YAHOO come monica

oh me oh my three times in one week. today is my last final!! oral presentations and then baddaboombaddabing. tomrrow perugia? yes. sunday pack? yes. monday recital? yes. tuesday visa pick up and last dinner together? yes. wednesday finish packing? yes. thursday morning leave for rome? yes. sunday leave rome at 8 am for america? I THINK YES. oh the continent of north america, i miss you so. i just found out my cousin is moving to chicago on june 1st, awesome? yes. who is just so happy and content with life? oh that is me. who has suddenly been daydreaming and needs to go practice her presentation at least once? me.

if someone sees the parallel between movies and chicken, let me in on the secret...

"About me. Hmm. Not sure what you want to know. Not a serial killer. Just a nursing student seeking her bachelor's degree and soon after grad school. I talk a lot. But may just as easily become very quiet. I'm a neat freak with the exception of letting laundry pile up occasionally. Love to shop. Love pizza. I do not cook. Don't know how may never learn. I have yet to grasp the concept that you can't watch a 2hr movie and bake chicken. I diet maybe every 3rd day. So I may put some unusual never before seen organic foods in the fridge. I've had 6 roomates in the past and they would all choose me again as a roomate if they could. The reason. I advocate great communication. Despite how small or minor you may think something to be. Talk to me and I will always to you."

this is the girl i will be sharing my apartment with for the summer... thats is all really.

not dead

i'm not dead, the lab computers have a virus (thanks to us) and i have been in naples all weekend. now i have finals all week and will be leaving for rome shortly after. then home. thas about all i have for now, but im not dead. that is all.

two times in one week? CRAZY!

hello. my name is ashley marie boven and i'm a fi-- second year.

anyway. i am in quite the JOLLY mood this morning (thank you lindsey) and i just feel liek spreading the sunshine. speaking of il sole, i think i am going to be il sole in our pplay we have to put on at teh end of the program, the sole has these magical powers to impregnate le principesse with just its sunshiney rays. i'm not sure why i decided to be the sun... anyhow. speaking of oddness, my lovely aunt yvonne sent me a mother's day card this past weekend, which was quite humorous. and then to top it off in her message (which also included i know this is a mother's day card but the message just fit you so well) she said that my cousin becca had had a dream a week ago that i was pregnant. point being, it was quite the humorous thing to wake up to on monday (or tuesday, not sure) morning. (also very nice and warmy and fuzzy making). anyhow. i love my aunt yvonne.
so ths past weekend annie (a hungarian with perfect olive skin) actually said to me, "wow ashley, you tan so well." and was like what?? apparently after 20 years of burning myself i have finally accomplished being able to tan nicely and quickly. i have become quite brown (comparably) in a very short amount of time. so blah blah blah.

so we have a quiz today... on three tenses of the subjunctive, passato, presente and imperfetto. all we have left is the trapassato congiuntivo (subjunctive) and we will have all 14 tenses! or maybe its fifteen with imperative, i dont know, its not really the point. what exctitement! oh i hate verbs. i hate grammar on the whole. i dont really care much for vocab either. haha. oh sto scherzando, i love it all.

oh wow i just remember a dream i had last night. it was all about the facebook. damn mark zuckerberg.

SO. i had a lovely day yesterday by the way. i went out to lunch with lauren and then we went with elisabet and sat in piazza miracolì on the grass near the tower with all the other million university students and studied and chatted. it was delightful. i was actually happy to spend timewith people in our group for the first time in quite awhile. today after the quiz rossanna is giving us a surprise and we are leaving CLI and going somewhere special. surprise surprise.

well im exhausted. anyhow ciao.

a wet dog

this morning it rained. i didnt realize this until i was already taking my bike out of the garage. i was soaked upon arrival. rossanna gave me sweater to put on so my hoodie could dry. i was sportin the rossanna style. fabulous really. anyway, i am back in my own clothes. and its sunny.

i think i am going to shopping this afternoon, or maybe go to teh ghetto grocery store that has been discovered and check that out. I really just want to start buying stuff though, for some reason my need to buy stuff for people is making me really anxious. kind of like christmas time really. mah, oh well, its a joyous thing, im not sure why its making me so oddly anxious. mah, blah blah blah.

i went Aosta on sunday. florence on saturday. i loved them both. aosta is about the most north western point in italy, right on the french and swiss borders. beautiful really. just beautiful. you should go if you get the chance. a six hour train ride. lots of interesting people. if a midtwenties french italian man ever asks please tell him i am engaged or married, your choice. and if you knwo whats good for you you will tell the same about yourself. unless you are a guy, in which case i suppose you arent in danger. italian trains at 2 am = the redline at 2 am but with italians that arent bums, just drunk.

i really dont feel like saying much else. only about 25 days left and ill be back in the wondrous america. i hate english, but i love americans. oh americans.

I actually feel like writing today. pazzo.

so after writing the title I have already lost my zest for wanting to write anything. but I checked other peoples blogs this morning for the first time since I left the states and I kind of felt inspired, or just envious that I that I don't have excess time to just sit and shoot the breeze in front of a computer screen but rather am usually out gallivanting around Italy. perhaps i will just come back to this after morning class and be renergized. forse? oh but before i forget, my babbo told me last night that my sister Alice was Fred flinstone. and i haven't stopped laughing yet. mostly because i have no idea way. and because he says Fred flinstone with the greatest accent ever.

anyway. so we are on the università di pisa website today. http://www.unipi.it/ateneo/comunica/comunicati1/chicago.htm_cvt.htm
so that's special. i'm sitting in a chair and i look my back is tied to some sort of wooden stake, as my posture is excessively straight. not sure why. anyhow, that was friday, not much fun, but they fed us, and like a good college student, that was all i needed to be happy. free food.

my babbo and i had this excessively long conversation while he was hanging laundry out my window last night. it was quite a funny conversation, that would be the one which ended on him telling me that Alice was Fred. i think its because her clothes are old and holy, but i don't actually think so, its just what i can come up with. maybe its like silvia says and its because she acts like a caveman with her manners. i don't know. he asked me if i thought he was a good father. and that was like the one time, i think it was Lindsey, or maybe heba, im not sure, they asked me what's the one thing you hate about me. and just like that situation, i had nothing bad to say, but its still just an odd question to ask of somebody. i mean clearly i told him was a good father (and to keep up with the parallel clearly i had nothing to hate about whichever it was that asked me the other question) but then he was like why do you think so? and i was like i don't know. so then he thought i was just saying he was a good father to placate him. so then i told him it was because he was a lot like my daddy. and then that only made me have to tell him all about my dad for like 15 minutes. i just kept digging and digging dude. finally he finished hanging the clothes. then at dinner i was accused of not liking the rest of the family because i only talked to babbo. it was a joke, but i mean, true. well, not true that i don't like everyone, but true that i only have conversations with my dad, its actually just because he's the only person that i can ever form coherent sentences with. not sure why. he also makes a really big effort to talk to me. which is nice. i thoroughly enjoyed his bday present, it was very babbo-like. he has been writing in a journal for over 20 years every day he told me the other night at dinner. crazy. he wants me to go caving with him, and i want to, but i don't want to die in the cave and not know how to say help. hahaha. he has worked two shifts of work for the last three days straight. that's a lot of work. i always feel really bad for him when he leaves at night after he just got home from work only a couple hours before. wouldn't you? anyway, that was a lot of babbling about my babbo with no real point.

so, let's see. this weekend is firenze! and next. i might go to bologna on sunday. who knows. variety is the spice of life. only like 30 days left here. which is just insane. argh, then home to spend quality time with dr. tony il dentista. yuck. but it will give me a good excuse to have three straight days of couch sitting and watching television... in english!! although i discovered that on sundays the mtv channel doesn't air italian mtv but just english programming, no subtitles or anything. i find this humorous, and also nice and homey. oh italian television. oh crazy italian government. oh RAI. im doing a presentation on William wordsworth's visit to pisa tomorrow afternoon. well, hopefully, i haven't started it yet. my stuttering problem has gotten really bad over here in italy. its really really bad when i am reading italian but its even got worse as well when i am speaking english. i don't even have to be super excited/hyper to stutter. its really not good. i am going to have to see a speech therapist or something ridiculous. maybe Alice and i will go together. she has a lisp. was that mean? sorry.

oh patience. what a virtue.

this morning was the most beautiful summer morning we have had yet. oh the weather has just been so beautiful! all of us pale chicago kids are even starting to not look nearly so out of place. a grand thing indeed. i wonder if i will stay so detached from my computer when i return home or if the umbilical cord will reattach itself, i hope not, i enjoy books and what not these days. and probably even moreso when i can read them in english at a decent pace!

blah blah blah. it seems someone needs to pay attention to negin's sleep aptterns and make her go to bed. as she is always up at crazy hours. however, entertaining...
smashley marie: oh chicago, how i miss teh homeless people
smashley marie: they just beg and play accordians here
mayrain1: oh, that's not nearly threatening enough
smashley marie: exactly
mayrain1: yeah i've noticed that actually, homeless people in the US are unusually hostile
mayrain1: but its endearing i suppose.

anyway. blah blah blah.
i suppose i have wasted enough time. both yours and mine.

my first public statement as a twenty year old.

well. i am twenty. (so is negin, and apparently she's having a baby as well. go to the baby shower dudleyites.)

i finally got around this morning to orientating my photos correctly, and adding a few more labels. perhaps unnecessary as anyone who was going to look at them already has most likely. but oh well. personal satisfaction.

i am really sunburned.

Happy May!