Don't ALWAYS do as the Romans!

It's been a while since my last post.  I have been busy at school, finishing up my last semester of classes and preparing for graduation.  Busy times over here.

In the midst of all this, something has been living and growing in my mind.

How did people feel okay with making other people their slaves?  With participating in genocide and killing huge numbers of people?  With standing aside as three thousand and seven hundred people are aborted every day in the United States alone?  I know the answer.  

It's because they're not people.  

Simple, right?  If someone has a different color skin, has a different background, or has not been born yet, he or she is not a person and therefore does not have the same rights normal people do.  No reason to treat them with common decency.

It must be the way human traffickers view their victims.  Sex slavery is the second largest--and fastest growing--criminal industry in the world.  In my recent experience, people know that this kind of thing exists, but not near them, and not in such great proportions.  According to the FBI, the average age a child is first sexually exploited is 11, and as many as 40% of forced prostitutes nationwide are children.  Chicago is the second highest city in the nation in terms of child sexual exploitation.  The majority of forced prostitutes are 18 or older, and are either literally grabbed off the street or lured away from home by someone they meet and grow to trust, only to be betrayed into a life of sexual slavery.

Enough.

Like many Americans, I have both a dresser and a closet filled with clothes, and I wear different outfits different days.  Not anymore.  Every day until Easter, I will be wearing a simple green dress so that when people comment, I will be able to explain what I am doing and talk about an issue that they may or may not be aware of.  Sexual slavery is a huge issue, both in numbers of lives affected, and in impact on the lives of those involved.  It's worth doing something about, even something as small as wearing one dress for a month and a half.

A long time ago, in a land far, far away...

When I last left you, dear readers, I was stuck in a foreign land, short on both sleep and food.  Fortunately, I made some friends during my months in Milan.  So, after a kind roommate made me some homemade Chinese food common in her hometown and then I slept for 14 hours, I headed to downtown Milan to spend the day with a friend.  She bought me lunch and we hit up all 8 levels of Italy's posh most famous department store.  Fun day.

Early the next morning--EARLY the next morning--I hopped on a bus, got to the metro, and waited for the first train.  From the central station, I caught the bus to the airport, whipped through security, and got on the plane to Dusseldorf, Germany.  Oh!  My bag was a couple kilograms overweight, which was definitely a potential problem.  The airline charged 10 euro for every kilo over the limit, but I had a woman checking me in who was either kind or lazy and she just let my bag slide on through.  Woohoo!

Onto Dusseldorf, which looked like a snowy winter wonderland as we landed.  A quick pass through the passport check desk, and I was at the gate.  My plane was a bit delayed because the pilot wanted to wait for  a couple late planes coming in with a bunch of people transferring flights.  We made up the time during the thousands of miles to Chicago, during which time I slept some blissful albeit leg-asleepy hours and watched the movie "Salt."  There's nothing like a fast-moving action movie on a nice 5 x 6 inch screen. Oh, yeah.  I also watched "Despicable Me," which I loved!  A nice animated movie, plus my natural high level of emotion, temporarily enhanced by the anticipation of finally getting home, all adds up to me tearing up in either sadness or joy at least four times during the movie.

I left Milan in the morning, I saw Dusseldorf in the late morning, and I landed in Chicago in the early afternoon.  Not too bad, right?  It was the longest day of my life.  Not in a bad way, just in a really literal way.  It was 33 hours, to be exact.  Beat that!

Trade ya!

More time in Italy for less time in IL.  How's that sound, Angela?

Well, the decision was made for me last Saturday morning when my flight out of Milan was cancelled.

Cancelled.

Yes, cancelled.

Really cancelled.

It took me a little while to process the information, so I figured I'd give you the same  opportunity.

There I sat at approximately 5:30 in the morning, about to leave for the airport, when I found out that the reason I wanted to go to the airport had just disappeared.  Shoot!  So I got on facebook and found that the only person I knew in the US that was on was a girl who used to be in the high school youth group I helped out with in Evanston.  I asked her to call my home phone number and ask my Dad to go online.  Ha!  It must have been a funny conversation.  In any case, my Dad came online and we tried to figure something out.  There was, of course, not too much we could do, so after a little while I headed off to the airport.  I waited in line for about an hour at the service desk of the airline for my flight, where I was told yes, my flight was cancelled, and they could not help me here.  I had to go to the ticket counter for the airline.  I got there and had the chance to wait some more.  At one point I thought, "Well, my flight to Germany would be taking off right now."  Later, I thought, "Well, my flight to Germany would be landing right now."  Later, I thought, "Well, my flight to Philadelphia would be taking off right now."  I finally got to the front of the line and talked to a man who told me that every flight that day was cancelled for that airline.  Since every flight the previous day had been cancelled as well, they had to help a lot of people.  He said every flight the next day (Sunday) from anywhere in Europe to anywhere in the United States was booked to the hilt, and there was absolutely no chance I could make it on any of them.  He was able to get me a seat on a plane the morning of the 20th, however.  I REALLY wanted an earlier flight.  Any earlier flight.  I didn't want to be the obnoxious customer who caused problems for the poor guys who had to deal the frustrated people who had been waiting in line for four and a half hours.  There were a few tears begging to get some fresh air, and I figured they couldn't hurt my cause.  So I let the man behind the counter see the heroic effort I was making to not melt into a puddle of tears and hoped he would magically be able to find a quicker flight.  It didn't work.  I collected my little piece of paper with my new flight information and made my way to a seating area, where I instantly melted into a puddle of tears.

Okay.

Next I thought to myself, "I'm in Milan for 2 more days.  It's a good thing I have an apartment here.  Oh. To bad I don't have enough money to buy a ticket back into Milan.  Since the airline got me into this mess, they should take care of this problem."  I glanced back at the line I had just stood in for... what was it?  Oh yeah--four and a half hours.  I decided to go back to the service desk.  I was talking to a person within ten minutes.  She told me she couldn't help me; I should go to the ticket counter.  Cool.  While I was there, I picked up a copy of my flyer's rights.  I sat back down in the seating area and burst into hysterical tears.  There was a couple kind of near me, and I think they were saying a romantic goodbye.  They left to do that somewhere else.  I sat for a minute going on less than 6 hours of sleep in the past 3 days, and having eaten nothing that day except one packet of crackers.  I looked at the line--maybe it was smaller.  I dragged myself back into line, plopped down on the floor leaning against my luggage, and started writing a blog I knew I would not be able to post until I returned to my apartment.  Did that, and then closed my eyes, making sure to remain in physical contact with every piece of luggage I had with me.  I dozed off and only woke up when the woman behind me asked me to move forward.  Very refreshing.  This time the line took me less than two hours to get through, and when I got to the front, I was able to get a round-trip ticket to the city from the airport.  AND I read in my handy-dandy flyer's rights that I was allowed to make two phone calls.  Sweet!  Free calls to the US!  I called home and left a message explaining all the updates, and then called my mom's cell phone.  I knew odds were small that she would pick up, since she never gets to her phone in time for the first call and only finds it for the second time someone calls.  I was right.  It's nice to know that some things don't change, no matter how many months you've been away from home.  :)

So, I caught the bus back into Milan and made my way to my apartment.  Unfortunately, I had turned in my keys, the doors were locked, and my roommates were not home.  There is a window in the hall that my old roommate liked to have open for circulation.  I warned her that it would be easy for someone to simply climb in from outside, but she would still frequently open it.  I guess she opened it one last time before she left, because it was a crack open.  I lugged all my luggage through the window and then locked it.  Whew!  Looooong day.  My roommates were quite surprised when they came back and found me back in the apartment!

Tomorrow, I go home for real! (I hope.)

Pair-ee!

“Paris” in French.  At least the way I speak it.

Sunday was our wrap-up day, our last day together.  It was also the first Sunday of the month, which, fortunately for us, meant that the Louvre was free!  We spent most of the day there, and enjoyed part of one wing.  Seriously, that place is huge.  I saw the Mona Lisa, which I really enjoyed since I have been taking a class on Leonardo da Vinci over the semester, and the Mona Lisa was (of course) one of his paintings that we paid special attention to.  Kind of funny—there was a huge crowd pushing to see and take pictures of the Mona Lisa, which is behind bullet-proof glass and has an entire wall all to itself.  Right in hallway outside, passed by unnoticed by most of the people who at that point are only excited to see da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, are two more da Vinci paintings.  One is another portrait of a woman.  He only completed four portraits of women in his life, and one is in a place where it frequently gets ignored by people rushing to see another.  Weird.  We also saw the Venus de Milo, and other famous pieces of art.  Did you know there is an entire exhibition on the history of the Louvre?  There is!  Actually, there are more than one: History of the Louvre 1, the Medieval Louvre, and History of the Louvre 2.  What kind of museum needs three different exhibitions just to cover its own history?  Pretty cool, I think anyway.

After that, the plan was to visit the Champs-Elysees and get crepes as an early celebration of my birthday.  We decided, however, that it would be a good idea to check first to find out when the last night bus or first morning bus ran to the airport Becca and I were flying out of early in the morning.  We went there first and found out that the first bus in the morning would cut it too close for us, and the last bus at night departed in about half an hour.  We went on a hasty quest to find crepes, but it was Sunday night and most places were closing.  We did manage to find a bakery that was starting to close, but the woman was kind enough to let us in and patient enough to remain very pleasant as we took our time ooh-ing and aah-ing over the baguettes and French pastries.  We had to get both.  Yum.  Then came a hurried goodbye, and Becca and I were on the bus to the airport, ready for a night of talking, paper writing on her part, and hopefully some sleeping on mine.  We found a good spot for the night and got settled in, and then an airport employee came over to tell us that if we were not on the next flight out, we would have to leave because the airport was closing.  What?!  Airports close?  Who even knew?  With some help from the information desk, Becca and I navigated our way to the cheapest hotel in the town outside of Paris where the airport was located.  Thanks, RyanAir.  I’m sure hotels in that town love you.  That was Sunday.

Becca wrote her paper and I caught a few hours of sleep before we got up to catch the earliest city bus to the airport.  It didn’t work; we missed it.  I was kind of concerned I would miss my flight if we had to wait an hour for the next bus, but the clerk at the hotel was just getting off work and offered to drive us!  How kind.  We made very good time, and were well in time to hang out at the airport because our flights were delayed.  Mid-Monday found me flopping into bed and falling into a deliciously sound sleep.

BAM!   …We’ll always have Paris.

Parigi!

"Paris" in Italian.

Friday morning Marie and I woke up bright and early, meaning about 9, and enjoyed breakfast before heading out to meet up with Becca.  After a long and somewhat trying ordeal, BAM (Becca, Angela, and Marie) was reunited!  And I had my bag, which someone had thoroughly gone through and taken the 50 euros I had put in there.  Bummer.

We hopped on the metro and hopped off again at a certain stop--I don't remember how we chose it; there was nothing famous there.  But we ate some food (French food... yum) and wandered around for a while.  We saw a cool old church and were enchanted by cute little outdoor food markets.  We spent a long time in an antique store before we went to meet up with Jean Francois, the man at whose house were staying.

It was a cool antique shop.

His house was so cool!  His wife and mother-in-law were in Morocco when we arrived, so we had dinner with him and his son.  The son's name is the French version of Julian, which I don't know how to spell, and he was about our age.  Really cool family.  Jean Francois traveled from France to Nepal more than once when he was younger on an autocycle!  An autocycle is essentially a bicycle with a small motor over the front wheel to make it turn.  Top speed? 15 mph.  There was room for one small bag behind the seat.  He's got lots of stories, and lots of really cool unusual instruments hung on one wall of his house.  Some of them he bought on his travels, and others were given to him as gifts.  We asked him how, since he only had one little bag with him, did he get all those large and awkwardly shaped instruments home?  He said whenever he got one, he would ride to the nearest airport, find someone who was flying to France, and ask them to take the instrument and mail it to his address!  Every single instrument arrived safe and sound.  Isn't that incredible?  That was Friday.

Saturday was our outside day and the timing was a little unfortunate because it was also the coldest, most precipitous day we had in France.  Oh, well.  We wandered around an area that Jean Francois recommended, and another that Marie's guidebook said was "the ageless Paris of poets and songs" or something like that.  It was pretty cool, but very cold.  We saw Notre Dame, which was beautiful.  A mass started while we were in there, which was interesting.  Tourists walk around the perimeter of the church while those participating in the mass do so in the middle.

Notre Dame!  And a Christmas tree with blue lights.

Our last visit that day was... the Eiffel Tower!  Wow.  I've always heard that it's so beautiful and so big and so much better than the pictures, but I was still blown away!

  

The Eiffel Tower!

It was gorgeous!  Becca and Marie are both dating people, and at one point they turned to each other and said that they wished their boyfriends were there.  I came up with the brilliant idea of taking a picture of them kissing nothing in front of the Eiffel Tower and then showing their boyfriends and saying, "Look!  I was thinking of you at the Eiffel Tower!"  I know, I know, I'm brilliant.

And then we went to space!  Just kidding.  This is the Eiffel Tower from underneath.  Doesn't it look like it belongs in space though?

Black and white photo except for the golden tint of the lights of the Tower.  That's right.

That was Saturday.

Paris!

Aah, Paris...

Where to start?  Well, there was some rough weather in Paris the day Becca, Marie, and I were supposed to fly there and meet up.  In fact, when I took off from Milan, the ground was covered in slush, it was sleet/snowing, and there was a murky sort of pre-dawn haze.  When I landed outside of Paris, I looked out the window and it looked almost exactly the same!  Since Marie was flying into a different airport than Becca and I were, we decided to all meet at Becca's and my airport and then head off to our hostel together.  Well, the weather wasn't so great, as I said.  I was the first to fly in, and I made it just fine.  Marie's flight was delayed several hours, and she had quite an adventure navigating her way to the airport where I was waiting.  Becca called to say her flight had been cancelled and she would fly in the following morning.  Marie finally made it, we joyfully hugged, and then left the airport to catch the hour and a half long busride to the center of Paris.  Where she had just come from.  Funny--the airport was very small and not very well heated, so I sat there for over 12 hours wearing several layers of clothes along with my hat and coat, and fairly frequently went to stand in the bathroom for a little while because it was the only warm place I could find! 

When I got on the bus, the driver stopped me and told me I had to put my bag underneath.  I did, and then got back on the bus and he tore my ticket.  Marie tried to follow, but he said the bus was full and she had to take the other bus.  Oh, no!  We're finally reunited after months of being apart and a very long day just waiting and struggling to meet up with each other, and now we have to ride on separate buses and hope we meet up all right on the other end?  We didn't know how soon the second bus was going to leave or anything, so I rushed back down, and we stammered that we were traveling together and had to ride the same bus.  The driver looked at me and handed me back the other half of a torn ticket.  I hoped it would work but wasn't sure if it would.  I didn't want to have to buy another expensive bus ticket.  It worked, and it wasn't until I got off the bus in Paris and went to pick up my bag that I remembered I had left it on the other bus.  Shoot!  We went to the little ticket stand to ask about it, and the man said to return the next morning.  At least I had my toothbrush and toothpaste in my purse and had layered on the comfy clothes I was going to wear as pajamas on top of my regular clothes while--get ready--"chilling" in the airport all day.  That's right.  Wordplay.

Marie and I found our way to our hostel, which was really cool. I think it was two really old buildings built right up against each other which had been connected and then turned into a hostel.  Cool atmosphere.  Also, breakfast was supposed to be 5.50 euro extra, but the guy at the counter said it was included in our surprisingly low room cost!  It was a dorm-style room, which I had never stayed in before, so Marie and I shared a room with two other girls, and during the night found out how the hostel keeps costs so low: they don't heat the rooms very much.  But not all the beds were being used, so I grabbed a lonely blanket and made it through the night just fine.  That was Thursday.

I will write more, but that's all for this post.  The internet at my apartment is broken, again, so I am using a friend's computer at her apartment.  It's very generous of her, and I don't want to wear out my welcome, so to speak.

Au revoir!

Un buon weekend

“A good weekend.”   Yup, Italians use the word “weekend” too.

Last Thursday morning brought with it an old friend, Becca, and a new friend, Juliet.  I study with Becca in Chicago, but this semester we are both studying abroad and she met Juliet at her host school.  Much to my delight, they both came for a visit this weekend.  We tried to work out the rendezvous point online before they flew out of their country because they wouldn’t have internet access after they left and we would not be able to call each other.  (Even so, I gave them my phone number.  You never know when it’ll come in handy.)  Unfortunately, when I told them where to meet me in the train station, I was not remembering exactly correctly the layout of the station, so the staircase I directed them to did not exist.  Oops.  We looked for each other for rather a long time before they called me from a pay-phone they found and we were able to talk; we found each other soon after.  It was the beginning of a fabulous and memorable weekend.  I introduced them to Italian cappuccinos and marochinos.  We visited the Castello Sforzesca and a few museums inside, one of which houses the "Pieta Rondanini," Michelangelo's last sculpture--unfinished--before he died, and a room painted by Leonardo da Vinci.  I took them to Chocolat, the best gelato place in Milano, and the only place I've found that sells lemon-basil gelato.  Holy smokes--so good.  The Duomo was a given, and we picked up some good luck by spinning three times with our right heels in a hole in the floor of the center of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II--kind of like a fancy-pants Italian shopping mall right next to the duomo.  It has Prada, Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana, McDonalds... you know, all the major players.

The Pieta Rondanini.  It depicts Mary taking Jesus down from the cross, but when you walk around it, it looks like Jesus is carrying Mary's weight.  Notice Mary has part of a second face.

Leonardo da Vinci's "Sale della Asse."  So intricately detailed.

Us! ...and the duomo.

We had pizza, handmade in front of our very eyes and cooked in a huge wood-burning oven by men who were very happy to be able to speak Arabic with Becca.  The last night and pasta with pesto and traditional Milanese Christmastime bread/cake, panettone.  The pasta was orrecchiette, which means "little ears" because it's shaped kind of like little ears!  It was absolutely lovely to be able to catch up with Becca and just spend time with her.  I really appreciate sharing space with someone.  Even if we're not talking, we're together in the same place at the same time, and that experience cannot be reproduced or simulated, no matter what kind of communication technology is available.  It reminds me in a way of what a famous fiction author described as "kything." (Anyone? Anyone?)  I think sometimes more goes on than meets the eye.

It was hard to say goodbye.

I will leave you with a couple public transportation Funny Moments:

1) One night, Juliet and I went out to get a bottle of good ol' Italian wine, and after a successful pickup, we returned to the sidewalk and looked back to see the bus we wanted to take a block behind us, doors already open.  We knew we couldn't run back a block and catch it before the doors closed and the bus started moving, so we started running forward, hoping to make it to the next stop in time.  Facing the street on the sidewalk ahead of us stood a woman.  She glanced over, saw us running in her direction, froze for a second, and then turned and ran the same direction we were running!  Juliet and I were a little confused but we kept on going.  When we were close to the stop, we stopped running, and the woman stopped at about the same time we did.  We got on the bus, and I don't know if she did or not; I lost her in the group of people at the stop.  Strange.

2) In Chicago, if the doors of the L start to close and something blocks them from closing all the way, they bounce back open.  Good system, I think.  Well, I was in a hurry at one point, and ended up running to an underground metro train.  Juliet was going to visit a friend in Florence for a day, and she had forgotten some readings for class that she wanted to read during the train ride.  We were at the train station and I didn't know if we could go back to my apartment and make it back before her train left, so I decided to go back myself.  That way if I couldn't get back in time she would still be able to catch the train she had bought a ticket for.  So I was rushing to the right metro line and saw that the train was there right then.  The doors started to close as I was sprinting towards them and with every thought focused on making in inside that train car, I dramatically leaped forward.  I'm sure it looked so cool that if it was in a movie, I would be an action hero flying forward in slow motion.  Right up until the doors closed on me.  Really hard.  And didn't bounce back open.  I had my head, one shoulder, and one leg inside the train, some squished internal organs, and the rest of me still on the train platform.  There were a few men standing in the train close to the door I was stuck in, and their shocked faces would have been really funny if I had had time to enjoy them.  I saw the man standing closest to me instinctively jerk forward to try to help pull me into the car, then hesitate as if unsure what to do.  I clearly wanted to be on the train, but it most likely would have been easier to extract myself if I just went back onto the train platform.  The doors were really tight, and he could probably see that either direction I went would end up being painful, so he didn't want to touch me.  But there was no way I was not going to make that train.  I weaseled my way forward, and if it was in a movie, I would be a cartoon squeezing my way forward through something so tight my eyes would be bugging out of my head.  But I made it!  I got through and stumbled forward as the doors snapped shut like the jaws of a predator angry that it lost it's prey.  Even though the episode happened very quickly--within a few seconds--literally everyone within line of sight was staring at me, and there were a few mouths agape.  I do love a dramatic entrance.  I popped back up into a normal standing position, flashed everyone a smile to show that I was not hurt, and calmly walked over to a pole to hold onto for the ride.  All the seats were filled and honestly, who wants to lose their balance while standing on public transportation?  That would just be embarrassing.

Non mi legga chi non e matematico.

The above is a quote from one of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks.  As my well-educated and intelligent readers probably know, Leonardo kept many notebooks throughout the course of his life, in which he made many sketches and wrote many interesting things from right to left.  Why from right to left?  No one knows.  The translation of the quote is roughly "Let no one read me who is not a mathematician.

I don't know how he would feel about me reading him, much less quoting him.

This is unconnected to anything else, but I want to say it.  Star Wars was on TV today.  "The Empire Strikes Back," to be precise, dubbed in Italian.  I did not watch very much, but I did notice that everyone's voice was different except for R2D2 and Chewbacca.  I wonder why they didn't translate those character's lines into Italian.

Last night I attended a concert at another university in Milan.  It was done by two women, an Israeli woman and a Palestinian woman, who each sang a selection of their own songs and then performed together.  It was amazing--my favorite things I've done in Milan thus far.  The experience meant a lot to me before the concert even started, because my friend had given up her ticket so that I could go.  That immediately gave the free concert a ton of value.  It was supposed to start at 9:00, and at about 9:30 the audience broke into applause.  The girl next to me (a friend of the friend who gave up her ticket) explained to me that clapping is a way for the audience to communicate they are tired of waiting and want the show to start.  My first thought was that timetables for showtimes must be quite different in Italy than in the US if there is a ubiquitously known way for the audience to communicate impatience.  Oh, those cultural differences.  My second thought was "Really? 30 minutes?"  I'd estimate an American audience would have clapped in 12 at the latest.  The Palestinian Mira Awad was the first performer, and she was positively entrancing.  She sang acapella mostly in Arabic, and a little bit in English.  She sounded wonderfully Middle Eastern, and at one point the man accompanying her on djembe had a solo, and she did some lovely dance moves.  I have a friend who once spent a summer in Palestine, and when she came back she tried showing me some dance moves she saw there at a wedding.  I had an idea of what they should look like, but had never seen them look so smooth and beautiful as when this woman who had spent her whole life there did them.  After a while the second singer, internationally known Israeli singer Noa came on.  I used to think J.R.R Tolkien was exercising his imagination when he described Saruman captivating people by putting them under the spell of his voice.  When Theoden, king of Rohan, resisted his voice and spoke, everyone around thought his voice sounded horrible--unrefined and foolish.  Now I think Tolkien heard someone like Noa and wrote about his experience, adapting it to fit the story.  Seriously, her opening song was 10 or 15 minutes long, and she thanked the university for hosting the concert, as well as the audience for coming, and then introduced herself and her band members.  With each introduction of course the audience applauded, and I literally felt like one of those poor sucker soldiers riding with King Theoden who just wanted him to shut up so they could continue listening to the enchanting voice of Saruman.  The main difference is that Noa is not a wizard gone bad.

Here are a few pictures I snapped of when they were singing together.  I also really liked what the lighting designers did.  Every song had a really different look.

Their first song together.

I think this was during the song "There Must Be Another Way" which was really powerful as a duet between an Israeli and a Palestinian.  Beautiful.  If I wanted to get really symbolic here, I could talk about how the light that look like an eclipse.  An eclipse--temporary and holding the promise of full light in the future.  If you care to give the song a listen, here's one version: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN8B1xvCxI0&feature=related

 

This was their last song.  Here's the two of them performing it in Rome a while ago: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iukOKO-6R0

There have been a few changes to the song since then, making it more equally split between the Hebrew and the Arabic, but this is more or less what they sang.

When we left, the girl I was with (who is a jazz singer and attends at least a couple concerts every week) said that Noa "is a Singer, with-a the big S!"

I must say I agree.

Today Was A Day.

The title is a tribute to my friend Becca.  She is one for calling things what they are.

Today I had a field trip to MediaSet, the major television broadcasting company in Italy.  There are six Italian channels--three public and three private.  MediaSet controls the three public ones, and is owned by Berlusconi, the president of Italy.  Berlusconi... hm.  I will refrain from commenting at this time.

Anyway, my class got a tour of several studios and editing rooms.  It was a blast--so interesting!  In one studio, the cast of one show was practicing.  We couldn't stay very long, but they were all dancing, and it was fun to see a little piece of the process.  Also I want to dance.  I have been craving swing with Joshua, salsa with my Dominican friends, tapping in WA musicals.  Like "Singin' in the Rain."  That tune's been going through my head quite a bit recently.

Tomorrow I am going to a concert with my friend Esmeralda, who studied at my home university, and at whose university I am now currently studying!  What are the odds, huh?  Actually, the performance is by two women who perform duets together--an Israeli Christian and a Palestinian Christian.  I am excited to go experience that with Esmeralda.

That's the update!  And this is the view of MediaSet from the street.

Feeling sunshiny!

Today was gorgeous and sunny and every time I walked outside I started grinning like a fool.  A happy fool--that's me!

P.S. The quote a couple posts ago was from Agatha Christie's "The Man in the Brown Suit."  Good book.