i had a bazillion ideas...

this past week i had so many ideas of things i wanted to post about, but alas my slacker side got the bets of me (well i dont really know if it was my slacker side because i was frantically doing homework and trying to figure out how to upload a mission photo-which took FOREVER- that i was supposed to have dome last week so i guess in a round about way it was my slacker side because if i had done my h-dub when i was supposed i could have blogged. okay that's enough of a side track)
ANYWAYS, i encountered many things that i wanted to share with you.

1. on friday i read this article in the salt lake tribune. anytime i hear anything about breast milk it takes me back to 10th grade english when my teacher was talking to us about how beneficial a 'mommy farm' would be. The article talks about how a california company is selling breast milk that is donated my women (obvi becasue its impossible for a man to donate breast milk) to hospitals. The article talks about the ethics, more or less, of selling this donated mommy milk. I found a few gems in the article while reading:
"A California company is eyeing Utah for its abundance of notoriously health-conscious, breast-feeding moms."
a. notorious: widely and unfavorably known. really, why would health-consciousness ever be considered 'unfavorably known'. could this be because of the word of wizzum that the many latter-day saints support? humm.
b. "Utah mothers breast-feed at rates, well above the national average..." this made me laugh out loud.
c. the article also mentioned how mom donate, sell, and trade their breast milk online. strange? i think yes is the correct answer.

okay thats enough about boob milk. now on to better things (at least in my opinion)

2. La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's most Enchanting Language.
Its a book I'm reading, one of my besties said when she saw it she just had to buy if for me. so sweet! im so glad she did becasue i LOVE it! I'm only about fifty pages in, but man its so good. the author is just talking about how much she loves the italian language, with words and phrases thrown in that are in italian. "everything just sounds better in italian". and she could not be more wrong.
im currently in Ital 322 advanced composition and let me tell you its kicking my butt. sometimes i just get so discouraged becasue i feel like i will never be able to speak this wonderfully beautiful language. i hide the tears that well up in my eyes during class and hope no one will notice what an idiot i am. doubtful. its at times like these when i have to remind myself why i am studying italian. because i love it. thats all (and the men are on the attractive/romantic side). the more i study the more i love it and the more i get frustrated that i am not progressing as much as i would like. but i love it and i seriously cant image my life now if italian is not a part of it. Dianne, the author, helps to remind my why i put myself in this high anxiety situation. so i trek on, not giving up simply becasue i love the language.

here are a few lines from the book that make me smile...
"...a single word in Italian can reveal more than an entire paragraph in English"
"Take, for instance, Tommaseo's entry on Italy's national pastime (present and future): flirting, which translate into fare la civetta, or 'make like an owl'." She then goes on to describe the difference words that italian have to describe the type of fliriting from a civettino, a precociois little boy flattering a pretty woman, to zerbinotto, a fop tpp old for such foolishness.
"A shrewed furbacchione who obtains a learning a coveted building permit for a rectangular, cement-lined hole in his backyard by describing it not as a swimming pool (prohibited by law) but as a storage vat for water that local firefighters might need to douse a blaze"
she also describes congiuntivo as the sexiest verb form.
whats not to love about this book or the italian language. She talks about how one cannot separate the italian language from their culture. i think that is why i love this language so much. its so rich and full or life, love, passion, tragedy...okay thats enough of a rant about my obsession with la bella lingua

there was more i wanted to write but i didnt write down my inspiriations on my tiny post-it so those ideas will float with the wind until they land again.

i hope all of you have a great week.
you can expect more post as i recommitted my self to being a better blogger

a day trip to the bay and the nostalgia that it brought

i heart sf.

on monday i went to san fransisco with carole and justina. i was so excited to go becasue i have never been before, except that one time i went camping underneath the golden gate bridge for youth conference. we hit up all the touristy spots such as chinatown where i tried a chinese doughnut which was disgusting! we went to pier 39 and watched the seals and foreigners, walked around fishermens warf as well as the rest of the city. we walked up and down the crookest street in the word, lombrad not wall st people...sorry bad joke. but by far my favorite thing that we did was go to little italy.
as soon as we enter neighborhood a man came out of his shop and yelled at the man in the next shop over in italian. voglio parlare con te! my heart accelerated with happiness. oh hearing a real italian speak italian, mama mia, che magnifico! further down the street there was a man smoking outside a restaurant and i asked him if he was italian and he was so we began to have a conversation in italian! it felt so good to speak the language again. oh how i have missed it. we talked about where he was from, me going to siena and why he came to the states. needless to say my friends were impressed with my schveet skills. i still fumbled like i always do, but i love the italian language sooo much. its part of who i am now. we continued to run into italians throughout the day wether they were working or on vacation. i even followed some around at pier 39. yes i know im a creeper, but i just loooved hearing them speak. che comodo! guarda! towards the end of the day we went to this gelato shop in little italy called naia. i was expecting overpriced disappointing gelato but i was pleasently surprised. naia had decent prices and good gelato even better than that one place in lucca where we ate horrible gealto that one time. i talked with the girl behind the counter as i tried many of their flavors ranging from corn to toasted coconut and she told me that they make their own milk base right in the store and just as the italians do they make their flavors using the actually fruits, nuts, ect.

i will definitely be making a return trip.