Cruisin' the Mediterranean

I feel a little spoiled: the past 2.5 weeks I spent with my parents, both sets of grandparents, and youngest sister on a cruise of the Mediterranean. And let me tell you, it was pretty awesome. While cruising may not be for the overactive or fly by the seat of your pants type (and while I was often panged with guilt at the luxurious treatment I received but didn't feel I deserved), it's certainly a fun way to get a brief introduction to some new parts of the world. Here's as short a recap as I can manage.

Start: Barcelona, Spain. We spent a few days here before the cruise- and might I add that aside from Catalan, the local language, the Spanish spoken in Barcelona is not really Spanish. They just pretend it is- and realized that Barcelona is fantastic and huge and has way too many things to see. I must go back. Oh, and Gaudi's cathedral really is as awesome and eclectic as I had always thought. And now I really want to learn Catalan.

Stop #2: Villfranche, France (just outside of Nice). Lovely, but unfortunately, we were there on a Sunday, which apparently meant that all shops be closed. We observed the rocky beach, took in the beautiful scenery, and had some dang good chocolate pastries.

Stop #3: Livorno, Italy (destination Pisa and Florence- there's not a whole lot to see in Livorno). I finally got around to seeing the leaning tower, and to my surprise, it actually was worth the trip. How it leans! Also. I ADORE Florence.

Stop #4: Civitavecchia, Italy (destination Rome). Is 3 cups of gelato in one day too many? Having a guided tour through the Roman Forum made it much more interesting than wandering through rubble on your own (which is what we did last time). I can also assure you that the Vatican is still there, and just as awe-inspiring as ever.

Stop #5: Athens, Greece. The Acropolis really is worth seeing. We were lucky enough to be the very first tour group there in the very early morning. I recommend it. Also. I love Greek food (cucumber salad and baklava and pitas, oh my!), but Athens itself isn't much to rave about. We took a drive to the southern most point of Europe to see more rubble in temple form. Worth the drive, I'd s

ay.

Stop #6: Kusadasi, Turkey. Although I may be biased because I love all things remotely Islamic, Turkey was one of my favorites. We saw the stunning ruins of Ephesus (think Ephesians from the Bible), bought lots of touristy things (including my parents and grandparents buying several expensive and beautiful rugs), ate tasty Turkish food, declined several passionate proposals, and desperately wished for more time to roam around.

Stop #6: Santorini, Greece. This is was the entire reason my mom decided to book this cruise. I was initially a bit skeptical, but it turned out to be every bit as beautiful as momma had hoped. My dad and I scaled the 800 or so wide steps up the backside of the volcano from port to town, dodging donkeys as we went. If I had money to spare, I mean a lot of money, I would definitely rent a cliff-side room with a view for a week or two. Maybe one day.

Stop #6: Salerno, Italy (destination Vesuvius and Pompei- basically Naples). I need to live here. Really. Truly. I won't survive life if I don't get to spend at least a year on the Amalfi coast. I didn't expect it, but this area of Italy was probably the most gorgeous part of the country I've seen yet. We hiked to the top of Mt. Vesuvius, observed the steam pouring out of the still-active-and-possibly-about-to-blow-any-day volcano, nearly froze in the strong winds and 40 degree temperatures (our cruise weather forecaster lied to us), and walked around the streets of Pompei, which, to quote my grandfather, "was the most impressive bunch of rubble I've ever seen!" It's shockingly well preserved; as you walk around it looks and feels like a real town. Except it was built over 2000 years ago. Another reason to live in Naples: their pizza is the best thing I've ever tasted.

In between some of the stops, we had 4 days of sailing at sea, during which we spent our time eating, sleeping, lying in the sun, attending special classes in belly dancing (well, some of us did. Can you imagine grandpa swinging his hips?), and chatting. The days at port were busy and long, but when you only have 1 day in a city, you can't spare a minute! I got to spend time with 4 of my grandparents while they're still healthy enough to get around and remember it. Mostly. I got to pretend I was 16 again (no, Kate and I are not twins, but plenty of people thought so), and my parents spoiled me rotten. All in all, a dang good trip. Thanks, parents!

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

This country bumpkin (me) did a scary thing today.

I drove around in the District of Columbia, just me and my trusty ole' GPS.

Not impressed? You should be. Let me describe a a typical DC driving scenario.

First of all, your street, even though it's in the "suburbs" has a traffic light on nearly every corner. Just leaving your street takes 4-5 minutes and several red lights. As you pull onto the main street closest to your house, you notice that although there are 4 lanes (2 each way), the road is exceedingly narrow. You pull into the right lane and drive along at 25 mph, which really means around 40. Things are going well until you notice that you're barreling down on a parked car in your lane. You quickly merge left rather than hit the car or slam on the brakes and cause an accident, getting honked at for almost cutting off the guy behind you.

Your heart beating a little faster, you suddenly see that the next traffic light is red, but the intersection is doing something weird with 2 roads intersecting over yours, and you stop uncertainly in between the 2 roads with a prayer in your heart that you won't get smashed. Then there's a patch of construction where all the lines shift; the GPS says to keep left, but the road you need suddenly turns; some roads are one-way, some aren't; some should be and as a car tries to pass you, it nearly scrapes the paint off your car.

When you finally arrive at your destination, your knees are weak, but your car is still in tact and so are you. Your journey has been a success.

Packing.

Packing.

Throwing copious amounts of stuff away.

Pack some more.

Grading, teaching, grading, testing.

Frantically visiting friends.

DC next week to leave Trav behind.

Europe the week after.

Then back to Utah to teach my final semester at UVU.

We're finally leaving.

Molly

Three weeks ago today, my 16-year-old cousin Molly got up in the morning and didn't feel well. She trudged down the stairs to tell her mom that she wanted to stay home from school and was going back to bed. My auntie knew that Molly had been feeling a little off, feverish and such, for the past few days, so she didn't think much about it. Molly went back to bed and slept and slept and slept. And slept.

Sometime in the early afternoon, my aunt went into Molly's room to check on her. She had, after all, been sleeping for more than even the average teenager should sleep. Auntie called her name, shook her, tried to wake her up, to no avail. She was breathing, but not responding. An ambulance was called. Molly was admitted to the hospital and dozens of tests were run. Still nothing.

By Friday morning, things weren't looking so good. Molly's brain had swelled during the night, and it was no longer responding to the tests the doctors were running. The family, hoping for the miracle Molly deserved, called Molly's two older sisters and told them to come back from college right away. But by the time they arrived late Friday night, Molly was brain dead. They kept her breathing long enough for the family to say good bye.

Molly was my younger sister Kate's best friend and like a sister to us. Like a sister in all the ways you have a sister- all the fun, as well as irritations, of a sister. She and Kate used to torture Kristi and me (though I'm sure if you ask them, they would say it was the other way around). They were annoying and loud and giggly and messy and juvenile. They were also adorable and funny and sometimes even sweet. Molly spent half of her time at my house, and Kate spent half of her time at Molly's house. Sometimes when they had slumber parties, I would make them pancakes for breakfast and pretend to be the waiter. They had to call me sir, or I wouldn't respond. When I did reply, it was only in a British accent. Sir didn't speak American.

Molly was one of the wittiest people I ever knew. Sometimes she and T-rav and I would make snarky comments about whoever was hanging around us. We would laugh about little things under our breath and then refuse to reveal their meaning. She understood jokes way beyond her years.

Molly was smart, beautiful, athletic, popular, and a little spoiled, but most of all, and most importantly, she was nice. Everyone who knew her loved her. Over 1000 people came to her calling hours; there were nearly 900 at the funeral, including her entire sophomore class. Everyone talked about how kind and friendly Molly was. She talked to the lonely girl in gym class or always smiled at the nerdy kids. She definitely wasn't perfect. But she was compassionate and thoughtful. And loving.

We don't know why Molly died. It makes me inexpressibly angry that she was taken from us, from Kate, her sisters, and especially from her parents. How do you go on with life when something like this happens? Why did this tragedy happen? I wonder when and if the anger will ever go away. This is the type of tragedy that is better read in a Reader's Digest article and not experienced on your own. It's not supposed to happen.

I know that somehow life will continue, somehow my poor aunt and uncle will carry on, somehow life will regain a sense of normalcy. But we will never forget her.

Molly, I love you.

si, yo hablo

One of the most amusing parts of being an ESL teacher is tricking your students in to thinking you don't speak their language when actually you do. You hear all sorts of things you're not supposed to...like who is at home in bed rather than in class because they stayed up too late playing video games, or who is actually on vacation and not visiting their dying aunt, or who so-and-so is dating, etc. And swear words. It's really quite entertaining.

But the funny thing is, sometimes I make it more than obvious that I understand what they're saying, and they still have no idea. For example, a student might lean over to a friend during class and ask the translation of a word in their native language. But before the friend can reply with the translation, I might supply it for them. The students rarely bat an eyelash; they continue on as if it was perfectly natural that their English speaking teacher could have translated their language.

At some point during nearing the end of the semester, they usually get around to asking me what and how much I speak. If their native language is among the list, there are usually exclamations of shock, excitement, and, quite possibly, dismay: "You mean you understood us all along?"

Yes, yes, I did. Ha!

bountiful baskets

I bought my first share in a food co-op the other day. Here's what $15 got me:

4 tomatoes

3 mangoes from Guatemala in perfect ripeness

3 yellow squash, slightly hail damaged

1 pineapple

1 huge bunch of spinach

5-lbs of yellow (my favorite!) potatoes

10 apples

10 delicious juicy oranges

7 bananas, very green

2 lbs green beans

2 turnips

Here's how it works: you sign up on the website (bountiful baskets) on Monday or Tuesday for a location near your house- and you have to be quick about it because the sites fill up fast- and on Saturday, at a designated time, you go pick up your produce from someone's back yard or business or greenhouse. It's mostly local produce (except for during the winter, when it's Arizona or Mexico local), and organic baskets are also available. ($25/basket). You never know what you're going to get; each week is different. And it's a lot of food.

a rant about a ten-year-old

I have a confession: I've spent the past few weeks grumbling about 3 particular 10-year-olds in my dance class. I complain about them on the way to dance, and then rant about them on the way home. You might be wondering how can a fully grown, mostly adult person could spend her time thinking about and being irritated by someone less than half her age.

Well let me tell you.

Thanks to my current teaching schedule, I get to the studio exactly as dance is about to start or, more likely, a few minutes late. I run in with my bag in hand, ready to rip off my teaching clothes and fling on my dance clothes. It would take me all of 3 minutes. But as I rush in, I notice the lone bathroom is occupied. "Who's in there?" I ask. It's no surprise that it's girl #1, who's been changing for at least 7 minutes. Oh, and did she get to class 10 minutes early? And did she spend her time gossiping with the other girls rather than change? Yes, yes, she did.

I wait by the door while class starts warming up. And I keep waiting. When girl #1 finally gets out and I finish getting changed, I'm well over 10 minutes late. Great. I go join the rest of the class and try to hear the instructions being hollered at us by the teacher- hollered because someone is clomping out some beats with her hard shoes while the rest of us are trying to hear. Oh yes, it's girl #2.

Some of us turn to #2 and tell her to stop. She smirks at us with her beady eyes and jowly face and pauses just until we turn around to listen. The clomping starts again. And when it's time to do our group dance, guess who's in the wrong spot and doing the wrong steps with bad form and terrible posture? Yep, it's #2.

Until this point #3 has been silent, but that's because she's been hiding in the back with her friend. Now that she's in with the rest of the class, the questions start. "Miss Jo, can I be the leader? Miss Jo, can I show everyone the step? Miss Jo, I want to be on the first line! Miss Jo, can I be Harry Potter if she doesn't show up? (this is for our group dance) But if she doesn't show up, can I do her part? I want to be Harry Potter! Miss Jo, she pushed me! Oh, I already know this step; let me be the leader!" All of this wouldn't be so unbearable if it didn't cause a riot among the other dancers. No one wants to let this girl have her way, and for good reason.

At the end of class, my friend and I are discussing what type of solo dress we'd like to buy when #1 walks past and hears the word "dress." She butts into our conversation, spewing forth mindless drivel about the new dress she got and how great she looks in it and how it means she's so advanced and how it will help her win all the medals at the next competition.

My irritation level is rising just thinking about this. And yes, I realize that makes me a very petty person.

winter blues trip #1

Last week was a glorious one for one main reason: I only went to work for 1.5 days. Monday was a holiday and Wednesday we left for a trip to San Diego to visit my brother.

Bro-ter, as I like to call him, was graduating from recruiting school for the marines (much to his dismay- no one really wants to be a recruiter. It's like being a missionary except without any of the spiritual blessings associated with religion and a lot of cold calls and public speaking. Yuck). And since I'd never had the pleasure of visiting a military base, we popped in for the occasion.

Our first night there we stayed on base in "billeting," which is a weird word for fancy barracks for soldiers on a short-term stay or their visiting families. Think dorm room circa 1960. After bro-ter's graduation, we hung around San Diego with him until his flight left. Although I felt a bid morbid doing so with a marine brother, we spent about an hour wandering around a navy cemetery, pristinely located on a peninsula overlooking the bay and Pacific ocean. Beautiful.

The next day the sun finally succumbed to my pleadings and showed its face for a few hours in the afternoon.

It was here that we spent my favorite part of the trip: watching the sea lions and seals sun themselves. They looked like big dead blobs on the beach, but I assure you, they were very much alive. I NEED one.

We also visited the statue modeled after the famous picture of the sailor kissing a nurse. There was a posse of teenage Italian students that arrived there just before us, and like all Italians, they dominated the whole area with their loud Italian chattering while their chaperon directed each of them to imitate the famous kiss. I think ours beat theirs.

She's a HE?

T-rav posted this on his family's blog. I thought I'd share it with all of you.

Have you ever gone through life thinking that something was one way and then it turned out to be the other? We've had a chicken for four months that we thought was a hen. When we bought her she was too young to lay eggs, so we didn't worry too much about her. The other two hens we bought at the same time started laying eggs about a month ago, but Blackie never did. We did our internet homework and found out that chickens of her breed don't like to lay eggs in cold weather so we made some excuses for her. Yesterday I observed some suspicious barnyard/backyard behavior involving the chicken in question and another hen and I knew I needed to go back to the source of all light and knowledge in the world...the internet. I found the above picture and our "hen" looks suspiciously more like the one the right than the left. "She" also fits a whole lot of other patterns that make "her" a "him". So it turns out that our late blooming hen is actually a rooster. I feel kind of confused and both Kelly and I have had a hard time changing to masculine pronouns when referring to Blackie.

I think the most helpful bit of information that I found for how to tell the difference between a Black Jersey Giant hen and rooster was the one that told me to look into their eyes. A hen has a peaceful absent sort of look in her eye while a rooster should have an intense look with a glimmer of anger or rage. Today we made sure to look our chicken in the eye and sure enough, there is a fire burning behind those beady black eyes.

-Trav

lame duck books

I used to believe it was a terrible sin to quit reading a book without finishing it. I clearly remember reading one particularly awful book upon the recommendation of a friend (called The Clan of the Cave Bears. The title should have been enough to tip me off, I know) and being either scandalized or bored out of my mind. Yet I kept plodding through, waiting for it to get better. It never did. It's not that I really thought the author would suddenly morph into an amazing writer or that the plot would get interesting 10 pages before the end. I just couldn't leave it unfinished. The remaining pages would haunt me, and whenever I saw the book sitting on my shelf, I'd be tempted to pick it back up and see how it ends.

Luckily, as a moderately speedy reader, I've been able to keep the time-wasting to a minimum. Not to say that I haven't read plenty of worthless books over the years- it pains me to think of all the pages spent on badly written material when I could have been reading something better.

So lately I've begun to reevaluate my policy. I started reading a book last spring that I just couldn't get into. I hated the writing style, the plot was confusing, and the characters flat and uninspiring. After about 100 pages, I put it down. Last week I started a book I got for Christmas from T-rav (one that I thought I wanted to read) and I'm thinking about dropping that one as well. I feel like I've given it a fair chance to persuade me to keep reading. If a book can't interest me after 210 pages, what's the point?