My cooking success!

Since I decided to reward myself for even small successes, I need to share my latest cooking success and receive a bit of appreciation:)

So, today I had a good mood that was supported by my responsibility to cook lunch for everyone, so I cooked potato pancakes (deruny, draniki in Russian). I spent about 1,5 hours but the result was quite good! Actually not even me, but also Italians liked it:) Yes, first Ukrainian dish that they liked. I consider it as a great breaktrough! I'm open to accept congratulations:))))

Pisa trip!

Ciao tutti! Masha impara l'italiano ogni giorno (Masha learns Italian everyday) - I needed to share it in the begining since that is the phraze that is describing my life for already few weeks:)My progress is visible! Yuuuupiii!

Blogger Masha is back with couple of new stories! So, for those who is trying to follow my Italian discoveries, I have a new story to tell:) This weekend was amazing - I travelled to Pisa!

Initially we were planning to go to Florence, but on Thursday me and Annare were invited to Pisa by Tugce and Simo - 2 international EB members in Pisa!4,5 hours travel and we came to Pisa - one of the most beautiful cities in Tuscany (region in central Italy) near Ligurian sea. The city itself is very small, only 185 square kms, so you can cross it in maximum 1 hour. Population of pisa is not more then 100,000 people. But each year Pisa welcomes thousands of tourists that are coming to see Piazza dei Miracoli that is recognized as one of the main centers for medieval art in the world. Partly paved and partly grassed, it is dominated by four great religious edifices: the Duomo, the Leaning Tower, the Baptistery and the Camposanto. Piazza dei Miracoli with its Leaning Tower of Pisa (Torre pendente di Pisa) stirs imagination of everyone from the old to the young!

The construction of this imposing mass was started in the year 1174 by Bonanno Pisano. When the tower had reached its third storey the works ceased because it had started sinking into the ground. The tower remained thus for 90 years. It was completed by Giovanni di Simone. The top of the Leaning Tower can be reached by mounting the 294 steps which rise in the form of a spiral on the inner side of the tower walls. The tower leans at an angle of 5.5 degrees. This means that the top of the tower is 4.5 meters from where it would stand if the tower was perfectly vertical. The total height of Tower is more then 55 meters. Amazing view on city of Pisa opens in front of you as soon as you are reaching the top. It's believed that Galileo Galilei to have dropped two cannon balls of different masses from the tower to demonstrate that their descending speed was independent of their mass. In 1934 Benito Mussolini ordered that the tower be returned to a vertical position, so concrete was poured into its foundation. However, the result was that the tower actually sank further into the soil. You can learn more about Leaning Tower of Pisa here.

Even without statistics and history, Piazza dei Miracoli is just a fascinating place to see and to be. Lying on the grass in few meters from 800years old building that are believed to be one of the best places in the world brings you inexpressible emotions!

Apart from sightseeing we spent a lot of time together with Simo and Tugce, which was great! They are so nice and so caring! I felt like at home, having somebody cooking breafast for me and not making jokes about my attitude to pasta;) Thank you girls for being so hospitable and tacking care of us:) In the night (yes, in the night - at 23.30) we went to a cafe with quite a strange name "Pick a flower" to meet with LC Pisa. We actually didn't met so many people, but those we met were really nice! I was glad to see Cisco (MCP Italy 2006-07) there, it brought me a lot of memories of my first month in Italy, when we lived all together at Via Andora!

Walking for 7 hours of the first day and for 3 hours on the second day was kind of tiresome:) so on our way back to Milan we were almost dead. But travel in Italian train will never let u die, not even fall asleep. Since all the people in vagoon (and believe me, there are quite a lot of them:)) believe that speaking on the edge of their vocal potential is absolutely necessary:)
What else..Enjoy my pictures at Facebook here and come to visit me in Milan and maybe we can travel another day to Pisa;)

Lake Como trip

Today was very good! Almost my first trip outside Milan! Only in 40mins drive from Milan one can find beautiful and very romantic place - Lago di Como (lake of Como) surrounded by few small towns.

Como lake is third largest lake in Italy after lake Garda and lake Maggiore and one of the deepest in Europe!
Lake itself is quite big, shaped like letter "Y", which can only been seen from sky:) There are quite few towns around lake: Como, Lecco, Bellagio, Menaggio and Varena! These small towns are widely known for attractive and extermly expensive villas. It's widely known that a lot of celebreties have villas there, I haven't seen any, but actually I think it's quite true.

Como is a nice small town with beautiful Duomo di Como (Catherdral of Como) which suprised me, thousands of tourists, few museums, lovely narrow streets, expensive hotels and quite few book stores! The atmoshpere was so relaxing and peaceful, so I couldn't really believe that I'm just 30 mins away from Milan! There are actually not so many things you can do there, so we came back to Milan in the afternoon. Pictures of this trip you can find in Facebook album!

Few ideas that came to my mind were : I need to come back there one day with somebody very special for vacation or something like that, one need to work hard to be able to afford buying villa there. I wonder what is more difficult. But why not to try, right?:)

Being on my own

Yesterday, I read at Ira's blog about feeling safe and happy at UK. I didn't have any thoughts about at that moment. But just couple of hours later I was exposed to some thoughts around the topic.

I'll not tell the whole story how happened that I was in the middle of nowhere in Milan at 23.15 at night, not knowing where I am, not knowing how to get back home because the metro station was closed, being not able to ask for help of Italians around, not knowing any taxi number and being pretty confused in general.

I was walking along the street trying to find out solutions how to call taxi or get to city center and I saw a bus coming to the bus stop right next to me. Accidentally, that was the only bus number I knew in Milan and I knew that theoretically it's supposed to pass trough piazzale Lotto, which is relatively close to Via Andora. So I jumped in.

I was the only girl in the whole bus and the person one who had a ticket. I was never prejeduced towards people of any nationality or social status. But the way those men at the buswere staring at me, made me think that the way people behave is not influenced by nationality but by social environment and lifestyle. Basically, one exposed to certain environment will unconciously become a true reflection of the environment regardless his origin and most probably regardless his previous experiences. My thoughts on that subject should be a topic of a separate post.

30 mins in that I've spent in the bus trying not to put attention men winking to me, commenting me and trying to get to know me better etc., were the worst in few past months. On the other hand, maybe you've noticed already, I got used to practice "positive thinking" to most of situations happening and also taking some learnings from whatever happens to me. That helped:) I went out on my bus stop, one of those nice men went out with me, waited for few minutes near me and left since I was to staying close to people that still were on the steets. I run, yes, almost run back home. On my way back at Via Diomede, I saw some prostitues, typical view of night Milan:) Curiousity - they are alone on the street at night, waiting for I don't know how long, what are they thinking about while waiting for clients. They could have soo much time for thoughts and reflection, but do they ever do it..I guess it's rather a rhetorical question...

In any way, I was happy, really happy to come back home, close the door, see people, drink tea, eat cake and feel SECURE (well, opportunity to see big Wagner's polecat is not a big danger after all:)).

I shared my adventure with Fede and Anna. I didn't call them since I didn't want to bother them and didn't really believe that they will be willing to help. A good thing to know was that I was wrong:) they care! Then I talked to Alba, some of her words made me think again.

The bus I took is considered to be the most dangerous bus in Milan at night, it's called "immigrants bus" since it goes to North of Milan to disctricts where only were poor immigrants live (I never actually knew about this disctricts), that's why you can't see any Italians there at night. And I was kind of lucky to get out safe without anything stolen.

That all made me think about choices that people make - I could have went to Toastmasters instead of party, I could have went to night club, I could have stayed at home after all. But I've made a choice and got what I was supposed to get. Now I know what feeling unsecure really is, what does it mean that you are on your own and there is almost nobody in the whole city, who will be willing to go to help you. You'll be surprised, but yesterday I re-discovered what does it mean to take responsibility for your choices and actions. And actually confirmed to myself that life is a succession of lessons that must be lived to be understood. There is no other way.

P.S. if you think I'm depressed or sad, I'm not:) I know I still need to learn not only to think positive, but also to express myself positive! But I'm on the right way I'm sure:)

Random from today

I had the intention to write a post few days ago, everything seemed to be sooo bad at work! I even wrote on a paper all that happened to me during Thursday and Friday, it was soo negative that I decided to trash it and forget it;)

Today was a better day, maybe because it's Saturday?:) I woke up quite late, cleaned some parts of house (unfortunately my room is still a huge mess:) hopefully I can solve it tomorrow), then went to meet Milano Bocconi EB. These guys have great potential:)
Then I came back home with again strong intention to work, but Federica persuaded me to go out with them for demonstration! I had no idea what was that about, but my curiosity made me go there. It actually didn't impress me a lot, just few snapshots are worth mentioning. It was not a demonstration in fact but an event to collect signatures to support initiative about passing new law to Parliament. The whole initiative was called "Vaffanculo day" which in English means "Fuck off day". Actually, they managed to gather 500,000 signatures and even more. So despite all Italian bureaucracy, democratic mechanisms seem to be working. Yes, more info about V-day here. After they got news that there are 500,00 signatures collected people went crazy- they were dancing, singing songs etc. Everything looked quite strange:)
Then walking down Via Dante we got go see few interesting things.
First was the Indian procession, I still have got no idea what exactly was that about, but we saw a lot of people in Indian clothes (not actually indians themselfs) pulling huge robe with kind of a platrom (like the ones you can see at carnivals with girls:)) with people and some Indian stuff on it! It looked quite surrealistic in the center of Milan:)
Later, we saw an Asian man doing different kinds of figures - flowers, parrots and something else. It was wonderful how a simple beetroot (barba bietola) can become a beautiful rose and a random carrot is turning into a parrot! Simply amazing!
Then another new books, tasty Italian gelato:) Delicious dinner!!!!!Thank you Alba!

Nice evening conversation, a quote stuck in my head "Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love" Albert Einstein.
Positive attitude matters! Life is beautiful!

Self discovery day

As promised, I dedicated some time to personal discovery! Today I'm spending my day on getting to know myself better then before?! Sounds quite funny! Actually i'm passing trough a bit random (can you believe I don't have structure for the process?:)) But surely I'll for the next time). In any way, after I finish everything I'll share the output here if there are people interested in that!

But now I'd like to ask you to take 5 mins of your time and fill in Johari and Nohari window for me! Funny thing is that I've done that before, but when I opened my previous test (it was around 2,5 years ago) the characteristics I'm giving to myself changed!

So, even if you did it before for me, please do it again:) Links are here

http://kevan.org/johari?name=Dekabrinka

http://kevan.org/nohari?name=Dekabrinka

P.S. if you are interested in tests that I've taken for yourself, let me know, I can share:)

My latest Milan discoveries

For those who is following my "Discover Milano" trips - museums, churches and other places of interest:)

Today me and Irene went to very nice place - Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli house museum. Actually, I planned to go to Santa Maria della Gracie church where "Last supper" is but only yesterday we found out that we need to book our visit 1 month! before! Then visit to Brera didn't work as well, so we decided to go to this small museum!

It's house museum and unless you are looking for it, you'll never put attention to it - just a random house, one of thousands you can find in Milan! Collections there are impressive - painitings, arms, caprets, jewellery, glass, clocks and watches, porcelain, furniture etc.

If you are interested to find out more, have a look here. Very good thing about it was free entrance with student ID (God bless that Saturday that I've spent to issue ISIC and Euro26. At least 4 hours and 55 grn are definitely not wasted:))

We were very close to Via Montenapoleone, the street I wanted to visit for a long time. It's believed (and actually is) the most expensive street in Milan - all brand boutique are there! You can find there more then 100 shops of the world most popular brands

Honestly saying I expected to be impressed by the outlook of the street - but in fact it's nothing more then a small, narrow street with lots of shops, expensive cars and celebrities. Prices also are not so high as I expected it to be, for sure comparable to prices in Mandarin Plaza in Kiev! The only one discovery was that on such streets you can find special boutique hotels:)

Then we had panzerotti on our favourite place in city center, had a lot of fun trying to order a monthly transportation ticket. You should know that system is different from what we have in Ukraine. I had to fill in application, go to make picture, have student ID, passport, copies of fiscal code and residence permit and now I have to wait for 15 days for ATM (Milan transportation agency) to issue me this monthly ticket (and actually they still have the right not to issue that). If I'm lucky, I'll be able to spend only 18 euros for metro each month (not comparable to 0,5o grn in Kiev, ha?:)).

Being at home (hm, I Via Andora home already?!) is cool. I missed it! Yes, Irene moved here, Alba is coming tomorrow! Hectic times of Autumn are coming...:)