I love my job, but

Oh how I wish this were edited. Here it is: the first and thus far worst Sicilian Sunburn I've Sustained. I'm pretty aware of how generally awkward this photo is, angle wise and beyond, but I just needed proof that I lived through that sunburn, peeled, and am presently still red. My poor, white, Oregonian, sun-kissed skin is begging to peel a second time. Let's hope the Aquaphor, (aka: glorified petroleum jelly) I've been lubing my entire body with three times a day will pull through for me in this final stretch.

Living on a U.S. Naval Airstation has high points and low. I get this sneaking suspicion that a lot of people don't actually know what I'm doing here, where I live, and the circumstances which brought me here, so I figured I'd take this time when I'm not sleeping, working, eating or wishing I was sleeping or eating to clear the confusion, if I may.

It's hard to know where to approach in tackling the massive, pulsing culture, lifestyle and silent undertones that lick one's toes no matter where they go. It has come to my attention that many people don't know exactly what an International US Military Base is (those of us lucky enough to be without family members fighting for our grand ol' country) so go educate yourself on Sigonella... I'm working off the assumption that link will be in English. My computer is very much aware that I'm in Italy and has dutifully changed every website I go to to Italian for me. Gratzia.

Tying in the aptly named title of this particular post, "I love my job, but... I hate giant, naked pregnant bellies." I can quite honestly say that I have never seen so many pregnant bellies in my entire life. I actually asked a friend that recently, "Why am I so weirded out/surprised when I see a massively pregnant stomach?" Every single person on this earth was once roofed under a belly, so it REALLY shouldn't surprise me. Yet...

Pregnancy here is an epidemic. To be frank, Navy men come in on the ships to their wives/girlfriends/current girlfriends and soon to be shotgun-wedding-style brides, after months abroad and what do you know? 9 months later a new crop of babies has surfaced from the wake of many-a-womb. So right now, I can look at the dozen or so women who come to the pool and are about 7 months pregnant ("Granted, gynecology is just a hobby of mine, but it sounds like she's crowning." I love you Jason Segel, I'm so incredibly attracted to you) and pinpoint the date that a fleet came home.

A fun trick they taught us at training is to just ask kids you're working withwhen their birthday is, because a fat chunk of them will be all scattered around the same time ;). Ba-dum chhh (my attempt at a drum sound?) But I digress...

I am so uncomfortable by giant naked pregnant bellies I have to sacrifice many womens' safety whilst guarding and avoid looking at them, as to not put the rest of the pool in danger when I start hyperventilating. In all seriousness, how is that not the most disgusting thing you have ever, ever seen?

In summation, there are so many young kids, babies and pregnant woman it's enough to make anyone's head spin. I suppose that's why we're here though. The life of a military wife/husband is not one to be envied. I've gotten to know a couple of women who's first and most stressed piece of advice is to not fall in love with anyone in the military. Thanks ladies, I'll do my best? The adopted mom that we're given when we get here to help us adjust is a sweet girl, barely older than me and often jokes about the shopping sprees she's going to go on when her husband, also a really cool guy who works with the k9 unit, as therapy through the loneliness when he is deployed for a year.

I could ramble on and on; the dynamic here is one of stress, sadness, deep love and strength, with that quiet glimmer of hope. I can't get over it, I keep running around trying to take it all in, but I'm far to overwhelmed by it all

I'm getting bored of writing about this, so I'll wrap it up. I live on a hotel on a military base in Sicily, Italy. I volunteer 8 long hours a day 5 long days a week and get evenings and weekends to travel this odd little island.

It's hard to describe how it is different from mainland Italy, so I guess that if I'm going to be stereotyping Italian culture from now on I try to say Southern Italy. It's very similar to the North and South of the States though. An Oregonian would probably be offended if compared to a Texan. We are worlds apart, language, food, lifestyle, culture. The same, but very different. Same goes for all 7 regions of Italy. Each speaks a different version of the same Italian, each with new variations of the same dishes, bla bla bla. I've officially bored myself to my limit.

Jelly fish?

The Never Ending Jet-Lag Story

You know that feeling when you're absolutely in love with the recent experience you've immersed yourself in? I had a little tingle of that feeling today when being served my first true Italian ice cream sandwich, a spamoni-esque gellato blend squished between to honey croissants.

I'm sure you'll be proud to know I've increased my phrase knowledge base from: "ciao," (hello/bye), and "bonjourno," (good morning) to include the ever-neccesary: "excusa," (excuse me), "mi excusi," (I'm sorry), "dove il bano" (where is the bathroom?) and "questa?" (how much? I'm not even sure on that one I just kind of mumble it and they scream numbers at me).

Regardless, I really do love it here. Italian culture is one that will take much adjusting too, and I'm sure to annoy my friends and family with my new found lackadaisical ways when I come home in September.

Some wonderful things we've learned the hard way about Italian culture?

1. Public Transportation: Oh, southern Italy. Your heart is in the right place, but you are far too busy to provide any sort of semi-secure/timely public transportation. Without going into too much detail, the aquatics staff decided to take a trip out to Catania (about 15 minutes from base in a regular vehicle) to hit up the flea market and regular market for fresh fruit and vegetables and then a nice trip to the beach. A well-intentioned plan morphed painfully into a ten hour trip, which may have been fine, if 7 of those hours hadn't been spent on or waiting for a bus.

Let's not go into asking for directions via your Italian phrase book, the biggest language barrier of my life (PS, don't let anyone tell you Spanish is similar to Italian. I mean it is, but don't expect your extensive Spanish knowledge to get you anywhere. They will venomously ignore your Spanish attempts are pretend they don't know what you're talking about. They do - ish, they are just offended because Italians are in love with Italy and Italian culture) trying to pay for bus fare (Bus Driver: "Que disastre!" and just walks away without explanation for 15 minutes...), validating tickets, finding which bus goes where, getting yelled at by literally an ENTIRE bus of Italians to get off, screaming god knows what.

Wrapping up my public transportation in Italy rant, the one language that saved our ass was Polish... Well, naturally.

2. The Time Continuum: Italian time differs on many counts. To start with the obvious, there is the wonderful 9 hour time difference between here and home, making most communication really tough.

Next, is the idea that time, or being on time, is important or a pressing issue. There isn't much else to say, other than that being on time is unnecessary and a little gauche. Also, restaurants are open for lunch, then close, and then reopen at around 8:30pm. If you shop up to a restaurant at 8:30p, your food will probably be adorned with spit; no one goes to restaurants for dinner before 9pm, and it is an instant American flag waving proudly above your head. Which I suppose brings me to Italian meals, at minimum a 3 hour affair, the average being around 5 hours. Sicilian meals are 4-5 hour affairs, as every ingredient is hand picked/caught/slaughtered that day and won't go anywhere near a grill/kitchen until you order it (Dear Camas, WA residents, if you haven't already, cease your complaints of Top Burger's wonderful cook to order frozen burger patties. I won't hear it.) There is a restaurant here where the woman leisurely wanders to the garden and picks the food that she is going to be using for the meal after sitting down next to you and reciting tonight's "Menu."

Moral of the story being, don't go to a restaurant under time restraints of any kind. Don't go to a restaurant already hungry; you will suffer. (On the flip side don't go with a full belly. There are baskets and baskets of bread, appetizers to be had, plate 1 of dinner [generally a pasta dish], plate two of dinner [generally a meat platter], dessert, and wine by the liter.) Don't rely on busses/trains/planes to be anywhere near on time, although once they get there everyone drives at least 100Km per hour...

3. Pushy Italian Bitches: The concept of a line and waiting is a widely discouraged idea and when I say pushy Italian bitches, I mean vicious, old Italian woman who will rip your hair out, shove you to the ground, kick your lifeless corpse and rape your mangled body before waiting in a line behind of you. In all seriousness, they will actually slap/hit you if they feel they are entitled to your spot, no gentle love taps here. No one waits in line... In retrospect, at LAX for our Rome flight, the clusterfuck at the airport should have been a surefire sign of Italian's hatred of waiting, but we were young and naive. It took getting taken advantage and screwed over for 2 weeks straight everywhere we went to pull on my big girl panties and start pushing back. These women are NOT frail or fragile, don't let their lies fool you

Once again, I'm far far far too tired to think of anything else. I won't complain, because shoot, I'm in Italy, but say if I did want to complain I would say that I've been up 18 hours, waking at 5am everyday, and am in a continual state of burn and peel. In other news, my first hot shower in a while today! Solid.

Mud baths

In keeping with my list theme...

Top 5 Favorite New Experiences Thus Far (Not in Order):

1. Eating Sea Urchin Eggs..

Salty, a little fruity, and not generally my cup of tea because I hate sea food. When in a city several hours south of Rome, right?

2. Mud Bath in Sulfur mud.

Well, when we were headed to the Aeolian Islands we all had a very clear idea in our heads of what our mud baths we're going to look like. Were we pleasantly surprised when we found a gaggle of Italians soaking in a Sulfur mud pit inside an active volcano? Debatable. Sulfur, mind you, smells like the love child of Human Excrement and Rotting Eggs. Several girls opted out right away, their "day at the spa" idea murdered by the pungent notion of smelling like shit for several days. My more adventurous colleagues and I embraced it with open arms; never has slathering myself with something the texture and smell of diarrhea been more satisfying.

Several more serious fellow Mud Bathers would coat themselves head to toe and step outside the bath and not move, just staring at everyone else until they were completely dry and would peel the mud off. I didn't have the patience for that, nor the mud monster mentality, so we showered off the best we could and then went to the beach and dipped in the Terranean Sea (not quite the Mediterranean, mind you, but I guess if you think about it they're all kind of the same anyways). From there we swam/dragged ourselves to the water with hot springs. Anywhere there were bubbles you had found yourself a warm spot. A lifetime of Oregon oceans have never prepped me for any body of water that naturally warm.

The post-mud feeling was amazing though. My skin has never been so soft. Overall, I recommend it if you like your skin soft and shitty.

3. Diving into Jellyfish infested waters. Mostly everyone avoided the black sand beach we went to later in the day on our Aeolian Islands trip because the sand and water were covered in jellyfish. They weren't huge, but they were everywhere! The sand on the black sand beach was so soft and silky I just wanted to bring it home and... shower in it. Sleep with it. Make it breakfast in the morning. Call it back the next day. You get the picture. Plus, not running straight into a warm, beautiful, crystal clear, bluer than blue ocean was one of the hardest things I've had to do as well. I didn't succeed.

After walking down the beach we walked out on a long dock and I just couldn't take it anymore. I didn't even care if I got stung, I wanted to jump into the Terranean Sea. So I convinced my friend Caryn to go with me and it was amazing. We pointed to the least jelly-fishy spot we could find and didn't hesitate. Once I got resurfaced it was instant fright and just scrambled to get back on the dock. Thankfully, we didn't get stung but I wouldn't have regretted the decision even if I had. Andddd we were the only two who dared to do it, woooo.

4. Being a foreigner. I've only left America once, and that was to go to Canada, so my first excursion outside the country for real has just been a jumbled experience of people staring at me, feeling like a two year old (Wanting to know what every sign says, never understanding what anyone is talking about, wide-eyed trying to take all this newness in), and butchering a beautiful language trying to order pastries. It would be harder but better if I didn't live in a mini-America, but about half the people and almost every employee working here is Italian so I still get manage some culture here. And that's not to mention the odd culture of the military base. But we won't go down that road today. Regardless, I'm picking up little bits here and there and it's fun to listen to people talk a million miles a minute and be able to pick out one or two words.

5. That's all I've got so far. I'm going out to a nice Italian place tonight though so this spot will be filled.

Island Life

Well, we've wrapped up week 1 of my 12 week stay in Sigonella, Sicily. I'm exhausted, sunburned and a little cold, but feeling good.

Presently, I'm sitting in the back corner of the lounge/cafe/hangout/one of the few places with internet connection with half the CA people and a couple lingering military guys. If I may divulge, the time difference is a little frustrating, the best times for me to come here to Connections is generally a pretty poor time for people to be online, so that's the real reason why I've resorted to blogging.

For anyone who doesn't know, I'm in Sicily working for a program called Camp Adventure on a U.S. Military base (Sigonella) where college students get sent to international bases were college students are camp counselors for kids whose parents are in the military. They move around every couple years and it's pretty rough on them, the idea being that no matter where they go the camp is the same.

List Time :D

Some things I'm liking about Europe?

1. The euro. Thanks Biniyam Iyob for your lessons on the EU and western world economies. They have not benefited me thus far!

2. The fact that Italians (or maybe all Europeans) can't seem to get their toilet situations together. Every single toilet I've come across has presented a new toilet flushing challenge. For future notice, the norm I've noticed is that Italians (All? Just Southern Italians? All Europeans?) like their seats WIDE and uncomfortable. Ladies? If you feel like you're falling in and peeing on yourself, you probably are (but you're definitely doing it right).

3. The staring! A fun game you can play is the staring contest with an Italian man. You notice him staring at you? Stare back. So far I've found the game unbeatable, but I still try. (Age is not a determining factor, however, there is a positive correlation between age and creepiness of the stare)

4. Cars. Unlike our great American forefathers, the catch phrase of the European auto industry is not "Bigger is Better," or "I NEED MAH MAN TRUCK." I have yet to see someone driving a truck as a personal vehicle.

That's all I can think of... more later?

In more important news, however, I'm having a really hard time keeping my eyes open. So while I have experienced un molto bel giorno, sono stancato e non sento come esso (Thanks, free Italian->English translator!)

It begins...

The countdown is on: 4 days until I leave for Sicily for three months.

I'm flying from PDX to LAX this Saturday, June 12th at 6:55am - 9:20am. Then at 3:25pm- 12:15pm Sunday I fly from LAX to Rome, and finally Rome to Catania Sunday 1:50pm-3:05pm.