7 posts tagged “italy”

Show us a picture of your shadow.

shadow in gardens, Verona.

As many of you know, I am off to Italy in February, and I will be remaining there for the better part of 2008.  If you didn't know that before - well, now you do. 

As I am going to be in Italy, I won't be too interested in spending half of my time there on the computer, updating Vox and the numerous other bits of cyberspace that I control.  I will still be here, updating and answering a QotD and posting a random thought every once in a while, but nowhere near as often as I am now. 

SO-

I have set up a blog to keep the updates on my time in Italy well-organized and accessible to everyone.  Obviously this blog won't really get going until February, but I am going to be posting on it every once in a while between now and then while I'm in the process of getting ready to go, so put it in your bookmarks, look at it every once in a while, don't make me feel sad and lonely because no one visits my Italy blog. 

So here's the address:

http://ciao-bella-2008.blogspot.com

I've already got one post up with some basic info on my plans, as well as a few photos from this summer (I realize that this is somewhat of a pre-emptive strike, but hell, it can't hurt to get going early).

Florence

I'm scared. 
For months now I've been hopping up and down saying "woohoo, I can't freakin' WAIT to go back to Italy it's going to be absolutely kick-ass and awesomeness and good food and Italian men (many of which are creepy, but I, being the "nester" as defined by one of my friends, managed to find one of the good ones) and artwork and amazingness and just a GREAT YEAR."  Pretty much in one big run-on sentence just like that.  The last four months have been a run-on sentence (oh, the many levels of truth in that statement...). 

But suddenly there's ... well, yeah, that works actually.  There's an ellipses caught in the middle, slowing the sentence down.

...Wow. Only I would use grammar as a metaphor for life.

Moving on...
-- As I was saying, that ellipses is the fact that, all of a sudden, and *almost* inexplicably, I'm scared.  I've only got an outline for the next year, not a concrete plan.  It's impossible to have a concrete plan due to the circumstances, so I guess that's okay, but I am a person who has, if nothing else, concrete plans.  I really thought pigs would fly before I, the self-proclaimed (a proclamation upheld by many of my friends AND online quizzes) real-life version of Monica from Friends, lacked that.
But there are no flying piggies outside the window, and it's happening anyway.
I'm scared because
A: It's always a bit risky for a young woman to be traveling around in a foreign country alone.  I had one slightly freaky incident this summer, and I handled it well (because I am the definition of SMW - Strong Mills Woman), but it was still freaky, and there is a good chance that I may have to handle more slightly freaky incidents well in the future.
B:  I may be screwed, emotionally.  I rely heavily on my friends and family to get me through the bad days.  I will still have them, but on much more limited terms.
C:  I'm not completely screwed emotionally because I'm not only going back to Florence, I'm going back to a relationship - but that's the other thing.  Already being screwed emotionally, do I need the drama of a relationship?  One that is inching towards being something serious when I return?  It's wonderful that because of him I won't be totally alone and we had so much fun this summer and I'm falling pretty hard for him... but oh, it's just another level of scary. 
D:  As much as I appear to loathe Mills at times, I love it I love it I love it and though I need the break, I am so sad to being leaving it for a year.  This is all just such a huge change and though, for the most part, I think it's going to be one of the most amazing years of my life and later on I will be SO glad that I did it... part of me isn't sure if I'm ready for something huge like this.  I fall into cocoons once I'm settled in somewhere, at home, here, even this summer... and I get so used to that warm fuzzy used-to-it feeling that after a while the idea of change is nauseating.  I know I will fall into a cocoon there as well, just like I did this summer, but I'm going to have to switch apartments at least once, possibly twice, and so there will be disturbances, there will be uprooting, there will just be... ugh.  The cocoon will be disrupted at least once and that will make it all that much harder to burrow into. 

I don't know.  I don't know why I'm blurting this out at 3 am on Vox.  If anything I ought to be talking to a real person about it but I don't know who right now. 
A: Most people I know are asleep. 
B: There are two people I know who probably aren't asleep right now but... I can't talk to either of them really.  One is just hard to talk to about anything these days.  I have a hard time having a good conversation with someone who I don't really think wants to be talking to me.  I have to feel like the person on the other end of the line really cares, and wants to be talking to me even beyond trying to 'fix' me, and lately, I don't get much of that from this person.  The other - well, that person is the other half of the relationship I'll be going back to.  I don't know how to talk to him about it because while we've connected wonderfully on emotional levels thus far, I think the one that is required to talk about this is still playing hard-to-get, and we'll have it eventually but just not right now.  And I don't know that I can translate these thoughts into Italian well enough for him to fully understand what I'm saying.  

And part of me doesn't really want to talk to anyone about it, because that's also who I am.  I am an expert at suppressing emotions because it's 'easier on everyone', and sometimes it's easier, so I've gotten used to it.

Whatever.  Italy's going to be awesome and I know it.  This is just stupid irrational fear getting the better of me.

In other news - my doctor basically told me that I'm fat the other day.  Me.  I've gained a tiny tiny tiny bit of weight in the past few months, but I am not fat.  I am not a twig.  I am not as thin as I would like to be.  But I am not fat.  I am curvy.  But I am not fat.  I have an average body that most still call "thin".  I am not fat. That has been my mantra for the past few days.  This woman knows that I'm someone who has struggled with eating disorders in the past.  Is she trying to trigger me?  I won't go into specifics as I am sick of recounting the story to people.  But she basically told me that I am fat.  Ew. 

Apparently the skewed 'ideal' body type for women is something widely supported by doctors these days though?  The same thing happened with Abby's doctor -- Abby is VERY tall, much taller than me, yet her 'ideal' weight is apparently only 4 pounds over what I weigh now, and her doctor told her she should try to get down near that ideal weight.  Were she to do that, she would be stick.thin. and probably in danger of several health problems from being as severely malnourished as she would have to be to get there.  There is something very wrong with this picture. 

I guess that beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder then?  And unfortunately the "professional" beholders have messed up eyes. 

You know what?  I'm an art history major.  And in many of the works of art that we've looked at, there are women depicted who are supposed to be the beautiful protagonists of the piece.  And 90% of those women are CURVY. 

How about Marilyn Monroe?  Anyone remember her?  A huge sex symbol and someone that pretty much everyone agrees was a beautiful, beautiful woman -- CURVY AS HELL.

* sigh * Bedtime.  

Beachy Marilyn

<---  * clears throat * CURVES.  Easily one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the silver screen, and she is CURVE-A-LICIOUS. 

Beachy Marilyn 2

<---  Would you call that woman fat?  Didn't think so.  (And I'm not even Marilyn-curvy..)

It's dedication time.  What song are you sending out, and who is it dedicated to?

Bubbly

Well, I don't really believe that, and I don't think that anyone I've ever dated does either.  In every relationship I've been in I've tried pretty damn hard to be a really great girlfriend.  And I guess I can't speak for myself, but I think I have, for the most part, succeeded in that goal. 

But even if I may not be a horrible girlfriend right now, I am certainly starting to *look* like one.  I've just had the unfortunate luck, since I've been dating Eugen (and no, folks, that's not a misspelling of Eugene) to have had bad timing and just unfortunate situations that have made me look like a bit of an idiot.  There's this episode of "Friends" that can explain this for me.  Actually, there are many episodes of "Friends" that can explain this for me but this is the one that popped into my head:

Ross has just accidentally blurted out Rachel's name at the altar while getting married to Emily, and now he is waiting at the airport for Emily to join him on the flight that is supposed to take them to Greece for their honeymoon.  Rachel is there, on standby for a flight back to New York, and when it becomes more than obvious that Emily is not going to show up, he tells Rachel to come with him - "You can lie on the beach, I can cry over my failed marriage, it'll be great".  They're about to get on the plane when Ross realizes that he forgot something, turns around to grab it, and sees Emily standing there, horrified at the fact that Ross was just about to go on their honeymoon with the same woman whose name he blurted out at the altar. 

I have never, thank goodness, done that.  But you get the idea.  Things that are in no way what they seem to be, but make me look pretty bad have for some reason happened a LOT in the past 3.5 months.  Examples:

1.  Eating like a bird - I'm like that.  I don't eat a lot unless I haven't eaten much that day/pizza is for dinner (really good pizza is my weakness and I can pretty much eat an entire pizza by myself).  When I cook for myself I make small portions, when I eat at the dining hall there's food left over on my plate because the people who work there put so.much. food on your plate even when you ask for only a little of this or that, usually restaurants have some concept of portion control but when they don't I often find myself asking for a box.  Bottom line, I don't eat a lot of food all at once.
Italians, however, eat every meal in a manner that would make you think they've been fasting for two months.  Maybe that's an exaggeration, but they do eat a lot.  So - just for future reference for anyone who might possibly date an Italian in the future - when his/her parents offer you more food, forget your diet, forget that you're full, forget everything but whatever you do, do not refuse food.  Refusing food is seen as an incredibly rude gesture in Italy and the only save is to say "Actually, I'm not as full as I thought I was" and continue eating.
 
2. Not knowing how to explain something because of the language barrier - this has happened a few times.   I guess this was bound to happen as this is the first relationship I've been in where there is a language barrier.  He knows just enough English and I know just enough Italian that we usually don't have any communication problems, but when we do it's usually not huge and we just end up making fun of each other.  When he wants to say "where are you" it usually comes out as "when are you", and once, when he introduced me to a friend and that friend asked if I was Italian, I had a temporary and fatally embarrassing grammar problem and instead of saying "No, I'm American", I ended up saying "No, you're American".   The language thing usually just inspires playful teasing, but then there are those moments - like trying to explain that I would understand him if the reception on both of our phones weren't so horrid, or that the reason I didn't respond to his text message is because I never actually received it.  In both instances I'm pretty sure that he was just left thinking that I didn't understand him because I suck at Italian and that I didn't reply to his text message because I just chose not to.

3. Accidentally making him think I may not want to be with him anymore due to religious differences - kind of goes along with the last one because I didn't quite know at first how to explain why I got a little twitchy when he told me he was non-practicing Muslim.  This one was pretty damn near a train wreck while I tried to figure out how to explain that while I absolutely did not have a problem with that, I was not sure how my parents would react, as it was now obvious that this was no longer a fling and so what my parents think might actually matter.  While I was trying to explain this I got a "Well, you're Catholic" immediately followed by "I'm joking, of course that's not a problem - I love you as you are."  Eventually my twitch was effectively explained and it was made clear that the "I love you as you are" bit was mutual, but it was almost a train wreck.

4. Being too tired to form a coherent sentence - He called me at 3 am the other day, because that is noon in Italy and he didn't quite realize what time it was for me.  I was happy to talk to him for a little bit, but as I was so tired, a lot of what I said simply dissolved into tired giggles.  This made conversation near impossible, prompted the "...are you sober?" question, and meant that he had to just decide to call me back later when I could actually put two words together.  The message that I was sober got across pretty clearly, but that one still didn't make me look too great for a moment.

And today's winning mishap -

5. Accidentally letting him think that I forgot his birthday - I tend to get really sad when people I care about forget my birthday/don't forget it but forget to say something to me, so I try really hard to make sure that the people I love feel special on their birthdays and if possible, wish them a happy birthday at least twice.  That plan didn't go so well today.  I woke up this morning and was in the process of fully waking up/trying to decide when would be the best time to call him and wish him a happy birthday when he beat me to it.  I was so flustered with being barely awake and the fact that he beat me to it that I allowed the conversation to go waaaaaay off topic for about ten minutes before saying "Honey, isn't today your birthday?"  (I don't know why I said that.  I know that it is, so that was really just a bit ridiculous, and again, didn't make me look too good).  He replied that yes, it was, and I wished him happy birthday and he said thank you and I asked him how he was celebrating and he said that he was going out with his friends in about an hour and did I want to come and I told him that I would love to but that by the time I got there his birthday would be over and so I actually recovered from that one spectacularly .... but again - for a moment there the situation looked a lot worse than it actually was and made me look a bit forgetful and just not too great.

I really don't suck at relationships , I promise.  And hey, this is a LONG distance relationship until January, so I'm allowed a few idiotic mishaps, right?

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