Girls' Dates

Four of my girl friends and I, each month arrange to hang out, just us. No boyfriends (no boys at all), no other friends, just the five of us. 

We talk about whatever, sex, boys, politics, sex, jobs, boys, friends, boys, boyfriends, sex. 

The time we spend together is priceless and probably the most fun I have and what I look forward to most but if it's not the fucking most difficult thing in the world! 5 girls, 5 conflicting uni/work/social life schedules it is almost impossible. Somehow we always seem to manage but it's never easy. In the lead up, when we're just trying to find a fucking time we can all make it to, I almost feel like giving up, it shouldn't be this hard, it's not worth it but when I'm there, when we're all there it reminds me just how worth it is. 

We have been friends for a long time and there's a reason for that, a reason why we have been such good friend for such a long time. These girls are 4 of my best friends and I love the time we spend together, I hope we never give up, no matter how difficult it is. 

Drink, drank, drunk.

You only realise how drunk you are when you go to the bathroom. 

Seriously.

Don't drink kidlets. 

Say Beautiful

It's amazing what the word "beautiful" can do when it comes from a boy.

Compliments make the world go round and somehow they mean more when they come from the opposite sex. Or so I can attest as a member of the female sex. Gentleman? Thoughts?

Beautiful is a different word to hot, sexy, gorgeous, stunning etc. It comes from someone who cares about you, not just someone who's attracted to you. 

And when it comes from someone you care about too, it can make you feel like you're on top of the world and all warm and fuzzy inside all at the same time. 

Beautiful is a beautiful world. 

Musings of an ex-Lit student/amateur writer

Sometimes I wonder why, exactly, authors include what they do or write the way they do. 

For example, the book I'm reading atm contains the line "...he'd taken off his shirt and lay atop the covers in just his jeans, but he was still hot."

Why did we have to know he took off his shirt? Is it because that's just something guys do when they're trying to relax? Or is it to emphasise how hot it is? Even without his shirt he's still hot? Or is it to provide the adoring fangirl with the (delightful and most welcome) mental image of this gorgeous guy half naked and sweaty? Or a combination of all three perhaps.

I just wonder sometimes...why?

 

Europe

I have wanted to speak Italian for pretty much as long as I can remember. Up until the age of 5 I spent at least 2 or 3 days a week with my grandparents who spoke almost wholly in Italian both with each other and to my cousins and I. I went to primary school with the basics, counting to 10, hello, goodbye, come here, please, thank you etc. However, my primary school didn't offer Italian as a LOTE, it didn't offer a language post-grade 1 at all.

Then I went to high school yippee, languages! Hopefully I can finally learn Italian and work out what the hell Nonna's saying half the time.
Nope. BHC offered French and Japanese. Well, I figured French is closest to Italian so if I couldn't study Italian, French was the next best thing. I loved it. For the first time I experienced the beauty of language. To be able to speak and communicate in a minority language is incroyables. It's so amazing to walk down the street and hear snippets of conversation and understand them only to realise a second later that they weren't speaking English. I mean it obviously doesn't happen every day but on occasion...yeah and it feels awesome. Probably didn't hurt that I had the most amazing, incredible, dedicated and wonderful French teacher from year 8 all the way through to year 12.

Then I went to Uni and finally, finally, started Italian. On the one hand, it was everything I dreamed, finally being able to speak and understand (to a certain degree) the language I grew up surrounded by. On the other hand, it was hard going. Uni flies through lessons and topics and grammar principles at blink-and-you'll-miss-it speed, you spend hardly any time in class and the teachers, while good at their job, push for a lot more independent study which is hard in language. Not to mention the fact that three years in and I can still barely understand 1 word a sentence because Nonna and my aunties talk so fast and in one of the many dialects of Italy.

Language is a massive part of people's identities, it's a part of mine. My grandparents, my aunties and my dad, my brother even, they all speak Italian, it's part of my family to speak Italian. I'm not materialistic, I read books and stay home and study, I don't party or drink that much, I'm not obsessed with finding a boyfriend and getting married, the least I can do is speak Italian.

But I need to go to Italy, in order to speak Italian properly (to the level of French), I need to go to Italy.
I just...need to go.