Out of Touch

Now that I am living in what I consider to be a third world country in some ways, I mean Italy, I have got out of the loop on some things.

One of those things is television. As I mentioned in my 4 Things post, I don't have what we North Americans would consider as cable here. As such, watching tv is no longer something I do. Thank god I have a computer and the internet, or I think I would truly go insane.

And so, I have no idea what tv shows are on anymore. This became painfully obvious to me when my friends did thier own 4 Things post on their blogs. They all watch Corner Gas and I have no idea what it is.

What is it??? What is it??? What is it???

Someone! Anyone! Please enlighten me! I simply MUST know!!!

What the???

I was shopping in the supermarket at the end of my street (the one I went into all bloodied and broken) tonight when I saw the strangest thing. I was getting some more flour since I had just used the last of mine yesterday making pancakes, and I looked up to see some "Manitoba Flour." This caused me to do a double take for two reasons:

1) The word Manitoba is on a package of something in Italy

2) There was a big ol' American Flag on the package.

(For those of you not in the 'know,' Manitoba is NOT in the United States. No, it is a part *sigh* of Canada. (That sigh was for you Damsel))

So, I stood there contemplating the package for a moment, wondering if somehow there was a reasonable explaination for a Canadian product having an American flag on it. Nothing reasonable-sounding enough came to mind, so I picked up the package and started reading:

"This flour is made with blah, blah, blah type of wheat. This wheat comes from a Canadian area in North America, called Manitoba, which was named after the indians that lived there......[I stopped reading at this point]"

Riiight. The Canadian area of North America. I'll remember that.....Oh, you know Italy, the southern part of FRANCE!!!

News flash: This just in! Canada is its own country! *shock*

No wonder the rest of the world just lumps us (Americans and Canadians) all together. Damn flour package......*mutter mutter*

The iPod Oracle

Mez's blog is just a haven of timewasting stuff today! Thanks Mez. This is way more fun than thinking about my inquiry question project for my on-line course, or planning this week's lessons.

This is the iPod (or iTunes) Oracle Meme. You stick your iPod, etc. on shuffle, and let the songs answer the questions. The results are actually pretty funny!

1. What do you think of me iPod Mini?
Atrevido-Orishas
(Spanish: daring, or venturesome. Not a bad start)

2. Will I have a happy life?
Guerras Perdidas- Bacilos
(Spanish: Lost Wars. Hmmmmm.....)

3. What do my friends really think of me?
Beautiful Soul-Jesse Mcartney
(That's nice!)

4. Do people secretly lust after me?
Hold onto the Nights - Richard Marx
(Is that a yes???)

5. What should I do with my life?
Boogie Wonderland - Earth, Wind, and Fire
(I knew it! I knew I should just give up everything and dance, dance, dance!)

6. Why must life be so full of pain?
Incense and Peppermints - Strawberry Alarm Clock
(Wow! Who knew it could be so simple? Down with incense! Down with peppermints!)

7. How can I maximize pleasure during sex?
No Sky is Blue - Emmanuel Carella
(So are you telling me I should just give up then? *sigh*)

8. Will I die happy?
You're Beautiful - James Blunt
(Is that supposed to make me happy enough to die?)

9. Can you give me some advice?
Livin' on a Prayer - Bon Jovi
(AMEN!)

10. What do you think happiness is?
Giugno '84 - Tiziano Ferro
(Italian: June '84. Well, I guess we are all screwed on that one)

11. What's my favourite fetish?
Not Myself - John Mayer
(ROFL! How funny, and relieving at the same time)

~Life's Extra Questions~

12. What song should be played at my funeral?
Estoy Aqui- Shakira
(Spanish: I Am Here. How funny, since I will be.)

13. Am I a good person?
End of a Century - Blur
(Excellent)

14. Is the universe neverending?
Si Tu Te Vas - Juan Luis Guerra
(Spanish: If You Go. Well, I don't like to think that I am the one responsible for the end (or lack thereof) of the universe but....that's what the oracle says. Sorry all.)

15. Am I an idiot for doing this?
The Reason - Hoobastank
(The reason...for doing this? It seemed like fun. Does that make me an idiot?)

4 Things.....

Found this on Mez's blog, so here are my 4 things.

4 Jobs You Have Had in Your Life (in Chronological Order):

-Sales Associate (for 10 years! The first and longest running job, although I worked at three different stores, mind you)
-Babysitter in the Childminding Service at the YMCA (that was before that crazy guy started stalking me there)
-ESL Teacher
-Teacher

4 Movies You Could Watch Over and Over:

-Clue (NOT Clue-LESS, but Clue--as in based on the ParkerBrothers boardgame. I have actually watched it 6 times in a row one Satruday when I was sick. I think I know all the lines)
-The Wizard of Oz
-White Christmas
-Love Actually

4 Places You Have Lived:

-Toronto, Canada,
-Las Vegas, USA
-Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
-Padova, Italy

4 TV Shows You Love to Watch:

*these might be a little outdated since I don't watch TV anymore. All I get right now is free Italian cable, which amounts to MTV, and a lot of Italian infomercials*

-The Simpsons
-Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends
-The Amazing Race (when it was on, and when it wasn't the family version)
-Sex and the City


4 Places You Have Been on Vacation: (ONLY 4???)

-Mexico (Acapulco, Ixtapa, Tiajuana)
-Jamaica, Cuba and the Dominican Republic (they are all in the Caribbean, so they count as one) -Italy
-England and Budapest (it was all one trip so that counts as one too)

4 Websites You Visit Daily: (not blog sites?)

-hotmail
-York U website for my online AQ course that I am taking
-msn.ca
-International School websites of some kind

4 of Your Favourite Foods:

-platanos maduros
-tiramisu
-perogies
-caesar salad

4 Places You Would Rather Be Right Now: (Now that's an easy one!)

-on a beach in a warm country, like the Dominican Republic
-in the warm, thermal baths in Budapest
-somewhere on the east coast of Australia
-home in Toronto for my visit already instead of having to wait three more weeks

4 Bloggers You Are Tagging:

All y'all!

Five Fun Facts About Fog

I've got my head in the clouds. Literally. It has been foggy for the past week, during which time I have learned some intersting facts about la nebbia.

1) Fog smells. It smells, well, like FOG. It has a smoke-but-not-smoke odour to it. Not overly pleasant I might add.

2) Fog gets frozen. Frozen fog is strange stuff. It pelts your face when you are riding your bicycle, but not in the way that snow or rain does. It is more like a mist of ice--similar to when you are at Niagara Falls in the winter.

3) You can see frozen fog in the air at night. The light hits the little crystals, and it looks like sparkels in the air. It's as if you are in a snow-globe of sparkles.

4) Fog makes it hard to breathe. In the words of one of my students when leaving school the other day: "Oh look Sarah! La nebbia. Now we will all get bronchio-pulmonia!"

5) Fog is 100% humidity. 100%!!!

Run, Run, As Fast As You Can

Well, I've started running (perhaps more like jogging). I know. I am pretty surprised about it myself. But I just had to do something.

I think it was Thursday that pushed me over the edge. All I know is that I left school in desperate need of working up a sweat just to burn off all that stress. If I had just come home and stayed in like usual, I would have gone mad.

So I got home and more or less told Alison we were going running. She runs already, so I knew I wouldn't have much convincing to do on her part. We ran for about a half an hour, which I think is pretty good since a) I don't run as a form of excercise, b) that really was my very first run ever, and c) I haven't worked out since I left Toronto. Afterwards I felt so great that I decided to keep it up.

Today is now my third day going for a run, and I think I am doing pretty well. I mean, I haven't keeled over yet, so that's gotta count for something right? I am going to go every other day for at least 30 minutes. It's better than nothing, especially since I have not joined, and will not join, a gym here in Padova (I just can't bring myself to spend roughly $70 CDN per month when the gyms have one excercise bike, one treadmill, no cross-trainers, and one muscle toning class--no step or pilates).

And It's Only Thursday

Well I must say it has been quite the week in Miss Sarah's second grade class, and it ain't over yet.

First thing Monday morning one of my lovely students threw up all over the floor. Luckily I had my planning meeting at that time, so I only got to hear all about it (and smell it when I went up to my room to get something), but trust me, that was enough.

Tuesday morning one of the kids in my math group drew a big fat naked picture of the male music teacher in his math notebook, instead of doing his work (Mez, I can now totally relate to your picture story. I thought the damn thing was hilarious myself. What is it with music and dirty pictures anyways?).

While I was showing the principal the music teacher's portrait, I noticed that it had begin to snow--light, powdery snow. And it kept snowing all day, which meant the kids couldn't go out for recess or lunch. By the time we went home after the staff meeting, it had progressed to big, fluffy, Canada-style flakes.

When we woke up Wednesday morning, there was snow all over the trees and things, but not on the ground. It was all wet and melty. Which of course meant that the kids couldn't go out for recess and lunch again. Joy. For those of you who don't know, keeping kids locked up in a room for 7 and a half hours straight is not a good thing. At least mine had gym yesterday so they could run around for a bit. Not that that matters at 3:30 in the afternoon, but still. To top it all off, one of my students has pink eye, so I have been administering drops twice a day. Since when did I become a nurse? Of course he is the silly kid, so he takes that opportunity to walk around like a mummy bumping into things after I have put the drops in his eyes.

Then today it was icy in the morning, so guess what??? That's right!!! Wet play for recess and lunch AGAIN!!!!! I am telling you, by 3:15 today, we were all ready to lose it!!! If we have wet play again tomorrow, I am going to boycott and send the kids out anyways. It is either that or lose what little is left of my sanity!

One thing I did get a chuckle out of today was our science lesson. We are studying the human body and making body cut-outs and gluing our organs on them. Today was brain and face day. It is really funny to hear yourself say:

"Do you have a brain?"
"Where's your brain?"
"Why don't you have a brain?"

and hearing them say:

"I need a brain."
"I don't have a brain."
"I lost my brain."

I think my assistant and I had more fun than the kids with that one.

Tomorrow *should* be ok? My kids have an extra Italian lesson to make up from last week when the teacher wasn't there, so at least I won't have them all day tomorrow like I usually do. My only hope is that we go out for recess and lunch. *hope, hope, hope*

Dumplings ARE Cute!

Inspired by my recent trip to Hungary, I decided to make Chicken Paprika with Dumplings (a typical Hungarian dish) for dinner on Saturday night as a sort of welcome for our new roommate.

For those of you not abreast of the current situation, Gigi quit at the end of last term and flew back to San Francisco. Now Alison and I have a new roommate named Eric, who is quite conveniently also Alison's boyfriend. He is also from Canada and is working at the school as an assistant.

Anyways, on with my dinner story:

I had to make a few changes to the chicken recipe since sour cream doesn't seem to exist in Italy. I substituted plain yogurt. I also made dumplings instead of using egg noodles.

I must say it turned out quite well. Although next time I might cut down on the paprika just a little...maybe 4 teaspoons instead of 5.

The best part was making the dumplings. They really are so cute floating around in the water all irregularly shaped and puffy. No wonder "dumpling" is a term of endearment!

Travel Bug's Christmas Chronicles, Pt. II

I have been back in Padova for three days now, and figure it is about time I finished up with my Christmas vacation, although after New Year's, can it really be that interesting?

December 29, 2005:

Arrived in Budapest and settled in at the hostel. Met some of the people staying there. Went out for a walk around 7 (sans map because I am stubborn like that) to get something to eat, but ended up at a grocery store and around some other streets just exploring. When I got back to the hostel, one of the girls (Becca) was going out for dinner, so I joined her since I hadn't actually succeeded in obtaining dinner, which was the goal of my previous outing.

After dinner, we came back to the hostel and hung out with the others in the common room.

December 30, 2005:

What to do? Got a late start on the day owing to the fact that I really had no agenda of 'Things to Do and See" while in Budapest. All I really wanted to do was go to the baths, but was saving that for another time. Spent a bit of time cross-referencing with maps and city guides since the rough guide map listed things in English, and the more detalied city map and guide listed things in Hungarian. It took a while to figure out what was what, but I managed.

Ended up going out for a walk around in the snow for a few hours to get my bearings in the daylight. Then I stopped by the market near my hostel to do some souveneir shopping since I definitely wanted to get gifts for my family in Hungary and thought it best not to put it off.

I returned to the hostel to dump off my stuff, and toyed with the idea of going to the store to buy food to make for dinner. One of the Aussie guys (Paul) thought that sounded like a good idea, so we went to the store together, came back to the hostel, and made dinner.

Then I went to bed, as did Paul and Becca (we were in a mixed dorm of 8 people).

December 31, 2005:

Time for a mud bath. I got up early today to get in a full day of sightseeing. The first thing on my agenda was to go to the baths and get a mud bath, since my rough guide said that I could do that, and I have always wanted to. I decided to go to the Gellert baths right across the bridge so that I could come home to shower and change after my roll in the dirt.

Well, when I got there, I was informed that mud baths are available by perscription only! How crappy is that. But I went into the baths anyways. It was nice, but I was a little put off by the lack of mud, so I didn't enjoy myself as much as I could have.

Once I left the baths, I wandered around the city some more on the Pest side, and stopped for food (and wine!) for New Year's day since all the stores were going to be closed. And then I went back to the hostel.

I had planned to meet with Becca and some other people from the hostel around 8, so once I got back around 5 I got ready to go out later that night.

And you all know the rest of that story......

January 1, 2006:

Rough morning. I woke up on the couch, even though I remember falling asleep in my bed, and I wasn't feeling so hot. Michael (another guy from the hostel who Becca, Paul, and I went out with on New Year's) gave me some AlkaSeltzer Plus Tylenol to make me feel better, but it only succeeded in making me ill. At that point I went back to bed to get more sleep, and woke up around noon.

The boys were there when I got up (Becca had to leave to catch her flight back to London that afternoon), so I got ready and we headed off to the Gellert baths to wallow away our overindulgences from the night before.

After we had become sufficiently pruny, we left the baths and went to drop our stuff off at the hostel and get a bite to eat. Another guy from the hostel, (Ryan), decided to join us for dinner so we headed back out into the rain to get some grub. I stepped out of the front door onto the street and turned around to wait for the others. Good thing I turned around because a car drove buy at that moment and I got splashed by a HUGE tidal wave that soaked the back of my coat and pants. At least I had my long coat on!

After dinner, the boys went and got more wine (I opted out) and we went back to the hostel to chill out and watch a movie in the common room.

January 2, 2006:

Wine tour! Today Micheal, Paul, and I woke up early and caught a bus to Egar, about an hour and a half outside of Budapest. Egar is one of the wine valleys in Hungary. We spent the day going from wine cellar to wine cellar tasting wine glasses of wine for 80 Forint (about .45 Canadian). I bought a bottle of wine for Gordon (my step-dad), and the boys ended up going back to the hostel with about 14 litres of wine between the two of them. And since we had an hour to wait for the bus back to Budapest plus an hour and a half bus ride....let's say they got started in it quite early.

We got back to the hostel and most of the people were there already watching a movie, so we joined them. A little later, Lance and Sousana (two Goth people from Scotland) and two others got back from caving and joined in.

We all stayed up until about 4am that night. It was a great time. We had a mini-goth party where all of us (including Paul and Mike), got all dolled up with black nail polish, crazy eye-liner, black clothes, some chain necklaces, etc. Someone brought out their laptop and got the Nine Inch Nails going. It was tons of fun!

January 3, 2006:

Last day in Budapest. I got up early today to check out some of the sights on the Buda side since I had not yet done so. I climbed up to the top of the Citadelle and along the Danube past the Chain Bridge before it was time to jump on the Metro and head back to the hostel.

I had decided to join Michael and Paul on their way to Rome (except that Paul changed his plans so I just ended up heading there with Michael), so once I got back to the hostel, I packed up my stuff and headed out to the airport.

Got to Rome with no problem, checked into the hostel, and headed out to dinner in front of the Pantheon and then a walk around the city to Piazza del Popolo and the Trevi Fountain before heading home to bed.

January 4, 2006:

Woke up around 10 and got ready for a day of walking around. We pretty much saw most of Rome, from San Pietro to the Colosseum, and everything in between. It was a pretty tiring day so we got pizza and headed back to the hostel to eat. We met some New Zealand girls who were staying in our room and we stayed up and chatted with them for a while before I got too tired and called it a night.

January 5, 2006:

I slept in while Michael went out sightseeing. We met around 1:30 at the Pantheon for lunch and then headed to the Cappucin Church to see the BONE CRYPT! Talk about creepy!!! There were all these sculptures made out of heaps of shoulder blades, skulls, hip bones, jaws, etc. On the walls there were flower patterns made out of separated vertebrae!!! It was definitely like nothing I had ever seen or imagined before.

Then we headed back to the hostel so Mike could pack before meeting up with the New Zealand girls for dinner and drinks. After that we headed to another bar (Trinity College Bar of all places) to meet up with more people we had met in the hostel.

This girl Mary and I decided we wanted to dance even though no one was really dancing. We said "Stuff it" and started dancing, and before you know it, so was about half of the bar! It was pretty cool. But Italian guys are pretty grabby and don't really respect the North American idea of "space," so we grew a little tired of that before too long.

Michael and the NZ girls headed back to the hostel and the rest of us just stayed chatting for a while longer before deciding to go home to bed.

January 6, 2006:

Back to Padova. Woke up this morning. Mike had already left at some time for his flight to the States, and the New Zealand girls had left to check into another hostel. Mary and I got up and got ready to go to the train station as we were both taking trains to Venice (but not the same train. I took InterCity and she took EuroStar) that left at around the same time.

After 5 hours, I returned to Padova with all my luggage in tow. I met a really nice girl on the train who helped me with my luggage and offered to have her boyfriend drive me home since they didn't live far from me. I thought that was really nice of them.

Got home to my apartment, unpacked, and started doing LAUNDRY!!! It had been two weeks for some of my clothes! I caught up with Gigi as to what had been going on while I was away, and then I went to bed for some much needed, uninturrupted, non-bedroom sharing, no snoring sleep!

And that was my Christmas vacation! I had an awesome time!!! I am already planning where to go for my 6 days off at Easter.

Happy New Year

I wonder if your New Year's Eve celebrations have anything to do with setting the mood for how the rest of your year will turn out. And if it does, then I think I am in for one hell of a year!!!

My celebrations got off to an early start yesterday at around 5pm with me, a bottle of wine, and a couple of the people here at the hostel. Of course we ran out of wine and had to set about procuring some more, which we did and rather easily too considering all the shops were closed. We managed to find a store open in the subway station that was well stocked.

Se, we returned to the hostel and kept drinking. More people turned up and joined in. The hostel owner made this really delicious fruit punch with bananas, apples, oranges, rum, white wine, and champagne, which, when looking back was probably part of my downfall since I had started on wine and shouldn't have mixed. I am sure the few shots of Jaggermeister didn't help too much either.....

Around 11 we set out to meet up with some friends of one of the guys here at the hostel. We went to an open air concert to ring in the New Year. There was music, fireworks, and that's about where my memory stops.

I vaguely remember "walking" along the street afterwards. Apparently we were going back to the hostel. I have NO IDEA how I managed all those stairs. I have been told that both myself and the other girl we were with were greatly assited. LOL The poor guys! Then I remember being in bed, then out on the couch because something was going on in the room, and then back in bed again.

Needless to say it was a bit of a rough morning when I woke up, but I am feeling better now. I think I am going to head off to the Gellert Baths to soak away my hangover in the thermal waters.

Happy New Year everyone!!! I hope you all had a great time wherever and whatever you did.