Habla italiano?

This is going to be harder than I expected in terms of lingualosity. My host parents [hereafter referred to simply as "my parents"] speak very, very little English. However, my sister speaks enough to communicate in a kind of Itanglish sort of way with me, and my brothers seem to speak a bunch, but I have not conversed with them at length and therefore am not too sure. Perhaps a little more preparation beforehand would have helped, but, really, "L'uomo e la donna stanno camminando" doesn't really get you anywhere when you are talking about light switches.

One sweet thing, fer sure, is my digs. Their house is pretty danged large, and I get the uppermost room. This means it can get pretty hot, but there's a fan, and I can open the doors/blind things to my balcony to let in cool air as well. Do you like how I nonchalantly tossed out "my balcony"? Yes, I have a balcony. It is pretty much AWESOME. And also provides a place to paint my nails without asphyxiating the entire household! Note to self: Must investigate said balcony for sun exposure. Possible tan acquiring area.

But my room here is larger than my one in California, has a double [I think] bed, a wardrobe with big mirrors, a large television, DVD player, a couch and coffee table, and various other assorted chairs and small tables. And a bathroom. That's right, a bathroom. With a sink, toilet [which I have yet to learn how to flush], buttwasher [I believe, no confirmation on that], and shower. All to my self. Yesssss!

On the down side, even though I have all this room, there is not too much in the way of Places To Store Clothes. I think I have a grand total of three [small to mid size] drawers and one half of the hanging space in the wardrobe. But never fear. Things will get put away, and I may have to utilize one of my suitcases as storage space for items temporarily out of circulation.

My luggage is still lovely and wonderful, though perhaps a little more dirty than when it began. This, I reckon, is partly due to the JFK ground crew/baggage handler people's tendency to place luggage [lying down, mind you, for maximum touchage], on the nice, wet, dirty tarmac. Woohoo! Unfortunately, though it indeed served me well when finding my luggage in the sea of black at JFK, the unusual colour (supah-bright pink, incase you didn't know) of my suitcases did not immediately distinguish them from the luggage belonging to our group of "exies." What are the odds that, in a group of 11, there will be two people with Pierre Cardin bright pink luggage? Not in my favour, apparently. Luckily they are different styles, plus mine are a little newer and have neon green locks, so we did not get them confused.

Though I started in JFK in typical isolation mode, and was beginning to be worried that I really would have no exie friends on this trip, by midway through our Heathrow Layover [and boy was it a long layover] I had homiezZz galore. And so I won't be as lonely as I had thought. Though I still do have a heck of a time remembering people's names. Oh well. C'est la vie.

Heathrow was pretty cool...lots of rad shops [including a Boots, which I didn't end up making it in to] and whatnot, including a Grand Old Britain [or some such self-promoting name] store where you can buy all the England souvenirs your hot little hands can grab. Though I spotted a few purchase worthy items, I have decided to wait to buy those until the trip back, when I will have a better handle on how much I can spend and how much room I have. Another return-trip purchase I would like to make: a pack of cigarettes, if not for the product inside but because they all say "Smoking Kills" or some other similarly blunt message on them in big bold letters, as opposed to the US packs that have a tiny little Surgeon General's warning tucked into a corner.

Heathrow is also, I think, only the 2nd airport (I cannae recall where the first was) that has "designated smoking areas," little plexiglass rooms in the middle of the terminalway that folk flock to to smoke their cigarettes. There is about an inch of separation halfway up the walls so they don't all suffocate, and they enter and exit through refridgerator type flaps. It is most excellent indeed. They also have smoking sections of [some] restaurants. In the airport. It is tres non-US.

Paying for the internet sucked, but I think it turned out OK. Our plane got delayed so I got to use up [most of] the rest of my 3 hours, time that looked like it was going to be wasted. The internet situation here is a little more grim. There's dial up on the computer downstairs, but it's a windows and so I'm not sure that I could plug the ole 'Bad into it. Since I only got here at 2 or 3 am, I'm not sure what the intarwub deal is in the rest of this town, at school, the library, whatever, but I am fer sure going to do investigation into this. Blog posting may have to be limited to once a week updates, but I will type them up daily as much as possible so they will be dated correctly, just officially go up in quick succession.

Well, I got more than that but it's quarter after 5 here and I should try to get some sleep [which probably won't be too hard, seeing as I haven't gotten much lately and kept falling asleep on the plane....it is only 8:15 pm or something in California, so that'll probably mess me up] because I have a long day of unpacking, showering, and getting to know Santa Maria a Vico and my fabulous fam!

Enjoying her chapstick a bit more that usual,
Bee Electric