She Likes Coffee and I Like Tea

I suppose the title is misleading, because I'm not actually going to reflect upon my time in Florence and my return to the States just yet. I was just bored and wanted to break my LJ silence.

That, and I have an idea for a series of Kronk and Pancha drawings that I REALLY want to do after watching Emperor's New Groove this evening. You know the part in the diner, where Kronk asks "Hey don't I know you from somewhere? Wrestled you in High school? Metal shop? Miss Norka's interpretive dance, two semesters! I was always the one in the back with the weak ankles..."

Curse you, drawing bunnies of DOOM!


A new year is here, and I'm back at NYU. Bringth it ON!

You know it's bad when my brain reaches the point where I write bad puns in the essay of my final exam. For example! Today, last exam of the semester, my Etruscans exam, and I wrote "...the tombs are all of similar construction, track housing of the ancient world. Of course, on the inside they could hold a wealth of treasures, or could just be bare bones."


.....

My brain had gone and died a horrible punny death. But regardless!!! I'm DONE (sorta...there's still that large egg tempura I have to finish) BUT REGARDLESS I AM DONE!! NOW ALL I NEED TO DO IS PACK AND RETURN MY PHONE AND EAT AND QUAFF WITH FRIENDS AND THEN GET TO THE AIRPORT AT 7:30 AM ON FRIDAY MORNING AND I'M PRACTICALLY HOME FREE! I AM GOING TO BE HOME ON FRIDAY!! MY FEET WILL TOUCH U.S. SOIL AT 3:20 PM EASTERN STANDARD AND I'M GONNA WANNA KISS IT, POPE STYLE!!!!

SQQQQQQQQUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

On that note, I still have to buy something obnoxiously touristy for singealiene and muneybags6.

OMG. I'm going to go and doodle for pleasure in the meanwhile. OMG. I can doodle for pleasure now. OMG. FUCK YA!


EDIT:

Oh, Lindsay, been thinking. If Tammy is money-bags, and you are booze-bags, does that make me punny-bags? Cause it's really the only thing I have in constant supply. That and a humourously painful relationship with the english language, but that doesn't quite have the same RING to it, you know?

That is all.

What a week. Especially what a weekend. Ups and downs, let me tell you!

Between getting Howl's Moving Castle downloading on my computer to being a lazy ass all weekend, to performing at May Day to rave reviews (Dude, someone said I perform like the love child of Robin Williams and Ellen DeGeneres. That is easily the BEST compliment I've ever gotten, I'm still all a flutter!) to being the only person in the building with working internet, to one of the girls down the hall being told by her girlfriend (who is in China now acting on Broadway there in sound of music) that she wanted to experiment with boys again, and the drinking and smoking and bar hopping that went down in response, it's been intense.

Being slacking like woh in regards to school work, but I'm back in the nano game and there is hope! I'm 8000 words behind still, but I did some major catching up this weekend and there is hope! HOPE! Hope I tell you, damnit, I can still do this! Oddly enough, I'm ahead in my word count compared to where I was on this date back during Nano '03. So, yea, W00t!!

Been trying to upload pictures and what not, but internet works fine, until I really need it, and I gets all "But I am le tired." I've only managed to get two pics uploaded, a nano based one and one of a gazelle for Renaissance Apprenticeship. Wah-la! Don't you just hate me for clogging your f-list with my poor ass sketches?

Well, actually, I'm DAMN proud of the gazelle. So no knockin' the wildlife, m'kay?

XD

Emery falls down a cliff and breaks her leg. In a moment of a desperate need for word count filler, my two characters, Phil and Emery, recounted a story where Emery and some students were chased by a rampaging wild boar, and she was elbowed by a frightened student off of a cliff. She, alas, was forgotten about by the fleeing students, and Phil had to hike back across the 3 km of farm land and shimmy his way over dangerous ledges to get to her, and carry her back up since she had broken her leg. But that's what friends are for.

Gazelle!! This was so much fun to do, but a real bitch. It took me forever to get the proportions right. Frickin' animals.

Well, that's it for now. I have so many knots in my shoulders it's sickening. Sleep is required.

Laters!

After two weeks of consistingly going to bed at 3-4 am and getting up at 7-8 am, of studying for midterms at the last possible fucking minute, and rushing to get a class journal and art projects DONE, this week is over.

My fall break finally begins.

*slumps in relief*

For break I'm driving around Tuscany with mom, dad, cousin Nino and his wife. I have to be at the Florence airport at 11 am to meet up with the lot of them, cause mom and dad will be there waiting for Nino's plane to arrive, so I'm going to meet them there, then we all hop in the car and GO!

My break will consist of Tuscan countryside and wine tasting. Ummmmm....wine tasting.

I've begun really gearing up for Nano. First I had no plot, then I had three plots, and now I've whittle myself down to one that I figure I can write furiously without requiring much thought. The other plots either required too much research, or too much philosophy.

Ricasoli, my apartment building, is practically empty. I'm the only person on my floor. I had free reign over the washing machine and the kitchen, so I washed clothes and ate and danced around my room while I killed mosquitoes and sung obnoxious songs. Oh, and since I was alone to my thoughts, I realized how long my hair's gotten, and decided, that for once, I would be the one doing the LJ camera whoring!

BWHAHAH!!!!

All in all, I'm the sort of camera whore you can buy for a few bucks and a load of bread


And finally, for my facebook huswife leiasolo8:

this is for Jenni BWHAHAHA!!! Found in the Santa Maria Novella Station in Florence.

See you all again the 4th!!! LATERS!!!

P.S. Oh, I saw Le Tigre e la Neve and Oliver Twist this week, but I'll get into that when I return from break.

Elizabeth and I got to Taormina in one piece, had an awesome time, and returned safely! On the train ride back, I made friends with the five Sicilian men in my compartment, and there was much miscommunication (due to my Italian) and laughs and philosophical discussion in broken Italian/broken english and mad hand motions and shared peaches and coffee.

It was glorious. It's funny, how Elizabeth attracted all the skeezy men this weekend but I got all the older fatherly types who lit up when they asked where I was from and if my family was italian, and I told them "New York" and "La mia famiglia e` siciliana".

Sicily felt incredibly homey, oddly enough. In Taormina, and on the train, the people I did talk to felt like family, but that's just cause they acted like my family acts. As if Sicily is a mediterranean Brooklyn-of-my-childhood, back when everyone was still living a few blocks from each other and we'd drive in to visit for Sunday dinner. People ask me if it's odd, hearing all this Italian everywhere, but that's how I grew up. People may say people want to return to the comfort of the womb, but hearing old people talking/arguing in Italian is my comfort zone (as long as no one expects me to join the conversation, of course. Hearing Italian is the comforting part, not the attempting to speak or comprehend it). If you want to see what makes Antonella regress, sit her down in a group of older Italians and just watch her look like a wide-eyed five year old.

Oh, and FINALLY, I was able to eat GOOD bread, none of this crap they make in Florence without salt. I have been DYING for semolina bread, and I finally got some in Sicily, as well as a veal cutlet just like grandma's. AND DELICIOUS BRIOCHE WITH GELATO.

*DIES AND GOES TO GASTRONOMICAL HEAVEN*


This weekend was a good weekend. Now midterms can start, but at least I'll die with left-over happy Sicilian vibes.

I have such an insane amount of reading/drawing/writing to do in order to catch up in my studies, I'm being to contemplate the pros of committing seppuku with my pencil or this keyboard. Or with all these computer wires.


But instead, I'm wasting time, illustrating one of my stories. Specifically, the cover of one. One might think, "But Nella, shouldn't you FINISH a book before you start illustrating the cover for it?", but I just laugh and continue my procrastinating way of doing things without actually getting anything DONE.


To the Library! In the hopes I might actually GET SHIT DONE!!

oh WHY was it CANCELLED! I was so ready for more Etruscan lovin', I really was!

Now I'm just going to have to go home and draw and study and shit. *sigh*

Another whole week without more Etruscans. Damnit, we were going to touch on their deities and religion today! Come on, you know you'd want to learn about a people who stole Zeus from the Greeks but made him one of 19 OTHER lightening gods!


...Might as well get back to Ricasoli then and start spreading the charcoal love all over my desk.


Expect another post today, seeing as I'll probably procrasti-fuck myself later.

Come on, you know you want too...

I'm here in Italy, and I have a mail box, but I never, ever, ever get mail. Never. It's so rare it defeats the purpose of me having a mail box to begin with. So, since I have one, who wants to snail mail me? I'll send you a letter back, come one, you KNOW you want to keep a dying art alive!!


My mailing address here is:

Antonella Inserra
New York University
Villa Natalia
106 Via Bolognese
50139, FIRENZE, ITALY


So then, how 'bout some letters? *nudgenudge winkwink saynomore saynomore!!*

...Even though I don't know exactly WHEN we're leaving....


So, singealiene is some where on Long Island, and she's going to spend the night, and then tomorrow we are going to be collected by muneybags6 and then the roads are OURS. I keep looking over all of my study abroad paper work, worried that I've missed something. Oh, and tommorrow I have to stop at Dr. O'Brien's office to see if they can just fill out my physical report or if I actaully need an appointment. But other than that, I'm looking forward to the open road and a wonderfully empty back seat.


So y'all, I'll be absent from the 12th to the 19th, since we have to be back for our 7pm May 19th showing of Star Wars. I hope the fan boys are out in full force (and leiasolo8, pulpcrucifixion, you know I mean that with all the love in the world). I hope to come back alive and with all my proper bits and with wonderous stories to tell.

A piu` tardi!!!!

EDIT: Fix some grammer and some wording at 8 pm...whatcha think?

I got into the NYU study abroad all right, but now I want to get this application for the Acton scholarship done, and I just typed up this essay.

This is were you come in. This is the one time I'm going to beg comments from youse guys. I need you to tell me if it works with the essay requirement. It's all I got. Tell me if it works and if I've got to fix it.

BUT.......I need your opinions by the 14th. As in, tomorrow. Seriously. I just got accepted to the program yesterday and I found out about this scholarship today. I'm working on a REALLY tight deadline, so give a girl a hand.

For your consideration, the essay topic:

As New Yorkers, cultural exchange is a part of our everyday lives. For example, you might hear 5 languages on a 10-minute ride on the subway. Tell the story of a cross-cultural expreience you've had in New York City, and describe how it relates to your interest in study abroad."

And, my Response:

(A/N: YES, I'm adopted. I know that. I'm not really Sicilian. But that's what application essay are all about: fudging facts, writing really fucking well, and having a SHIT LOAD OF DRAMA!! SO...I'm Sicilian. Mi Mangi. Also, this was written between the time of 4am to 536 am. Eh...sudden deadlines are a bitch.)


"Caucasian
Antonella Inserra

Desperate for an informant, and figuring I could kill two birds at once in the process, last semester I interviewed my Aunt Angela for my final paper in "Human Cultures and Society". The topic was Immigration, a topic that was nothing new to me. Like many others in this city, my parents are immigrants, my family an immigrant family. Our roots are in Sicily.

As American-born, I am hungry for stories of life in Sicily. How fortunate then, that I could learn about my own family while working on my final paper.

I visited my Aunt Angela in Brooklyn--her apartment fits both her and her sister, Giovanna comfortably. Their social security check from Italy for their past years in teaching pays the bills. Unlike my grandmother, they stayed too long in Italy to consider getting an American citizenship. They moved here to be near the family, but they will not betray Italy like that.

The interview lasted three hours. Having taken three semesters' worth of Italian, I tried to conduct the interview in "Eng-talian" in order to help things along. Things were going swimmingly, until my parents and my grandmother stopped by the apartment to see if I was finished.

I tried to include my grandmother into the discussion, to get a slightly different perspective, but something was wrong. Even with my "Eng-talian" there was still a language barrier. Unlike Angela, my grandmother didn't go to a university; because of that, she speaks more Sicilian than Italian.

For two areas so close together, you would think the languages would be vaguely similar. But Sicilian has more in common with Greek, Arabic, African and Spanish than just Italian. Even Southern Italian is grammatically different, making comprehension difficult.

It is for this very reason that Sicilian is dying. It is not the language of the industrial, prosperous Northern Italy. It's provincial, so it is abandoned in schools. As an anthropology major, I can recognize this loss of cultural linguistic nuance as common--but as I tried to speak with my grandmother, it saddened me.

We stand at the greatest cultural meld in all of history: we argue that America is more a "salad bowl" of culture, where immigrants try to incorporate their traditions into their new lives instead of melting into American society. But Europe, from an American viewpoint, is quickly becoming the melting pot. In applying to NYU, I was asked on the form if I was black, Hispanic, Native American, Caucasian, or other. This is what a European heritage as been boiled down to: Caucasian. Much like Hispanic is used to describe all of South and Mezzo America, a single word had come to represent not just white America, but all of Europe.

I am Sicilian-American--I feel I can claim this without question. My parents were born in Sicily after all. And yet countries and regions like Sicily, Albania, Greece, and Russia: countries traditionally viewed as "other", as "inferior", are now "Caucasian". But as I look around New York City, I see people unwilling to just melt into Caucasian--or whatever other term used to categorize them--whether they be Russians, Jews, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Koreans or Greeks. In this city, I see the world's largest Caribbean Diaspora. In this city, I pass by "Chinatown" every day while riding the NYU bus to class. And yet "The Caribbean" is a region, "Asia" is a continent, and these lands do not hold a single culture--something a tourist might gloss over, but a New Yorker is reminded of as they walk these streets. In this city I see people who know that their culture is worth more than a single word on a college application.

As a daughter of Italian immigrants, I want to see Italy. I want to get that much closer to the country that has been at the center of my family for so long. As an anthropology major, however, I want to find in Europe what I find here, in this city. I want to explore Europe and find its' cultural niches before Europe becomes the amorphous "Caucasian". I don't want the communities of New York to be my only example of Europe as it was. I want to see Europe as it is now, before it is gone forever.