Monkling's Blog

I’m pretty sure I mentioned once before that we have a webcam. We use it to talk to Stephen on Skype and I love it except when the boy doesn’t sign on for days & days. Then I leave him messages in Italian in my status window. Sad, pathetic Italian messages about how I need to talk to my son.

Anyhow, one day I was talking to him and he was drinking something green. He asked me if I knew what it was. I didn’t have a clue. My only guess would have been that it was some sort of mint stuff.

Steve tells me, “It’s green sambuca. It’s illegal in the US. Want to know why? Because it has codeine in it.”

I did a bit of research on that & found a rumor saying not that it had codeine in it but that certain other ingredients, when mixed may produce something similar to codeine. In any case, I doubt that’s true.

When we were visiting Stephen, he took us to a restaurant he goes to often, I think called Abruzzo. (I need to confirm that with him.) Like all the other restaurants he took us to, this was fantastic. I don’t think I ever tasted an artichoke as good as there. And the pasta… oops. Let me wipe the drool off my keyboard.

We were stuffed but Steve insisted we order dessert because, if you order dessert, they bring bottles of sambuca to your table: white, black & green. Naturally we all tried the green. And ended up buying 2 bottles of it to bring home.

Then came the doubt. What if it really is illegal to bring into the US? Will the nab us at customs? What if it’s perfectly fine to bring it home but the bottles break? Now that would have been even worse than if they took the bottles from us.

When we packed up to leave on that last day, I wrapped the bottles in bubble wrap. (Lucky thing I had used bubble wrap to safeguard all those Christmas cookies I brought to Steve!). Then I wrapped them in clothes. Then I put that in a plastic bag. An elephant could have sat on that suitcase & these bottles wouldn’t have broken.

The airport wasn’t a problem. There were no beagles sniffing out my booze. There was no x-ray machine searching for forbidden alcohol. There was no sticky green liquid oozing out of the seams.

I am now the proud owner of a bottle of green sambuca. Still one burning question remains – why are there deer on the label? What do deer have to do with sambuca?

A King penguin was knighted in Norway. Seriously. You can read the story here.

Completely off the topic of penguins and knighthood, this past Friday was a Holy Day, the Assumption. In Italy it’s a holiday, meaning there were no Italian classes for the seminarians. I’m not sure if they all decided to do something for the 3 day weekend but my son did. Not that he shared this information with me. No, why should he tell his mother he is off in Florence? He did, however, tell his sister.

Being the pain in the ass I am, I then sent him an email saying something like, “Sure, go off without telling me.” He emailed me back with the phone number so we were able to talk to him today.

“So how do you like Florence?”
“It’s nice. I went to Pisa today. I wasn’t too impressed with it.”
“I hope you took lots of photos.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see the Tower?”
“Yes, but I didn’t go in it. They wanted 15 Euros.”
“Did you see David?”
“No. He’s in some school but there’s no lack of naked statues on the streets of Florence.”

I guess in a way, it’s good he’ll be there for 5 years because there’s no way we would get to see everything I’d like to see in just 1 visit.

Today Theresa and I went out to the bookstore. Normally I’m not a big fan of shopping but I do love bookstores. Today I was on a mission. I wanted Italian flash cards. This required going to a few different stores before I found them. At first, I only saw French ones. “What? How can they only have them in French? That’s discrimination!” Then I got the brilliant idea to look on the other side of the bookshelf.

Once we got home, I went through the cards & started pulling cards out & taping them everywhere. When Theresa walked into the kitchen, she said something like, “Gee, why don’t you just hit me in the face with flashcards?”

Frank, however, is another story. He just got home from work & is in the kitchen eating dinner. So far, no word about the flashcards. I’m guessing he didn’t notice them. Here, let’s see… “Honey, did you notice anything in the kitchen?”

Pause. Long pause. “Cake?”

I just walked in there. “Huh?” He pointed to an empty silicone bundt thingie. “No, that’s not a cake.” He then got annoyed with me so I came back here to type some more. I guess it could look like a cake.

A few minutes passed and he came in here. “Do you mean the notes?”
“Yes.”
“But they’ve been up for the past couple of days.”
“No, I had exactly 3 post-it notes with words. These are flash cards. There are way more of them.”

Everywhere you look, there are flash cards:

I plan on labeling everything in the house. Of course labeling the food gets tricky. If I use up a flashcard for the container of milk what happens when we use it? If I write on an apple with marker, can it still be eaten? How about eggs? Do you think the dog will let me put a sticker on him? And yes, I really did write the word ‘le forbici’ on my scissors.

Today was a big day. It was the day I had to speak to someone in Italian for the very first time; someone who does not speak any English. I was terrified.

Right now Stephen is in Assisi taking language classes. He’s in a hotel where he does not have a direct phone line and where the staff does not speak English. In order to talk to him, I need to ask the switchboard operator to connect me to his room. I had the sentence written down because I haven’t memorized it yet: Voglio parlare con Stephen. The person answered, saying, “Buona notte.” I understood that – good night. I repeated it back and then went into my one sentence, asking to speak to Steve.

So far everything was going fine. But then the man said something back to me. I have no idea what he said. He could have said Steve wasn’t there or I had the wrong number or Assisi exploded. I stammered. He said something else and then I heard music so I knew I was on hold. A few minutes later, Steve answered.

I really need to start learning more Italian. I’m working on it but apparently 1 hour a day isn’t going to cut it.