well dear readers, at last i am again in italia.

Oh god how I miss it! I am here and i still miss it. There is a lot of construzione, anche tanti studenti nuovi, allora, sono un po uncomfortable. But mostly I love it. I love Arezzo!

I am visiting my roommate from last semester, Meghan Meehan. Would you believe me if I told you that she is on crutches? And would you believe me if I told you that Italian crutches are way worse than American ones? (did you ever think it was possible?) But it is nice because now I actually have an excuse to call a cab, rather than just that I'm too lazy to walk up la collina. (thanks Meg!)

Today I went to Poppi (on the Pratovecchio/Stia line, for those who went to bierfest!) The only thing I didn't like about it was the weather. It is quite misty/foggy/cloudy/wet outside so I guess I'm not really "under the Tuscan sun." Ma tutto posto! Poppi has the only zoo in Tuscany. But I didn't go there. I went to il castello invece! It was beautiful, and I got to go all the way up to the top of the torre and see the whole valley. It is like going to the top of the Duomo a Firenze, but a much smaller town. And the tower itself isn't as beautiful. But I got a free train trip out of it somehow!

Okay the last thing about today is my exciting news. Since all the theatre kids went to Venice this weekend (with our beloved Giuseppe Emiliani!) I coerced Riccardo into bringing in the phillies and the karaoke machine. Haaaa! just like old times... (ah goat fest and thanksgiving!)

Oh and by the way, for any family that is reading this, I am currently staying in a palazzo/apartment that is 800 years old. It is obviously gorgeous! And the person who owns it is a friend of mine who cooks and listens to Bach cello concertos in his free time. So Italian, eh? But he is American :oP

sinceremente,
kristin

well, its official. J.K. Rowling is a genius. Yes, I know its been awhile since I blogged, but I can't find the right forum to discuss my piece of evidence. It is as follows.

I want to discuss the names in the Harry Potter series. This is first and foremost about the looks and sounds of the names, not about etymology, historical/mythical significance, or association (though I may mention these things as backup or interesting factoid.) This also encompasses places and things.

Our first discussion is regarding repetition/alliteration. We find it many times throughout the series (i.e. Minerva McGonagall, Fawkes the Phoenix, Dudley Dursley, etc.) I find that several truly important characters have this nomenclature. This is not to say that those without alliterative names are not important (i.e. Harry Potter), nor is it to say that those with alliterative names are the MOST important (i.e. Padma Patil). But you must admit, the sounds draw importance to these special names.

1. Founding Fathers: I managed to make that into alliteration also. good job. Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin, Helga HufflePuff and Rowena Ravenclaw seem to be incredibly important to the life of this story. The four founded Hogwarts. Without an education, the good and evil wizards would not have proper magical knowledge and skills (i.e. no stories.) Also, the school's magical properties because of these founders (Chamber of Secrets, Room of Requirement) would not have appeared and created these adventures.

2. This draws a straight line to current heads of houses. By current, I mean those we come across in the first book (Sorcerer's Stone=SS.) Minerva McGonagall, Severus Snape, and Filius Flitwick are the heads of Gryffindor, Slytherin, and Ravenclaw respectively. This begs the question WHY IS POMODORA SPROUT THE ONLY HEAD OF HOUSE SANS ALLITERATION? Well, I suppose this is either because she is not important to the overall plot structure, or because she is the MOST important of the four. She helps harvest the mandrakes, as well as interesting Neville (clearly the most underrated and important character in these stories) in Herbology.

3. The third connection lies in the castle ghosts. Moaning Myrtle, Bloody Baron, Nearly-Headless Nick, Peeves the Poltergeist, Fat Friar... but wait! Again a missing link! The Ravenclaw Ghost? The "Grey Lady" is rarely mentioned, but she is still there and still NOT ALLITERATIVE. We also see at N-HNick's Deathday party there is a Wailing Widow and we know of the group called the Headless Hunt.

4. Luna Lovegood: HI. OBVIOUS. The moon + the power of love = destruction of Voldy? Luna will play a big part in the Deathly Hallows, I'm quite sure. 5. Places: Shrieking Shack, Room of Requirement, Forbidden Forest, Ministry of Magic... the list goes on. I want to briefly say that these places have all been very integral to the plot structures of this series. The most notable exception that comes to mind is that of the Hog's Head. THIS IS BECAUSE IT HASN'T BEEN IMPORTANT YET! As many have suggested, Aberforth Dumbledore is a likely suspect for the bartender who is tall with grey hair and "looked slightly familiar" to Harry. Yes, the Hog's Head was the sight of the first DA meeting and yes, this is where Hagrid bought Norbert and yes, this is where Trelawny made her first prediction about "the one with the power to vanquish the dark lord," but I don't believe that its important role has been played out yet.

6. Animals: Trevor the Toad, Crookshanks the Cat, Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback. Norbert we saw in SS when Hagrid bought a dragon egg from a shadester in the Hog's Head as mentioned before. BUT HE CAME BACK in GoF for the first task of the 3Wiz Tourny. Crookshanks (as JKR mentioned) is part kneazle, thus making him very perceptive and smart. He helped Sirius to get the trio into the Shrieking Shack. SMART CAT! Trevor, however, has yet to show his true colors, so watch out for him! Also, as Trevor belongs to Neville, ALL SIGNS POINT TO NEVILLE as being crucial to the plot of Book 7.

7. Muggles (?) Dudley Dursley, Piers Polkiss. Yeah. Dudders has played out his important role, though I wouldn't pe surprised if he took a bigger one in book 7. Blood ties, you know? But Piers Polkiss... his name just sounds snakelike. Many have suggested that he is a parseltongue, as he recognizes that Harry is conversing with the snake at the zoo in SS. He might just come into the story again, don't be surprised.

Much more to come as I think of it!

so I'm in St. Louis, MO visiting Jim! I never thought it would happen, but I'm here! So yay! I've been here for three nights and I've already done more here than I've yet done since I've been home. That's either really cool, or really sad, depending on how you look at it.

We went:

ice skating

to the zoo

to Red Robin

to Steak 'n' Shake

to the Missouri River

to the Mississippi River

to the St. Louis Arch!

and apparently there's a lot more in store!

Oh and we've been playing Super Nintendo like crazy. It's awesome. Be jealous. And right now Jim is at a work "luncheon" and it's raining so I am playing online and entertaining his beautiful dog si chiama The Splash. Now I'm going to go play some more Donkey Kong! Weee!

I have to make my review of Casino Royale.

I absolutely loved this movie. First of all, I think Daniel Craig is possibly better than Sean Connery. Mr. Connery is a tough Bond to beat, and I think Mr. Craig has done it. So kudos to that choice!

Second, this Bond girl rocks socks. I mean, they couldn't have picked a better Vesper to win the heart of the unwinable James. She's hott!

Third. Good story. EON made a real mess of a Casino Royale in 1967, so it's good to see the real thing here. Plus, the torture scene actually made me want to vomit. That means it must be good!

Also, I would like to state that the final battle scene is filmed in Venice. One of the most historical and wonderous cities in the world. A huge old building, the Rialto, Piazza San Marco, love, betrayal, death... what more could you ask for? Or could I ask for, I suppose...

Anyhow kids, if you haven't seen it, you should. This has my official vote as my third favorite Bond film. (The first, of course, being The Man with the Golden Gun --Roger Moore--, and the second being A View to a Kill --also Mr. Moore-- with Chris Walken as evil and insane Silicon Valley tycoon Zorin)

One more thing: Daniel Craig put me off at first because of his looks, but his character caught me immediately. So don't the the blonde Bond fool you. He's damn good.

I'm quite proud of this. This is what I wrote on HarryPotterRumors.net. I don't know if it got posted or not, but I think it's genius.


Harry is a Horcrux. He is a parseltongue, shares dreams and feelings with Voldemort, and feels more pain according to their proximity because he IS a horcrux. In HbP, Dumbledore says that he thinks maybe Nagini is a horcrux, made right before Voldemort killed Lily and James. Okay maybe... and maybe it's Harry. Because why would Voldemort suddenly second-guess himself, even though he's been killing people for years? And also, Voldemort needed a reason to be killing the Potters himself. So he could get to Harry and make him a horcrux. And I mean, why else would Harry survive the killing curse? JKR can hint at what she wants, but I think it wasn't the killing curse used on him at all. But that then begs the question "HOW DID VOLDEMORT ACTUALLY DIE?" I do not know, but I believe we shall see.

Also, because of the Priori Incantatem, LILY AND JAMES POTTER MUST BE DEAD. We know what happens because of the Priori Incantatem. The last spells performed will come out of Voldemort's wand. But we notice that the "last spell" aimed to kill Harry (it was still a spell, regardless of its effectiveness) did not appear from the wand. Think about it.

Thirdly, RAB. Why is no one talking about this? My theory is as follows... Regulus Black. Sirius Black had a brother that supposedly died. What if HE DIDN'T DIE. Like Peter Pettigrew DIDN'T DIE. And the A in RAB could possibly be Albert, because in OotP it shows an Albert on the Black Family Tree, and Sirius mentions that he was a favorite relative of the rest of the family. So it might stand to reason that they would give Regulus the middle name of a favorite uncle, thus making him Regulus Albert Black.

-Pheonix Teardrops

(And that's a kickass alias, isn't it!?)

mood: feisty
music: Jeopardy Theme Song
color: leather brown

So it's been over two months since I've posted, and I admit that is my fault. But at least now I have a shit load to write about!

What's immediately on my mind: Jim. My boyfriend Jim Short who I met in Arezzo is absolutely amazing. I want to tell him that all the time, but considering we live in different time zones and he's pretty busy at the moment, it's pretty difficult to do so. He's from St. Louis, MO, so it will also be hard to visit him... Oh and did I mention he goes to Rhodes College in Memphis? So it's still gonna be hard even when we're back at school. Bah.

Now what's immediately on my mind: I let Bunny loose in the bathroom and he keeps banging into the door every once in awhile. I expect he gets scared of the noise afterwards and runs to hide under the toilet.

In the recent past: I was in Arezzo, Italia for 3.5 months and I miss it sorely. My last weekend trip (not counting the one across the ocean) was to Roma. Quite a lot of interesting things happened, and I will mention a few here. We went to the Colosseum, the Forum (where a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to... haha), the Vattican (which you don't need a passport to get into, even though it's another country...), the Trevi Fountain, the Piazza Navona, and almost all the other sites on the map, as well as travelling on the inefficient Metropolitana.

So here are the two more important things that happened. My friend Kevin rented a Vespa a Roma, and it went over quite successfully. We all got to take turns riding with him and navigating the one-way streets of Rome. So for our last day there, we thought it would be a good idea if we got a few more Vespas.
BAD IDEA!
Within 15 seconds of getting on the scooter, Aysha fell over and crashed. There's not much else to say except there was a police report and a translation session and money forked over. A bad experience, but a good story to tell at parties.

The second awesome thing that happened followed thusly (is that a word?) The day we went to i Musei Vatticani was an Italian National Holiday, so you can imagine that the museum was packed. I mean, once we got to the Rafael rooms, we were cattle-carred. And there was an annoying man behind us saying "Keep movin' along ladies" as if he had some right to tell us that and as if we had a choice to move any faster. Pirla. Anyway, we finally got into the Sistine Chapel! Which was gorgeous! And in which there was a man who literally counted to ten in his head and then shouted "Shhhh! No foto!" and counted to ten again and so on. So anyway, we're admiring the Sistine Chapel with many many people, and who else should be in there with us but
NATALIE PORTMAN!
That's awesome.
So those are the good stories from the last two weekends, and I shall try to catch ya'll up on everything... slowly but surely!

Mood: nostalgic
Music: Everybody's Doin' It (doin' it, doin' it)
Color: the green color of my kitchen

Duomo in Firenze,

Murder Mystery Night, Me and the boar in Firenze!