Pasta or Pizza?

That is the classic quesiton here in Italy, since that is about all the food on offer. A million different types of pasta, or a million different types of pizza.

And other types of food, like Chinese, Greek, or Mexican? Fuh-ged-abouwd-it!

To further my theory on Italian food, here is a quote from Ramon's blog referring to a night out with some friends (including Italians) in Paris to a Korean BBQ: "It was a near disaster as it turns out Italians only know how to eat pasta, pizza (and not even good pizza like in the States) and tomato sauce-based dishes."

See, it's not only me!

Wow...Creepy

My mom sent me two e-mails this morning: one containing an article from the Toronto Star, and another with the related story as reported by CP24.

Apparently someone was murdered on my street (in Toronto), in the building across from ours yesterday morning. She was thrown from the balcony actually.

It is really strange when stuff like that happens on your own doorstep. This is actually the second story about violence in Toronto, where the violence has occured in areas that I consider "safe" and frequent while in the city, that I have heard in a relatively short time.

Kinda changes one's oppinion of their hometown, hearing stuff like that from abroad. How sad.

??? + !!! = ?!?!?

I am a triple punctuator!!! It has been brought to my attention that an e-mail I sent off a few hours ago (from my lovely Gmail account) contains a ridiculous amount of ??? and !!! 's!!!

Sometimes I even use them in conjuntion with each other and end up with ?!?!? at the end of a sentence. How odd is that?!?!?

Indeed, even looking over the posts on my blog, I found several instances of proliferate punctuation!!!

Oh well. I hope no one, lest of all the Grammar Gods, is offended by my excessiveness!!!

I Steal Dishes From Dead People

Today after school a few other teachers and I went over to see Stacy's new apartment that she and her boyfriend bought. They just got the keys for it today, and we were all anxious to check the place out! Especially since we had all heard about the great 70's style orange tiles in the kitchen! They are planning on redoing the whole apartment this summer, so we just had to get a 'before' look in order to be able to fully appreciate the 'after.'

Apparently, the previous owners had passed away at some point, and it was their children who were selling the place. Well they left a lot of stuff behind like blankets, linens, mops, soap, and kitchen ware. Since they are competely redoing the place, Stacy told us to take whatever we wanted since they were just going to throw it out anyways.

We briefly contemplated having a Greek-style plate smashing celebration on the tacky tiles, but decided against it in the end. I did, however score a few bowls, plates, and the like since a) we only have 2 bowls left in our apartment, having broken the other 3 sometime during the year, and b) I am leaving this place in a short time (and hopefully living somewhere else next year), so why buy?

Take Off My WHAT?!?!?

So I went to the chiropractor today for a much needed adjustment. I had been getting adjusted by a really nice woman I met in that Italian class I *started* taking when I first arrived. It turned out that she was a chiropractor living in the states on a 6 month leave to study Italian, and she kindly agreed to adjust my poor, misaligned vertebrae while she was here. And she did a great job! Sadly she had to return to the US in early March so it has been a while since my last adjustment, and I was starting to feel the effects. However, she has a chiropractor friend here who studied with her at Chiropractor School, so she referred me to him before she left (and yes, it has taken me this long to get around to calling him).

Well last week my back and neck were totally unhappy! Somehow I managed to pull something and I could barely sit and cross my legs. To top it off, I started getting headaches again, and actually had a headache for about three days or so. Definitely time for an adjustment! So I finally made an apointment for today after school.

So I showed up at the clinic and went into one of the rooms to fill out paperwork, etc. Then I was taken into another room to wait for the Dr. When he came in, he asked some health-history related questions, and gave me the run down about chiropractic care. Then he said he had to run out to treat another patient and that he would be back in about 10 minutes. In the meantime the secretary came in to give me my bill and say goodbye since she was leaving for the day.

*I pre-empt the next part of this post by saying that never at any point today did I feel unsafe, uncomfortable, or that I was in an awkward situation. What follows is a window into the thoughts of my entirely over-active imagination. Read at own risk!*

Of course at this point my mind started running away on me (thanks to all those stories you hear cautioning women, horrible porn movie plots (that I have only heard about of course!), etc.) and I began looking for ways to escape the room if necessary since the only witness has now left the building. After looking around the room I determined that I could fit through the slightly open window should it come to that.

*close mind window*

About 5 minutes later, the Dr. opened the door, told me to take off my shoes and pants, and then left.

TAKE OFF MY WHAT?????

*open mind window*

Take off my pants?! Now that's a bit strange. Why do I have to remove my pants? I am in some kind of film aren't I??? Franca never made me remove my pants. Maybe I don't really have to. No, surely I don't have to take my pants off. That would just be odd.

*close mind window*

At this point I just shook my head and started laughing. Only me.

When he came back in the room, I verified that my pants had to be off for this, and he said "Yeah, it's better. What's wrong, aren't you wearing any underwear?" I assured him I was and proceeded to take my pants off.

The rest of the visit was fine after I got over the 'I'm standing here in my underwear and a t-shirt' thing. He told me some interesting stuff about my spine and the side-effects of the particular vertabrae that were out of place.

At some point I was laying on the adjustment table and he said he was going to go put some music on and be right back.

*open mind window*

What kind of music could possibly start playing at this point, with me lying on a table, face down in my underwear? Where are the camera crews? Maybe I should go for the escape route!'

*close mind window*

A few moments later, the relaxing sounds of nature music flooded the room.

Then snap, crack, and pop!!! I got my neck and lower back adjusted!

*Breathes sigh of relief*

Now I can actually turn my head more than 180 degrees, my headache is gone, and I feel pretty damn good! I have 4 more Monday appointments right after school, and then will probably continue treatment when I get back in September.

Now I just have to decide what to wear!

For The Cows

Today at lunch I decided to have a cup of tea. I washed my mug (dropped it and broke the handle), grabbed a teabag, put some sugar in the mug, and went down to the staff room to put the kettle on.

As the water was boiling, I realized I didn't have any milk in the fridge. But I already had my heart set on tea, so I thought I would borrow a little spot of milk from someone else. I grabbed a container of milk, carefully avoiding the one marked with the principal's name, and poured some into my mug. While swiftly replacing the container, I *luckily* happened to take note of the expiry date: 24-04-2006. Indeed, when I looked in my mug, there were curdles floating around in the 'milk.' Damn. What a waste of two sugars!!!

So I went and washed out my mug again, ran upstaris to get more sugar, and proceeded to boil the water for my tea; this time deciding to use a spot of milk from the other container not marked with the principal's name. However this time I decided to be more covert about it, and bent down while I was pouring the milk into my mug. And I spilled milk all over my pants and the floor. Whoever's milk it was, they had cut the opening on the carton funny, and it resulted in TWO streams of milk shooting out of the catron: One stream going into my cup while the other poured onto my leg. Just great.

I guess that's what I get from 'moo'-ching milk off others!

The Vortex Is Strong

Please let it be known that I am literally DRAGGING myself to the gym today. Dragging. Coming home first is always such a bad idea.....

Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Fluff!

We are being overtaken by tree fluff. It is EVERYWHERE, like snow in May. It gets in your eyes and mouth when you are riding your bike, in your food and drinks if you are sitting outside. Yesterday my kids came in from recess with fluff in their hair. Not to mention all the fluff in the school from having the windows open.

Our Golden Book assembly yesterday was a complete disaster due to all the fluff floating around---especially after we turned on the fans. You can't really expect kids to concentrate with fluff flying around in front of their faces.

"You'll just have to ignore all the fluff floating around." Yeah right!

The Un-Travel Bug (aka Going Nowhere)

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The Travel Gods have not been smiling on me lately....

Bon Voyage

Off to Paris, France with my mom and Gordon this weekend.

A bientot!

On The Fence

Literally. On the fence. Stuck really. Until some nice gentleman who happened to be standing on the other side lent me a helping hand.

We were at the park. Stacy, another teacher Melanie, and I had decided to go chill in the park, drink some Prosecco, and have a good ol' bitchfest about life. We were there until about 7:45 pm just relaxing and enjoying the weather when we decided to head home.

When we tried to leave, we discovered that we had been LOCKED IN THE PARK(!!!) with about two dozen other people. Yeah. Apparently they close the park at 7. Seven!!! I mean really....Close the park???

The only way out was over the (extremly high) fence. Although no one else seemed to have trouble climbing it...

EXHAUSTED!!!

I swear I have never been this tired in all my life! Damn train rides! I now know that it is actually possible to be both awake AND asleep at the very same time.

*yawn*

Off Track

I have heard many horrifying stories about Italy's train service: multiple hour delays, re-routing of trains mid-journey, nightmare travelling conditions due to overcrowded cars; none of which I believed until yesterday. Up to this point, I have been a staunch defender of trains, and believer of the ridiculous saying "Nothing runs on time in Italy except for the trains."

Yesterday changed all that. Yesterday I had the train ride from hell. Or to hell. I'm not sure as of yet which would constitute the worse journey. Whichever one it was, I was on it!

First of all let me preempt this post by explaining my trip down to Naples: Friday night we left Padova on time at 9:42 pm for Bologna, where we had to wait an hour for our connecting train to Naples which left at 12:34 am. Trains arrive on time. All's well. Get on the train to Naples and stager through the moving cars to find our reserved seats, which happened to be in a compartment with three Napoletanos (read: men) who had locked the door shut with one of their belts. So after we woke them up and got settled, they proceeded to lock us into the compartment with them and fall back asleep. Luckily I wasn't travelling alone.

The rest of the ride was uneventful, but I never realized how hard it would be to sleep on a train with lights wizzing by, being unable to close the blinds for fear of suffocation and overheating, unable to close the window for said reasons, and unable to go to the bathroom as a result of said belt. Silly me. And here I thought it would be just like travelling by plane. Needless to say I only got about 3 hours of sleep tops.

Once arriving in Naples at 6:52 am, we decided to buy our return tickets to Padova for Monday.

Enter Problem #1: The train we were planning to take (Eurostar) was sold out. As was every other Eurostar train heading in a northernly direction on May 1st. It is worth noting at this point that Eurostars are the only trains where they don't sell more tickets than seats. This should have been a sign of things to come, but what could we do? We were already in Naples, and had to get back on Monday. So we decided to take an Intercity train from Naples to Bologna (7 hours), and then buy a seperate ticket for a train from Bologna to Padova (2 hours). So far so good. A little more expensive, but oh well. At least we had tickets.

Skip ahead to Monday, May 1, 2006:

We woke up in Sorrento, went out for breakfast, and then headed back to the station to catch the circumvesuviana rail-tram thing that services all stops between Naples and Sorrento (including Herculaneum, Mt. Vesuvius, and Pompeii). We took the 12:37 pm rail-tram. Travel time to Naples: 1 hour 15 minutes.

So we arrived at the Naples train station with about 50 minutes to spare before our 2:42 pm train to Bologna.

Enter problem #2: When the train pulled into the station, we noticed that all the cars had a 1, for first class, on the outside. Since we had second class tickets (no seat reservation), we had tried to position ourselves on the platform in a good spot to ensure that we got seats. But with all the carriages saying 1st class, we didn't know what to do. We got on the train, and wouldn't you know, that out of all the cars on the train, we chose to get on one of the only two cars that were actually first class. All the others were acting as second class. So of course by the time we figured that out, all the seats were taken. I managed to find a compartment with only one seat avaliable, so we agreed to take turns until someone got off.

Enter problem #3: The train didn't actually go anywhere for quite awhile. Apparently a train had broken down in between Naples and Rome thusly blocking the route, and another train had to be sent for to take all the passengers away before they could remove the train from the tracks. The "10 minute delay due to engine trouble" announcement turned into a "the situation is a huge mess and we have no idea how long things will take to fix" announcement. Only in Italy.....

(Platform full of people waiting for the train delay to clear in Naples)

We finally got moving 95 minutes later (i.e. 4:17 pm) and were told that the train would recouperate the lost time. Riight.

Enter problem #4: The train got SLOWER instead of faster!!! Even though we bypassed the main train station in Rome to save time, we left Rome 135 minutes behind schedule (please keep in mind that the normal travel time between Naples and Rome is about 2.5 hours tops). No doubt the increasing delay was due to all the 20-30 minutes breaks spent sitting at various, insignificant train stations along the way.

Enter problem #5: Rome is about 5 hours from Bologna, on a good train. On our train? Who knows. The exponentially increasing delay meant that we would miss the last train out of Bologna to Padova for the night since the last train left at 11:13 pm, and we would get there by 11 pm IF there were no more slow-downs. Unlikely! So we started calling around to see if anyone could pick us up. No dice.

We decided to consult one of the employees to see if there was any train behind us going to Padova that would stop at one of the stations we were stopping at so that we might intercept it and be able to get home. After checking on-line and radio-ing another conductor, we found a Eurostar night train going to Vienna through Padova that was due to stop at the station we were approaching. We had about 5 minutes to grab our things and jump off the train in Chiusi. The night train came along about 10 minutes later and we hopped on.

Enter problem #6: The train was three carriages long, two of which were for first class with beds. And the third carriage? Well, that was packed to the brim with people spilling out into the aisles. So we squished ourselves in, like cattle, and managed to secure fold-out seats in the aisle for most of our journey. We finally got to Padova around 12:38 am and had a friend come and pick us up at the station.

Over 12 hours of travelling for a 7.5-8 hour trip. Ridiculous. And did you know it is possible to have residual train symptoms? While laying in my bed trying to fall asleep, I still felt like I was on a moving train.

I'm telling you. That adventure was enough to cure me from trusting trains for a long time.