Flame on!

Happy February!  Either I haven't posted in awhile or it seems like it due to everything that's been happening.  At this point, I feel I may have to delete the parentheses from the title of this blog and just be honest with myself.  But first, a quick summary of the previous weeks.  We had our pre-session grammar class for the last two weeks... nothing special there except that we read a decent novella.  At the end we had a mock oral exam on a topic of our choice-- I decided to analyze La adoración de los pastores (El Greco) and Los Borrachos/El triunfo de Baco (Velázquez), but ended up running out of time after the first.  Thank you, profesora Araceli... (pincelada completamente suelta....).  We also took a tour of centro (old/downtown area) to see the sights.  My favorite part was the old medical school dissection room (all that wood was redone after the original room was destroyed in a bombing during WWII):

 See the table?  That's where they dissected the bodies...

 These statues are without skin to show the underlying musculature:

We also had an evening of pasta making at a local restaurant.  I may have to do it again someday when I have adequate counter space.  Jennifer and Jack (rocking and) rolling away:

 The owner making tagliatelle:

 Her mother cracking eggs (this woman was 80 something and amazing):

 Trying not to ruin it:

 Finished farfalle ("butterflies" in Italian):

I moved into my apartment last Sat. and am loving it so far.  My flatmates are fantastic.  At first it was just Dani and I, but Jennifer lived with us for a few days before she could move in to her apartment and our other flatmate moved in Fri.  She's from Innsbrook, Austria, and is doing research on medieval community politics or something of that ilk.  Dani left today to go home (in the north) until Mon, and we've already started speaking English.  We try, but it's hard when neither of us really knows the language.  I wish I spoke some German, but no such luck.  Anyways, here are some pictures of the apartment.  The kitchen (with the zebra print oven =D):

 A little terrace outside (and courtyard for the building):

 The living room/dining room area:

 Same room but you can see more of the table:

 The (lime green =D) hall upon walking in:

 Facing the door:

 Dani's doorway (I love the bead things):

 The bathroom (rather old, but functional):

 The sink area:

 Couch in the hall, viewed from my room:

My room:

My only complaint is that the shower (well, the shower head mounted on the bathtub anyway) doesn't have a curtain.  I flood the bathroom every time.  And now for some people and sights of the city.  Excluding, unfortunately, a chihuahua in a lime green shiny puffer coat.  They're epidemic, I tell you!  Anyways, speaking of that particular shade of green, this woman rocks it like I wish I could (her cart is lime as well, but you can't really tell):

This fluffy dog was in Coin, a high-end department store:

Here I pretended to get a picture of Jennifer and the statue so I could capture the lovely pink goth girl in the background... I think she missed the blog by a few posts as she would have fit in so well at the comic convention:

 This is the porta on the way to my apartment.  It totally reminds me of the building from Spirited Away where Chihiro and her family stop to eat (and enter the spirit world...):

 Compare:

So maybe not exactly, but pretty similar!  Speaking of Japanese things, I finally got a picture of the sushi bar (and Ari):

This was a foggy night in the park across the street from the porta above (the lights kind of reminded me of the candelabras rising out of the water in The Phantom of the Opera):

At the Trattoria Mariposa, one can get an adorable small pitcher of wine:

And add a drawing to decorate the walls (this is why I didn't take art):

This was a booth set up in Piazza Maggiore for some kind of fungal group [but what's really impressive is the epic Burberry style murse in the background (murse = man purse)]:

And more fungus (no Blasto, though):

The church of the sacred heart a block down from my apartment:

A huge piazza I pass by on my way to class (the thing in the center reminds me of the Ka'ba):

The same piazza fills every Fri and Sat with a street market:

One of the many shoe stalls (Em, this is for you):

Other than that... I had dinner with Ari and her roommates (who are awesome and hilarious) the other week, and some of Dani's friends stayed over this weekend (one of whom works at the CERN lab in Switzerland).  I got pizza with them and listened to them talk about the kids in their swim groups (they're all swim instructors).  The high point was when someone mentioned one kid, let's call him "Giacomo", and Dani was like, "Giacomo?  Con il culo flaccido?" (with the flaccid ass?) while making clawing motions in the air and the most hilarious face ever.  I was crying I was laughing so hard.  It really wasn't that funny, but hey, the fact that I understood it alone was wonderful.  Anyways... on to the main incidents.  Can I just state that I have really weird luck?  I mean, I feel like I have great luck in an overall life sense and really crappy luck on a day-to-day basis.  Or I just fail.  Probably a bit of both.  Exhibit A involved me returning from grocery shopping with a bag full of perishable goods and having my key get stuck in the lock.  No one was home, and I could neither open the door nor remove the key.  After a good 5 min of trying and failing to force it, I seriously began thinking I would have to break the door down and pay for a new one.  Then I heard male voices from the apartment across the hall and decided to see if they could help out.  I rang the bell and the guy who opened the door was wearing gloves and carrying a bunch of paintbrushes.  His friend lurking in the background sported an impressive set of dreadlocks.  Both were bearded and wore black t-shirts printed with alternative band logos.  Perfect.  Clearly the type to know what to do.  Despite appearance, however, they did succeed where I could not.  After trying and failing to both open the door and remove the key, they then went out into the community courtyard/terrace, where one scaled the fence to get onto our private terrace.  The windows were all locked, but he managed to jimmy one open without any obvious damage, then proceeded to open the door from the inside.  I got a new key after that.  While I was incredibly grateful to our neighbors, I also wonder if I should be concerned about how easily our apartment is broken into.  hmm.  In other news, a friend of several of my friends who I've had in one of my Italian classes and quite like came to visit Ari over the weekend.  We had a lovely time having a group dinner on Thurs. and decided to go out on Fri.  We weren't feeling up to anything big, so we went to Il Caffetino, a little bar/coffee shop.  It was PACKED.  Ginny and I ended up leaning against the food table while waiting for Ari.  Now, this food table happened to feature little tea candles for ambiance.  I want it noted that I'd had nothing at all to drink.  NOTHING AT ALL.  Nevertheless, after a few minutes, I smelled something burning and felt a warmth on my back, just as Ginny spun me around and started wildly patting me down to put out the fire.  This was the result:

I burnt a HOLE in my COAT!  It's completely ridiculous.  Who else does that sort of thing happen to?  Really?  The bouncers moved the candles back against the wall after that.  To make matters worse, I was cooking yesterday and, wearing an oven mitt because the pot I was using is metal and thus gets pretty hot, I moved said pot to reposition it on the burner.  Suddenly, I saw smoke and again smelled something burning, at which point I lifted my hand to see the end of the oven mitt in flames.  I immediately doused it in water and set it on the windowsill to smoke outside so my flatmates wouldn't notice.  It's now hidden behind all the other oven mitts and dishrags.  So lesson learned-- I should stay far away from fire.  I'd like to point out that in neither of these incidents was I hurt.  You see?  Weird luck.  Or maybe sitcom luck.  It gets me safely out of comically bad situations.