Eccoti!

Jessica, questa foto e' per te!

Ellen

Brooke and I went to the Ellen show! We had so much fun. We had to be there at 12:30 and filmed at 3:30. While we were in line we kept wondering if what we would get. We ran through every possible scenerio. We never expected what we really got. So, after waiting about 2 hours in line they shoved us all through security and we waited outside for a few more hours. After much anticipation we filed into the studio. Music was pumping and everyone was encouraged to dance (ellen loves dancing). The hour of before the show started it was just like a dance club. All we did was dance for an hour straight. Then Ellen poped out and she looked so great. They assign you to your seats and they gave Brooke and I the front row right by her DJ. We thought for sure we would get on TV. Everytime the camera was on us we would get really animated and cheesy in hopes that they would use that piece of footage. (Maybe we over did it as they did not even put us on once). During our wait in line they announced that they have had a hard time geting celebrity guests because of the strike, people do not want to cross the picket line. Ricky Lake was the celebrity guest. During the middle of the show they introduced the giveaways. The theme was Home Entertainment. She gave us a pack of HD DVD, including the Bourne Series. Then she gave us an HD DVD player to play them. After that she gave us a Play Station 3 with two new games. Then she gave us RockBand! (which is by far my favorite gift). Then on top of it she gave us a $400 gift card from Ikea. We had so much fun! After the show Ellen thanked us and told us to sit still. Her assistants came and told us to put our cell phones away and keep our hands free. The presents were all outside waiting for us. They file us outside and they pile on our hands the RockBand, the Play Station 3, the HD DVD player and give us a bag with the DVD's and Ikea gift card. We had so much fun and just going to a taping was worth it but walking away with presents was so much more fun!

I was tagged again

Okay, usually I don't play along with these things. I refuse to add applications on facebook and I am am still not sure how I feel about this tagging thing but I will write six things about me. So, 6 things about myself...

1.) I love Seinfeld. I could watch it all day every day. Often things I see in real life remind me of things from various Seinfeld episodes. Maybe it should be the other way around.

2.) I stand like a flamingo. I rest the side of my foot on the side of my knee. I get this from my mom and I could do it for hours.

3.) I love the Opera. I think mainly now because I speak Italian I can understand them but it is a passion. Even reading Operas now is fun to me.

4.) I am very ticklish.

5.) When I like a song I can't just sing it, I belt it at the top of my lungs no matter where I am.

6.) I love sitting down and leafing through actually devouring mail order catalogs like JCrew, Eddie Bauer, Victorias Secret, Potterybarn, and Urban Outfitters are some of my favorites.

Ellen 12 Days of Giveaways!

Brooke and I got tickets to Ellen's 12 days of giveaways and boy are we excited. I entered us becasue we live close to LA on a whim. I never really truly believed that we would be asked to go to the show. There are about a million people who want to go to this show and I thought our chances were 1 in a million. A couple of weeks passed and we did not hear anything. Then one day Brooke got a phone call from Carlos the head audience coordinator from the Ellen show. He confirmed our tickets and sent us this package with all the info. We go the 19th, we have to check-in at 12:30 and the show films at 3:30. We are so excited! We are excitedly waiting for this wednesday when we head up to LA. We are both really big fans of Ellens. She is so funny. But more than that, it is a 12 day of giveaway! I hope we get a juicer, no a plasma TV, no a computer, no a PS 3, no I really hope we get a car or a house. Itsn't it funny how greedy I got so fast. Make sure to watch on the 20th for me and Brooke on TV!

My passport

When I was younger I used to wish for a passport full of stamps.

Today on my way to the airport I was glancing at my passport and I realized it is almost full. I remember wishing for a full passport when I was a kid. I remember looking at my dad’s passport and pondering all the places in the world that I have never seen. After fifteen years and an unexpected life later my prayer was answered. My passport is full of memories. My Italian visa, stamps from France, England (after dating Nickja from London half my passport is filled with stamps to england), Ireland, Germany, Switzerland and of course Italy. Each stamp has so many memories. I had so much fun looking back and reminiscing (rammentando) of my adventures.

I have left Italy. It has been heart-wrenching.

Will my clothes ever dry?

I am getting ready to leave and I am for once in my life starting early to pack and to get ready. Usually, I wait until the very last minute. I can't tell if it is because I am excited or if I have unexpectedly lost my procrastination. (Probably because I am excited). So, on Sunday I sorted through all the clothes I brought here. I have to wash everything in advance because it takes days to dry clothes here in Italy in the winter. There are no clothes dryers so everything is put up on a line. It is so humid here that nothing dries ever. My clothes have been on the line for three days and still not dry. I have to pack on Thursday, in two days and have no hope that they will be dry. I just don't know what to do at this point. I have started to bring clothing in and put them over all the furnaces but the state controls the furnaces and they only come on for a few hours a day and usually my timing is off.

Fashions shows are prime time viewing

I am really going to miss being in Italy these next few months. A part of me feels Italianized. I drink warm milk now for breakfast. When I was in England for one week, I was dying for a plate of pasta. I don’t like to eat on the run any more. I think in Italian and I dream in Italian. I wear a nightgown just like they do. I embrace their crazy ideas. I can argue and fight in Italian. I express my opinion even if it is against everyone else’s (something that is very Italian). I even got my own Italian mullet. I love watching soccer with them. I will miss it and as I am getting ready to say good-bye I am feeling quite sad.

I love doing artsy things. I feel like I have a real creative side to me that I just love to express. I love clothes; to me fashion is an art. Whether you are wearing a designer Gucci dress or designer jeans to a skirt off from the street markets, fashion is an art that people wear. So many people think that it is superficial or material but honestly it is a type of art that everyone gets to experience every morning. I love it! I love opening my closet (which has no designer, actually a tiny bit) and picking out what I am going to wear that day. Sometimes, I try to think of all the details from my clothes, accessories even down to my shoelaces. It is an art. Sometimes, I don’t have to think at all. This is the beauty of this type of art. Today in church I wore red shoes, a black shirt, a smart black button-up with a green vest and a purple scarf tied in the classic Italian fashion. I have seriously enjoyed this fall in Italy as I think the Italians have an innate sense of fashion. I love that in Italy fashion shows are considered primetime viewing and you can get your own fashion show just sitting in a bar and drinking my glass of warm milk. Italians just seem to get it right. Sitting in a piazza you can see such extreme styles. You can see the giovani or the young kids wearing a variety of styles. They usually wear short skirts with boots and tights accompanied by a tight leather jacket. They have the most extreme hair styles, very textured and very sleek. Even the old people in Italy take part. They are so put together. They only leave the house with their best on. They are much more formal. It is not uncommon to see elderly Italian women with fur coats and high gloves on the city buses. Since there are many ways of being stylish in Italy and I love a country that accepts that with open arms.


My favorite quote from the devil wears prada:



Miranda: I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.