Rain.... again

It's raining, it's pouring the old man is snoring, he went to bed and bumped his head and won't be up til morning!

It's raining, yet again... i would be more mad about it if it was just in my region, but (un)fortunately it is expected to rain in all of Italy for the next week. I open the weather forecast and see rain expected for everyday available, that's nice! I guess it could be worse... We could have major wildfires like in So. Cal.

My thoughts and prayers are with those who have been severely affected by those fires!

Never thought of it that way

A friend sent me an email with this whole long lists of maybes and some of them actually made me go 'huh, I never thought of it that way'... here are the 3 that made me think

Maybe...giving someone all your love is never an assurance that they will love you back. Don't expect love in return; just wait for it to grow in their heart; but, if it doesn't, be content that it grew in yours.

*(It's true that we should be grateful for havnig the gift of being able to find love in our hearts to give to others)


Maybe...happiness waits for all those who cry, all those who hurt, all those who have searched, and all those who have tried, for only they can appreciate the importance of all the people who have touched their lives

*( I was thinking it would say only they would appreciate everything they got in the end, but to appreciate the people who touched your life when you were hurting and down is a powerful thing, hopefully we all have people who can be there or us during those times, I know I do!)

Maybe...you should hope for enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, and enough hope to keep building your faith

*( I guess I just never really took time to think that sorrow is the essence of our humanity and that without hope we really don't have much)

Just thought I would share these with you guys :)

Yay for not having to put on more clothes

I love my boyfriend... I tend to wear only some thin yoga pants and a spaghetti strap top to bed and when I get up the morning I wear them around the house for a while. The temperature here in Trento has dropped big-time... for example the temperature outside right now is 8 degrees celsius, which for my American friends would be about mid 40's, and it is super windy too, and the temperature is only supposed to get lower this week. Antonio saw that I was kind of chilly this morning, and looked at me and goes, "are you cold?" to which I responded, "kind of".... well instead of saying what I thought he would say, something along the lines of 'why don't you throw on a sweater or wear something warmer' he looks at me and goes... "Do you want me to turn the heat on?".... That my friends is a random act of love. I'm sure he doesn't even know it and wasn't thinking about it... but the fact that he would suggest turning the heat on instead of making me throw on more clothes means a lot to me. It might not mean much, but to a person who feels more comfortable in yoga pants and a tank top than in a sweatshirt and sweats it means a lot! It's the little things that count in the end :)

Study, Study, Study

I NEED to study! I know I am only taking one course at the moment, but I feel pretty safe in saying that grad school is a lot more intensive than an undergrad, not a huge discovery, it's to be expected I guess. Well, I have a lot to study and I do not seem to be able to do it... so I thought maybe if I made how much I have to study public then maybe I would feel guilty or it would finally hit me that I have a lot to do.... so here it is.... What I have to read:

Finish excerpt from the Communist Manifesto
Read Long exceprt by Weber
An excerpt by Parsons (in english)
An Excerpt by Sewell (also in english)
An ecerpt by Polanyi
An Excerpt by Mannheim (in english)
An excerpt by Arendt
2 very long chapters out of the prof. book (in english though)

I love that my prof. gives us excerpts and he copies them out of the books for us, so that means I haven't had to buy any books yet. It's a lot of reading, and it doesn't have to be done by this weekend, but I shoudl try to finish it all up as soon as possible... let's see how much Im able to do this weekend!

On the plus side I have lost quite a few lbs. since getting out here, which makes me happy :) on the down side I still have a cold :(

Socialized Medicine... not too bad, if you ask me!

I hate, and have hated for many years, President Bush.... I read in an article that Bush vetoed the child health care plan, or rather vetoed raising the funds to $35 Billion, and wanted to only raise it to $5 Billion. This is basically a plan that allows free child care to kids whose parents make too much money to recieve Medicaid, but not enough to purchase any kind of actual insurance. I think the part that pissed me off was when I read "It would be funded by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents to $1 per pack." and the President vetoed it, "saying the Democratic bill was too costly, took the program too far from its original intent of helping the poor, and would entice people now covered in the private sector to switch to government coverage....Bush argued that the congressional plan would be a move toward socialized medicine by expanding the program to higher-income families."

I mean come on, how heartless can you be. It's benefitting children! I currently live in a country, or rather on a continent, where socialized medication/healthcare is the norm, and while it does have some problems, it is a pretty good system. In Italy all citizens have healthcare coverage, when i told a friend that we had to pay a co-pay for labor and delivery, she thought we were crazy and said "people out here would refuse to have children if we had t pay for it." Sometimes there is a wait for services, but if you know that you need a yearly exam for something, then schedule your appt. ahead of time. If it is an emergency they can usually fit you in, or worse come to worse, you could ge it done provately and pay, but you would pay next to nothing. Prescribed medicine is free, and other medicines are rather cheap! In France, any persons under 16 years of age, whether French or not, are automatically covered under their health care system. My dear friend Noemie is French and from what I have heard the French have a very good healthcare system that is free for it's citizens. I believe Canada has free health insurance too (I'm not 100% sure, but I think they do), and most Scandinavian countries have free healthcare too. Look at Sweden, mothers are given 420 days of maternity leave, or rather of days to use anytime between the childs birth and the child's 8th birthday, and the father gets 60 days, or months of "daddy-time" to get acquainted with his new child, and it's all paid...and that's just the tip of the iceberg, Uni. in most of Europe is really cheap and subsidized by the state of free. Where did we go wrong in all of this? How did we get stuck with outrageous healthcare costs and Universities with tuition upwards of $30,000.... if you ask me something is wrong with this picture!

Things a child should...and should not say!

Things a child should say: Please and Thank you

Things a child should not say: Child 1: "Sei una merda.... sei la merda che ho fatto stamattina." Child 2: "SI, magari sono una merda, ma io vado a casa a fare sesso. Tanto, tanto sesssssssso!" Rough Translation: Child 1: "you're a piece of shit... you're the piece of shit I shat this morning." Child 2: "Yeah, maybe I'm a piece of shit, but I'm going to go home to have sex. Lots and lots of seeeeeex!"

I take the bus to work usually, I could walk, but it has been cold and rainy lately, so I have been bussing it! Now at this bus stop there are usually 4 young boys that wait for the bus when they get out of school. These boys are roughly 7-8 years old and everyday they get to the bus stop and one turns to the other and will say something along the lines of "vaffanculo, pezzo di merda, bastardo, sei un coglione." (fuck you, you piece of shit, bastard, you're an asshole) to which the other boy will respond something just as bad if not worse, and all 4 of them basically do this to one another, and at some point someone will throw in the fact that they are going to go home to either "fare sesso" have sex or to "scoppare" fuck! They talk crap to one another until the bus comes and then they all get on the bus joking around about what I am assuming is normal kid stuff (assuming because the busses are usually packed, so they would probably get in trouble for speaking like that). They do this every single day! The first time I witnessed it I was completely shocked. I couldn't help but laugh, I mean I just couldn't believe what I was hearing, who speaks like that. It is the weirdest/funniest/most shocking thing I have seen in a while.
Antonio said that sometime next week he will come with me to witness this barrage of insults, I told him that if I ever have a child and I hear him speaking like that that I would probably smack him, it's completely unacceptable. The saddest thing of all, at least in my opinion, is that the mother of one of these boys is usually standing about 10 feet away from where they are spitting insults at one another, and she does nothing to stop them. I mean that's just bad parenting if you ask me!

The way to my heart

So I think Antonio has finally figured it out. We were supposed to meet friends for a drink and dinner yesterday evening, and they texted saying they would be half an hour late, so I asked Antonio if we could go to the nearby bookstore. We went in and I, of course, went straight to the English language section. So I am looking at all these books I want to buy, when I come across this book called 'An Italian in Italy' by Beppe Severgnini, a really good, comical Italian writer. I have his book 'An Italian in America', (thanks for Adriano and Silvia who gave it to me for my brithday) where he writes about his year he lived in the U.S. and the big cultural differences between him and us, and it was really funny. This book is basically his view on Italian habits and ways of life after coming back from living abroad for a while. I really wanted it, but didn't want to spend money buying it, because well, I am once again a poor college student! Now, anyone who knows Antonio knows that reading is not something he likes to do for fun! However, when he saw how sad I was when I put the book back in it's place he picked it up and carried it around the store with us. When I asked him why he still had the book with him he said he would buy it for me, it was soooo completely unexpected and it made me so happy! As I told him, for some women flowers are the keys to their hearts, for other it's chocolate, or jewelery, or homecooked meals, and while I think all of those things are great, he finally figured out the way to mine.... Books!