Happy (early) Fourth of July!

I'm off to go camping with my family. I took summer school Biology this June so I could take some other courses in the fall, and the final was this morning. The teacher is a little eccentric--which made it as fun as this Art and English major can find Biology--but I'm thrilled to be done, and I'm looking forward to boating, roasted marshmallows, fireworks over a lake, and--on the 4th--my dad's birthday. Plus, I have books, and reading while camping = super fun.

These are fireworks from last year. Beautiful, no?

How are you celebrating? (Or not celebrating, if July 4th means nothing special where you  live?)

Summer = I am back!

My sophomore year of college is over, summer is just beginning, and I will miss my dorm neighbors, who put this in the hallway on move-out day:

The paper reads, "Need money to go back to Antarctica."

There were a few quarters in it by the end of the day.

It's so lovely to have time to be on Bookduck again that I don't know where to start. So I'm making a list:

1. The winter banner needs to go; I hope to have a new one made within the next couple of weeks.

2. Book reviews. They're coming, because my summer reading extravaganza has begun. I've forgotten how wonderful unassigned reading feels.

3. Other blogs! I have to time to read AND comment now.

4. Musical Monday. You may see one tomorrow :)

Summer-ly yours,

Where I've been

Hi, everyone! Sorry Bookduck hasn't been very bookish lately. I'm taking quite a few credits this semester, and my freetime is small. I miss posting and reading and commenting and all that good stuff I haven't had time to do.

I have been blogging lately, but not at Bookduck; my American Lit class requires me to maintain an online reading journal in blog format. (I'm not inserting the link because it's pretty boring, unless you're dying to discuss Phillis Wheatley's poetry with me.)

In other literature-related news, my first painting assignment of the semester required me to draw inspiration from a work of literature, and I chose Paper Towns by John Green. (Which, if you haven't read it, is fantastic.) (Yes, I'm the only student who selected a work of YA fiction.) I'm finishing that up tonight and crossing my fingers for good things at critique this week.

I'll leave you with some links I've found interesting over the last few weeks:

Literary classics= VIDEO GAME GENIUS (at Kiersten Writes; probably one of the funniest things I have ever read)

So, YA Literature Is Going Down the toilet (an intelligent, funny defense of YA lit at Maggie Stiefvater's blog)

"Young Adult Lit Comes of Age" (article at the LA Times)

Hello. I miss you.

Spring Semester started on Thursday and my homework pile is quickly becoming as tall as me. Between that and my library clerk adventures my online (and reading for fun) time has been much tinier this week, and I haven't read and commented on as many of your lovely blogs as I'd like to. I've also received some wonderful blog awards, which I will acknowledge and pass on at some indeterminate time in the future when. . .well, when I have time to do it. Until then, please understand that I'm not ignoring you because I think it's fun.

See you on Musical Monday,

Italy Part Tre: Venice

When I checked my e-mail on the afternoon before I left for Italy I received this message from one of the professors going on the trip:

Dear all,

Venice is having a very cold and wet winter. They are actually predicting rain, snow, and flooding while we are there. You may want to get to WalMart and buy yourselves a poncho and some rubber boots that are about knee-high. I bought some last night and they cost me $19.99.

See you tomorrow.

Dr. M.

I went out and bought boots. They are brown and awkward and slightly too big because the store I chose didn't have any in women's sizes, but I didn't have time to run around town looking for the perfect pair. In any case I was glad I bought them. Here's why:

This is a mammoth puddle in front of St. Mark's Basilica with the Doge's Palace beyond. It is one of many puddles I encountered in Venice, most of them smaller yet surprisingly deep. One can see platforms in the background of the photo; these are used for walking when St. Mark's Square floods, which did happen a bit while I was there. There are similar platforms elsewhere in Venice, which was good because it rained off and on for most of our time in Venice.

While I was in Italy for school, the trip was very unstructured. Once we reached Venice we were basically told to go do whatever--just keep a journal and come to quick meetings about every other day. This was both liberating and mildly terrifying. The day after most of us visited the islands in the lagoon, however, we did have a bit of direction in the form of a challenge: Find the oldest restaurant in Venice (it's about 500 years old) and try traditional Venetian food. Hint: the staff is known for being rude, it's a bacaro (sort of like a bar that serves food), and the place is listed in most guidebooks.

I joined forces with Carrie and Tasia, my friends and two main travel buddies. We scoured our guidebooks for possible establishments and found two that fit the clues. (My mom gave me Rick Steves's Italy 2010 guidebook and it was invaluable. I've previously called guidebooks boring, and I stand by that if one is just reading one at home, but I now think them endlessly interesting and incredibly useful when figuring out the ropes for oneself in a foreign country.)

We considered asking someone on the street if they knew what restaurant the clues talked about, but nixed the idea since none of us knew how to say "500 year old restaurant" in Italian. We tried a tourist information office, but the woman at the desk just fluttered her hands and said, "A five hundred year old restaurant? It's impossible. Impossible." We went back to the hotel in defeat. One of the professors was in the lobby, though, and after one more hint we were sure which restaurant it was: the Cantina Do Mori.

It's a small place on the other side of the Rialto from St. Mark's, standing room only. The first bartender we saw didn't speak English (nor should he), and we had no idea how to ask for traditional Venetian food in Italian. Carrie pulled out her handy dandy Italian phrasebook from the 1950s (it tells you how to ask for typewriter parts and girdles) and we paged through it awkwardly for about five minutes. It was the noon hour and the place was filling up with locals; it was crowded and full of Italian words.

Finally, the other bartender--who'd watched the whole thing and apparently decided to let us hang for awhile--motioned at us and said that he spoke English. We asked him for something traditional and he gave us a variety plate of cicchetti, which are small snacks with toothpicks in them. The cicchetti we sampled included this slimy eel thing and a bunch of strange rolls and little sandwiches with whole (bony) tiny fish on top. It was all very salty, and while it wasn't my favorite food ever, it was good stuff. I wouldn't cry if I had to eat it again.

We did a lot of other things in Venice, but most of our time was spent wandering around lost. Venice is a maze and maps are only so helpful, since few list all the narrow streets (calli), and some streets change names in random places. Venice is comprised of six sestieri, or neighborhoods, with the southern neighborhood of San Marco being the most touristy. It's definitely worth heading north into San Paolo, Santa Croce, west to Dorsoduro, and beyond. After dark (and it was dark; many streets weren't brightly lit), there were many instances where it was just us on the streets or near the water. This was both eerie and peaceful. (And if you ever go to Venice and want to get away from the awful tourist menus around St. Mark's it's worth the walk to Muro in Santa Croce. It was So. Good.)

And now it's picture time!

Someone boarding a vaporetto (right) from the vaporetto stop at the Accademia Bridge (left). Since I keep talking about water buses I thought I'd show one... Most of the important streets are decorated with pretty lights, which we found both beautiful and incredibly helpful.

There were a lot of people in Venice who really wanted to sell us handbags. We didn't want any. Here are some street salesmen hounding passersby on the Accademia Bridge.

Graffiti near the Accademia Bridge. Does Venice have a faery problem? Could that be why we were lost all the time? Other notable graffiti included the phrase "Thief Cause". It was all over Venice.

We saw many people--all of them speaking Italian and probably not tourists--coming out of a gelato shop down the street as we wandered. We decided that we should go in too, and were glad we did: one euro for a large scoop of gelato in a waffle cone. Yummy and wallet friendly.

I came across this scene as we walked through Dorsoduro, and I promise that the dogs were playing, not fighting. Venetians seem to like their dogs; we saw a lot of them, and many people took their dogs into stores, even big ticket designer ones. (Note the flood platform.)

I deeply appreciate signs like this. We used them frequently.

Beautiful graffiti art on a payphone.

The view from our hotel's cozy little lobby.

Carrie and me obstructing the lovely lobby view on a rare sunny morning.

Ciao,

Tune in next time for pictures and tales from Florence!

Italy Part Due: Islands, cats, and statues oh my!

"Due" (pronounced doo-ay) is Italian for "two". I didn't know that until a few days before I left for Italy. I like it.

I also appreciate the comments that were left on Italy Part Uno.

In response to Nina, I would love to go back to Amsterdam someday and actually get out of the airport. Love love love.

To Catherine Denton and Mariah Irvin, I don't know how I ended up with such a fascinating flight companion. I pinched myself a lot, because I don't usually get to sit by such interesting people on planes. (Well, technically everyone's interesting. You just don't know it until they talk or do a cartwheel or something, and talking with strangers on planes can be awkward, so a lot of people--I'll admit including me--just don't do it very often.)

Anyway. To pick up where I left off, we landed in Venice in the afternoon on January 6th. Then we fought jet lag and took a walk around Venice. (There are lots of stocking, sock, and tights shops there. Just an observation.)

Oh. And I saw this:

The Rialto! It's such a pretty bridge.

And I was in VENICE. (Or, as Venetians call it, Venezia.)

The next morning a bunch of us decided to visit the islands of Murano, Burano, and Torcello in Venice's lagoon.

Murano is famous for its glass factories (in--I believe--the 13th c., Venetian glassblowers were kicked out of Venice proper and sent to Murano because their furnaces were a fire hazard). Many of the factories offer free glassblowing demonstrations, and we went to one.

See the broken vase? The glassblower made it before our eyes, then dropped a piece of paper in it to show how hot the glass was. The paper burned, and shortly after the bottom of the vase shattered and it fell down. In the background, the glassblower is making a horse figurine. We were, of course, taking pictures like crazy during the demonstration, and at one point the glassblower turned and posed. At that moment it hit me that pictures of him must be in many tourists' photo albums and cameras. I'd pose too.

Murano. That spiky blue thing is a glass sculpture.

Glass flowers.

Burano, on the other hand, is famous for lace making and cute, brightly colored houses. We came during siesta, and all the kids going home from school for lunch had--I'm not kidding--wheelie backpacks. Good for them. (And their backs.) They also make great cookies--excuse me, biscuits.A pack of large cats right near the vaporetto (water bus) stop.

Idyllic laundry scene.

An apparently typical place to keep one's umbrella--I saw quite a few hanging outside sun-drenched front doors.

Now on to Torcello, which used to be a big deal. Thousands of people lived there. Now? Not so much. The big tourist attraction is the church complex about a ten minute walk from the vaporetto stop, which was worth seeing, but wandering outside with a camera was the best fun. Cat houses! With cats!

Creepy vineyard.

I love the pose of this statue, which was to the left of the vineyard.

A stone chair near the church complex. Carrie, Tasia (my two travel buddies), and I decided we needed to sit in it.
This is Tasia sitting in the chair.

This is Tasia awkwardly almost falling out of the chair.

Me sitting in the chair.

If I look cold, it's because I am. But I can talk about weather in the next post, which will be about Venice!

Ciao,

Italy Part Uno: Unexpected airplane soap opera

**Blogger isn't letting me put spaces between paragraphs where I want to, so I'm sorry for the unwieldy blocks of text below.**

On January 5th, 2010, I traveled to Minneapolis and boarded a plane from there to Amsterdam. From there I--and seventeen other students and professors--flew to Venice. (Here's why.)

I sat by an elderly woman with curly blonde-ish hair and a wrinkly, craggy face on the big flight. We exchanged first names. She called herself Bert, short for Bertha. (I would probably go by Bert too.) Bert told me that she was going on a European cruise starting from Rome with a friend and her daughter, who has MS. Cruises are the easiest vacations for the woman with MS to take. I told her I was headed to Italy on a school trip and then the plane took off. We kept talking.

What started as fairly ordinary small talk, however, became an enthralling story that unwound over the eight hour flight between movie watching, plane food eating, and Bert's settling in with her sleep mask. Turns out Bert wasn't just going on a European cruise--she was also going to Paris to meet a long-lost niece.

(!!!)

When Bert's brother was stationed in Germany in the 1960s, he went to Paris and met a woman named Cristiana. (Bert didn't say she was beautiful, but I'm sure she was.) Cristiana got pregnant but didn't tell Bert's brother about the baby. He went back to the U.S. not knowing that he was a father. "It's just like one of those crazy soap operas," Bert said.

Bert said that her brother talked about bringing Cristiana to the states, but that never happened. He married someone else, had two kids, and died twelve years ago.

Last year Bert got a phone call from a woman named Barbara, a Search Angel. Years ago Barbara was reunited with a long-lost relative and was deeply touched by the event. Now, she volunteers her time as a Search Angel, helping others find their long-lost relatives and loved ones.

Barbara told Bert that she was about to hear something strange and told her about her niece. Bert almost hung up, but she heard Barbara out, and Barbara left it up to Bert to follow through. After some careful thinking, Bert hesitantly contacted her niece, who is now forty-eight years old. The niece sent photo albums from her childhood; she looked just like Bert's late mother.

The icing on the evidence cake was a picture of Cristiana with Bert's brother. (Bert's brother brought one home just like it.) The niece lives in France and has a sister in Paris who speaks English, which is helpful since Bert doesn't speak French.

I asked Bert how she felt about the upcoming meeting, and she said she was excited and anxious: this was likely to be a closure-filled emotional event. The niece originally searched for her father, but since he's dead, Bert is standing in for him.

The flight landed in Amsterdam, we parted, and I hope her meeting went well.

I stumbled off the big flight feeling absolutely exhausted. It was about midnight my time, and I'm terrible at sleeping on planes. It was about 7 AM in Amsterdam. We had a connecting flight to Venice, but first we had to go through passport control and security screening, and I've got to say that Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport--besides being beautiful and possessing random doors in the middle of hallways that open to nowhere and entertained my friends and I to no end--has the happiest security workers I have ever seen. There was smiling. There was small talk. There was a man in an important looking uniform bellowing out, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm". I can still hear him singing "E I E I Oooo!" in my head.

In Venice the vaporetto, or water bus, that we took to reach our hotel landed near where I'd seen the accordion player in July 2007, but he wasn't there this time. Hardly anyone was. (People aren't kidding when they say that January is Venice's slow month, when it belongs to Venetians more than to tourists.)

I have lots more to tell, and many pictures to show (I didn't even get to that today) but the Bert story is probably enough for now :)

(In other news, I highly recommend visiting Stephanie Perkins's blog. She is in Paris researching for her novel, Anna and the French Kiss, and recently crowned the hottest guy in the Louvre. (As in the ones depicted in the art, not the living visitors.))

I'm back from Italy!

And after getting off the plane I ran to the grocery store, picked up a family-sized Stouffers lasanga from the freezer section, and threw that puppy in the oven!

Just kidding--I didn't do that. But we all joked about it on the plane ride home.

I have lots of stories to tell and pictures to share, some of which may show up today.

Hoping your Monday is fabulous,

Musical Monday (26)

Every Monday I post whatever song I can't get out of my head or just can't get enough of because Mondays can often be less than marvelous, and music is happy--even when it's sad. If you'd like to join the party, just make your own Musical Monday post and leave a comment!

This is a prescheduled post, because although I should have arrived home from Italy last night, one never knows about plane delays.

Anyway, this week's song is "My Moon My Man" by Feist. I've had it in my head all week. (Well, this week. I'm writing this on January 4th. Writing to the future is weird.) I haven't listened to much Feist before, but in light of this song I may have to change that. Also, the music video is set in an airport, and Future Me recently spent a lot of time in one.



Wishing you a Madly Moving Monday,

Musical Monday (25)

Every Monday I post whatever song I can't get out of my head or just can't get enough of because Mondays can often be less than marvelous, and music is happy--even when it's sad. If you'd like to join the party, just make your own Musical Monday post and leave a comment!

Hi, all! This is a prescheduled post, because I am in Italy right now. (I don't type that very often.) I hope this finds you well :)

This week's song is "Candelight" by Relient K. Great musical texture + cheesily fun lyrics + a reference to Lady and the Tramp=Mmm mmm good music. There is a one minute outro on a separate track below, but it doesn't have to be listened to to fully enjoy the actual track.



Wishing you a Magnifico Monday,

PS: If you've not checked out the Lauren Mechling interview I posted on New Year's Eve yet, I recommend it. Her answers still entertain me. (I know New Years weekend was a bad time to post things, because people are busy, but I was leaving the country soon...)

Travelduck

Tomorrow I'm getting on a plane and going to Italy, and I'll be gone for the better part of two weeks. There will be an ocean between me and my laptop, and I will miss you all. I'm scheduling the Musical Mondays I'll miss to post automatically, but other than that Bookduck will be a pretty quiet place while I'm gone.

I wish I could say the trip is for a vacation, but it's actually part of a travel course I'm taking this January: Italian Culture in Context: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Travel Literature of Florence and Venice. I'm excited but nervous because so much of the itinerary is left up to us, and we've basically been told to take walks, talk to people, and get lost. I'm not good at not having plans, but I also don't like travel planning. A part of my brain shuts off as soon as I see a guidebook.

If you're wondering, my university offers classes like this every January, when we have J-term and students take one class for the entire month. It can be something fun that stays on campus or it can be a travel class like the one I'm taking. My roommate, for example, will be in Nicaragua with the Social Work department while I'm busy getting lost in Italy. (And I probably will get lost; both my sense of direction and my map reading skills are hilariously terrible.)

This won't be my first time in Europe, or even in Italy. In the summer of 2007 (right before my senior year of high school) I went to Europe with the Midwest Ambassadors of Music.

We had three buses. I got to ride on this double decker pink--excuse me, fuschia--bus all through Europe. This picture was taken in Paris.

There won't be a bus this time (we don't even have an itinerary), but I checked the weather forecasts and there's sure to be rain. There was a lot of rain in 2007, too. We zipped through London, Paris, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and swung by Venice for a day, and that day was the only dry day.

A typical umbrella huddle near the Eiffel Tower. Note our chic blue jackets. They had our names handily embroidered on the front, made it easy to spot each other, and were impermeable to rain. But I'm probably never wearing mine again.

The group included a choir and a band; I was in the band. The choir sang in lovely old churches. The band played outside in parks and town squares...where it rained and we got wet.

Following are pictures I took in Venice in July 2007. I'm wondering how different it looks in January.

We saw (and heard) these gentlemen as soon as we stepped off the boat. They sounded lovely.

Masks!

These children may look like they're playing nicely together, but they weren't. The boy was playing keep-away with the ball, and the girl was not happy.

Hurriedly snapped picture of a gondolier. No, I did not ride in a gondola. Too expensive...

Venetian glass!

Excited/nervous/happy/terrified and leaving my winter coat at home because it's not in the single digits and below zeroes in Fahrenheit in Italy (yay!),

P.S.: If you have not e-mailed me before and are not on my contact list and e-mail me between January 5th and 18th, your message will end up in my Junk e-mail folder and will be automatically deleted in ten days because that's how it's set up, and I can't figure out how to change it. Normally I'm able to rescue such e-mails, but I won't be able to at this time. Just so you know :)

Musical Monday (24)

Every Monday I post whatever song I can't get out of my head or just can't get enough of because Mondays can often be less than marvelous, and music is happy--even when it's sad. If you'd like to join the party, just make your own Musical Monday post and leave a comment!

Happy New Year everyone! This week's song is "Mr. Pitiful" by Matt Costa simply because I like it and it is stuck in my head.

In other news, I am leaving for ITALY tomorrow for the better part of two weeks for school. (I'll explain a little better later today. But it's okay if you're not that curious and don't come back to read that post; it won't be mysterious in the least, and I've known I'd be gone since May.) The capital letters are to help me believe it and give me a little push to get my suitcase packed. (It's packed in my head.) For this reason the next two Musical Mondays will be pre-chosen and pre-scheduled. So they'll be here, but I won't, because I'm putting an ocean between myself and my laptop.

I hope you're all having a fantastic (so far) 2010!



Wishing you a Mega Awesome Monday,

Riverboat Days Finds

I had a great time camping this last weekend. When I wasn't busy lounging at the campsite and cruising down the bike trails (Which were so close to Lewis and Clark Lake I could hear the waves!) or daydreaming on the bench in the pretty picture below, I visited the annual Riverboat Days Arts Festival in Yankton, South Dakota not too far from our campground.

My bench for the weekend with a view of the lake and the bluffs. (And you can't see it, but the bike trail is right behind the bench.)

It's been years since I've gone to Riverboat Days with my family, and it's as much fun as I remember. First, on Friday night there were fireworks. Here's a bright and shiny picture:

We sat right near the water, and before the fireworks started all these bugs kept flying from the tall grass and the water at the people waiting for the show to begin. I don't what they were, but there were lots of them, and they kept running into my forehead.

Two kids who tried to catch some of the bugs. See those white circles around them? Those are all bugs; they didn't photograph well.

We went back Saturday afternoon to browse through the maze of food vendors, artists, and other crafty types selling their wares. Here are a few of my favorite finds:

Sign reads "Fairy Houses for your Garden"

One of the coolest, most whimsical fountains I've ever seen.

Humorous Clocks . However you feel about our current president, you've gotta admit this clock is at least a little funny.

The Writer's Clock!

And, finally, the clock I wish I could switch over to every now and then.

I also had a great time looking through the Art Moms booth and got a little something to hang in mine and Kayla's dorm room when we move in after Labor Day. I'll show it to you later :)

My favorite booth, though, was Rebecca Scott Designs. There were so many cute purses, but they were all a little too spendy for me--August is an expensive month, textbook buying and whatnot. But it's still super fun to look :)