Ever since I was a kid, I've always been a real deep thinker and stuff

What’s this? Another post with no direction except some ramblings of a gal trying to figure out life in Italy?

Silly blog readers, you should have figured out by now that that is the point of this thing. Hell, it’s the point of my life, either in writing, speaking or emphatic hand gestures (which by the way, if you thought I was a big gesture hand talker before, you should see me now). Anyways, on with the rambling…

*Let me start by saying there is one side effect of not having a second English speaking person to translate in the house right now… I’m speaking Italian to people. No, really.

Sure, Christian has to correct my verb tenses (damn the verb tenses I say! Damn them!), but I get my point across and it’s not as hard as I assumed.

I had hoped to test my Italian when my aunt was in Canada, but the situation changed and the last few weeks of cramming were cut short. Life throws curve balls and we adapt, it’s as simple as that.

*Speaking of my aunt, she had her operation on Tuesday and it went well, she spent the rest of the day sleeping, due to the heavy sedation she was given while undergoing eye surgery. I’m unsure if there was an option to stay awake with only local anesthetic during the operation but if there ever is an operation that I think requires heavy sedation, anything on the eyes would be it (says the girl that freaks out if she touches her eye while dealing with contact lenses… but who am I kidding, I believe sedation is needed for anything that involves doctors)

But, she is doing ok, the operation was successful and she is awake and talking now. She should be home on Tuesday or Wednesday.

*I came to an important conclusion last week after my aunt and I were watching some Italian show with some American actor I’ve never heard of but my aunt recognized. She mentioned how he hasn’t worked in the US since circa 1980 and was now trying his hand at Italian television (he obviously spoke his lines in English and they dubbed his voice with the Italian voiceover, meanwhile all the other actors spoke in Italian). Anyways, I realized that the whole dubbing in Italian is actually a good thing for some actors. I mean, if you’re Keanu Reeves or Val Kilmer and you’re speaking/acting skills are atrocious, the dubbing guy can kinda fix that for you so that you’re not that horrible.

Other fun facts about dubbing… the Clooney guy sounds a lot like Clooney, so does the Russell Crowe guy. Watching shows like Will & Grace kinda suck because Karen and Jack don’t sound the same, it’s missing the high-pitched Karen voice and laugh and dare I say, they make Jack sound really, really gay.


*In Polish/East European excitement… I had a class with a student yesterday and the unit we were talking about had a chart that named the top tourist destinations in the world. It surprised me a bit… France came in first, U.S. second. I’ve seen charts in the past that reflect this, but some other countries were absent that I thought would be there, such as Australia, weren’t. What surprised me was Poland was number 9 and the Czech Republic was 10, I think Hungary was 7 or something like that.

I asked my student why he thought it was like this. He got kinda embarrassed at first, but then said he thought it could be because there is apparently a big sex tourism industry in these countries. Really?

My first thought with Poland was history, you know, concentration camps and all that stuff (because concentration camps seem to be my first thought when anyone mentions Poland… it’s not perverse, it’s a bi-product of reading many books on the atrocities there). But he argued that a lot of people go to east Europe for the sex trade. I reminded him this wasn’t just European tourists, this was a worldwide thing, I could swear other countries were more popular for that kind of thing, but no, he said it was a thing, especially because E. European women are beautiful, whereas my examples (Thailand, etc) aren’t (in his words) “as beautiful.” It’s all relative to your type I tried to explain… but then it occurred to me that we were discussing the sex trade and it’s a sad topic and I didn’t want to get into it. Especially since I began to wonder why he knew so much about the topic.

*We also discussed Italian industry, he claims the main exports are cars. While this is probably true, I joked that I thought fashion was… he didn’t appreciate that. But he did tell me when I complained it was all so expensive that I could go buy designer goods at the market at cheap prices… they even say the names on it. This of course is just like the “designer goods” you find at the night market in Richmond and of course they’re not real. He did not believe me. I wonder why he continues to take lessons with me if he constantly thinks that I’m naïve (this happens at least once a class, we meet once a week), even if it is just my way of being funny.

I also joked that I thought Kinder was a big export for them, again… he did not find this funny. My sense of humor is wasted here.

*I think I’ve achieved the impossible. Or not me, but a cat has pulled a quick one on me and made me tolerate it.

Meet Ginger:



This is Jessica’s cat. Jessica and Simone went away for the weekend and left Ginger at our place to stay, being an inside cat he had to stay inside… my allergies be damned.

Aside from a spastic allergy attack I suffered the first night he was here I had little to no other allergy attacks (mainly because I was cold and grabbed a blanket to cover myself while watching TV, little did I know I grabbed his blanket and pretty much lay in cat hair for a few hours). It may have been due to my diligent hand washing after I touched him, which was actually a lot since dude likes to jump on you lap and sleep. And I hate to say, I may have liked playing with him a bit, or maybe I was trying to make the other cat jealous, to show her that I can be nice to cats that aren’t complete bitches (because while Ginger isn’t a complete bitch, because he is a cat he was slightly snooty, I mean he’d try and sit on my computer keyboard because he was lacking attention, when I’d swat him away, he’d just jump back up).

PS: yes that is a hockey game in the background of the ginger pic, it was Calgary vs St. Louis since finding a Canucks game is pretty hard around here. Sure we get the occasional game, but it seems the network here is a lot like the CBC and TSN and love to show mainly Toronto and Ottawa games.

PPS: You know it’s big news when the Sean Avery incident makes it’s way to Europe. I’m glad to see the guy remains the biggest douche to every hit the NHL. Can they please ban him? (and I don’t like the actress in question) How about we forget about the whole getting rid of Harper discussion and instead focus our attentions on getting rid of that guy.