What's in a name?

Well, actually a lot's in a name. For example, when people read Great Expectations and see the name Mr. Pocket it reminded them that he was a character who wished he had more money in his pockets. When people hear the name Mildred, an old lady (for some, well, me anyway, a British old lady) automatically comes to mind. When VIU students hear Orla, we think of Spawn of Satan. When we hear Romeo or Juliet, we think of love. And that brings me (rather circumlocutorily) to the topic of my post: I went to Verona last weekend!

I must begin by saying that Verona is a very cute town, but it's rather sad that its claim to fame is not having the second largest Roman colloseum (only the one in Rome is bigger), but the Casa di Giulietta-- that's right, a fictional literary character's "house." You can even visit her "tomb" where she's "buried." And if you pay a whopping 5 euros, you can go inside her house, see a few paintings of her and Romeo, and stand on her balcony (which is actually a stolen sarcophagus glued to a second-story window). If the line's not too long, you can send her an e-mail, but my friends are still waiting for a response. They figured if they can visit her house and send her e-mail, the least she could do is reply. After all, it's only polite to write back to admirers.

Well, so after we stood in the courtyard of her authentic medieval house and rubbed her right boob for good luck, Chen, Keshia, and I decided to explore the rest of the city. The colloseum was very cool, and it's still used today for concerts (although I can't imagine that sitting on a stone seat for a whole concert is very comfortable). We ate lunch in a Chinese restaurant (it's sad but the food was really good and a whole lot cheaper than eating Italian food there!), and then went across the river and climbed a little hill to see a castle, which was (of course) closed. The view was very pretty though, and after we had had enough of it we made our way down and entered the Archeological Museum located at the foot of said hill, which of course, we had to climb again because the museum is basically half the hill. At the bottom there was a Roman amphitheater, which, when it was in use, was complete with an orchestra pit and curtains that were moved with a pulley system. Then we made our way through a small chapel to a museum building that used to be a monastery but now has an entire collection of decapitated statues and bodiless heads, and we passed through a Roman graveyard before finding ourselves back on the street we started from. In all, it was a nice, relaxing day, and I'm glad that the three of us travel well together. It's rare to find two new friends to go to Verona with as plain old tourists, and not for their international wine festival (which, coincidentally, the rest of VIU was in the city for).

Pictures can be found here:

http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014763&l=8655d&id=3901306

On a small housekeeping note, I have had to change the privacy settings on Skype because several times now I've received rude phone calls from strangers in China or Turkey at 2AM. The last one woke me up three times in a span of 10 minutes, and when I told him politely but firmly to not contact me again, I was met with a string of F words in a tone so angry I was awake for the next hour, sure that he was going to hunt me down from Istambul and kill me for refusing to take his phone call. I had to leave the phone off the hook the rest of the night to avoid hearing from him again. So I've attempted to solve the problem by blocking calls from people not on my list, but I know that that creates a problem for several people. I probably can't receive calls from Dad's office because it's never from the number that I use to call them, and I'm not even sure I can receive calls at all (because you never know with modern technology...everything that can go wrong seems to do so happily at the first chance it gets). So I just wanted to apologize for anyone who cannot get through, and if you find this too annoying, either let me know via e-mail or a comment on here and I'll change them back and just leave the phone off the hook at night, or call me on my landline at a time I would probably be in the room (i.e., after 9pm here). Okay just wanted to get that cleared up.

I haven't been updating this blog as often as I did last semester because lo and behold, the professors here are assigning this weird thing called homework! It's a strange concept, but every other week I have to write two papers (one for each of the Spanish Guy's classes), and Massimo (Teacher of Doom) assigns homework every other night as well. Today he infuriated Keshia by saying that American kids have issues with Italian and are just horrible when they try to learn it because we're brought up only knowing one language (English) fluently. I hate to agree with him, but it is true that in general, the American students here are the ones with the worst pronounciation and the hardest time speaking. However, he didn't mention that for us, it is easier to guess at the meaning of words we don't recognize than for some of the other nationalities in class. Anyway, I didn't take much offense at what he said; I guess maybe because I grew up speaking two languages (even though my English is far better than my Spanish is), and I found French to be fairly simple to learn (although sadly, most of it has gone out the window since I haven't used it in three years). I just don't have many problems with learning Italian. My problems with Massimo's class stem from Massimo, who really infuriated me yesterday because not only did he come in to class reeking of cigarette smoke, but he had the nerve to sit practically on top of me the entire class period. I think that out of an hour and a half, he probably spent only 20 minutes of it where he wasn't able to touch me. My jacket now smells like smoke (actually it constantly smells of smoke because of him) because he sits so close that his shoulder touches my arm, no matter how far I lean to the opposite side of the desk. It's really rather frustrating and irritating, but I'm afraid to complain because as it is, Spawn of Satan (Orla) decides our grades based on how much she likes us, so I definitely don't want to be on Massimo's bad side in addition to already being on Orla's. (Silly me for accusing the maids of stealing my money! Of course they are so honest and would never do such a thing!) Ah well, sorry for griping so often on here about Massimo and Spawn of Satan. It's hard to stop a rant when all I can think of is how I'd like to be more practiced in the art of defenestration.

To change the subject, I shall impart the wonderful knowledge I have garnered on the all-knowing wikipedia.com (my newest method of procrastination...and you can't complain either, because it's educational!):

Kiwis used to be called Chinese gooseberries. They changed the name as a marketing strategy during the Cold War because sales were going down because they were associated with China. The leading producer of kiwis in the world is Italy. They are rich in vitamins A, C, E, and potassium. I eat two kiwis every day in the hopes of nourishing my body with something other than refined sugar in bread, pasta, cereal, and croissant form.

Cleopatra was the last Egyptian pharaoh. She reigned from 60-30BC, when she killed herself with a snake. Apparently one of the most famous stories about her is when she presented Caesar with a Persian carpet, and he unrolled it to find her in the center. Nine months later she gave birth to his son, and then made an "alliance" with Antony that resulted in three more children. Antony's wife kindly took in her children after Cleopatra and Antony died. I really have no idea how this came into my head, but I suppose I must've been trying really hard to stay awake in class one day and all of a sudden I had the desire to know when the last Egyptian pharaoh died. So I looked it up.



And this has been facts.com, bringing you interesting facts whenever you definitely didn't want to know, signing off until next week.