Icicles

After finals, I came home to the roof of my house lined in "white" LED icicle lights that really look blue compared to our old school lights on the bushes and our big wreath.  They're pretty, but I complained that the two colors look silly together.  Christmas Eve, however, we had a fairly large snow and when the water melted and ran off the roof, our fake icicle lights were covered and replaced with natural icicles.  They started small but quickly grew in to some of the largest icicles I've ever seen.  My favorite one starts as 3 smaller icicles, grows together at the bottom, and is HUGE!  They are beautiful throughout the day, but are exceptionally stunning at night when they are lit up by the icicle lights that lie beneath the real ones.

First day of icicles

Full view

Day two...they were huge!

Holiday Crafts

I have always enjoyed making my own gifts for Christmas but haven't really had the time the past two years to make as many as I would like.  My cousin got a new job this fall where she sometimes has to wear a hard hat, so I joked with her that I would make her a bedazzled one for Christmas.  When her boyfriend doubted that I would actually make one, I decided to prove him wrong, and what can be a better Christmas gift than a bedazzled hard hat?  I hope she likes it :)

Growing up, my brother & I made gingerbread houses each year and would usually kick my parents out of the kitchen and sing Christmas songs as we assembled and decorated.  My mom decided she wanted to make one this year too, so we bought a kit at the store last week and sat down to put it together yesterday.  It started off well, enjoying the sweet and spicy smell of the gingerbread but quickly turned bad and ended with me screaming and frantically trying to push the roof of the house back together.  I watched the gumballs lining the roof slowly cave in until they fell all the way through.  The first sign of the instability of the house was when the roof didn't line up with the side walls, but I decided to push forward with the decorating.  It went well and I had fun for a while until the roof became too heavy and finally just slid off.  Hopefully we'll be able to put it together with the glue gun today once I get it from my apartment.

A solid start

Pretty gum ball roof

And then the roof literally split

Attempting to salvage the house

Brussel sprouts...yes, brussel sprouts

Whenever I go to the grocery store I like to find something I want to try but either haven't ever tried or don't really know how to make.  I look at it as a challenge of sorts.  A few weeks ago I bought frozen brussel sprouts, and as much as I wanted to try them, I was nervous and always wanted to eat something I knew I liked during finals week.  Then today I was starving before my workout and decided to break them out.  Thankfully they were delicious, and I am going to buy some fresh ones to make myself the next time I go to the grocery store :)

Today was a really good day.  And not just because of the brussel sprouts.

So Many Things

There are so many things to be thankful for today so I decided to make a short list.

1) Campion Christmas.  It was so nice to be able to enjoy my family's company and all of the delicious food without overdoing it and being able to take moments to just sit and realize how much I enjoy being around my family.

The Campion clan at John & Tiffany's wedding two years ago.

This is more like what a get together is usually like. Organized chaos :)

2) Taking pictures of silly things I find pretty.  I went outside in the freezing cold without my coat to take pictures of the bottles of homemade cherry and blueberry wine my uncle put out in the snow to chill.  My dad laughed at me, but the bright colors of the wine in the fun, classic bottles were too pretty not to photograph, and I'm so glad I made sure the capture the moment.

3) Prosecco!  Aside from Spritz (actually Prosecco is usually used in Spritz, so I guess it's very similar), Prosecco is my favorite drink from Italy and one of my favorite memory triggers of Italy.  I will always remember Renaud going back to grab dessert while I was waiting in line at Billa but instead coming back with two bottles of Prosecco and then popping the corks off the bottles out the window of the neighbor's apartment trying to see how far we could make them go.  Any time I see Prosecco that isn't too expensive, I make sure to pick it up.  Drinking it has a light, nostalgic feeling that I adore and hopefully will always remind me of happy memories.

4) Being rewarded for my hard work.  I logged on to Compass today to check my grades and much to my surprise, I received an A on my Poli Sci research paper and an A overall in the class!  I worked so hard on that paper and in the class, and it is so nice to feel that my hard work paid off.

My pile of notes and articles to be recycled.

Hobby Time!

Somehow I finally crossed all of the items off my to do list I made after Thanksgiving break for the end of the semester, and it feels so amazing!  Last night, I slipped in to an Italian writing trance and finished my two papers after banishing myself to the Communications library and promising myself I could go out only if I finished.  Thankfully I did and was able to go out and have a blast to celebrate the end of the semester.

I took this yesterday before I finished my Italian papers, but those two are crossed off now too :)

I've also finally had time to do things I actually enjoy to do.  At the beginning of the semester, I remember the Fulbright advisor asking me what I like to do in my free time, and the only thing I could think of was "I have free time?"  Between school work and my two jobs there was not really too much free time this semester.  Whatever time I did have was usually spent catching up with friends, so it was a strange feeling to have time to do things I really do enjoy doing.

I love all the colors!

Wednesday night I broke out the beads and jewelry making supplies to make bracelets for the first time in months, maybe even a year.  I had a blast picking out the different color, size, and shape combos of the beads that I felt best fit the people I was making the bracelets for.  After lots of time spent choosing beads, stringing them, judging the combos, and sometimes restringing all while watching Project Runway, I finally ended up with a red themed bracelet for one friend, a blue and green themed bracelet for another friend, and a purple, green, and flowered bead bracelet for myself.

I used to make jewelry all the time and had forgotten how much fun it is and how much I enjoy giving my jewelry as gifts or wearing the final products myself :)

This is obviously not at work, but oh well.

I got to read all of that just today!

I was truly thankful for the time I had to play with my beads, and then I had a full five hours of freedom at work to do whatever I wanted.  No online French workbook.  No class reading to catch up on.  No papers to write.  No studying.  Nothing except whatever I wanted to do.  I chose to read "The Pact" by Jodi Picoult, which Natalie lent to me a few weeks ago and hadn't had the time to even think about reading.

It almost felt like I was forgetting to do something or was doing something wrong having five full hours to just enjoy a personal book.  Even though I sometimes would stop and feel weird, it also felt so nice to truly sit and enjoy a book for a long period of time.

I look forward to many more opportunities to read and enjoy other hobbies over break.
Long live hobby time!

People from the Past

This morning I woke up not feeling so well physically or mentally, so I took some me time reading and writing in my journal before heading to the gym.  I was already feeling better, but right when I got in the locker room and saw my favorite volleyball coach from high school, I knew it really was going to be a good day.

I always had good coaches both for school and club teams, but Heather taught me so much both on and off the court, and I even got to work for her one summer at Campus Rec.  Her intelligence, strength, and confidence make her one of the most beautiful women I've ever met, and I am so fortunate to be able to have been one of her players. She always influenced me to play my best on the court, which then made me strive to always do my best in everything in my life as well.  Somewhere in the past year I have struggled with and sometimes forgotten that.  Running in to her today made me remember how much she believed in me, how much I used to believe in myself, and how much I really do have going for me.

I am a strong, intelligent young woman and had an amazing workout once I finally remembered and fully embraced that.  I got on the treadmill and ran for the first time in a very long time.  I felt amazing.  I stopped worrying about what I looked like and just enjoyed how good it felt to be focused and running.  Normally I try to run multiple miles, even if I haven't run in a while, but today I let myself run one really good mile.  I focused on being strong and making that one mile the best I could run. It felt so good.

I am so thankful that I ran in to Heather today and remembered everything she taught me about being a confident, amazing woman.

This may not seem to go with my post, but this was taken at a time in my life when I was just living and loving life and not caring so much about what I looked like. Strangely, it's one of my favorite pictures of myself and I finally found it after looking 2 days for it.

Understanding bits of foreign films

As part of my procrastination from studying/preparation of my celebration time post-exam yesterday, I browsed through the DVD collection at the UGL and found three foreign films.

1) Les Poupées russes (Russian Dolls) - The sequel to L'Auberge espagnol that I had to watch for French class. I liked them both, but I really enjoyed the sequel.

2) Matrimonio all'Italiano (Marriage Italian-Style) - A classic, crazy Italian comedy/drama with two of my favorite Italian actors, Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren.

3) Belle Epoque - A Spanish movie where apparently a man returns from war and four women seek his love and attention.  Actually I'm not really sure, that's just what I gathered from the back cover, but hopefully it's good.

Thanks UGL for your great foreign film section! 

I find such a thrill in being able to understand bits of foreign films even if it is just one or two words out of a sentence.  I watched Russian Dolls with Kristie last night, and we would say the words aloud that we understood, getting great satisfaction out of those few words we did know.  Granted we've only been taking French for one semester, so there weren't a whole lot of words we understood, but more than you would think.

It was actually more difficult watching Matrimonio all'italiano this morning because the movie is mostly in dialect (Napoletano I think) rather than standard Italian.  There weren't any Italian subtitles, which is what I was hoping for, so I put on the English ones, which ended up being extremely helpful with the whole dialect thing.

I want to watch more Italian and French movies over winter break so I can attempt to keep up with my skills in each of the languages, and of course there's always the joy in that small glimpse of comprehension when I catch a word or phrase I actually understand :) 

I See the Light

After two weeks of doing almost nothing but studying, avoiding studying, writing papers, avoiding writing papers, and drinking more caffeine than I have in the past 4 years combined, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  There were times I questioned whether I would make it through Macroeconomics, but I took my final today and officially survived.  It feels even better than I thought it would to be done, and I actually learned a lot.

My desk at work while writing my Media Studies paper.  Articles, books, data tables, 2 computers, puppy chow...

I found something really comedic in the enormous amount of coffee containers in the trash outside the Foreign Language building. The Starbucks cup must have thought so too. "Funny, isn't it?"

Also, I finally asked my professor where he is from after spending the entire semester trying to figure it out.  At first I thought he was from South Africa then from some random English speaking place in Latin America and finally had decided on somewhere in the UK once he started using the UK for all of our examples in class.  Much to my surprise, he's originally from Germany, grew up in New York City, and has spent a lot of time in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries.  AKA he has one of the strangest accents you will ever hear.

I still have a 5 page and another 2 page Italian paper to write, but as much as I complain about them, I do genuinely enjoy being able to write in a foreign language.  In comparison to everything else I've done the past 2 weeks, I'm just so excited to finally feel that there is an end in sight.

Tonight I'm getting "inspired" to write my Italian papers by watching a foreign film.  Too bad it's French...oh well :)

Buon Giorno di Santa Lucia!

Saint Lucy is my Confirmation saint, so the past few years I have "celebrated" by going to church and usually getting myself a special treat of sorts such as a cookie or something.  To my pleasant surprise, Saint Lucy's feast day is also an important holiday in my beloved Verona.  Sadly, I didn't get to celebrate it there since my program didn't start until January, but rumor has it that in Verona they exchange gifts on December 13th rather than on Christmas, and there is a market in Piazza Brà selling food, sweets & toys.

The Saint Lucy statue leading the way down Via Mazzini.

There is even a statue just off of Piazza Brà at the beginning of Via Mazzini with Lucy on one side of it.  I didn't realize it was there until half way through my time in Verona, but continuously finding out more about her importance to the city gave me comfort and peace.  It helped me realize that Verona was exactly where I needed to be at that time in my life and is truly an important part of my life and personal growth.


This year I'm celebrating by braving the below zero arctic tundra that is Champaign-Urbana right now to turn in my Media Studies paper and study for my Macroeconomics final tonight.  I did make myself a delicious soy chai latte at home to bring to the library with me though :)

Today's latte is in a travel mug, but this is one I made last week.

Swing Dancing

It was one of my good friend's 22nd birthday celebration last night, and his birthdays always guarantee a good time.  We were swing dancing partners freshman year and would dance every single weekend together at our bar of choice.  We were usually the last ones off the dance floor and always had a good time.  Last night we finally got to dance together again after a nearly two year draught.  I was really rusty, but it was so much fun, and I realized how much I miss it.  Hopefully I'll find some time next semester to join a club or something...of course I'll also have my hip hop class to get my groove on :)

Gotta love spinning...I always add in a few more than my partner leads :)

Oh freshman year...

Butterflies

Yes, I love the colorful flying type, but since it's the middle of December, there aren't really too many of those to be found.

I don't have any butterfly pics, but this gives me the same kind of feeling & is another thing you won't find in the middle of December.

I'm talking about the butterflies you get in your belly when you get really excited about something, or more specifically, someone. Nothing may even happen between you and that person, but the feeling you get when you're so nervous to talk to them that you stumble on your words or hope you don't fall flat on your face is one of the best feelings in the world. It's one of those feelings that reminds you that you're alive.

I had that feeling for the first time today in a very long time. I loved someone so much and was so hurt by them that, although I figured I would feel butterfly excitement again some day, it was also sometimes extremely doubtful in my mind. Nothing will probably come from it, but it was so nice to have that feeling again and to be able to just sit and enjoy the uncomfortable yet exciting butterflies.

It gives me hope.

Maybe not today, but I finally believe that I will feel like this again someday.

Finals Week Restlessness

Since Grainger is a short walk from my apartment, it has quickly become my second home (aka I'm there right now & spent all morning here too). Studying in my apartment only leads to searching the TV guide for the next How I Met Your Mother episode or scavenging through the cupboards for the next thing to eat, so whenever I can, I force myself out of the safe apartment in to the cold and down the street to beautiful Grainger where I can study with all of the brilliant engineers and pretend I will some day make half as much money as they will.

Not my photo since I forgot my camera chord, but pretty much the same view from my 3rd floor cubicle.

Even though I am at my own cubicle at Grainger I am still just as restless as I usually am at my apartment. My restlessness used to be limited to my love of travel but after experiencing so much more of the world last semester, I am even more restless and restless more often. I want to go everywhere. Boston. New York. North Carolina. Maine. France. Portugal. Belgium. London (Lord only knows why after everything I've been through there). and of course my dear Italy. I choose a new city or country I want to move to every day, and it has actually become a joke between me and a friend. My restlessness flows over in to my career goals. English teacher abroad. Study abroad advisor. Registered Dietician. An advertising career. Event planning. Public relations. And again, it changes every day.

My restlessness seems to be under a magnifying glass now that it's finals week. Everything I do either revolves around studying or procrastinating studying and restlessness is perfect for anyone trying to procrastinate. I go from one blog to the next while listening to Grooveshark. Then I move on to the news sites. Then Facebook. And of course I have to check my e-mail once more. And repeat.

Verona was the best and worst thing for my restlessness. It satisfied it for 4 full months but just allowed it to grow exponentially upon returning to America. I hope this blog will help me appreciate what I have in my life right now and settle my soul a bit.

Il Teatro Romano.

The city that makes my heart sing.

Often times, especially lately, I become too caught up in bad things in my life which just bring me down, and I want to make a change.  I want this to be a place where I can post photos or stories of things I find to be beautiful each day. Mostly pictures since I'm a visual person, but I also want to develop my writing skills again, so I will also try my hand at that. Also, if I ever get the courage to make this a more public blog, I hope that my friends and others will share what they have found beautiful in their days as well.

There is something so healing about the warmth of the sun, so this is my piece of sunshine for days when the real sun just won't shine.