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

Tempus fugit

Ciao tutti,

How time flies! I've just realised that I haven't posted anything for two weeks, even though it feels like yesterday I wrote my last post. Time does fly when you're having fun - or at least when you've got a lot to do! Last weekend, we got up extremely early on Saturday (7:30 am) to go to Mantova with Belinda and Enrico. We went by car and arrived around 11 am because we had somehow managed to dodge all major freeways- well, that's what you get when you ask a woman to navigate...

Anyway, Mantova is a lovely city. It's really small and has only about 50,000 inhabitants, which means it's not much bigger than it was in the Middle Ages. The cool thing about this city is that it used to be surrounded by three artificial lakes for defense purposes. Two of these lakes still exist, so the medieval town centre is perched on this man-made island directly adjoining them and this has preserved much of its historical appearance. Here are some pictures.

The castle courtyard

Palazzo del Té

The three of us in front of the cathedral

Me and Belinda on a bridge over the pond in the Palazzo del Té's courtyard

Belinda is from South Africa and Enrico is Italian. They're getting married in about two months and, unfortunately, they're going to move away shortly after that. Enrico has found a job in Belgium, so they're moving to Kortrijk. I am really happy for him that he has got this opportunity and for the both of them that they will be earning significantly more than they do in Italy so they will actually be able to find a house bigger than a shoebox - as housing and food are much cheaper in Belgium. This is also really good for Belinda, because she's been having some trouble learning Italian and it will be easier for her to find an English-speaking job in Belgium - and people speak English in Belgium, whereas communicating with Italians can still be very difficult since they absolutely refuse to speak any language but Italian. However, I'm a bit sad that she's leaving. She is the best friend I have made since moving to this country and I'll miss her when she leaves. Talking about Belinda, here's a nice picture of her.

After returning from Mantova, we quickly went home for a change of clothes and were off again to Caroline's (my boss at Corporate English) birthday party. We didn't think we were going to be there for very long because we were really tired from getting up early that morning and the preceding week, but you know how good parties can change your mind. We had a lovely time. I didn't really know what to get her so I gave her a book which was meant as a joke. It was The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, I hope you catch the irony. A lot of my colleagues were there and Mike showed up as well. We had some lovely drinks, some interesting talks, met some nice new people - and unfortunately some boring ones as well - and enjoyed Caroline's doorman's lovely Indian curry. Although it is never a good idea to get really drunk at your boss' birthday party, I got quite close - mainly because I was very tired - and I suppose it's a good thing I didn't find out there were people doing tequila shots until the bottle had already been finished (but I was quite upset about it at the time, "those filthy thieves, they stoles it from us").

We just stayed in bed for the rest of that weekend and from Monday on it was business as usual. This weekend, Lars and Rachel (Olaf's brother and his wife) graced us with a visit, which was lovely. We walked around town, did some shopping, played loads of trivial pursuit and café international, had the usual gorgeously enormous pizzas at La Padellaccia and enjoyed some Más specials (gigantic cocktails filled with alcohol - they don't really know what to do with their alcohol at Más so they always just seem to put in some extra), enjoyed lunch at Corso Como and visited the Cimitero Monumentale and looked at all the fabulous new things at High-Tech. Lars and Rachel left us early this morning and after going back to bed and sleeping some more we got up and cleaned our apartment. So now, we've got our Sunday evening all to ourselves!

I haven't mentioned my work much the last few posts, but that's just because it is going really well. I've got loads of hours and teaching keeps me busy for the largest part of the week. I've become confident enough to know which lessons I really need to prepare and which are quite standard or easy and therefore don't need much preparation. There are some lessons I don't prepare at all anymore, because I know we're just going to have a conversation about how the students' week has been, to read the newspaper or to check a letter or email they've written. I'm working long days though, which can be annoying from time to time. When I was starting out as a teacher, I needed as many hours as I could get as fast as I could get them and this meant I accepted whatever they offered me. Now that I've got enough hours, I've got the luxury of being able to be more selective in the new courses they're offering me. Fortunately, some of my early morning courses are ending which will give me the opportunity to reorganise my schedule and maximise my efficiency and work enjoyment. And it will give some more time to do my own things at night. And then there's always Alleva to make me happy. Studio Alleva is a law firm I work for on Fridays and they cancel 3 out of 4 of their lessons. They have now reached the point where they're not allowed to cancel anymore and as of this week I just get paid whether or not they have their lessons. Now THAT is a good way to start each weekend!

Ciao, Fe