Today’s adventure was to Aegina, the closest island to Athens. This island is notable for two things: its pistachios and how it has become a suburb to Athens with people commuting to work from there. Sure, there’s a lot of archaeological material there too, but those two are definitely its two current popular points. To get to the island I caught the Metro to the nearby port of Piraeus. From there, I took a type of ship called a Flying Dolphin. With a name like that one would expect these things to look like submarines. Instead, they looked like boats with wings. To give it stability, the boat has two short stubs off of the front that prevent it from tipping over (I guess). They ships are called Flying Dolphins because they go much faster than the other ferries at a whopping 35mph.

I got to Aegina in one piece and then had no idea what to do. I’d read a little in the books and on the internet; but, besides the ancient temple on the other side of the island, the archaeological site near the harbor was the other main attraction. Since I had all day in Aegina, I decided to just walk around and get a feel for the island first. After 30 minutes of intense walking around the city with the harbor, I gave in and went to the archaeological site. It was interesting. Like most of Greece, it had a lot of history before the classical period and then another rebirth with Roman sponsorship. Having seen the National Archaeological Museum yesterday, the Aegina Museum wasn’t great. They did have excavations we could walk through, though; better yet, they were on a hill, which made for great harbor pictures.

Walking to the site I came on a street that made me laugh: it was called Nikos Kazantzakis St. (odos, actually: Greek for ‘road’ or ‘way’ or ‘journey’) I’m not sure if N. K. actually spent time on the island. In any case, they had a statue bust of him on a pedestal in park. For those not familiar with Kazantzakis, he’s the author of The Last Temptation of Christ (which I read for my Christianity and Literature course) as well as Zorba the Greek and a modern version of Homer’s Odyssey in the same rhyme pattern Homer used.

When I finished all of that, it was only 1pm and my ticket to return to Athens wasn’t until 6pm. Five hours to fill and nothing to do. (For a while I was tempted to try and get an earlier ticket. When I realized that daylight savings time put the sunset right before I left I refrained from missing it.)

It turns out I like hot tea. I sat down at a cafe on the water and read a book for an hour while enjoying two cups. I forgot my stocking cap for the trip (which means my head was cold from the wind coming off the water — but also was getting plenty of good sun on it), so the tea was perfect. After the tea I went and had lunch at a restaurant and then sat in the sun and enjoyed my book and the harbor for another two hours.

Then came the pictures. I went to all of the different sides and locations around the harbor just looking for good shots. Ships, especially yachts, are rarely boring to shoot. Their reflections on the water with the mountains on the islands behind them makes it a fun process. When I get back to Florence I’ll post the gallery of the day.

I also figured out in shooting those that I’m a sucker for sunsets. That takes a completely different entry to describe. Enjoy!

Before taking off, I grabbed pistachios to see if they really are some of the best. I now have a kilo of them (2.2 lbs) to test. Wish me luck. My journey to Aegina ended with a disconcerting omen: right once the ferry left the pier, someone’s cell phone rang. This would have been normal, except for their ring was “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion. A song made famous by a movie about a ship sinking was not what I wanted to hear. Before they could get a call back after they hung up, I stuck on my headphones and pressed play on my iPod. That definitely took the stress away.

I just finished one of the most enjoyable and eventful days of my life. Imagine every class you take is incredibly interesting and none of it seems like a waste of time. Imagine every break in between classes naturally flowing with every errand you need to make on a stop directly between your location and your final destination. Imagine not having to worry about scheduling and just relaxing on the river of time that is flowing at exactly the right speed. I don’t know what I did, but for some reason, today was awesome.

It started with my Political Science class. Actually, it started when I went to the Accent Center before class. I did my reading on Machiavelli and then went and helped the staff with their computers. I finished one minute before our Political Science class began; but, the prof. knew I was helping and he didn’t mind me stepping in at the last second (at least he didn’t seem to). We spent the first half of the class going over the reading we’d done and he showed us clips from a movie based on a novel by Graham Greene (“The Third Man”) that related the atmosphere of Machiavelli in the Renaissance with the sections we were studying on Italian political parties in the beginning of the Cold War. I was anticipating every step of the way and it flowed wonderfully.

Then, he took us to a museum, that is the best I’ve ever seen. The Opificio delle Pietre Dure is this little museum off of a side street (I know, kind of funny to say in Florence) that has its artwork made out of semi-precious stones. It’s AMAZING!!! There was one room where every work was a recreation of an oil painting. They were all made in the 1700s and 1800s. Some of them looked so good they seemed to be 3D computer models. Before I came over to Florence I thought my Uncle Ron’s stone creations were the best things I’d seen. His creativity with the natural rocks he finds is amazing. I only wish he could see this museum. Every piece I saw reminded me of him.

Then Davide, our Poli Sci professor, took us to the State University in Florence. The classes are not meeting this week but that’s because the students are doing a sit-in and the professors are refusing to show up. Apparently the Italian Education Minister is trying to reform the school system so that once you pick a career path (I think around when you are 12), you can never change which track you’re in for school. How crazy is that? Let’s ask the 6th graders to pick what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives and hold them to it. This is a protest by both the faculty and the students that makes sense!

Then was a break and then my Italian class. Yesterday I wrote about some of my frustrations with how my class was going. It’s as if the professor read my blog (even though I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t know it’s here — but who knows these days). We came to class with write-ups of what we’d done this weekend. When we write and he has us read it, it makes sense. Even while listening to my classmates — and all of our mispronunciations — I was able to follow what each one was saying and predict some of the mistakes beforehand. The pace we took challenged us by making us work creatively outside of class and when he corrects the small things, but still teaches new stuff, it results in the perfect pace.

After class, I stopped by the travel agent I’m using for my Fall Break and he told me everything is a go. He’s booked my airline tickets to Greece and my hotels and when I come in Thursday I’ll pay for all of it and get my train ticket setup. Originally I was going to spend a couple of days in Athens and a couple in Mykonos. After a while I did some reading and Mykonos in November loses its appeal. It’s one of the sun capitals of the world. With cold winds, though, it’s not the hottest place — literally! Now I’ll get to soak in Athens at my own pace.

The only part of the day that wasn’t perfect is that I haven’t been able to find baking powder. Last Thursday our landlady brought over a cake for Brett and I. She said that she was making some and thought we’d like one. So, I’ve been trying to scrounge up the ingredients to make her sugar cookies for when I give the plate back! I’ve now got to search the internet for a recipe for sugar cookies without baking powder. I even went to a market that specializes in imports from the US. They have Snickers. They have They have Campbells Soup. They have Pop-Secret Popcorn. They don’t have baking powder though; it takes them three weeks to get it over here. Oh well, I’ll prevail in this cookie dilemma.

I topped off the night with a Fellini film: La Strada. Starring Anthony Quinn, this piece made very little sense to me in overall plot structure, but I really liked it. There are so many little details in there that stuck out. One of the characters spent the movie demonstrating the human instinct (or at least predominantly Western instinct) for seeking purpose. I suppose if I read some reviews and commentaries even more of the pieces would fit back together. One Tuesday every month, the Accent Staff put on the movie night. Last time there were only two students there and Sarah and one of her friends. This time it was just Jeremy and I. There are so many people missing out on great movies. I haven’t seen one that I felt was a waste of time yet.

I also just finished one of the most daunting tasks of the week: shaving my head. While I had the pattern for head shaving down so well before (to the point where I don’t think I needed a mirror), my stitches are an obstacle. I have to keep them dry, which meant that after I removed my bandage (for the first time since Saturday), I had to do a dry shave on the back of my head. While it’s not the easiest way to shave — it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Also, if I hadn’t been particular on how much of the hair I wanted off, I think I could have done it alone. Brett did need to help me with the section really close to the stitches though. It’s done, I feel fresh, and now it’s time to make dinner. Good night!

It’s fun how quickly books can change perspective. I previously wrote about my guilty conscience for quickly reading my book on slowness. I got over it pretty fast, sped along, and finished it tonight. The book is good in so many ways. While I’d love to adopt most of its philosophies on slowness, I’m more enthused about some of the things it inspired. Most people who know me and read the book would say it’s written in several parts directly at me. I took my undergraduate years too fast, I’ll admit, but I enjoyed it too.

What surprised me most from the book was the thoughts it created for seminary. During my Spring Break retreat I came up with a list of requirements I had for seminary. While they are great ideals, they are becoming less important than they were. Here’s the list that I’d come up with:

• They must be flexible enough to facilitate me spending one semester in a 2/3 world context. They don’t have to plan all of the details, but they can’t be an obstacle either.
• Their faculty must be impressive. They should not only have some authors who are well-published, but they should have a passion for teaching and engaging with students. They must continue to want to learn and be willing to let students teach them little things (like computers).
• Their student body must be a community. While this does bias one against “commuter-campuses” to an extent, there are many ways to still foster this community in any setting. Students should have outlets, both structured and unstructured, to gather with their classmates and create friendships that last beyond their tenure at the seminary.
• The seminary should be diverse. Rather than having polarizations or basing on standard percentages (for age, sex, race, denominational background, etc), the seminary should have as varied a spectrum as possible.
• The seminary should also have connections outside of its context. This means more than just the “feeder” congregations and graduate schools that most students would go to. It should have coeducational programs with other seminaries and also work to create denomination-linking opportunities as a flagship for ecumenism.
• The seminary should encourage spirituality by example. While many professors do have understandable personal conflicts with current ecclesial bodies, they should at least have been formed in that context and desire to form others in similar contexts. The students should all either be serving as staff or active lay leadership within a local congregation. In other words, the seminary shouldn’t just give out another degree but should actively seek to change and strengthen the church.

I don’t know of any seminary that fits all of these. Looking back on the list, I know that the seminary I pick probably will not be able to perfectly match 3/4 of them. Here’s another requirement that the book brought out:

• The seminary must give me latitude in what I study. I recognize that the curriculum requirements will partially constrict my options; but, when I find an area I have a passion for, I don’t want to be told I have to study other things before I can study that. Because I finished a rigorous degree in Religion, there shouldn’t be many subjects with strict prerequisites that a seminary will say I’m not able to study. Does it require critical reading skills? Hopefully at that time they won’t make that an issue. Does it require some other knowledge in order to understand the context? Perfect, let’s make that, and only that, be the first lesson I study for the course.

TCU gave me the chance to explore. Some of my favorite courses were seminars requiring substantial papers or projects at the end. Some of my other favorite courses were the directed studies I did individually or with a friend and the professor. My Classical Rhetoric course I’m currently doing with Dr. Enos is a perfect example of the bullet point above. Even though I had relatively little historical knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome, Dr. Enos took note and adapted the first lesson to teach me. The course is made of readings and small papers that I write. The first reading was a novel that showcased the events and atmosphere of ancient Athens. What was a 20th Century novel doing in a course of ancient rhetoric? It’s exact purpose: to teach. Dr. Enos’ willingness to use a different medium and to do a course with flexibility in the curriculum has made it one of my favorite courses at TCU. That’s another thing a seminary should do: it should encourage learning by stoking the passions that the students bring to it or develop while there. Subduing the flames just to make sure the student is ‘well-rounded’ causes apathy and indifference.

The prime example of that while I’m in Florence is my Italian language class. I must confess that I’m a grammar nut. I know, it’s a sick hobby. Talking about the function of a word, and in particular any of its relations or nuances with the rest of the language, is a fun hobby. I love piecing together the puzzle of a language’s components. My Italian class, it’s about grouping together the pieces; it’s about creating a bunch from scratch.

This is really stemming from my bias for reading languages; I simply don’t like to speak them. Give me time, and I think I enjoy writing them. The ability to converse, while it does show mastery and helps more than anything with comprehension and retention, is so stifling! The other issue with our Italian class is what I want to focus on. It’s intentionally a conversation class, meaning we gloss over a bunch of the grammar and leave holes that I want to fill. How do Italians say infinitives with participial constructions? How do Italians nuance between possibilities and probabilities – are there any stresses with different activities in using particular subjunctives? I want to learn how to say “Eventually I will be going back home to live” instead of just knowing how to say “I leave on December 14th to the United States.” It’s a huge difference!

My current mood is that I’d rather study the Italian language looking for puns and other tongue-in-cheek instances I find, rather than study the forms of irregular perfect participles. Don’t get me wrong, the perfect participle has been an essential part (sorry, couldn’t resist) of every language I’ve studied; but, memorizing it in rote form just doesn’t make for a fun night. Will I ever master Italian? Probably not; especially with how hard I’m working on it. I will, however, enjoy the rest of the time I’m here before returning.

Can you believe rapidly reading a book about slowness brought all of that on? Wow.

I’ve now had an intercultural experience I never planned on and didn’t really want in the beginning: I went to the hospital. I don’t want to talk about the specifics, but for a period after just waking up this morning I lost consciousness and woke up with my head bleeding. My roommate’s gone for the weekend, as are all of the TCU people, so I called the Accent Center’s emergency number. Cristiana was on-call and helped me SO much. She and her boyfriend came and picked me up and rushed me to the hospital. After the hospital staff fixed me with five stitches (which now have to stay in for the next 8 days), they did some other tests that lasted the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon.

During the afternoon I was in observation and was in a room with a guy who was 53 and another who was 103! While the wait was kind of annoying (and actually relaxing), the 103-year-old kept asking the other guy about how the Fiorentina soccer team was going to do tonight. They also talked politics and WWII history. I’d like to say that I picked up most of it; but I really only understood about 20 percent of what they said. Either way, they were entertaining while I had to wait for the tests and the results. So, other than a splitting headache (which I can’t take Aspirin for — it thins the blood, which is something they don’t want) and some lost time and blood, I’m doing pretty good.

If you’re ever in a foreign country and have to go to the hospital: 1) make sure you’re wearing a t-shirt (mine was keeping pressure on the back of my head), 2) find a wonderful bilingual friend like Cristiana, and 3) think and pray a lot — they’re both therapeutic.

The treadmill has to be one of the greatest and worst inventions in the history of the world. It’s a contraption designed to make you work hard for amounts of time without getting anywhere. Yet, training on it (and its horizontally-impaired step-sibling the Stairmaster) lets me get into shape for hiking the Appalachian Trail. The work they put me through prepare me for the mountains that I get to walk up by my own pace.

It’s unfair that life’s a treadmill too. This week, I’m finding so many ironies that point out how bizarre and twisted life is. I’m reading two books at the moment (besides the school books and other ones that I’ve been working on for a while).

First, is “Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages” by Mark Abley. It’s amazing. It goes into the sociological reasons some languages are dying out while others are recovering and picking up speakers. When I struggle with Italian (almost every day) I can pick up this book and read about linguistics and the struggles those learning dying languages have. The book talks about how rapidly the number of languages in the world is decreasing.

Then I have my new guilty pleasure – “In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed” by Carl Honoré. The book covers why slower is sometimes better. Many people would say this is the perfect book for me; it’s actually the perfect book for everyone. It’s a book on a philosophy started in Italy that makes life more enjoyable.

So where’s the irony in all of this? I’m slowly reading the book about languages dying fast while I’m rushing through the book about taking life slower. It’s terrible! I don’t want to put down the book on slowness because it’s so good. I want to savor the book about languages dying out fast and so I don’t pick it up as often. This is SO wrong.

Something even worse is that my music is this way too. On my iTunes party shuffle I just listened to “My Favorite Things” on Outkast’s CD, “The Love Below.” This remake of the Sound of Music classic puts a strong, fast, syncopated beat behind the melody line. It’s great for getting my heart racing faster and my mind spinning. Then came “A Song You Might Hear in a Wedding” by Jon McLaughlin. Probably THE most beautiful song I’ve ever heard. It’s a slow ballad with Jon playing piano and sing a love song very slow. The notes come out like honey (another irony: I read Proverbs 25:16 the other day (double irony: right after Eurochocolate)) and force the listener to hear the words and digest them. My music a perfect example of the double-life I live (and I’m assuming most people live): part of it is at a break-neck pace while the other part is a relaxed lethargy.

Italy isn’t the place where I will cure my double-life. Although, I can now at least look on it with a chuckle and get ready for the sprinting and the crawling.

I just returned from the world’s largest chocolate festival. Eurochocolate, http://www.eurochocolate.com, is an annual fair devoted entirely to chocolate. It was packed! This year in the ten days it’s hosted in Perugia (in Umbria to the south of Florence), they’re expecting over a million people. In fact, the bus I went on couldn’t get into the city; we had to park a town over and then ride the train into the city. From there, everything in the city was setup for the festival. The busses were only running the “ciacco line”. The police were linking their arms and forming lines to channel the herding pedestrian traffic. The only nice thing about being so crowded? There aren’t many 6’3″ Italians who go to chocolate festivals.

There are a lot of free giveaways (like chocolate cookies and Coca-cola Light), but most of the chocolate is for sale. While the displays on fair-trade cocoa and the new types of pepper-chocolate were interesting, the tasting was the best. There were chocolates made without butter or sugar that tasted so smooth. There were dark chocolates that you couldn’t bite through – you had to suck on them. They had almost anything you can imagine with chocolate. One lady had long hair and had it styled with chocolate (that was actually kind of disgusting since it had started melting mid-day).

I came home with some fun stuff too: coffee beans covered with white chocolate; a bar of dark chocolate with mint crystals in it; a white chocolate bar with some types of nuts and toffees inside; a giant bottle of chocolate liqueur; a bottle of chocolate pepper vodka (yeah, I know, they have EVERYTHING with chocolate in it); a box of wafer cookies filled with dark chocolate; a bar of dark Cuban chocolate; and my personal favorite — two bars of pepper-chocolate. The pepper-chocolate burns on the way down but is kind of fun since the taste stays in your mouth and throat for a while.

After the first twenty minutes of walking around I was already tired of the chocolate. I’d tasted so much so fast that the rest of the time was scoping out what to stock for the rest of the semester (and whatever survives long enough to make it home). The sugar (and caffeine) high lasted me well into the afternoon. Here are three things I’d definitely recommend before going to a chocolate festival: 1) don’t bother with breakfast before going, 2) take a water bottle — washing chocolate down with hot chocolate is counter-productive, and 3) pack something salty for lunch so you don’t wait in line for a prosciutto sandwich. My afternoon snack that was a little salty: popcorn with chocolate instead of butter. It was nice, but it simply lifted the sugar high back to where it’d been before.

You don’t have to go to Belgium or the middle of the Swiss Alps to get great food and great chocolate. Italy once again proved that you don’t have to go far away to experience something completely different.

It’s great how the small reminders of familiarity can change an entire day. I spent the first part of the day getting a lot done. A little reading here and there adds up. Then came the familiar: Mike’s cooking lessons. These are turning into the highlights of my weeks. I know this is going to be shocking, but classes and living in a tourist-trap don’t match up to learning how to cook. The only thing that made this one extra-special: two of my TCU friends from before I arrived in Florence enjoying it with me.

Natalie Mattern and Brooks Zitzmann are two friends from back in Ft. Worth who are studying in London. Natalie, one of the co-directors of Awakening last Fall, is graduating in December (with me and so many other friends that I have). Brooks, graduated my first year at TCU, but has just finished her Masters degree at Oxford. She’s been working on it for 12 months straight and is now done! So what do they do on their short break? They come to Italy!

Nat and I had been playing e-mail tag for the past week exchanging info. They spent yesterday and the first part of today in Cinque Terre, a gorgeous (or so I hear) place over on the coast. I’m planning on going, but not until November. In the end, they rode the train directly into Florence and met me at Mike’s. They didn’t know what they were getting into! The hostel they’re staying at turns out to only be a block from the apartment, so luckily it worked out as well.

OK, now for the menu for the best meal the girls had in a long time: Cipollata, Petto Di Polli Alla Fiorentina, Tiramasu and a Vino Rosso. In English: Onion Soup, Chicken Florentine, Tiramasu (don’t know an English one for that) and a Red Wine. That still doesn’t do it justice.

Cipollata:

A soup made of onions, sausage and cubed bacon all based on a broth Mike had been prepping for the afternoon. The broth ended up being the key: he’d been boiling all kinds of veggies in it. This was served on garlic toast. Topping the soup: a lot of parmesan cheese – a lot! Imagine French Onion but Italian style.

Petto Di Pollo Alla Fiorentina:
Chicken breasts stuffed with a mixture of spinach, parmesan, pine nuts and salt and paper. The chicken is then browned in olive oil and baked the rest of the way. Who knew that chicken was supposed to have melted cheese, nuts and green stuff inside of it?!?

Tiramasu:
Like nothing I’ve ever had. This one even topped the kind we learned at the cooking school. Chocolate and coffee mixture isn’t good enough for this one; instead, it takes Kahlua. I’m not going to even describe the rest since I’ll probably make it a lot. Just one more hint: the not-so-secret ingredient is Mascarpone Cheese (not the Kahlua)!

The cooking crew — with Brooks holding the Tiramasu

After we got done at Mike’s (4 hours after we started), we walked around and enjoyed the Florence night. We did the Edison’s (bookstore) thing, but I think I’m out-growing Edisons. The atmosphere is great, but it’s just not enough. Bookstores are great because there’s SO much there; but, they’re also my escape. In Cambridge, the Coop was a social thing for me to do with classmates. Here, Edisons was kind of social since I was with Nat and Brooks. I’m naturally a recluse in bookstores. I’ll just have to avoid them and order all of my books online. Oh wait, that’s even worse!

Seeing Natalie and Brooks was great! Familiar things are nice … now for something I’m rarely too familiar with: sleep. Tomorrow morning I’m getting up and going to EuroChocolate.

I’m pretty excited. I just got the e-mail. The e-mail that told me two of my best friends are now engaged! Richard Newton, one of my roommates back at TCU, has been dating Sarah Harville since our sophomore year. Now they’re engaged.

They both support each other and love each other so much. Whether helping each other study for Religion midterms and finals or whether worshiping together at UBC, the two are there for each other. I kind of wish I wasn’t in Florence at the moment. Just to be around them right now would make my year. But alas, I’m over here and can only read the e-mails and catch Richard on Instant Messenger. Oh well, it works. So, if any of you who read this at TCU are around them, TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE NOTICING: describe the things you’re hearing and seeing! Until then, I can only sit and imagine from the tidbits of info I have.

Kneading is an art. It creates; it forms; it sustains. Kneading envelopes, turns, pushes, and envelopes again.

The bakery at the end of my street is one of Florence’s best. It’s the little details that help in distinguishing this ‘forno’-expert from all of the others. The baker speaks at least three languages and smiles and waves at me every time I walk by the windows. His shop is set up with two doors that are perfect for creating a traffic flow during the busy hours. For 1.5 euros I can get a huge slice of pizza that quenches my hunger for a long time. For under three euros I can get a day’s supply of biscotti cookies and cheddar biscuits. All of his work is done because of kneading. Yes, he has machines that help him, but he still does some.

Mike, my cooking guru, has some of the highest standards for kneading. When we made homemade pasta noodles or focaccia bread with Duccio (Mike’s instructor), we were pressed for time and Duccio said “Good enough.” Mike came from across the room saying, “No way, come on Duccio.” Then he turned to us and chided, “you realize he’s letting you off easy, right?” It’s funny.

Texture is essential. Material is essential. With everything in baking, however, the form at the end of the kneading is never the final result. Kneading is only one of the preparation steps. After adding heat, allowing time, or simply using for the intended purpose, the form that results is never identical to the beginning. Bread rises, noodles are cut and formed, pie crusts are fit into a mold.

One of the best metaphors for God’s shaping our lives is that of the potter and the clay. Taken from all over the bible (I saw it was in Jeremiah this morning), the process is the molding of our lives into something better than their current form. The ironic requirement for the metaphor is that bread or clay has to have air kneaded out of it. The hot air has to be forced out so that it’s easier to mold and bring to a better texture. The strange aspect with kneading is that after the air-removing process, and after the molding into the perfect form, the form is still shapable. It can still change until something else happens: it’s form hardens by either time or temperature.

My favorite musical genre is Broadway. It probably started from the musical nature of Disney in my younger years (you know: The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King). The lyrics give the meaning of the songs but the melodies cement the impact. For some reason, probably the copyrights most of all, I can’t put one of my new favorite songs on my website.

In the weeks before leaving for Florence, my camp co-counselor from this summer, urged me to get the soundtrack for the musical “Wicked.” Now, to be fair, one of my best friends at TCU had told me that in April, but it didn’t sink in until the end of the summer. “Wicked” is the musical based on a book of the same name that takes a different look at “The Wizard of Oz.” In what one reviewer called “the year’s best guilty-pleasure,” the stories of the three witches in Oz intertwine and mold together.

My favorite character, Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West), goes through the whole story wanting to be changed. She wants to be ‘de-greenified’ and she wants to be equipped and empowered (by the faux-powerful Wizard) to help everyone else. Elphaba, through the entire story, is actually saying that she needs to be kneaded. Her point is that she thinks she can be better and she wants someone to change her.

Before I give you the words to her duet with Glinda (Glinda the “Good” — the witch who rides around in a bubble), I want to point out that Elphaba was wanting a mentor. It turns out that she became disillusioned with her mentor’s lack of abilities (and honesty) and wanted something better. In the end, as in all of our lives, the change comes from the place least expected; those surrounding us are the ones who help mold us and shape us. What allows Elphaba to be changed? Her knowing that she needed to be kneaded.

For Good
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz

ELPHABA
I’m limited:
Just look at me – I’m limited
And just look at you –
You can do all I couldn’t do, Glinda
So now it’s up to you
(spoken) For both of us (sung) Now it’s up to you:

GLINDA
I’ve heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don’t know if I believe that’s true
But I know I’m who I am today
Because I knew you:
Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

ELPHABA
It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You’ll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend:
Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird
In a distant wood
Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?
But because I knew you:

GLINDA
Because I knew you:

BOTH
I have been changed for good

ELPHABA
And just to clear the air
I ask forgiveness
For the things I’ve done you blame me for

GLINDA
But then, I guess we know
There’s blame to share

BOTH
And none of it seems to matter anymore

Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?
I do believe I have been changed for the better?

GLINDA
And because I knew you:
ELPHABA
Because I knew you:

BOTH
Because I knew you:
I have been changed for good.

What will it take for God to change me? Admitting that I need to be kneaded. It also involves someone like Mike saying “that’s not good enough” and Melanie and Jessica for saying “try this” and for every other person for molding me in different ways.

What could be worse than my third technological casualty during my stay here in Italy? The fourth, which almost happened! When I was cooking a great sauce for my angel hair pasta tonight, I tripped over my power cord plugged into my Apple Powerbook. It wasn’t good. When I plugged it back in, it started clicking. So I took off the European power adapter and put the American one on and then plugged that into a European converter I have; still clicking. In all of those stages it wouldn’t power the laptop either. It was gone.

Then came the other scare for the night (besides the midterm that I have tomorrow in my Political Science class): my iPod wouldn’t work. It said that it didn’t have any charge left in the battery. This was the major problem with this generation of the iPod; in fact, Apple had to settle a lawsuit because of it. What was strange with this one was that I’d listened to it a half an hour before and it had a great battery. After a while I was lucky and giving it a jump-start from my ever-depleting laptop battery got it going. Want to know the only good thing about not being able to charge an iPod in Italy? Half of the TCU group has our iPods with us, so chargers aren’t in short supply either!

I’m not worrying too much about these. Once I figure out how to get a charger, things will be great. Until then, however, I’m running on fumes. So, don’t expect tons of updates on the site until I get more stability with my technology!