blog makeover

In the dreary drab rainy days of winter, i can't stand all the gray, black and brown. i thought of holiday colors for the blog. while, i love Christmas, i hate Christmas colors. so i decided to give this season and the blog some random radical technicolor to cheer up!

i made my blog header from all of my old Florence pictures. I put them on the Picnik website to spice them up....it took me about two hours... and they weren't just any two hours...they were my only solid hours to pack up for my big trip to Boston! ooops....

but at least my blog is colorful and cheery now...
....i hope to be both in my next last few days in Florence before the holidays.

other ideas for blog headers...

the florentine past is always relevant to the present...

Chi vuol essere lieto, sia: di doman non v'è certezza....

-Lorenzo dei Medici

my roomie at Smith is my newest penpal.

Lilly,

ah lilly! hi! i totally just stumbled on your blog somehow, and i was wondering if it was okay if i linked you in my blog...i just started a new anonymous blog because of law school. i was really excited to find your blog...it's so good to have updates on your life. how is florence? i'm so jealous that you're an ex-pat while i'm stuck here in boring old america. how is the boy????

don't a stranger my dear former roomie (gosh, that seems like AGES ago, doesn't it?)

-K
PS: K's blog Hello, My name is Fabulous

........................................................

Ciao carissima K!!

mamma mia it's been forever since we've talked. I am soooo flattered (and pleasantly surprised) that you found my blog and enjoy being caught up on my dolce-amara vita.

i always forget somehow that you showed up to smith knowing tons of italian and already being an italophile ....and i was the frenchie....now look what influence you had on me!!!

first of all, great blog!!! i can hear you saying everything in your voice and your K-way of talking...it's not anomymous in the sense that i can totally see the K-ness about it. but i wish mine was more anonymous. i had intended it that way but there's so much that i just can't resist putting up (fotos, personal stories). so far you can't really find my full name on there. but i send the link to everyone so obviously they know it's my blog!!!

boring old america here i come, by the way. im going home for Christmas and then for an indefinite amount of time. i have to rethink-research-restart my life plans to live and work in the states or in italy. i think graduate school will be a detour. and i need to make money!! there is no money in my bank and no money in italy. im an aupair and i think ill go crazy if i have to keep doing this job. i want to do what i like to do and what im good at!!!!

Florence is beautiful though as always and it is so hard to leave. the river is overflowing with water, the streets are overflowing with christmas lights and the atmosfere is overflowing with holiday cheer. and leaving the boy is going to be ROUGH. o man it's always so dramatic. he's my best friend. my latin lover. we are going on our two year anniversary date this weekend. he's got 3 more years of law school and he lives with his parents. so if that explains anything...yeah.

aww my dear estranged 1st-ever-roomie. thank you for sharing your blog and filling me in on your life. im so damn impressed and jealous that you are (already) in grad school and heading in a direction. i have yet to find my direction. i feel like a freaking weathervane...a gust of wind can send me in a different direction. do i want to design? be an architect? be a translator? a world traveler? an english teacher?

so congratulations and ill hopefully see you around Boston!!! what a great city!!

.......but not as great as Florence....hehe:)

un bacione
Italilly

the word of the day is FURBA.

FURBO. No, not the cute little alien-eyed talking toy, Furbie!! The adjective that defines a key to survival in Italy. To get by, you need to be seriously furbo. If you're passive, you're not going to get through a crowd, you're not going to win an argument with the Tabacchi shop guy (although the consequences of being passive are not a matter of geographics). If you're passive-aggressive, you might win the argument but you certainly won't get as much respect if you are seriously fiducioso and furbo. You need to be assertive, you need some serious confidence, self-assurance and cleverness to get any respect and dignity. I was starting to feel helpless...they responded to me in english, they cut me in line or push me off the sidewalk, they stared me up and down. For the longest time, I couldn't figure out why the Italians* wouldn't change their attitude with me.

Then I realized that I had to change my attitude with them.

I started to pick up on what gives the Italians that extra kick of energy and assertiveness (strong horsepower fuel called Italian espresso two times daily), what gives the young and old the assertive confidence in any situation (causing them to use the "umbrella gesture" or some parolacce), and the ability to be unashamedly confrontational.

Today I took the preparatory steps to becoming furbo that an Italian would take on any given morning. I had a cappuccino and a corneto integrale on via Gioberti. I walked fast and in the middle on the road so confidently that no bike or three-wheeled truck dared to honk me out of the way. I spoke with my best accento fiorentino and self-assurance. I was assertive when making purchases--I wanted a discount for purchasing more than one item or I wouldn't buy it.

And then I got to the Post Office centrale near Piazza Repubblica and I was running late for my lunch in Gavinana outside of town. Come al solito. I pulled a ticket for 142, when the customer being served at the window was at 114. Porca miseria!. So I did some quick calculations. I could look at the flower market under the arches around the Poste, and then make a quick visit to the Smith College sede in Piazza Signoria before my number was called.

I tend to talk too much and lose track of time. I did exactly that with my former study-abroad coordinator. I got back to the Poste and the board beeped a 149. Oddio, che palle!!!

I knew there was only one solution to avoid waiting for my new number, 174. I needed to be furba. I needed to be confident and very convincing.

The number 151 came up. The post officer waited, looked around, finger on the button for the next number. I vecchietti in line looked at their numbers and sighed, so I made a mad dash to the desk.

Che numero hai? she wanted to make sure I was number 151.
Ah, well I have 142, but I was outside and customer 151 has left the poste office, I said in a whisper as to not draw angry glares from the crowd of customers.

And in two minutes, I paid and ran to the bus. Menomale!

.....................................................

Now the Disclaimer: So if you want to have any success at being furba, you need lots of sleep, siesta's and caffe'. My good friend M forgot those key steps but was saved by her innate furba-ness. She had to talk her way out of a 50 euro fine to the bus-ticket controllers, for having ripped a 4-way paper ticket in half, which was unstamped because it was too short at that point to fit in the machine. She later made the mistake of misreading a Eurostar sign on a train and got on with a regular priced ticket, and the ticket controller kicked her off. Two trains later, she found herself on another Eurostar (she had no money to buy a higher-priced ticket) that afternoon so she decided to be fake being deaf. But she was a bit sfortunata, because it was the SAME ticket controller! Despite being sleep deprived, despite having forgotten a crucial espresso before her nine-hour ride from Vienna to Modena, she was naturally furba and talked herself out of being arrested.

So if you are not my friend, M, and not prepared to be furba, don't even try it because it's exhausting...comunque, you should prep yourself first before you take on the challenges of being tricky, or else you might find yourself in a tricky situation!

*not my friends or acquaintances, but those Italians who see my cappelli biondi and put me in the outsider category subito so they can stereotype and undermine me

in my element....

thank you, Uncle Chris, for this fantastic panoramic of our gita around Florence. we saw palazzo borghese, kent state univ study-abroad palazzo, caffe' rinascente, chiaroscuro, the post office and san lorenzo market. in the evening we had a glass of Castiglioni chianti at an enoteca with a little bit of souvenir shopping in the leather shops of Borgo Greci. also, we were on a mission to find three giant Babbo Natale cioccolati di Kindercare...

un incontro all'improvviso became una bellissima giornata!

if i want good news, i read The Florentine

these days it is so rare that i find any good news in the news. so that's why i read The Florentine. they have a way of informing you about all the positive happenings in a positive way. nice stories and upbeat reports. it is a thoughtful, newsy, educational free little newspaper. i have put off my travel and coming-of-age novels just to read this in all my spare time. i seek it out desperately every two weeks at all the drop off locations....somedays it requires that i pretend that im getting a drink or looking at the menu at Old Stove as i spy the stack of papers and make a mad dash out the door with one. but why am i running if it's free? im not used to free, senza prezzo. that's almost too good to be true. anyhow, if i don't find it, i know it's online, but i love keeping it folded up in my bag for a moment of potential boredom on the bus or in a queue.

they have this wonderful way of writing about the culture & customs, sketches of local Italians, a weekly "fatto bello" (nice fact) of the week, and book reviews. this week i was really touched by the story about the colorful altruistic taxi driver, Caterina aka "Milano25".

I was lucky enough to ride in her taxi two years ago one night after a long evening out with the girls at YAB, Lochness or Slowly (or all three). surprisingly we found her taxi at a stand in Piazza Repubblica. this was a real lucky streak considering she is a famous taxi driver (for all her volunteer work for kids with cancer) and so we jumped in her car for our ride home. it was such an experience let me tell you...it was as smooth as an airplane, it was like being rocked to sleep in a cradle with all the toys and DVD screens showing a Disney movie, it was like going back to my childhood for those twenty minutes. I thought I was in a fairy tale.

But when you read about her life...you realize her personal story was not like a fairytale.

And seeing that my point is that The Florentine is a wonderful newspaper that focuses on the positive, you can bet that they really showed you the beauty and upside of her story.

Thank you, TheFlorentine!

i like reading the good news in newspapers

this NPR article makes me smile...it's about a woman who has lived 100 years and has seen it all in the 20th century, who was a volunteer in the Obama campaign, and the best part of the story is that her name is Lillian too!

i like to see the glass half full

Now I know this NPR article is just telling the facts about jobless rates going up...but, um, a little encouragement and optimism would do us all a lot of good! i can't find a job in Italy so now let's see what happens when i look in the States. I'm keeping an open mind for my job searches in both places.

(My LinkedIn profile explains what I'm looking for if you're curious)

they don't call it the world wide WEB for nothing

I feel like spiderman. I'm spinning webs everyday in the digital world of cyberspace. I have a bazillion links between facebook, linkedin, picasa, blogs, email....everything cross-references everything else, have you noticed that? if you go to your facebook, you list like 10 links or pieces of information that you can ALSO find in five other different profiles. My blog tells you about my LinkedIn profile now (finally updated!) and my LinkedIn tells you about my blog. Don't worry if you don't know about my LinkedIn "professional" network profile, because you could either A.google my name or B. find the link on Facebook! I mean I feel like a real-estate agent just buying up property on the web. I'm getting my name out there which makes me feel some entitlement to all these pages dedicated to me. I've got the social page (facebook), the professional page (linkedin), the artistic page (picasa), the personal page (blogspot), the entrepreneur page (etsy).

Now that everyone else I know directly or indirectly through friends (facebook tells me i have 814 friends*, linkedin tells me i have 11 connections, my email has 234 contacts) has a tangled web of their exponentially growing collection of pages on the world wide WEB, I can't even keep up with friends, family, colleagues...let alone my own pages, me.

*are they all true friends i see and talk to daily? no of course not

see what happens when you google your name

I found my incomplete, outdated LinkedIn profile (which is now been updated) a few cross-country race statistics from my collegiate and highschool races and a link to my Facebook profile....

Good thing that's all that came up. *


*I'm not saying there is more to find, I'm just glad that's the case.
**On facebook someone could tag some horrible unflattering or scandalous pictures to your face. On google you may accidentally find other scandals with your name attached. PHEW so far so good...

thanks tina!

Awww. I googled my name on the Smith College website and found a reference in a Smithie JYA student blog.

but what would Margaret Edson say about Lingueo???

On Sunday May 18th, the day of my commencement from Smith College, Margaret Edson '83 told us what is so valuable about an education as it was originally intended ( in the classroom, as "a physical, breath-based, eye-to-eye event."). In this days I've been thinking a lot about my four-year undergraduate American liberal arts education. About what it has done to help me grow, about how I should've taken more advantage of it, how I want more of it, about the differences between the benefits of our system and those from an education here in Italy.*

Anyway, Margaret, an award-winning-playwright-turned-Kindergarten-teacher-by-passion gave us her reasons for the valuable, priceless event of classroom learning, saying:

"Classroom teaching is a physical, breath-based, eye-to-eye event.
It is not built on equipment or the past.
It is not concerned about the future.
It is in existence to go out of existence.
It happens and then it vanishes.
Classroom teaching is our gift.
It's us; it's this.

We bring nothing into the classroom -- perhaps a text or a specimen. We carry ourselves, and whatever we have to offer you is stored within our bodies. You bring nothing into the classroom -- some gum, maybe a piece of paper and a pencil: nothing but yourselves, your breath, your bodies.

Classroom teaching produces nothing. At the end of a class, we all get up and walk out. It's as if we were never there. There's nothing to point to, no monument, no document of our existence together.

Classroom teaching expects nothing. There is no pecuniary relationship between teachers and students. Money changes hands, and people work very hard to keep it in circulation, but we have all agreed that it should not happen in the classroom. And there is no financial incentive structure built into classroom teaching because we get paid the same whether you learn anything or not.

Classroom teaching withholds nothing. I say to my young students every year, "I know how to add two numbers, but I'm not going to tell you." And they laugh and shout, "No!" That's so absurd, so unthinkable. What do I have that I would not give to you?"

The point being that I want to go back to classroom, whether to teach or to learn. Basically she got me thinking about the incredible wonders that happen in a classroom (the kind of thing you appreciate and understand once you're out of one) and about the magic of learning (this is not intended to sound corny)...because now I'm thinking about my career and that means thinking about more time in the classroom for a Masters.**

P.S. You can read her speech here.

*(Ask me how many times I've had to defend and explain the liberal arts education while in Italy... Example: "why do you have two majors? you didn't do a thesis undergrad? you took classes of all subjects? you don't already know your career path? YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU WANT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?" etc. )

*now I have to think WHAT Masters do I want to do...?

why laptops make you lazy (but allow you to be productive)

i guess it would be incorrect to say that laziness is what made me sign up to be a Lingueo language tutor because while it doesn't necessarily mean you need to get off your chair, you do need some motivation (and free time) to register, make a profile then create the video classes for the language you want to teach. it's an online site for students and tutors to give video language lessons. it's relatively new from what i've gathered so there are only about a 100 tutors and 150 students from around the world who have signed up. as a tutor, i make a schedule of my hours in my time zone, my hourly wage linked to a paypal system and a series of video classes. it's sooo 21st century, isn't it?

i mean it's not that i was too lazy to go out and do face to face lessons, because I currently have one student that I meet with in person and on Skype, the problem is our generation has their face to the computer screen all day that Lingueo takes advantage of that. it's a really powerful tool for obvious reasons....now i can learn japanese with someone both from japan and in japan at the same time while I stay comfortably in front of my computer at home (in either of my homes in italy or the states*).

now i just have to figure out how to sign up as a student...and decide which language to take.

I'm thinking Japanese or Finnish....

*yes i do call Italy and the States home

and now we know he was right....

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by

inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will

deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their

fathers conquered."

Thomas Jefferson 1802

it's all about family (and the apple pie)

This was my second Thanksgiving in Tuscany. The first time was a small cozy traditional meal with my 22 classmates from Smith during my study abroad year. This year I went to a Tuscan villa tucked behind the hills of Florence, and although we were only 20 minutes from the citta', we were in such a secluded place there wasn't even cellphone coverage. It was a formal evening filled with Americans, Italiani and Italo-Americano's, 58 of them to be exact, and all the branches of a family tree: sisters, brothers, bambini, grandkids, nipoti, nonni e nonne. Everyone spoke in fluid sentences of Italish. The evening was a lot fancier than my traditional family meal at home.

The ambiente was not only formal but italianizzata (the women wearing all black with pearls and heels, the men in jackets and ties, the kids in matching plaid jumpers etc.) The splendid and spacious villa was buzzing with white-glove-wearing servers passing trays of an aperitivo of tempura-fried salvia leaves and asciughe and fried mozzarella. The dinner tables were long and triple-decked with white porcelain plates with silverware. Literally silver. They even had a first course of Tortellini soup...but who needs a first course when Thanksgiving is the equivalent of about six!?

I was not expecting such a flashy evening, especially when Thanksgiving is a tradition based on a simple meeting between simple peoples giving thanks to Mother Earth and to each other. The Florentine upper-class however is not what I would call a simple people. They love an excuse to flaunt fashion and manners and formality.

I gave thanks to the tradition of family and good food, which was not forgotten! After the big turkey and the stuffing, peas, mashed potatoes, and the caramelized onions, there was my favorite of all the traditions included too: the big apple pie for dessert ..... among the Tiramisu and chocolate truffles of course. I had fasted all day to manage several helpings of everything and even save room for dessert.

After the servers had cleared the tables, the older couples had started dancing and the kids had melted like the chocolate truffles davanti al TV, I thought of my family across the same sea that the Pilgrims had crossed to arrive at Plymouth.

And although six hours behind with the time difference, my family in Boston sat down to exactly the same meal.
--

blogrolling my fellow smithies

i'd like to share the Smith College Alum Blogs page where you can find 180 blogs (including mine!) written by Smithies. How nifty!

A.Main page of the Smith Alum Blog site
B.List of all the blogs

If you want a homemade gift to give this holiday season...

My new stationery on ETSY!

Inspired by Italy Made by Lilly

PS. I'm new at this so please email me with comments questions or suggestions (italilly@gmail.com)

they call me the Heidi of il mondo di heidi

After launching my first little online shop for my Florence-inspired stationery, I wanted to help launch an ETSY shop for my favorite collana designer commessa. Her site, Il Mondo di Heidi, doesn't get enough visitors so I think that ETSY will be a better marketplace for her handmade necklaces, gadgets and bags.

Until we launch the Il Mondo di Heidi Etsy shop officially, you can see the fotos on my Picasa site.

The Doc prescribed me a subscription to NPR articles

The doc said the prescription should help subside the fever. NPR always does make me feel better....

"I believe in improvising. It's exciting; it's an adventure, a challenge, and a chance to be creative. Not being locked into a "plan" or a prescribed way of doing something leaves room for all kinds of wonderful stuff to happen. You don't always have to follow the recipe. I always use more butter, eggs and garlic than a recipe calls for, and the only unfortunate change this brings about is in my size."
-Alice Brock in her essay "Making it up as I go along"

"...when I see all three of my kids laughing, when I think about how much less my life would have been if I had settled for what I thought I wanted, I realize I don't much care about the sensible things I once did. It's the ridiculous I love."
-Claude Knobler "Life is Wonderfully Ridiculous"

"I believe we have the power to create our own happiness. I believe the real magic in the world is done by humans. I believe normal life is extraordinary."
-Wayne Coyne in his essay "Creating our Own Happiness"

Doc, are you sure you can't get me a vaccine for this?

Doc, I am not feeling too healthy. No, it's not the flu. But sometimes it feels like it. I think I've come down with an illness and it's both mentally and physically painful. I have headaches and chills and nausea and insomnia and I feel emotional and unstable. I'm nervous and irritable and ansiosa and paranoid. When my head doesn't hurt, my heart does. And I think it's contagious! Everyone else is affected by it...

Uh huh, I've had these symptoms for a while. Well, it all started back in 2006 when I realized that I needed to get out and get away. Away from myself. I managed to go far away, far away, but I started to understand that "Wherever you go, there you are." For a while the symptoms went away. I had changed my environment, my lifestyle, my attitude, my language, my friends, my goals, my priorities. But then I changed my mind. Then I was ready to get away again.

I'm back here but the illness follows me wherever I go, Doctor. Once I'm here, I have to leave again. First I want to be here, then I want to be there. I came because I needed to hold on to it and be wrapped up in it, surround myself with this place, live in it. The idea of leaving makes me ill, but the idea of staying makes me ill. The symptoms just won't go away. All this coming and going. It's like the opposite of vertigo, it's like horizontigo. Flying back and forth really makes me feel it!

Doc, so what is it that coerces me to take the risk of coming back here. To remind me that I want to take in this place and take on these obstacles and these goals and this language and this life and then just reject it and throw it away?

Yes, I can assure you it is a mental and physical pain I feel. It is in my heart and my body and my soul. So if it's not the flu then what is it? Perhaps a vitamin deficiency?

Oh I understand... I see. And it's a rare illness? And do they have a cure for that?

What? They call it that?...Nope I've never heard of it....Residential aversion. Sometimes known as Binge living. Also known as geographical intolerance. Defined as the ambivalent attachment to your environment and physical location. The tendency to move frequently. A vicious cycle of moving back and forth between two countries, whether it was your desire or not. Often has strong mental and physical symptoms similar to the flu.

Doc, but what is the cure? I can't live this way anymore! I need to stay put. I need to stay in one place. This place needs to stay with me. I need to stay put. I want to stay put in this place.


Time? Take time? What is that....a vitamin?

Trust me, I've been taking plenty of that.

all at once

Sometimes the hardest thing and
The right thing are the same.

- The Fray

horoscopes are hit or miss and this was a hit

Your Horoscope - Week of November 17, 2008 Maybe your instincts aren't on target this week, Taurus, so it's in your best interests to follow the tried and true advice you receive from friends and relatives. Your perception is off and your reactions are colored by your own emotions. On Wednesday your typical common sense and practicality go out the window. Take a time out and don't make any decisions just yet. On Friday lucky Jupiter in your sector of philosophy trines karmic Saturn in Virgo and you'll have a very enlightening experience, one way or another. Your ability to enjoy life accelerates as you increase your self-knowledge.

i found this on a walk.

If la bambina had seen this, she would have cried out, "Look! look! Naughty BIMBI!!"

Carissima Firenze...

The other day I met up with three alumnae from Smith College at Kitsch for the city's best and biggest aperitivo-actually-dinner and a mini-reunion. We all have long-term sometimes long-distance relationships with Italian amanti and we all intend on staying in Florence forever. Since my bf was the only Florentine and their fidanzati were Sicilian and southern, we could only compare the common stereotypes...sono mammoni, forse le loro madri non si fidano di noi stranieri, viverebbero negli USA? magari..., capiscono la nostra cultura? ah forse, aspettano che facciamo tutto per loro? pulire, cucinare...forget it!!...

well, not really because they are fortunately more 21st century worldly bfs who are very respectful and don't really fulfill those stereotypes. It was my bf who practically taught me to cook and who knows how to do things on his own (although he does live at home with his parents), and he was extremely understanding as well as respectful and open minded to all of my family values and cultural barriers. We have had as many culture clashes as would a Californian and a New Yorker. Two years later and we are not culturally clashing but culturally cooperating.

Among us ex-Pat girls, we talked about how we love Florence and want to stay (understatement of the year) . Later that night, I took out two current JYA Smith studentesse to see the best bars in the city (via dei Benci) and to meet some Florentine ragazzi because I know it is hard to integrate without the help of a local. But at the end of the night they asked me a daunting and burdensome question:

What do I love most about Florence...

I began to stutter. I began to search their faces and think of a cliche' answer just to give them something, anything. But I couldn't bring myself to make up some quick response. I felt that would offend Florence and all Florentines. I have not spent two years here just to say one measly thing about why I love this city, like "My favorite thing is the Duomo."Although the truth is that I get i brividi everytime it pops up from behind a rooftop... So instead I politely gave the most general all-inclusive unspecific elenco saying I love tutto tutto from the language to the people to the aCHenHo (said in a SUPER STRONG accento fiorentino) to the bistecca Fiorentina. I surely offended Florence with that pathetic, unsubstantial and unoriginal response.

It was just my luck that today I found an excuse about why I don't have to list the Reasons-I-love-Florence. Melinda Gallo, a local writer I will be fortunate enough to meet on Tuesday, has found the perfect way to personify the city of Florence, a place that has changed my life, in the words that I have been searching for...

"I could probably come up with a million reasons about what I like about living here in Florence, but they all sound trite to me. The true reason why I love living here is because it just feels right to me. It is like being in love with someone. You could certainly list the aspects about the person that you appreciate, but when it comes down to it, it is a feeling deep in your heart that can't be labeled."

-Melinda Gallo on her blog

And she is absolutely right.

I can't wait to be inspired by the following:

• Women who run with the Wolves by Clarissa
  Pinkola Estès
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The Time Trap by Alec Mackenzie
• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frank
• The Mediations of Marcus Aurelius
• The Golden Sayings of Epictetus
• A Whack on the Side of the Head: how you can be more creative by Roger Von Oech
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• Undaunted Courage by Stephen E Ambrose
• The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale
• Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham Maslow
• The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D Wattles
• Phule's Company by Robert Aspirin
• The Measure of Our Success by Marian Wright Edelman