Adda' passa' a nuttata

"Adda' passa' a nuttata" is a famous sentence of one of the greatest Italian actors and playwrights - Eduardo de Filippo- in his legendary play: Napoli Milionaria.

In a strong Neapolitan dialect, Eduardo concludes the last act of his commedia saying "The night shall pass". I love his old, almost folkloristic, theatre. While telling the stories of simple, sometime miserable people, De Filippo reminds me of  those values Italy used to be founded on: family, compassion and humour. Values of a society that, I'm afraid, no longer exists. But I'm glad Eduardo came across my mind today and I had the chance to include him in my blog.

This prologue, not quite fitting, was just to explain the words I wanted to use to connect this post with what I wrote yesterday.
So, to start with what I had left last night and as anticipated by my previous post, it took me a while to fall asleep but my dreams have luckily not been disturbed. Just as Eduardo wished in his third act, my night has passed and the new day has come taking with it a lot of fun things to do.
26 degrees - Sunny. Perfect weather to go to the beach and even better if a bunch of friends go with you and there are beach volley courts!!! Great day. We played for hours and I went for the first swim of 2012. Brrr...The water is still cold, but once you get inside it's really nice and refreshing. The cold water awakens each single part of your body with a little shock, but he temperature outside is so pleasant that it makes the initial suffering totally rewarding. Here some shots of us playing...

Not bad, mmmh? Can you tell from these images how hard have we been playing? We did and by 3.30 pm we were all hungry and all agreed we deserved a little treat. We went to Maria Bonita, a Mexican restaurant around beach road. Nice place and atmosphere, good food, fun people and...animals! Yes because there we met a funny mascot: a talkative (loud) parrot with an unexpected skill: he could hold nachos in his claws!!! Isn't it bizarre? It looked almost fake, I had to take a picture!

I know, it has been a very hard day for me so far. You're probably feeling bad for me wondering how I made it through such hardships today (gosh, life in Dubai is so hard!!!).
To reassure you...I concluded my day going to the spa for a full body massage. Well, perhaps I will squeak by. LOL:)

Now that I'm done with my show off and I gained the antipathy of many, I can go to bed and get ready for the new week to start. A whole week at work without Thomas. (By the way, I talked to him earlier. He's in the jungle of Northern Thailand, almost at the border with Myanmar, and he loves it. He said they're in a wild and mystical place that could be the setting of a Vietnam war movie! Tomorrow they'll start building a library, the goal of their Week Without Walls project, bravo!!!).
So, I have to go to work for a week relying on myself only. That worries me even if it's usually me getting up first in the morning. But it's mathematically proved that sleeping alone increases the possibility to get up late or ignore the alarm clock.
Will I oversleep?
It's midnight already. Better go and set 2 or 3 alarms, just in case!
Good Night!

My Security Blanket

Since we're in Dubai, this is the first time I'm home alone. Thomas left on Wednesday, off to Thailand with a bunch of 8th graders for Week Without Walls. Yes, those lucky little kids get to spend a week somewhere really cool in the world to learn about community service and cooperation, putting their effort in a project that will benefit less privileged kids.
So, right now Thomas is probably sleeping dreaming about the elephant nursing he did today and petting that tiger in Chiang Mai yesterday (that must be so cool!).
In the meantime, I'm about to go to bed looking for one of his T-shirts to place next to my nose on the pillow. Gross? Maybe, since the T-shirt I picked is definitely an used work outfit, but I need a comforting presence tonight. Yes, I do miss him very much. But tonight I have an extra excuse!

First time to the cinema in Dubai with some friends. Lee (PE teacher at ASD and my super star Boot Camp instructor) picks the movie. She tells me the title, but I don't even check what it is. "The movie doesn't matter, I just want to hang out". At least that's what I thought.
Turns out that tonight choice was "The Devil Inside". I will not give a review of the film, as I'm trying really hard to keep those images faaaaaar from re-visualizing in my head. I will just say that it's about exorcism and that I've always proudly managed to avoid watching "The Exorcist" in all these years.
It was scary and intense and now...I hate the fact that I'm home, ALONE! :(
Amore, where are youuuu!?!
I don't think I've ever had a stuffed animal I needed to sleep with or a Linus security blanket when I was 5. But now, at the age of 28 I'm looking for a reassuring smell to keep the bad thoughts away.
I'll let you know how it goes, but I'm pretty sure Thomas' T-shirt will do the job! Good Night! :)

Books here and there...

Thomas' mom arrived a few days ago. She and Bernard decided to stop in Dubai on their way to Myanmar, where they'll visit Manu (Thomas' brother) and Virginie (Manu's GF).
It's funny: as usual when visitors come, we asked them to bring us fundamental surviving stuff like pork (Italian affettati in general) , big pieces of parmesan cheese, real coffee for my Italian moka machine, etc...

All these products have obviously something in common. They are Italian (as you can tell I'm very nationalist when it comes to food) and they all nourish your stomach! yum yum.

Karin (Thomas' mom) couldn't avoid pointing out that, after a few months traveling South East Asia, Manu, on the other hand, asked them an all different type of nourishment. Let's say something to feed his sharp intellect with...more than his tummy. He, in fact, requested a huge amount of books, newspapers magazines of all sorts! (By the way, if you want to see how they're doing in that part of the world check out their blog: http://laconditionhumaine.jimdo.com/ ).

Having said that, one could get caught by the easy temptation to compare the requests. By contrast, Thomas and I could easily be considered as only interested in food, with no literature drive.

That's why today, in our defense, I want to share with you some of the books we have recently read and that, in my modest opinion, deserve a few words.

Thomas, I'm pretty sure he would agree on this, loves series books. His latest accomplishment is the Millenium Trilogy. The gripping novels, wrote by the Swedish Stieg Larsson, are apparently very captivating. I heard the movies, both the Swedish and American versions, are worth watching.

Looking at my side of the bookshelf, there are two books I'd like to share.

The first one is the super popular "Shantaram". People are looking at Shantaram as a some sort of phenomenon, sold in millions of copies all over the world.

Now, I have to say that when I finished the 1000 pages and my passion for the novel was consumed, I started to be skeptical about the story. Manly because throughout the reading, the main character, its author Gregory David Roberts, appears like the coolest dude on earth. First, he escapes from an Australian prison and goes to India. There, he starts a new life in exile living in a slum selling weed and helping the poorest with medical assistance. Then he gets framed for a non-existant crime and ends up in the shittiest jail of Bombay. Once out, more dead than alive, our hero starts working for the local mafia, mostly made of Muslims. He even goes fighting the Soviet war in Afghanistan with his Islamic brothers, just for gratitude, without really embracing the Muslim cause. All this, and much more, happens together with beautiful but impossible love stories, life-long friendships and the disclosure of pearls of wisdom.

I know I can't summarize Shantaram in 5 lines, but the point is that I was so into it!!! I started researching about its author to understand how much of all that was true. 

I found out that there was a BBC documentary on it, a Shantaram website and tons of other information on YouTube and other websites. After my research, I have to admit, I pondered my crush on Shantaram. 

I knew that the story was just partly true, but Roberts claims Shantaram to be his memoir of his years in India. Total delusion when I found out that apparently there was a guy in Mumbai in the 70s who really did everything Roberts describes so well. 

So, did he take someone else's story to just embellish it? 

I'll never know and I shouldn't probably ask this question. It doesn't matter.

The book is still worth reading. My only advice: enjoy it without investigating too much. 

The novel is about India and the adventures of an extraordinary gora who has a lot to share and, perhaps, teach. In Shantaram the miserables are heroes, the slum becomes the kingdom of leper princesses and even war turns into a romantic setting for friendship and ideals to flourish.
It is a good book.

My second  title is "The Lacuna", by Barbara Kingsolver. I didn't know the author and just picked the book attracted by the colorful front cover and a gut feeling. I honestly have to say that the first 50 pages scared me. So many words I didn't know... But somehow, I kept reading and the magic happened. Non native English speakers will understand me. When you meet someone new in a foreign language, if his accent is strong or the person speaks really fast, it can happen (let's face it) that you just don't understand much. However, if you have the chance to spend time with that person, your ear gets used to the sound of that voice and starts to decode the unfamiliar idiom. I could list so many personal examples... 

So, just like with people you don't understand when you first meet, a similar thing can happen with an author's writing. At least that happened to me with Kingsolver's style. But after the first couple of frustrating chapters I started to understand better and fully enjoy the novel.

The Lacuna is a fiction story set in real history. An imaginary writer, Harrison Shepherd, is divided between two realities and countries: revolutionary Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera's Mexico, and anticommunist US during the Russian regime of Stalin. The book touches on the difficult coexistence between arts and politics in those years. But most importantly, in my perspective, Barbara Kingsolver gives a captivating insight of Frida Kahlo's extraordinary life and work. This book doesn't talk about Frida's art in detail, but you can perceive the colors of her suffering and the devastation and passion of her surreal mind.
Result: after reading this book I bought a canvas, brushes and colors and I painted something for the first time in my life. Once I found the subject of my first (and maybe only) "master piece", drawing was easy. I faced more difficulties when it came to adding colors. I had a few acrylic colors that I used for the background, then I mistakenly bought oil colors for the details. I confess, I didn't even know that you needed a solvent to get the oil colors ready. When I found out that mixing water wasn't taking me anywhere, I mixed my nail polish remover and - very surprisingly - I did manage to finish my painting!!! At first, I didn't even give a title to it. The subject is a monkey with a little colibri bird next to it. I will use Spanish for my title, in memory of Frida. 

So, here for you, "El Mono" by Benedetta Frandi. 

Technique: Acrylic, Oil Colors + Nail Polish Remover on Canvas! :)

Scusami se sono felice...

Here I am, January 28th, 2012. Laid down on kite surf beach in Dubai. Perfect weather. Not too cold, not too hot, a little windy and a flat calm turquoise immense sea a few steps from me. Thomas is taking a nap next to me, his hand keeps a contact with me touching my leg gently. I look at him and I feel complete. He's so close to me that I can still smell what remains of the perfume he wore last night. It's dissolving, I can tell, but I can still perceive it, delicate, mixed to the natural fragrance of his body. A body that I know well and love in all its perfections and imperfections. We are now "man and wife" and it feels good, but it didn't come easily. 6 years together, learning how to be together, how to understand and compensate each other. We've been married 6 months now and you might think there is nothing extraordinary in the enthusiasm I express here. It may be true, but I still believe it's worth putting it down in words. Words that will somehow remain as the years go by.
I feel the obligation to etch these thoughts, since I've learned that everything can easily be forgotten and, even worst, be replaced by intolerance and hatred.
I'm thinking about my parents.
I cannot distinguish their 30 year- marriage to the idea that what brought them together, at first, was founded on love, passion, enthusiasm and mutual trust. How did they forget about this? How can two people grow apart so much and become strangers...become "Somebody that I used to know"?

If I think about the "good" I want to incise in my memory, it might seem weird, but I look at our bathroom as the mysterious symbol of the intimacy existing between Thomas and I as a couple. Yes, I think the bathroom is the room of a house that better reflects a couple's dynamic.
I look at our matching electric toothbrushes. They have a story behind that we, only, know. And again, I can't help but comparing, thinking of my family house in Florence where, many years ago, even my mom and dad used to share an electric toothbrush. A last generation one, maybe brought from my dad from one of his business trips abroad. I still can see it. It was a kit with 5 different toothbrush pics...one for each of us. A family kit and although it was getting obsolete, I was attached to it. Weren't they?
I look at everything Thomas and I have and I feel the instinct to protect it. Each photo we took together, each piece of furniture we bought, music we've taught each other or book we've read... is an important component of the puzzle of our life together. How can one give up on all this? I don't know and maybe I cannot even understand certain dynamics right now. I'm sure my parents had good reasons to take different paths and I'm not judging them. I'm just saying that it takes so much work and effort to build a life together that one should defend it against everything. Miscommunication and misunderstandings... at one point my mom felt she was the only one trying to save the relationship, while my dad constantly felt under accusation with a wife too often harsh on him. They stopped talking and they slowly started to blame each other for different reasons. That was the moment when the irreversible damage was done. And it's from there that I want to learn. That I want to learn how important is to remember. Are we destined to follow our parents path? Definitely not. But we must learn from it. We can recognize what life is about to serve us and react in a constructive way.
Now I feel outrageously happy and I want to imprint it and treasure it in my memory. Just for me, in case harder times will come...

So... forgive me if I'm happy, I hope you can cope with this mawkish post, but I could not avoid writing it.

Just an ordinary day...for ordinary people.

January 12th, 2012.

The new year has started at school like everywhere else. After 10 days surrounded by family members (yes, loud and crazy sometimes, but extremely fun and caring!) going back to work and to our chilled life, where our family lives in a different continent, has a bitter taste. On the first day of school I got back home alone and tired, while Thomas was still working. My sister had left a few hours before, but I didn't realize it. I wasn't there. The house and everything felt empty and sad. No more laughs and 155 conversations started and never really ended, no more real talks, the ones you can have with the ones you trust 100%, no more sharing everything (from shoes, make ups to opinions and feelings). She is gone. But somehow found the way to keep her presence here with me for a little longer. Beba left  me the sweetest note a sister could write. I cried for hours, but I'm glad she did write those words.
Did I  already said she's definitely the smartest of us, B sisters? If not I'll say it now. She is great. She has a unique sensitiveness and her brain is so sharp that it amazes me every time. She can do everything she wants, she succeeds in all challenges she undertakes. She is versatile and sensible to understand how to adjust to any situation. I miss her deeply, just like I miss Bianca for different reasons. Oh sisters...what a great invention!!!
But I apologize. This is totally off topic.

What I wanted to talk about today is this ordinary day at school. It has been a good day with the kids: funny, sweet...funny as usual, but now it's 4 pm, I'm in the gym, running on a treadmill. Across the glass window, in the gym, there is a basketball game: Thomas' team's game. And I'm supposed to pay attention an watch it. Instead, maybe because when I run I go on a sort of high heart rate-ecstasy, my thoughts are flying away, in my own world. I'm here physically connected to this reality, but mentally detached from the external environment. I'm in the middle of the action, but it feels like I'm observing everything from above. If someone comes to me and interrupts my thoughts I feel suddenly unplugged like an electric guitar during a rock concert. Silent, with no reason to be there.
I'm looking at the players running up and down the court. Are they doing their best? I don't know. Thomas alternates satisfied faces to disappointed postures and head in his hands. Maybe it's the thick glass between me and everything else. I can't hear much, so I decide to focus on the gestures and movements of the slice of life taking shape in front of me. I look at the excited parents on the bleachers recording their kids' performances, supporting and inciting the boys with all their energy. It's fun to watch them. They would risk to look ridiculous, but actually they are so well positioned in their world.  So well attached to the reality. Everything they do is appropriate for the moment. I'm probably the only one who secretly doesn't fit here, right now. But I need my little moments. I need those places where I can go with my mind. Then I come back and I will pretend that I followed each single moment of the game. :)

Score: Period 4 (last one) Falcons (us): 33 - Dragons (our rival school): 38.
Thomas is not happy and he won't get better now that  only 53 seconds are left. :(
He'll probably be grumpy tonight but I love him. He is so into it. He loves what it does and does it greatly. I am proud of him every time I look at him. He's my link to the real world. He takes me back to the more practical stuff, when my mind flies too far.
OMG!
Score: Falcons: 37 - Dragons: 39 - Second: 00:00
One of our kid shoot and I'm pretty sure he got a foul (I know, I said I wasn't really watching this game but this final part was exciting and, after all, I'm the wife of a basketball player/coach/supporter/freak and I must have learned something in 6 years!). We could have probably finished this game on a sweeter note, but I don't know what happend...the referee didn't interrupt the game and we didn't get the foul free shots (or whatever they're called). Game over :(

But good job Falcons and good job amore! Let's go back to the real world and let's go home...
like ordinary people...

Mon Jardin

I love gardening and Dubai has just the perfect weather to grow everything you want! My basil plants growing...

 Bougainvilles have the perfect climate here in Dubai!

 

 Persils, salvia and tomatos growing healthy! :)

Waiting for 2012...Happy New Year!!!

After the Maldives, where Thomas and I experienced complete relaxation, peace and mystic natural beauty, back to Dubai a fun/intense week is waiting for us. My mom and sister Bianca met us for 24h during a stop of their MSC cruise in the gulf. 

Then, on Christmas day my aunt Vanna, uncle Giampaolo and sister Beatrice +BF Antonio visited from Florence and here we are, on the very first day of 2012... 

We had an exciting busy week filled with laughs, family love and presents!!!

One of the greatest moments of the end of 2011 is our fishing trip. Here you can see a few pictures of  it! I still can't believe what we did, but WE (including myself who NEVER EVER fished successfully in my life) took around 7Kg of fresh, beautiful, edible fish!!! :) And thanks to my sister and aunty's help, we had a wonderful dinner last night, eating 5 of our big beasts!  Have a look, enjoy ...and feel free to envy us! HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!