Posts Tagged ‘karen’
{ December 18, 2008 @ 1:25 PM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: ad, allergic, aunt, Bianca, bite, bullet, cake, converse, copper, cousins, crystal, damage, Daniel, Darius, daughter-in-law, David, ear to ear, England, English, experiences, Farringdon, France, galleries, Gizmo, good da, grandmother, grin, Jett, karen, laces, Luke, luminous, Matthew, milkshake, mueseums, Nespresso, penny, raining, shopping, Simone, son, speakers, stick, T.V., tempted, till, uncle, vinegar, winter }
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Thursday, November 8, 2007
Hey Everyone!
So yesterday we arrived in England… well I wrote about it yesterday anyway 
. Seeing my mom, Gizmo and Karen was great. But then there were MORE great things to come on the second day of being in England. My sleep wasn’t the best because I was staying at my grandmother’s (Karen) house… and her son and daughter-in-law live with her too… they have a cat. I absolutely love cats but there’s a tiny problem I have with them… I’m allergic :-O!
But never mind that because after four days of suffering, oh woe me , no it wasn’t that bad, we moved into my cousins, uncle and aunt’s house which is literally across the road… okay around one road, down another, around one more and then there it was .
Oh yes, the MORE to come on the second day was that I went to the super store with my mom and (:-O. You have no idea how happy I was to be understood and that I could understand people there! They speak English… I know, no duh you are in England but that’s not the point!
I had missed it so much… I just couldn’t stop smiling, it was when the guy at the till said the price and bid us a good day that I realised how much I had missed it… he seemed pretty confused at why I had a grin from ear to ear on but, I didn’t care, at least he spoke English! It is something that I still miss even living in France where there’s more English speakers here than Sicily but it was amazing. I never knew how easy I had it and I actually can’t remember any other “shopping experiences” (like talking to people at a store…) before I’d moved to a non-English speaking country. So it’s so true! You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
Then again… I did miss the weather in Sicily too… I mean I really, really missed it…. And I had really, really appreciated it there as well ! It was absolutely freezing in Farringdon… but my two little cousins loved playing outside and so I had to bite the bullet and stick there with them, in the end I tempted them to come back inside with milkshake! Mmm milkshake, it fixes everything .
Anyway on the forth day, this is now the seventh of May (Ha! I was a poet and I didn’t even know it… until I re-read the sentence anyway ) I saw the rest of the crew – Luke (16), Matthew (13… Matt was born on the same day as me! He’s only 12 hours older. He was 6am I was 6pm ), Darius (11), I know there’s an awful lot here ;-P, Daniel and Jett (who’s 4 and 3, aw how cute )!
Just read over the Matthew thing, in case you don’t know our birthday’s the 1st of February… now you have no excuse to forget it and can’t not send me in a nice picture of you kissing a fish . Pucker up!
On the 8th of May, it was my sister’s birthday! My aunt, Simone, baked a… actually two chocolate cakes for Venetia, you heard the list of names! One would’ve just been finished in an instant of it being brought out . Oh yummy, those cakes were just… so yummy!
We took tonnes of pictures but most of them are of Venetia and I stuffing our faces with chocolate cake… or the one’s that were taken too early and we were trying to fix our hair! Quite a few random ones of a vase of flowers… I think these where taken by my one cousin when he got his hands on the camera .
Most of the days that we were in England it was raining, so we didn’t really get up to much. I made sure I watched a good amount of English T.V. whilst I was there though . In France it’s a very odd occasion that there’s English on the television. Except for the Nespresso, what else? ad, they don’t dub it .
We stayed in England for a month, on the last Sunday Simone, David (my uncle), the boys, Karen, my parents, Venetia and I, wow quite a list there , went to a few museums and galleries. In one of the museums there were little stuffed chickens, that was really sad but my little cousins didn’t seem to mind… I guess they’re boys also fake dodo birds, dinosaur, giraffe, elephant and rhino skeletons and my favourite, the luminous crystal room! I was wearing converse so the laces looked so cool in the light. Of course we got pictures on my moms camera phone .
Oh yeah before I forget! It’s winter now, no duh , but that means that bees and wasps and looking for warm places to keep snuggled up. Yesterday my mom got stung by the wasp or a hornet on her leg twice and her hand at least four times! It was hiding in her trousers and then quickly flew away to the other side of the room once it had done the damage.
We didn’t know what to do so I put got the cream out, then my dad said to put vinegar on, the vinegar soothed the sting but today a few hours later it swelled up and today it’s still all swollen. Today I found out though that once you’re stung if you put a copper penny on it and hold the penny on the sting for 15 minutes it should take the sting away and it won’t even swell up!
Great to know, but a bit late now . Well I’m going to leave it at that! Hope to hear from you all soon!
- Bianca
{ December 18, 2008 @ 1:14 PM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: abnormal, airport, atchoo, aunt, bags, bear, binoculars, car, check-in, coca-cola, coffee, duvets, England, enormous, explained, fire, fist, flight, freezing, front, gesture, giggles, Giovanni, Gizmo, glass, hug, ice, ireland, jack-change-it, jackets, jumpers, karen, lake, laughter, lemons, lifetime, milkshake, MP3, Natalie, night, packed, Palermo, Palermo Univercit, passports, pathetic, powerless, quarter, queue, refrigerator, Robert, Scotland, shine, shiver, shoes, side-tracked, SIM card, squashed, street, suitcases, sun, swing, teenagers, tickets, traipsing, trampled, tree, trolley, U.K., Venetia, washing-machine, wife }
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Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Hey everyone!
Well yes, it was the night before we left we were all packed up and ready to go. It was really strange leaving that house. Now that I think about it I didn’t actually leave that much behind in Sicily. It was strange not doing anything with the refrigerator and the washing-machine. We just left them in the house for Giovanni to have.
I left a few “warm” (… not light) clothes, thinking that I wouldn’t need them in south-west France… wow, I was wrong! That giant, jumper thing really could’ve come in handy today. It’s been absolutely FREEZING *shivers*! But it can’t get much worse because all of the French are already in giant jackets and jumpers… unless they just stay wrapped up in duvets next to a cosy fire in winter… and even if they do, I’m up for that 
!
So anyway we were all packed with the things we actually needed. Now going back we only had 3 suitcases… I wanted to bring the swing that we’d got in Sicily… it was such a cool swing; see what I mean about not being so great with leaving things behind! But in the end the swing was still swinging silently on its own, hanging from the tree that I had tied it to 
.
Yeah, we only had three suitcases because my mom was in England and therefore wasn’t flying with us. The flight we’d taken was only one suitcase per person… my mom had to leave most of her things behind (my dad was packing )… but it was mainly just her jumpers and shoes.
The lemons in Sicily were absolutely enormous (I just remembered how much I miss them)! If you make a fist with your hand that’s the size they were! Okay, if you make a fist with my hand … The first day in England I walked into Karen’s dining room where my sister and my aunt (Natalie) were.
There was this… thing on the table. It was like a Sicilian lemon… but a million times smaller. I burst into fits of laughter and asked “What is that thing?!”… yes that was a lemon, Natalie seemed pretty confused, but Venetia joined in with my fits of giggles and then explained to Natalie. We’d only been away from the U.K. for two months, but really… this is what I used to think was a lemon! Ha! You’d get at least a quarter of a tall glass filled with lemon juice from one! Four would make a whole jug of lemon juice… here you’d have to use like twenty! Pathetic !
Right, yes back to Sicily. Sorry keep getting side-tracked! On the last night in Sicily, we drank an abnormal amount of milkshake (since we had a lot of milk in the fridge… and coincidently a lot of chocolate powder) and played jack-change-it to pass the time. We got to bed pretty early, then I was woken up at… okay I can’t remember the exact time, but it was much earlier than early for me. It was around about two am-ish… maybe four.
Once we were all ready we packed up the car and off we went. I was cramped in the back with suitcases sticking into my sides and a heavy carry-on-case on my lap. After an hour of being stuck like this we arrived at the airport, had a nice long stretch and then brought our bags inside.
So you’re wondering what we did with the car? Well even if you’re not I’m going to tell you anyway . Do you remember that guy I told you about I think it was eight blogs ago, the one that we met in the small electrical shop on the first day of being in Sicily, where we wanted to buy a SIM card from? He had moved to Sicily 11 years ago from Scotland and was teaching in Palermo University. Yeah, him! Well let’s just say Robert. Well Robert’s son had just turned 18 and Robert had wanted to buy a car for him. My dad had found this out when he’d phoned him to ask if he wanted our car. What are the odds, eh?
So Robert met us up in the airport, had coffee (what else?… Sicilians drink far too much coffee… but being in Sicily it’s difficult not to get hooked on the strong stuff with a coffee bar on every single street… I even did) with his wife and my dad, signed the papers then drove off in the car. Now it was just a waiting game for the check-in and then the flight to finally see my mom, who I hadn’t seen for almost a month now and then there was also Gizmo!!!
We had our last Sicilian coffee and breakfast then went off to check-in. Not again! Our bags were the correct weight combined but not separately… it was like so what’s the difference… apparently there is a difference . So we spread out the weights into the different bags, and then finally checked in… I had to leave my binoculars behind, which I’d been traipsing around with me since Ireland .
After an hour of waiting in the waiting area, the woman announced that it was “All Aboard Time” okay she didn’t actually say this but it was something in Italian and then everyone started moving quickly towards the doors… so this was sort of a gesture that we could start lining up to show our passports and tickets.
If you every go to Sicily be warned! Most Sicilians do not like waiting in a queue, so either stand your ground or move to the back before you get trampled on… or ultimately squashed between people.
We buckled ourselves in and with a smooth start (and no ear popping) we were off. My mom told us to look out for an ice lake shaped like a bears head somewhere to the north of Italy or south of France during the flight, but it was too cloudy… or it could have just been when I was busy concentrating on my coca cola and I didn’t notice it .
The flight was actually a lot of fun. There were a few teenagers more to the front that got down their electric guitars and started playing (not plugged in of course). Later on I turned my MP3 player up really loud, over the voices of the cabin, then I heard this ATCHOO! Turned to Venetia knowing it would’ve been her and said “I heard that even OVER my loud music!”… we burst into fits of giggles.
Later on we landed, stood around like everyone else waiting for the bags to come through. When they did we grabbed them. Adjusted them so that they’d stop slipping off the trolley and off we went to see my mom! As we came around the corner I couldn’t see her no matter how many times Venetia said, “There she is, no Bianca over there! That way!” Then I spotter her… right in front of everyone else, ran up to her and gave her a gianormous hug… or rather she gave me the gianormous hug… I was left powerless .
We went over to the car and drove south for a good hour or so, stopping at a fast food place on the way. Since I’d only been once in Sicily and was craving milkshake… you’d think I would’ve had enough on the last night in Sicily for me to never want any more for a lifetime … I hadn’t.
We finally arrived in a nice little village, then went to Karen’s house, I could hear Gizmo barking before the car had even stopped. I jumped out and Gizmo was already out to greet me. I had missed him so much!
Gizmo wants to play now and the sun’s starting to shine again. So going to leave it at that and will be back soon . Hope to hear from you all.
- Bianca
{ December 18, 2008 @ 12:51 PM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: amber, bed, Bianca, box, centipede, crazy, creature, devestated, disturbed, England, fainted, fiat uno, fly, funny, furnishing, garden, gecko, Giovanni, Gizmo, great escape, heart attack, house, inches, increased, jack-change-it, jewellery, karen, kitchen, legs, lemon, lightning, millions, moaning, mom, mom's mom, orange, overgrown, packing, pastimes, prickly pear cacti, rip, room, rules, shocked, sicily, small, smile, snake, swept, tea cup, thunder, tile, ushered, utterly, Venetia, wall, white }
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Monday, November 5, 2007
Hey everyone!
Before I start remember that you have to start reading from the next page and work your way backwards …
In Sicily at Giovanni’s place we didn’t really do much. For three days there, there were bad thunder and lightning storms, but it was really cool to watch because you could see the ocean from the room my parents were in.
Since we still didn’t have a car, Giovanni found one for us and brought my parents to go see it… when they came back I was utterly shocked at what they had bought… it was one of those little, white fiat-unos… it did the job though and was very handy for our great escape of Sicily !
Giovanni also said that he’d help find us a house… what he found is not quite what I’d call a house…
We stayed at his bed and breakfast for three weeks, our pastimes usually long, late barbeques. After we got the car though we did go out and about seeing places a lot. Giovanni’s fiancé’s mother was fixing up a “house” for rent and we just happened to be in need of a house. So Giovanni, like any sales person would put two and two together and brought us around to this so-called “house”…
We went around it… this took a very short time as to how small it was. Apparently it was furnished, which consisted of 4 beds, the bathroom, a dining table… and a stove. WOW, great going with the furnishing .
It had five rooms (in total, yes in total, not just the bedrooms). Three bedrooms, the bathroom and the kitchen/dining room which she promised she’d tile and never got around to it. It did have a good sized garden though and a grape vineyard 2 minutes walk from the house. The garden was full of orange and lemon trees and even prickly pear cacti… the rest of the garden though was absolutely overgrown… everywhere.
We took the house since it was the only thing we could find, I know it was a stupid decision but awk well too late now .
We were in soon enough (the picture dates tell me that it was 16th of April, and we’d only taken these at least a week of being in the house) and had settled down. My mom decided to fly back to England to her mom and Gizmo since Karen (my mom’s mom) was taking so long in packing to get herself over to Sicily with us.
My mom kissed us goodbye, she got on the plane and off she went. The next three weeks droned on and on and on for the three of us. We were sick of sitting in the house, or playing jack-change-it (a card game, the rules continuously increased as we got more bored… in the end it was hard to keep up ).
To understand Giovanni you’d have to have known him… he was like a snake with a smile. He’d become your friend and rip you off at the same time in fact one of his favourite phrases to use on us was “my friend”… it’s very frustrated to think that we fell for him. Then again the more that I think about I don’t think he realised. Some Sicilians (mainly Giovanni ) are the type like I help you, now you must help me… or in Giovanni’s case it was more like I help you… now you must pay me .
The first few days in the house were… there’s actually no real word to describe it. I just sat here for 5 minutes trying to think of one and… none! Well… in the third day or so I was about to go run a bath for myself and ended up running to my parents room yelling “There’s an ALIEN in the bath!!!”… it was not funny at the time .
It was seriously an alien-like creature. It was light amber-brown, had a long-spindly body with… literally millions of LONG legs and antennas. I know you’re thinking oh that’s just a centipede… that was NOT a centipede!
We found tonnes in that Sicilian house, so since I found the first one it has adopted the name of “alien” so from now on don’t be alarmed if I refer to something like, “there was an alien in the tea-cup!” … this did happen once. My sister almost had a heat attack when she was making tea … now that was funny!
Actually one night in our room (we were sharing one in that house) there was an alien on the wall and a gecko on the other. Venetia refused to sleep unless I got at least the gecko out. So I got my jewellery box, dumped everything on my bed, made the gecko come down of the wall. By about a few inches of the ground the poor thing fainted and fell to the floor. I was so devastated and just wanted to leave it alone. Venetia on the other hand kept moaning and wouldn’t go to sleep >:-(! So I ushered the gecko into the box and put the lid on top. Now Venetia wanted me to put the gecko outside. No way that I was going out there at this time of night! So I let it loose in the kitchen .
Of course Venetia was not happy about this but I was too tired. I climbed into bed and was almost asleep when I was disturbed by a crazy creature… known as, yes that’s right, Venetia. Apparently now I had to get the alien out. I got up dragged Venetia’s bed with her still on it to my side of the room and tried to go to sleep again. Nope this wasn’t good enough . I said that I’d get the alien down but she’d have to put it in a box.
I put Venetia’s bed back, got the broom and swept the alien off the wall, then climbed back into bed…now the alien had gone under the wall… after Venetia doing what she needed to do, even though I said if she did it I’d never talk to her again, we went to sleep. The next morning I was talking again >.<.
As I’m sure you can see I talk far too much . So I’m going to leave it at that and get back on track with it tomorrow.
Still hoping to hear from you all soon !
- Bianca
{ December 18, 2008 @ 11:38 AM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: adventure, aunt, bath, bed, Bianca, C.P.R., cheesecake, cigarettes, cigars, crazy, dad, electric, England, fairy, film, fishing, flower, football, Gizmo, gran, great-gran, grrr, happened, heavy, ireland, Italian, jumping, karen, leather, lights, lives, lollipops, luggage, machine, Mafia, Maisy, Malta, March, miserable, mom, month, Mount. Etna, mouths, nail, name, Palermo, parents, person, pictures, pink, planes, pop, postponed, reassured, reluctant, rugby, scarier, shirt, Sicialian, sicily, sleep, slouched, Stansted, supposed, taxi, team, The Holiday Inn, Thursday, uncle, upsetting, website, woman, world, zoom }
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Thursday, October 25, 2007
Hey everyone!
First off, I’ve decided this website isn’t just going to be about fishing (although that’s a big part of it ). Since I haven’t gone fishing lately (I was supposed to be going over the weekend… don’t quite know what happened there /:[ ) I haven’t got any fishing stories, so I’ll just zoom all the way back to the 1st of March when my adventures around the world really began.
If any of you have ever moved country you’ll know how difficult packing is! I had to bring my WHOLE life in just one suitcase! I’m not so great with throwing things out, quite a few times I kept packing arbitrary items… for instance pink, flower, fairy lights kept managing to find its own way in the suitcase… okay it was me… aww how I loved those… eventually though I replaced them with more… useful things after being persuaded by the fact that the plug sockets in Sicily would be different… it’s okay though taking them out freed up like half my suitcase !
I also had to leave my (absolutely GORGEOUS) electric guitar which I’d only gotten 2 months earlier!!! That was so depressing, I WAS going to attempt bringing it as hand luggage but didn’t really want the hassle and it was SOOO heavy.
To get on with the story, grrr as I’m sure you can see I have a tendency to move onto a different subject and get distracted… Anyway, a few days before the 1st (which is when we departed Ireland) my gran, (I just call her Karen, so from now on I’m saying Karen) was staying with us and gave us the FRIGHT of our lives (I’m using us and our because my parents, sister, second cousin and my uncle were in the house at the time, with me of course 
).
I was in a deep sleep because I wanted to get a relatively early night, when I heard shouts and yells and stuff of MOM, MOM!. I ran downstairs, into the lounge expecting my gran to be doing something stupid instead my uncle and my dad were giving her C.P.R., later I found out she’d collapsed and her heart had stopped beating! The rugby was on that night so Karen must of just been over excited or something , a few hours earlier she was jumping around cheering on her favourite team … why was I on this story…?
Oh right yeah well Karen was supposed to be taking Gizmo (our small dog, I’m sure I’ve told you about him before) on the ferry with her, across to England there she would look after him at her house until we were settled in Sicily (since we just got up and left and didn’t bother finding a house first since someone, not saying anybody’s name in particular … usually people would put the persons name here and I’m very tempted to… but I won’t since I’m so, very nice … said that it was easy enough to find a house there. This later proved as wrong . See there I go again, off a different direction to the story… although this has got something to do with the story so I guess it’s not that bad…!
(Gizmo!!! The post looked very boring so thought I’d give you a glimpse of him
! He’s on the window sill at my gran’s house, I think Gizmo spent too much of his time watching my uncle and aunt’s cat… He’s in England hints the fact that he’s wearing a shirt
!)
I’ll continue with what I was saying, Karen came around and my parents rushed her to hospital, she’s all fine now though . But she was supposed to be taking Gizmo on Tuesday, we were going to be leaving on Thursday. Gizmo and Karen’s departure was postponed until Saturday so I had to say goodbye to Gizmo and leave him behind with Karen and my great-gran (Maisey). It was so upsetting! I knew I wouldn’t see him for at least a month, an actual fact it was TWO!
And off our taxi took us (since we’d left our car with a friend who was going to sell it for us). We slept at the hotel across the road from Belfast International Airport, because our flight was at 08:00 am… FAAAAAAAAR too early for me .
Somehow I managed to get up and be ready in the morning for my flight. My sister actually has some footage of us that morning… which I’ll have to find, most of the recording I was slouched over my suitcase on the floor of the hotel bedroom, moaning at her not to film me ! Venetia (my sister) did get some of the planes taking off though and you can see how early it is because of how dark it is outside!
Once we were all ready and had had breakfast we all crossed the road and checked in. Our first flight was very short and was surprisingly painless! Usually my ears pop… with a lot of pain going up and then coming down, despite my efforts to chew gum, or suck lollipops… sometimes I’d even try sleeping. We flew to Stansted in England first, sat around for a few hours, had lunch at a really nice Italian place, oh my word, the CHEESECAKE was the NICEST there it was so yummy!!!!
Once we only had about an hour of waiting to do we found out that our luggage was too heavy for the next flight to Palermo, Sicily! Quickly we sorted it out, I had to leave the coolest nail set ever behind, which I’d also only got two months earlier, it had an electric nail buffing machine!!!
We checked in again, and got on the plane to Palermo, my ears didn’t pop too painfully this time either, something in the day to be thankful about !
After a few hours, the pilot landed the plane safely and we all got out, grabbed our luggage and walked around to the exit which came out onto one of the most Sicilian scenes that I’d ever seen… mainly because I’d only ever been to Sicily once and it was just for a day trip from Malta to Mount. Etna, to get there we had to go on one of the fastest catamarans in the world! Well anyway it was tonnes of black cabs parked outside with all of the taxi drivers dressed up like people from the “Mafia” with their leather jackets on and cigars or cigarettes hanging out of their mouths… yet, they weren’t standing around looking cool, or sitting in their cabs, they were playing football and yelling at each other in Sicilian… it was quite late already so the lighting just seemed to make everything a whole lot scarier .
We managed to drag one of the taxi drivers away from his football, packed up our suitcases, buckled ourselves in and off we went. They drive like… CRAZY there! I was sitting in the middle at the back and just keeping my eye on the speedometer. Once we arrived at The Holiday Inn, the cab driver made us pay 60 euros for a five minute journey, so if you ever go to Sicily, I think it’s best to just hire a car out. We went inside only to find a miserable looking woman slouched in her seat at the reception. My dad used his broken Sicilian and asked if she had any rooms, she was reluctant at first, finally she gave us our key, and we went up stairs. At this moment, I just wanted to go right back to our home in Ireland. I had a bath, was reassured by my dad that I just needed a good night’s sleep and I’d enjoy it more in the morning, so I went to bed.
Will continue with my Sicilian adventure tomorrow . Sorry this post had nothing to do with fishing.
Hope to hear from you all soon, still waiting on those pictures .
- Bianca
