the garbage renegades and the essence of liberty

here in crema we have what's called "raccolta differenzata" which means compulsory recycling and sorting of rubbish. here are the categories:

friday morning pickup
umido: organic stuff. food.
plastica: bottles, saran wrap, etc.

tuesday morning pickup
carta/cartona: paper and cardboard
secco: everything else that can't be recycled.

i have been here a month and i think we've already forgotten to take the trash out at least 3 times. it has to be out by 7 a.m. the real tragedy is forgetting to take out umido because then you've got a stinky green bucket of slimy spinach and moldy tomatoes waiting for a week in your kitchen. but i came up with a strategy--which we will never use--to get our umido to the whereever they take it. and that is haul our umido in its biodegradeable bag to the other collection zone of the city on a different day. in effect, commandeer someone else's garbage day. assuming that it's a day or two later. i can just see us stealing through the city by night wearing capes and masks... gotta get rid of the umido.

i'm going to firenze / florence in a few hours. except first i have to teach shawna's class because that little fiend called me and begged me to teach geography for her. it's fine because i've already taught this lesson three times but not fine because i thought i was done for the day and now i have to work until 5:20, finish up business at school, pack, and get a 6:28 train. BUT what i get out of it is a free train ride to florence, a 32.87 value.

mauro asked me a question yesterday that really made me think. i told him that i love the book 1984, and so does he, and so does shawna. a few hours later he asked me to explain how i can love that book, for it's not in accordance with my life. for all you uneducateds who haven't read it, the book is the one that the idea of "big brother" came from... oh yeah and doublespeak and lots of other worthwhile things. it's about an ultracomformist, controlled society where nobody has choices. the lesson of the book is that liberty is absolutely essential to humanity. and according to mauro, i live a life devoid of liberty; i am robbed by my religious beliefs of my choices. he sees me going home on saturday night so i can leave for milan at 7:30 am and not having their kind of fun, and he sees those as restrictions placed on me by a i suppose tyrannical power like the one in the book. i tried to explain to him in my awkward italian that instead i believe that i have complete freedom, that i am ultimately free because i choose the consequences i want and then the actions, that i am free from dependence... after going home i studied the idea a little more and found that the idea i tried to explain to him of liberty is pretty much exactly the definition that is found in the dictionary at the end of the book of mormon, or at least the italian version. free to choose either "eternal life" or "captivity because of sin" or something. i have to go teach silly shawna's class now but as this is a critical question i would like to explore it later. critical for every person to understand the source of their liberty.

ciao from crema and in several hours from florence!

savanna

not the best entry ever but we've gotta publish.

there's a certain kind of pain that can numb you
there's a type of freedom that can tie you down
sometimes the unexplained can define you
sometimes silence is the only sound
(nickel creek)

i waited until february 14, 2006 to check the grade i got in my poli sci capstone class. i was scared. i wanted an A-, expected a B+, wouldn't have been surprised over a B, and feared something lower. well let's just say that i got what i wanted. yay.

i don't think i have bought anything that has made me happier than my iPod. music just does something. i'm listening to nickel creek right now. hence above lyrics. i didn't write those this time. i want to sing along but that means more people staring at the american.

i want to go to russia. italy's that much closer, right?

feeling unfocused. does that mean i'm hungry?

i'm going to carnevale next week in venezia. i've never seen venice. i'm going with a friend from BYU. we took italian 101 and 102 together. will be fun to see him. except i need a costume.

new favorite quote from shawna: "i'm not mocking you. i love you."

i got my first "stipendio" or paycheck yesterday. paying rent and phone is not fun. € 500 and about a fourth of it left.

i'm bored. more later.

sav

to get me through this semi-charmed kinda life

i'm going to catania today. that's in sicily. this trip will be much nicer than vienna i think because i am staying with a family and it's not twelve degrees below zero. i am nervous and excited... nervous because it's the family of a friend and i want to be charming, and because i love meeting new people and seeing how these foreigners live. plus i get to see a volcano!!!!!!!!

i might be kidnapped by the mafia. let them know that i don't have a rich daddy so asking for ransom will be useless. inutile.

in geography i have been teaching about underdevelopment. first i show statistics, measures of development and their implications. then the dialogue goes like this:
me: do you think this is fair (that GDP is low, literacy is low, infant mortality is high, life expectancy is low, people are hungry)
them: no!!!
me: what would you do about it as the leader of one of these countries?
them: give more money to, for example, education
me: where do you get the money?
them: from taxes
me: but your people are poor. they can't pay more taxes.
them: uhhhh
me: where do you get the money?
them: from other countries.
and then the idea of development aid and corruption comes out. i love geography.

i gotta go.

running around trying everything new, but nothing impressed me at all...i never expected it to

i am an an internet cafe... how classy. ick.

i took my ipod out of the house for the first time today. i just had to listen to jacob's BFF anthem CD.

i have been sick for the past several days and staying in the house every day all day makes me crazy!!!! i went out last night and i'm going out tonight whereas i know i shouldn't.

so guess what, i transferred my photos from vienna to my computer and every single file was there but every file was empty. i would love to cry over my lost photos but i didn't do that much in vienna anyway because it was 12 degrees below zero. which sounds a lot scarier in degrees celsius so i won't provide a conversion. :)

tomorrow my argentina family isn't going to church because there is a block in milano, which means no cars are allowed to go into the city. so i have to find my own way there. i don't want to stay home all day again with nothing to do.

i hate paying for internet.

forget it, i'm going to buy new shoes.

I just decided that I'm going to return to BYU one last time. Summer term 2006. Why? If the GPA cutoff was the same as last year, I'll have a full scholarship; I don't want to return to Longmont with nothing to do (and strangely enough I don't want to stay in Europe); I need a cushion to find a real job; I want to take Italian 321 and Poli Sci 359R, "Parties and Elections in Post-Communist Eastern Europe" (how could I resist!?); I need to go out there for graduation anyway. Plus there are one or two additional reasons I won't publicize :)

Summer term is painless. I'm excited. And because I'm not going right into graduate school I don't have to worry about not having a break between my undergrad and my graduate work which at one time was a reason to not return.

Please don't take this as for sure but this is what I'm thinkin!

Write me.

(PS I love paying off my American Express bills)

mi sento un po' malata

i think that means i feel a little sick. sunday my head hurt, and monday too, and then yesterday my throat, and today my throat a little more plus my lungs and ears and head are congested. i am scared of getting sick because i have insurance but in italy that doesn't stop me from having to pay for health care.

i made the fortuitous mistake of telling paola a couple weeks ago that i will like it better here when i have friends. so starting either the next day or the one after, the teachers have been bringing in their sons my age, one at a time, one day after another. it's pretty funny. one of the boys has a group of like six other boys that shawna and i have been going out with. they're fun but they'd better start thinking of something more interesting to do than go to pubs, because i'm not into having to choose between standing outside in the cold with people who are smoking (smoking is banned now in italy in public indoor places, thank goodness) and standing inside and emerging smelling like drinking italians. gross. actually that only happened once. usually what italians call bars are places to drink coffee or in my case cioccolata and there is one really nice one called klejnot (say "clay note") all decorated in red and cute victorian furniture with live music, and thanks to parliament, no smoke. while i was in vienna they wanted to go bowling but there was this blizzard so no one could get their cars out of the driveway.

and speaking of snow, the snow here is very wet and deep and it doesn't go away because no one takes care of it! the snow plows didn't come through the main roads until, say, sunday (two days after the heavy snow started) and in certain places still no one has shoveled the sidewalks. this is not the land of american initiative and neighborliness where sidewalks are cleared by the common man by 9 am after a snow.

i hate that i am eight hours ahead here because i check my email when i arrive at work in the morning and again when i leave around 5. but people at home sleep between those hours so i don't get anything new except for annoying "be a good republican" emails from GOP chairman ken mehlman left over from when i was doing the media/political analysis class.

SO... the price of you reading my blog, whoever i am addressing with this abstract "you", is to send me an email. dodgycharacter@gmail.com. come on, you owe me.

i just emailed the paralympics to beg them to be a volunteer. that sounds better to me anyway than doing the regular ol' olympics.

i missed the state of the union address last night for the first time in my life since the age of like 9. but don't worry, ken mehlman GOP chairman sent me my own copy ;)

my eyes are sore, as they always are when i am a little sick or congested. okay bye.

savanna