It's good to feel like a mermaid again

Finally, after probably more than a year of not even really knowing where my bathing suit is, I went swimming yesterday. The pool has flippers and it was fun to be able to swim with them and feel what it would be like to actually have fins. Many girls were, and maybe boys too, into pretending they were a mermaid in the bathtub. I was into mermaids though. You can guess that I was delighted when I met my best friend named Ariel. And we used to go swimming together, when we lived on the same street. When I got to the side of the pool, I dipped my goggles in so I could clear off any smudges, and then I put those on, and definitely not with Olympic precision, dove right in. 'Cause that's how I roll. Head first, consequences later!

Buon pomeriggio

I am taking Italian 101 at Portland State this Fall and feeling pretty nervous about learning another language, though I love it, and it's pretty similar to Spanish, which is defnitely the more useful of the two. I would learn either of them fairly easily after learning the other. I wish that I had learned more Italiano when my grandpa was alive. I should have thought to ask him to talk about what he was doing in Italian while he cooked, or gardened or whatever so that I could sort of understand it and how it was supposed to sound. Grandpa was all about enunciation. I remember him saying that many people (in this country?) simply do not move their mouths enough when talking. It is a little easier to sort of mumble, but with learning a language, pronunciation is key. It has to sound real.

Well, ciao.