It’s apparently San Francesco (Saint Francesco) day…the patron saint of Massa (where the office is). As such we get a day off…I love this country!
I went off to Carrara in an attempt to buy shoes for the wedding this weekend (London), but they didn’t have my size for the ones I wanted. Now I need a nap.
After work Friday Daniele and I drove to Bologna. Great city! I loved it.
Met some cool people. Had some great food and conversation, found an international bookstore with a great english selection. I’m in books for a few months…
Apparently there’s no such thing as bolognese sauce in Bologna…they just call it ragu. Brilliant!
Also the american bologna is called mortodella in Bologna. It’s just bologna 🙂
Here’s some pics…I’ll put up more on it’s own page.
http://www.joesquires.com/bologna-italy-sep-2010/
Ever come across ridiculous articles that rate things?
Then you look at the questions they ask to determine the ratings and decide it’s just stupid. A person can skew any survey to get the results they want.
Yesterday I went to Italian class again and it was just more being yelled at 🙂
I did have to stand in front of the class at the chalkboard and spell stuff (in Italian of course). Luckily I did well. I havn’t stood in front of a class at a chalkboard since I was about 8 years old. Kind of weird…especially for a lefty. We have to write kind of funky on chalkboards (as not to smear).
The teacher sort of takes turns singling out students and talking to them for about 2 minutes at a time…I’m learning that I can avoid this by pretending to be busy writing stuff down or looking at my dictionary…if I don’t make eye contact with her she’ll assume I’m learning…and stuff 🙂
Also sometimes good to just say “si…capisco”…it doesn’t have to be true.
Today I went to Italian class for the first time. It’s actually a free class put on by a local high school but is specifically for foreigners.
It was pretty good…or at least it could be. They go for 4 hours a day, but I can drop in and out whenever I want. I’ll try to go everyday for at least an hour until it starts raining which will be the end of me as I will usually get a ride home on those days. The teacher is fairly nice…doesn’t speak much english and is tiny yet loud…once I realized she wasn’t yelling AT me it was OK 🙂
I didn’t understand much, but I wrote down a lot of stuff that she put on the chalkboard…I suppose tonight I’ll try to translate everything…and then oh yeah…by tomorrow I’ll be speaking about the weather or some such useless topic 🙂
I’m half packed for Munich…
I got exhausted and am now taking a break 😉
I’m the worst packer in the world. I’ve already forgotten stuff I was probably supposed to bring. Ummm…yeah. What was that thing???
I.was.supposed….to……..get…
Must remember to buy books in Munich.
…and to finish a thought from a while ago….that Nick Hornby book was “Juliet Naked” which is the greatest book I’ve read since…June….
Don’t you hate it when you want to say something really grand and it turns out you can’t?
Well tonight was the most fun I’ve had since….last night.
No real weight to a statement like that. Always more fun when you can say…I haven’t had that much fun since 2004. However I guess a statement like that indicates you don’t have fun often or something….
Anyway…I really enjoyed the Nick Hornby book. I love most of the movies made from his books. He’s a great writer and it’s really not my fault that I read a really good book in June (maybe it was July…but it was a Murakami book).
Since my flight is at 7am on Friday morning (from Pisa) I’m staying overnight in Pisa tomorrow so I can get up appropriately early…appropriately early for an inappropriate flight…or something like that. I still think Pisa is a dead-ish town but hopefully I’ll find something to do…
The weather is great today so I went to Lerici. If my contract is extended I may look for a place there. It’s a pretty small town, but absolutely gorgeous! I love it there…I’d have to get a car if I lived there tho. No train service and further away from work. A small price to pay I s’pose…
pics of Lerici here…they are all tagged with Lerici
It was almost exactly like Oktoberfest :)…I think…maybe….
New guy said something like: “When I look at you I just think you’re British.”
ha!!! Nice compliment…
Off today in search of a suit for a wedding in London next month.
So today is my first official one year anniversary of working in Italy…it now occurs to me that I’m now driving illegally…I blame america for this (for the lack of driving license reciprocation). I can drive here legally for one year (that makes no sense to me)…it was the same in Germany. 1 year legal then a criminal…as if after driving and observing drivers for a year I’m a worse driver than I was a year ago when I arrived…FALSE!
This now makes the second entry that I’ll have to run home and delete in case I ever need to plead ignorance 😉
After a long absence I’ve started listening to Cat Power again of late…Not sure I’ve ever posted here…but enjoy
and I had to post the first two just to get to this one (so you have some context – you’re welcome)…this is an amazing cover. It is immediate top 5 greatest covers on my list.
I’m constantly confused when I get this question from Italians. It always comes from waitresses and I should have figured out by now that it doesn’t mean anything like “How are you?”. It means more like “Do you need anything else?”. They just seem to sincerely interested in if I’m OK or something.
Sometimes I forget and just start complaining about the weather or something equally insignificant and then I ask them how they are…then I think do’h and just feel stupid 😉
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