that I am not a woman... it just seemed to 'duh' to mention. Well, to cut a long story short, I had been experiencing some doubts and had been wondering about whether or not I had made the right choice, whether or not I was happy here and whether or not I felt at home. The conclusion to the last question was that I do feel at home here in Milan and in our apartment and could definitely not go back to Nijmegen now, but that I do feel lonely here sometimes. The main reasons for this are that I usually don't feel very sociable after a full day of listening to students talk about whatever subjects they like and pretending to be interested in order to stimulate them to continue and that we usually have visitors every weekend. This means that I don't have a lot of time to make friends here and build on relationships. And when the only real friend I had made, Belinda, told me she was leaving to Belgium with her new husband, something snapped inside me and I started feeling really bad and alone. This situation has been resolved now but was the cause of some heavy weeks and some tensions between me and Olaf. But fortunately, we can talk about anything and when I finally mustered the courage to talk to him about it, we spent a night talking and crying. But that night helped a lot. The most important reason I felt so bad was that I kept it inside and didn't speak to him about it. Just talking about it was a load off my mind.

So, my trip to Holland was very important to me. When I went I expected to find a place I didn't belong anymore, which I hoped would make me realise Milan is definitely my home now. But the reality couldn't have been further from the truth. Nothing has changed, nothing at all. Of course, people have grown older a little, some of them have changed jobs, others have graduated in the mean time or are in the process of graduating, but in general the people there were still pretty much as they had been when I left. I felt very welcome and part of the different 'groups' again (my family, for instance, or my study mates). This disturbed me a bit the last time I went to Holland, but this visit it was different. The familiarity, openness and easy acceptance gave me confidence and fortified me. It felt like everybody was unconsciously saying that, if I ever decide I want to come back, I won't have to start all over again but that we can just pick up where we left off. This felt good, because I did feel bad about leaving a lot of people like that. I've always liked being the shoulder to cry on and being easy to talk to - oh yes, I reckoned myself to be the perfect little psychologist! - and found it difficult to leave especially those people who were going through some rough times. I mean, I don't delude myself that I'm more than I am, but I've always wanted to be there for people and to try to help them as best as I could, even if all I could do was listen. And the familiarity was extended even this far, people still weren't afraid to tell me what was bothering them or just to cry. Thank you for still wanting to share your life with me, even though I left you quite suddenly in pursuit of my own goals! But during this year, I've come to accept that people will always have problems and that it's not my responsibility to solve everything even though I might want to - and trust me, that's an important realisation for someone as self-centered as me! So this time, it was easier to leave. And even though this trip didn't have the expected result at all, it was good in a completely different way. My doubts are over and the knowledge that Nijmegen could easily be home again has given me my choice back. And after careful consideration, it turns out that I'm happy with the choice I have made and don't feel like changing it.

So, I came back and went back to work, which was just the same boring stuff - boring to speak about, obviously, not to do. Belinda left for Kortrijk on Tuesday, only to return by car with Enrico on Thursday to move their stuff. So we went out for bye-bye drinks with them on Thursday night. This was fun and didn't last long - as we both had an early start on Friday - but unfortunately it ended badly. Belinda's purse was stolen from underneath her chair and this freaked her out because she thought her passport was in there. She's South African and has only just gotten her permesso di soggiorno based on her marriage to Enrico, but without a passport she wouldn't have been able to leave the country and go to her new home in Belgium. Fortunately, the passport turned out to be in their apartment and she's just missing some replaceable stuff.

My sister Mignon and her boyfriend Sander had already arrived on Wednesday for a long weekend. They wanted and needed some time to themselves at first so they spent two nights together in a hotel. This was the only way we could have done it because Italians don't celebrate Ascension Day (seriously, they celebrate these really weird Christian holidays nobody in the Netherlands has ever even heard of but they just ignore Ascension Day?!) and we had to work on Thursday and Friday. And we've agreed not to have visitors outside of the weekend because it takes up to much time and energy and our (mainly my) work suffers from it. So they got their time together and we got the time to work. I finished really early on Friday and went to get them at their hotel. And it was lovely. Because they had already walked around town on Thursday and had seen a lot of the sights, we could spend a significant part of Friday just lying in the park catching up, chatting and gossiping. Our nights were filled with food at Mas and La Padellaccia, booze and games, games, games, as we obviously had to introduce them to Cafe International...

On Saturday, we went to Como and had a look around this gorgeous place, which wasn't packed with tourists yet as it is still low season. We walked along the lake shore, admired the local Duomo and traversed the lake by pedalo (or "pedalò" in Italian and "waterfiets" in Dutch) where we indulged in some childish fun. We had a lovely time and unfortunately they had to leave again today because tomorrow's just another working day. So they left and we cleaned the house... And now we've got the evening to ourselves. So I'm going to leave you now with a cordial goodbye and some pictures.

Just look at that cute couple!

Me tough helmsman!

Captain Olaf

First mate Sander

Mignonneke is a quite a dish, isn't she?

For more pictures and some interesting home movies, see Olaf's web album: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/ojdegroot/Como190507.

Ciao, Fe

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