Maternity

Master thesis: done

Dissertation of the thesis: done

GRE test: completed

PhD application: handed in (and now finger crossed!)

And what now: painting home, baking cookies, searching for antenatal classes in english, going shopping for baby stuff, studying finnish, reading newspapers, writing to friends....

My belly grows and grows. There are just a couple of months left. It feels heavy and huge, but it looks rather pretty. The best part is when the inhabitant wants to communicate or simply moves within the boundaries.

I get tired quite easily and I sleep as often as my mam's dog (a very lazy one). I have a hunch that it's good to enjoy some holiday now, since soon there is going to be a lot to do!

However, it is quite weird to have so much spare time. In my rush, I have always made the tyres screech, with no time to rest or relax. Now that I can sit one hour at a terrace sipping a hot chocolate and reading the Economist, I get drunk of relaxing vibrations.

No exams to do, no hurry to get a book from the library, no concerns about the stupidity or perfidity of certain people. Freedom?

Somebody say pregnant women are beautiful. In my case, I guess it is just that life has never been more relaxed.

Puhutko suomea?

I'm studying some finnish.
Funny to see that just by changing the length of a vowel you can say "I kill you" instead of "I wait you".
Anyhow, I try my best, but even in cafés most of the times I get the answer in english. Apparently I'm not a chameleon - yet-.

spring feelings

March 21st.
First day of spring.
Blossoms, sunshine and a clear sky.
Pictures of you, The Cure.
Shy daffodils come out. Nature wakes up and makes everyone feel so light and soft.
It's the start of a new life, of something beautiful, again.

stealing toilets

I still have to get used to live in a peaceful and safe country.

It does not seem real to drive in a smooth, silent and gentle traffic.

When I'm in the metro stations I still have the natural instinct of checking my purse to be sure that my wallet is still there.

Today I was at the supermarket and I had to take the shopping cart. Automatically, I put just 50 cents in it. Why? Of course, because if somebody "stole" it, I would have lost just 50 cents and not 2 euros. Then I realized I don't live in Italy anymore. Nobody here steals shopping carts. But if I was in Italy, my precaution would have probably been right.

In fact, somebody steals even TOILETS! It happened in the metro stations of Naples. People dressed up as plumbers were staging a sort of Oceans Eleven in order to steal toilet bowls. I'm just wondering: what did they do with the plunder?

some crumbs of the journey

Despite the anxiety of my grandma, we made it.

The car reminded those fully loaded lorries that travel from Sicily to Lombardy with all sorts of mediterranean delicacies. However, when looking inside the car, instead of spotting oranges and tangerines, you could see huge transparent plastic bags, saying "SERVIZIO IGIENE URBANA, RACCOLTA SECCO*" full of underpants, socks and other underwear material.

After getting away from the italian cahotic traffic and from the german smooth mororways, we shored in the lovely fairy land that is Denmark for a couple of bucolic moments. There, we stopped in a town whose name made us think somehow of a candy and, with a lot of expectations, we tried to find a place for lunch. Of course we found just a greek pizzeria and an irish pub. Same amount of good luck in Stockholm, while waiting for the ship. The only places open for lunch were a kebab-pizza fast food and a fake japanese sushi bar.

And of course, once in Helsinki, we had a good dish of Italian pasta ;)

* I didn't have any better bag than those huge garbage ones for the "dry waste"

I'll be back

From the email of a really good friend of mine:

[...]
"how is going? did you move to helsinki? you are really crazy girl ;))
i miss you too much!
take care my lovely friend"
[...]

The crazy girl is moving, and she is just so busy that now she does not have time to breath. She promises that she is going to come back to this blog in a month. Let her arrange her life.
Soon she's back with new, fresh adventures ;)
ciao!

Italy vs Finland

frozen spits

funny when outside is -10 or -20.
If sea and lakes get frozen, imagine what happens when people spit on the pavements.

"How disgusting, you just stepped on someone's puke!"
"Really?! But my shoe is clean"
"Well, it was frozen."