Whew...

Fast blast: Whew... hm. Today was kind of... I'm not sure yet. The morning was good, then I started working on stuff and am not sure what I've accomplished, but I'm pretty sure it's not enough. That's how I feel.

Tonight's feature: My birthday cake and the desserts in general. :) Tonight they brought out a birthday cake and sang to me for my birthday (which is on Saturday)! It was really nice. They had a card and everything! The cake was really cool. It was a spice cake in three layers, with creamy white stuff between the layers and chocolate icing. :) Gaetano and Luigi made it. In general, the desserts are extremely beautiful, but not extremely sweet. I think it's probably better that way, though it's always a surprise when I take a bite. We've had different desserts every evening since we've been here.

Okay.... today I learned a lot about parliamentary versus presidential systems and what federalism is. We watched a movie Dr. Taylor made in the seventies. That was entertaining. Kind of. It was about voting in parliamentary systems. I learned a lot, but... the most entertaining aspect was that the very young Dr. Taylor we saw on it is our teacher now. We talked about a lot of European politics today, and I read a lot about them, and now I'm trying to write a paper about them. I'm about European politicked out.

:)

I am getting laundry done--do you know we ran our laundry through the dryer TWICE and it still wasn't dry! Tomorrow morning at 6:15 a.m., we're rolling out on our way to Venice... and I definitely need lots of the clothes in the wash! I hope they get dry in time. And I'm trying to get my work started pretty thoroughly before we go so I don't have a stressful Monday. Wouldn't that be nice, to be done.

I guess the other really important personal news of the day is that I cried for a long time this afternoon. I feel weird putting that on my blog, but that is the real news of the day. My emotions just get walled up in my heart for long periods of time, and I'm so glad they came out today. It felt really good to cry. Lest you dear ones worry, lots of it was in response to good things that struck a deep chord with me today--reading some really tender verses about God, finding out something neat in someone else's life who I care about a lot, and realizing that some things I haven't liked about myself are changing. w00t!!! :) I just want to not lose what I realized today and use it instead to keep going. Buona notte, amici.

P.S.--I won't be blogging for a couple of days, since I'll be in Venice... :) But I'll be back Sunday night. :)

posted by LizC @ 1/20/2005 02:52:00 PM