i've moved to vancouver and now that i'm (mostly) over my initial anxieties about moving things are shaping up nicely for me. it rained every day for the first week i was here, but now it is blue skies and beaches all day, every day.

for someone who has never lived in a big, big city before i am sometimes overwhelmed by how much there is for me to do all the time. a simple bikeride through my current neighbourhood and i am discovering the most unusual shops and parks...and buying the cheapest produce in the city -but the cheapest things you'll find throughout vancouver are yoga and sushi. the cool thing for me, though, is that all the neighbourhoods in vancouver seem to be equally as charming and quirky in their different ways. i'm moving to kitsilano in august, which will be amazing because living in kits is like living in a beach town (with amazing boutiques, greektown, high-end grocery stores, and a vast array of restaurants). i have recently turned into a beach bum.

things are slowly falling into place; i've got a good job at a restaurant and i'm beginning to nanny next week, so money will start coming in so i can finally buy some proper towels and mats for the beach (priorities, priorities), and i've got a boytoy to moon after, whether he likes it or not. the only thing left to figure out is the whole apartment/where-am-i-going-to-live-for-the-next-year thing. it'll happen...

OrtoRosa

* OrtoRosa is a wonderful blog about the area of Italia where i am located

terra-y schiavo.

this is my last week in italy, which seems really odd to me considering i just got here! thankfully i got out of the office long enough this past weekend to enjoy one of our big events, cantine aperte. (translations are fairly easy and i've managed to hook into a longterm, freelance translating job, but desks are no love of mine). i took people on tours and made the children love me. i am discovering that i am highly lovable, my cruella deville composure fails me overseas. so the day was nice, i was eating gelato, drinking wine, sampling fresh bruschetta, when in walked a boytoy from last summer who i was fairly head over heels for. my italian at the time made me way to embarassed to talk to him much and he made fun of my driving mishaps ... which all came flooding back as soon as i saw him and once again i was speaking like terry schiavo. (ps: kind of sorry for that simile, but not enough to remove it). but then he made me drink with him and i made fun of his love for robbie williams and then we exchanged numbers and he asked me on a date that i probably won't be able to make since i am fleeing the country in 6 days. sigh. just look at these people and understand why it is so hard to leave this place (let alone the food, weather, landscape, italian boyfriends):
where to next? amsterdam! only for a week, but it's going to be glorious. my friend has already gone out to buy bikes for us to cruise around on and as long as they get me as far as the clog-making factory i will go home happy.

just me and fabio.

any bad blood you may have been sensing between myself and italy is over. i've done some research in the form of visits to florence, venice, treviso, sicily (list gets much more specific and a small part of me dies everytime i write the name of an italian city/area in english, but to ease delivery, and probably my memory in a few years, i'll carry on like this) and la frig mamas and papas we all want to be italian. trust me.

back there at the end of april i had one of the tamest birthday celebrations ever known in terra-dom. i spent a day with the last prince of collalto's daughter and her family in their insanely gorgeous, newly renovated, ground floor palazzo that is approximately 100m from the duomo, you know, that big green and white thingy that you just have to see when in florence. i spent the actual day of my birth visiting the accademia in the morning (nice balls, david -i could have had more refined thoughts, but it was my birthday, you know) followed by two gelatos for lunch (also, it was my birthday), followed by several hours in the uffizi. i spent the rest of my time riding around on my bike and going on cute dates with a charming chap who makes violins.

venice, too, has been treating a girl well lately. why can't i stop buying murano glass jewellry? it's all charming pigeons, aperol cocktails, and parties behind st. mark's. there was a huge birthday party for my friend, leo, and i think we ate for about 12 hours straight. and the weather has been so delicious lately it's criminal not to be out taking advantage on the beach or under the fig trees. am i painting a picture for you here?

and then there was sicily. ooh aah. with my high octane friend, fabio. OOH. AAH. who would live right on the beach except for the pesky vineyard that gets between his terrace and the water. he took me to visit the wonderful towns of marsala, trapani, and erice, as well as a visit to the fairly well-known winery, donnafugata. we did a lot of cooking and eating in the sunshine and a little drinking and running around marsala in the night-time. we had nonsense conversations the whole time and now i'm out of the rabbit hole and back at my desk in translation land. it can't all be fun and games, you know.

terra + easter bunny = chocolate babies.

italy is pretty rad for easter. i mean you don't find too many medieval towns hosting death of christ ceremonies anywhere in canada. and if you do, please fill me in on details, because there is nothing like a little KKK-religious garb, cross-carrying, fire-starting, dead christ on bed, middle ages latin hymn singing to get one into the easter bunny spirit. technically-and i mean technically in the sense of baptism, forced sunday school appearances, and coerced first communion-i am roman catholic, but really i'm more a lover of holidays for their commercial sake. i LOVE the easter bunny. i still have the most amazing basket that is in the shape of a plush bunny, so cute. santa is so rad. i am still plotting a secret revenge on my cousin michael who totally ruined the whole santa thing for me. this being said, seeing an authentic celebration of easter was intense and enthralling. and the town of gubbio is so one gazillion million times worth seeing.

saturday and sunday were much less religiously inspired, unless you consider the all-important religion of calcio in italy. calcio is life. calcio is soccer. i went to rimini, on the adriatic coast, with a coworker and her family to watch her son's international soccer tournament. pretty damn radical; these kids were way better than most university teams i've seen in canada. rimini was the site of mtv trl last summer and i think that it might have the highest density of hotels i have ever seen on one strip before. it was pretty lovely and the summer season has already started so it was mucho busy. we walked the strip, i went to my favourite store, and we played on the beach. aaaah. i heard there was snow in NS? that's really just too bad.

easter is called pasqua in italian. which i really like because it reminds me of my dad's favourite generic name, pasquale...which i actually have never heard of any italian being called.

terra, baby, get thyself an education.

i spent a lot of the weekend planning on writing about how high densities of italian people are bad for one's mental health and levels of aggression. i had all these blanket generalizations noted: don't know how to walk other than abnormally slowly, completely unaware of space around themselves, enjoy blowing smoke in others' faces, think wearing sunglasses 24/7 results in celebrity-like appearance, wear variations on the same outfit (read: cowboy boots, knee-length shorts, some sort of ridiculously tight shirt with as much sparkly & glittery crap as possible), unable to hold doors open, annoying loudness.

then it dawned on me that i was being a stereotypical foreign beeyotch, too set in some of her country's ways to realize that terra, baby, we ain't in kansas anymore. also, i have this problem of making my feelings way too obvious through my face with eye-rolling and disdainful smirks, whatnot. so i had to change my feelings.

this is not hard at all when one is so lucky to be in italy, and luckier still to be at the largest wine show in the world in one of this same world's most beautiful cities; verona.

i won't even begin to describe vinitaly, suffice it to say that if you haven't been you just can not understand how massive and insane and important it is, so please go if you ever have a chance. you will be pleasantly overwhelmed, be able to taste as much wine as your heart and liver could ever desire, and help make my previous statement sound less smug. i got to go with the winery that is so kind to host me here, but i ended up working for the movimento turismo del vino. i had to pass out all these terracotta signs to each winery that is an MTV member, which is a lot, a lot a lot. although my feet and shins are crying out for some sweet massagey loving, i got to see the entire fair while making myself a few euros. unfortunately, it didn't leave much time for wine tasting, but i did get three VIP tastings at some fairly prestigious wineries due to my hookups in italia and back in halifax. i'm a swanky gal.

one night when i wasn't quite tired enough to immediately pass out after the day's work i went into verona's centre for an upscale dinner with my coworkers. when dinner ended, at midnight, we went walking around the centre because everyone wanted to show me something amazing that verona had to offer. the capulet's house (a late-night hang out for lovers of all ages who graffiti it up with things like T + S = luvluv4eva and little sticky notes with love poems and the like), frescoes, roman arches and walkways, the old bridges, and the arena! the verona arena is like a mini colosseum, but it is still used today throughout the summer as a spectacular venue for open-air opera. i couldn't help but feel chic and wonderfully wannabe-italian while wandering the streets with all these incredibly historical visions paired with the high-end shops.

and in the end it reminded me that without these people, that i sometimes stoop so low as to crankily generalize, all of these spactular wonders wouldn't be here and i wouldn't be trying so hard to disguise my dorky canadian pronunciations in an attempt to be my own version of italian.

*feministing.com

extremely good site that gets feminism right.