"I'm hungry for the taste 
of Italian verbs on my tongue." 

{Meghan Landies}

Dang, I love when that girl writes! 

And I love all the more when she writes about Italia and my heart's native tongue.

Dinner and Merry Christmas

goodbyes with Megs.

so blessed. so very, very blessed.

Speak to me in Italian and I'm pretty sure I'll be yours forever.  :)

Wouldn't it be cute if that were their vows in Italian?

Seventeenth-Century Italian Violin Pattern.

The name of Antonio Stradivari and the date, 1737, both written on the pattern, have been attributed to the hand of Count Ignazio Alessandro Cozio di Salabue (1744-1840), the Italian collector who obtained it from Stradivari’s son, Paolo.

Credit.  (Word.)

Happy Wednesday.

Oh to be wed in Italy.

Recognize these doors? When we were there in '04, we saw a bride and her father travelling through the Piazza San Marco. I snagged a photo, and while it's rushed and hidden, it is one of my favorites for how authentic and real it still feels to me.   (This is not in Piazza San Marco.  This, looks like Florence, to me.)

My heart is currently wandering the streets of Florence. I'm not quite sure how it got there though. *ponder*


Sarete sempre nel mio cuore.

I made the mistake of watching Letters to Juliet and baking traditional "Irish" food last night. The outcome? I'm craving some travels to my favorite country I've ever been (and favorite language) and my favorite country I've never been. The ongoing issue. While 'waiting' an international adventure sounds lovely - give me something to pour my excitement and attention into, something to keep my life from feeling mundane. And if I were to purchase a ticket anywhere, I'd go to Italy and/or Ireland. However, I want to go both places with my husband. See the conundrum? So I keep waiting... for my favorite travel buddy to arrive.
Wouldn't it be terrible (and yet remarkably funny), if A.) he hated travelling, or B.) he tells me one day all about his great travels to Ireland and Italy that he took, oh, during the Spring of 2011?

I have several dozens of beautiful Cathedrals, Abbeys, Chapels, Baptistries, Mosques and Reliquaries from across Europe listed out on individual index cards. Tonight, they are helping me study facts about how each building shaped and transformed architecture. I'm going to keep them in a box. Someday, I'd love to play a game with them: pull one out at random, and travel to it. :)

(Though I think I'd always be hoping it was Ste. Chapelle... perhaps I'll stack the deck for the first round.)



It adds a new idea for all my traveling. I think I'll fill out an index card for each of the places my dreams visit. Not just it's name, but why it's important- how it changed and transformed the world, architecture, language, literature, art, history, me. Perhaps key facts. This class has certainly changed the way I experience the world around me... I always look for beauty, but now I look for beauty in the structure, innovation and significance of the physical world around me. Beyond my own experience with whatever beauty I am looking at, I want to become knowledgeable about it. I may be about to graduate, but I've never felt more called to become a student then I do this year. I am a seeker, and I've barely touched the secrets I know are in store for me....

The struggle is simply studying what's before me, today, tonight. "Discipline is doing what you ought to do, when you ought to do it." Tonight, the index cards are equally important to one another. One day they will be destinations I'll fly to. Tomorrow they will be dreams I can ponder. Tonight, they are facts I must memorize...

I'm loving all my classes this quarter, and loving having all my homework done for my class in an hour. 3 articles read, and the first 120 pages of my book.

I nabbed a fourth class last minute and now have 18 credits. This is going to be a very challenging quarter, but also very exciting. I'm taking Honors English on noir/hardboiled fiction (the detective novels with the Femme Fatale and dark gloomy images of LA in the 20's-40's). I also have intro to Geology, Intro to American Politics, the next course in the Architecture series which I started last quarter- this one focusing on my favorite architecture periods (Renaissance- Gothic!), and largely on Italy!!

Mondays I have class straight from 9:30-3:20, and Wednesdays from 8:30-3:20 with a couple hour break. I feel back in high school almost-- with class after class. I am going to posture myself to stay as I am now, engaged and excited. I'm going to keep choosing to enjoy being studious and engaging new topics and questions.

It also helps that I have an extraordinary set of professors and TAs this quarter. Of them all the worst is probably my architecture professor (who is still better than last quarter's arch prof), and let me tell you- when you are lecturing on Italian architecture, you pretty much would have to be canine for me to not be engrossed and my heart incredibly awake! I walked out of class today thinking "man, my heart is SO in Italy!" I'm curious to see what that will one day mean... I really have no idea. But I love that culture. I love the architecture, I love the streets, I love the language, I love the people I have met, I love the art in general. Oh, and you KNOW I love the food, and the cappacinos!

Who knows, maybe its something that will play out in the destiny of one of my children, and the fullness of it for me will just be imparting the information and passion... or perhaps, it will be in my own tale...