Mi piace.

I'm in Europe this week visiting a friend who lives out here.  I love to travel and always appreciate the random things that happen to me when I do.  For example:

We went to Venice (gorgeous city BTW) and in the main plaza there are about a bazillion pigeons roaming around looking for stupid tourists who will buy food and feed to them as a photo op (which we did).  My friend Jay, and I noticed an albino pigeon amongst the others and then I realized that it had a seed/nut stuck in it's beak.  I guess the morsel was a bit bigger than the little guy had anticipated.  We weren't quite sure what to do, so we just stood there and watched as the bird shook it's head and wandered around aimlessly and rather helplessly looking for a solution.  Some other birds came and tried to peck the nut out for themselves, but our little guy would have none of it.  Eventually his gyrations worked and he was able to free his meal and continue on with life.  But it was funny.

Today in church they handed out roses to the sisters for some Relief Society anniversary or something.  Jay and I were talking to one of the sisters who speaks Spanish.  Another sister from the ward came over and offered a bookmark to the sister we were talking to.  She just said, in Italian, "No thanks, they gave me a dead rose."  She held up her rose and the flower was already wilting and bent over.  We just couldn't stop laughing.

It's been really interesting to see how much Italian I actually understand.  I can understand probably about 60% of what I see written a little less than half of what is spoken.  It's kind of cool.  I could also understand some German and Swiss. (We flew into Munich and traveled through Switzerland before arriving in Italy)  Did you know that the Swiss use the same word for pineapple as the Spanish?  Now you know.