PEOPLE'S BEST OF 2008

People.com came out with the Best of 2008 and it's great! Here are some of my favorites:





"I feel so embarrassed."

– Miley Cyrus, apologizing before the release of her back-baring Vanity Fair photo, to PEOPLE



"I'll see you at the debates, bitches."

– Paris Hilton, responding to Sen. John McCain's use of her image in a presidential campaign ad with a spoof video of her own, on FunnyorDie.com





"You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick."

– Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, introducing herself to voters at the Republican National Convention

See all of People's Best of 2008 here!

FALL OUT BABY

Meet Bronx Mowgli Wentz in his Internet debut!

THE ROSSDALES GO TO CHURCH

Pop music's coolest family attended Christmas Eve services looking cute as ever!

GOSPEL CHOIR IN GELA

Our Sigonella Community Gospel Choir was invited to sing at a church in Gela! There were several local Italian organizations who went in together to send a bus to pick us up, and then throw us a reception at a beautiful hotel! Here's where we arrived in Gela:















It says, "The Community of Gela Wishes Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!"

There was a nativity scene underneath.















The piazzas were decorated BEAUTIFULLY!

With more nativity scenes!






























They don't put Baby Jesus (Gesu Bambino) in the manger until Christmas morning. He was there though! One of the non-english-speaking Italians handed me the Baby to take a picture. They all thought it was so funny how nervous I was to take Him!

This is the church where we sang. People were crammed into every bench, and those without seats stood in the back. The mayor was there, along with the local news! The TV cameras were on us for the whole concert! The smiles on the faces in the crowd were priceless! Everyone clapped along and some of the ladies were trying to sing along in a language they didn't understand!

One couple in our group are missionaries who started a church in a nearby town. They're our translators. Guiseppe got up before each song to tell the people in Italian what our song was about. I think our Chaplain was nervous when they asked him to explain what "gospel" meant!

Here's the whole choir:

After we sang the party moved to a beautiful hotel, Hotel Sole! They held a reception for us with MOLTO BUONO local food and they even had a singing group to perform for us! This was the highlight for me:

LADY GAGA ON THE TODAY SHOW

CHRISTMAS IN CALTAGIRONE

Kari, Trish, Shana, Aiden and I got really brave and travelled to Caltagirone all by ourselves Wednesday. Kari was a champ and drove us all. The experience taught me that GPS really is a wonderful thing!

































Caltagirone is a city famous for handmade pottery. There are at least 2 pottery shops on every street. It's beautiful but very expensive!
















Other than pottery browsing, we spent time looking at the various Nativity displays! There were like 8 of them in town. We saw 3 of them. This is the one at the Piazza Duomo.
















It was on a tall set of stairs. You can see it behind Kari here:



















The town has fliers everywhere with street maps pinpointing the spots where you can find the Nativity scenes. You walk in through the velvet rope, pay a Euro or so, and walk through the scene. Here's one:




We also saw a scene that was built to look like the City of Caltagirone:



There were lots of tours going on that day. We saw tour guides taking groups of adults or groups of school children through town to see the displays. Can you imagine going on a field trip to see a nativity scene??? That would never happen in the US!

Another thing I've learned over here is that if you need help finding something you ask the youngest person possible. Lots of the kids speak English. If you find someone in their 20s, 30s or 40s they're likely to speak Italian. The old folks usually don't speak English or Italian. Sicilian only!

ITALIAN RAP!

Italian rap is awesome, hahaha! This is a popular one. It was one of the top singles for awhile in Italy and I heard it first on the radio. Check this out...

Fabri Fibra ft. Gianna Nannini - In Italia (video ufficiale)

GIVE TO CHARITY...FOR FREE!

I just saw this on Fox Sunday Morning and I love it! There are 2 new sites you can use to give to charity without spending a dime, or taking any extra time out of your day :)

http://www.goodsearch.com/

This site is the same as yahoo search or google search. You choose a charity and the site donates a penny for each search you make. I don't know about you, but I google like nobody's business! Imagine how it would all add up!

The other site is: http://www.goodshop.com/

It's the same idea, except there is a list of online stores, Best Buy, Overstock, Macys, Kohls...in other words...good stores I visit online anyway. By clicking thru to these stores via the goodshop website, the stores agree to donate a % of your sales to the charity of your choice at no extra cost to you!

I will be using these sites from now on.

A DAY AT THE MARKET

Today my friend Amber and I went to the market in Catania. You can get literally ANYTHING there...clothes, shoes, home decor, cookware, produce, antipasti, cheese, meat...you name it! There's even a pet store! There are a FEW disturbing things to see. Here's one of them:

I felt bad later when I saw a little girl standing by the bucket taking snails and ripping them out of their shells and throwing them back in the bucket. Poor snails!

Ok, so if THAT's not disturbing enough...you haven't seen the meat market! Sorry I don't narrate, but many of these vendors get upset if they see you taking pics of their goods, so I tried not to draw attention to myself taking this video. I need to learn to say, "It's ok! I swear I'm not from PETA" in Italian!

You'll see a whole pig here on a hook and whole chickens. The animals hanging in the back are sheep. The meat I zoom in on is horse.

CUTER EVERY DAY!

Don't let little Zuma Nesta Rock's arrival let you forget about Kingston Rossdale! He just gets cuter every day!

This pic is from perezhilton.com.

Top Singles in Europe!

SCARPE!

Ladies, pay attention.



If you don't learn anything else in Italian you must know this word: SCARPE

It's pronounced (SCAR pay)



Say it to anyone here and they will point you toward the nearest SHOES!



My new favorite brand is Solo Soprani! My goal is to have at least 3 pairs before I return to the states. Wanna see more? CLICCA QUI!

BILLBOARD NOVEMBER

Top 5 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 for Europe:

5. Amy MacDonald - This Is The Life

4. T.I. & Rihanna - Live Your Life

3. Pink - So What

2. Beyonce - If I Were A Boy

1. Guru Josh Project - Infinity 2008

WATCH THE VIDEO FOR INFINITY 2008 HERE!

OLIO D'OLIVA

Today I went on a tour of an olive oil warehouse and got to see how they make olive oil from scratch! We visited the refinery in Motta S Anastasia.
The warehouse here serves both as an olive oil maker and a winery. See the sign? For today, we went to the left (a sinistra).

This place is cool. If you have an olive tree, you can pick your olives and bring them here to make olive oil for you. They produce olive oil for people all week. On the weekend, they make thier own. The warehouse is stacked with bins full of olives.

These olives still have bits of branches, leaves and their seeds.

A forklift picks them up...

and dumps them into the machine.

They're separated from their brances and leaves, seeded and cleaned. Then they fall down the chute and into the "olive smoosher". That's not actually the official term, but that's what it does.

Then they go down another chute...

and into these churns.

Basically, the olives churn until they become oil, resting every 40 minutes. The churns are numbered to help keep track of each person's olives, and the progress is shown on the screen.

It is not the same software they used in Sicily during medival times.
The olive owners stand and wait to collect their oil.

And when it's done, they grab a funnel and go for it!

The cool thing is that the olive branches, leaves and seeds are collected out back. The branches and leaves are used as mulch and food for farm animals. The seeds are sold as fuel. Many Italians use them to heat their homes, as it's much cheaper than gas. So no part of the olive is wasted! How very green of them!
This is how the weekend oil is packaged.

And the final step, into my belly!

Buono!

A LIFE UPDATE

I know I'm posting tons of pics but I'm getting lots of questions about day to day life! Here's what we're up to...
WORK: Mahlon's working at the hospital in the Emergency Room. The best thing about that (to me) is the uniform he wears. I call it his fancy pants or fire pants or hot pants uniform. It's bright highlighter orange pants with reflectors all over them! Right now he's going thru EMT training. This week he's learning how to drive the ambulance, SWEET! The hospital where he works, like everything else here, is beautiful:

Mahlon is still planning on finishing his degree while we're here too. Beyond that, he's still trying to decide exactly what his next step will be.
I haven't begun to apply for jobs yet, but I'm asking around. I have to apply for my Soggiorner's permit (that allows me to legally stay in the country) before I can get a job, and I have an appointment coming up soon for that. I've been keeping busy though. There's a free bus that runs back and forth to base all day. There are small day trips I can sign up for with my friends. And I've been working on my Italian language skills!
CHURCH: We've got a good one! There are American churches in town, but we've found the contemporary protestant service is great at the base chapel. Our chaplain is new here, and he has lots of big ideas and is starting a lot of projects right now. So it's a good time to be new! Besides the Sunday services, I've been attending the PWOC (Protestant Women of the Chapel) Bible studies, and I just signed up for the Christmas Choir. I'm excited about that!
FRIENDS: It's great, we've already got so many friends here! Our sponsors, Mike and Renee have been great and have become great friends. We met some fun couples in INDOC: Kari and Adam, Trish and Jesse, Brittany and Marty, Heather and Joey. And we continue to meet new cool people every day!

That's me, Trish and Brittany!
This is my first experience living as a military wife in base housing and I was so worried about making friends. Everyone's been great though and so nice! I love it!
THE HOUSE: We got our express shipment, but we're still waiting for our household goods. So we're still living without all our furniture and most of our cookware and clothes. It'll be really nice to be settled in. It'll feel more like home.
THE BABIES: Cash and Baby Jean are doing ok. Kitty took a couple of days to settle in, but she's fine now. Cash was ok at first. Now he's started acting out. He's suddenly begun to freak out at night and go crazy banging around in his crate. One of our friends said that's an animal's instinct, that some animals have that reaction to the volcano's activity. I never thought about that, but maybe that's it.
SHOPPING: Is good and bad. What I mean is, cool clothes, waaaay high prices! There are some great shopping places here. It's funny though how much more expensive everything is here! I haven't seen a pair of jeans for under 100 euro. (And in case you don't know...euro's value is higher than the dollar!) Oh, and there are t-shirts everywhere that you can get at walmart for $10...selling for 80 euro or more here! Know those vintage rock shirts or family guy stewie t's, novelty t-shirts? OUTRAGEOUSLY EXPENSIVE HERE! I almost wanna have someone send me a bunch and have a little stand out in town selling t-shirts on the cheap! If it wasn't illegal I'd totally do it!
FOOD: Oh my gosh everyone told me the food here was so great I'd never wanna come back to the states, that food would be ruined for me forever! Not true. It's good, don't get me wrong, but it's all the same! There's no variety here! Your choices are Italian, Italian and Italian. Oh, and Italian too! There IS no going out for chips and salsa. The thing I miss the most is ordering a giant salad with grilled chicken or steak on it. Mmmmm....I miss it! There is no ranch dressing here. Your dressing choices are oil and vinegar, or lemon juice. It's good like that too...I'm just saying...and I never thought I'd say this...
The thing I miss most of all, is American food!
Well, I miss my family and friends first. And THEN I miss American food.
All in all though, we LOVE it here!

LEONA EWWIS!

You know, it happens to everyone at some point. Leona Lewis ended up looking more like Leona Ewwis the other night, as she hopped from a Glamour magazine party (in HER honor) to the Sanderson Hotel and THEN to a star-studded Agent Provocateur catwalk show.

Did you have a few too many drinksies, Leona?

She doesn't actually look that bad. Not as bad as I'm sure she felt the next morning!

MEET THE LATEST ADDITIONS TO OUR FAMILY!

We finally got a car! The past couple weekends we've felt like the biggest losers ever. Here we are in SICILY, we don't have to work, it's a beautiful day, and we're sitting at home. GROSS!

















It's a popular thing here at Sigonella to buy an island beater. Everyone buys a little car on the cheap when they arrive and sell it to someone coming in on the way out. Say hello to our new little beater...a Volkswagon Polo :) We've discussed names for him. Mahlon likes Little Boy Blue. I like Marco. Get it? Marco Polo?















A few weeks ago, I adopted a basil plant for the kitchen. Meet Francesca. She's already been helping with the cooking!




















Ok, many of you will be sad to hear we got rid of the couch. THE couch. The one I've had my whole life, that so many friends have crashed on, and that Flave lived on for a year. Time for bigger and better things! We got rid of it and got a new one. It's just as comfy! Welcome our new couch!



Coming soon: A new coffee table and end tables! Stay tuned!

RAISE YOUR VOICE!

For those who don't know, over the past 2 years, I've lost my beautiful grandmother and the most fun uncle of all time to pancreatic cancer.

November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month.

This form of cancer is the 4 killer of all cancers and has a virtually 0% survival rate.

Please take the time to click this link. PanCan is a great organization that's trying to raise awareness for this terrible disease. Their goal is to get 1 million clicks this month. Please help support the cause by clicking the pic. Thanks in advance!

Check out this PSA by Dr. Randy Pausch. You may remember him from his famous youtube video, the last lecture.

MEDIEVAL MOTTA

What better way to get over post-election heartache than with a tour of a medieval castle and church? That's what I did! Check out these pics from Motta, the castle, the church of Patron Saint Anastasia, and other sites in the city!

SAINT ANASTASIA CHURCH MOTTA

This is the church at Motta for the city's patron saint, Saint Anastasia. CLICK HERE to read more about Anastasia. She was burned at the stake for her Christianity.

When you see the red curtain, Anastasia's statue is behind it. Each year they bring her out for all to see. But they keep her hidden most of the time so the people will look forward to seeing her.

HAIL TO THE CHEAT

Tonight Mahlon and I went out to the base here for the Autumn Festival. It was a nice party they put on complete with rides, music and of course food...plus, a safe trick or treating environment for kids.

One of our friends wanted Polynesian food. So, for his sake, we stood in the longest line at the festival. Even though I was hungry before we left the house, I stood in line and waited my turn. We waited OVER AN HOUR for our food (mostly b/c the Italians cut in line...it's true!)

Anyway, we finally got our food and we were starving! As we made our way through the crowd I noticed a sailor dressed up like Barack Obama. Luckily, I hid my food before he had a chance to take it and give it to the people who'd been waiting in line for 5 minutes! PHEW!

It was a close one!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Zombie Party – JibJab: Obama, McCain and Palin

CATANIA FIELD TRIP

TODAY was our last day of INDOC together, and what better way to end our classes than to use what we've learned on a FIELD TRIP!!! We went to Catania for the first time today.

Catania is the 2nd largest city in Sicily, and one of the top 10 largest in all of Italy! We were dropped off for the day at the Piazza Duomo. Every Italian city has a Piazza Duomo. It's the square where the big church of the city's patron saint is located. Catania's saint is St Agatha.

The symbol of Catania is the elephant, because the people of Catania are all republicans. Just kidding.

The elephant was believed to protect them from any other dangerous enemies. This is the fountain that Catania is famous for:



The streets around the Piazza Duomo had plenty to see! We walked up and down Via Etnea to do some shopping. There's also a street market featuring fresh meat, cheese, fruits and veggies. The meat is so fresh, some of it's still alive (seafood only!)

The one thing that bothered me was that I REALLY wanted to get a shirt with something written in Italian on it, but those didn't exist! EVERYTHING WAS IN ENGLISH!

"ROCKSTAR" "HOT STUFF" "I <3 NY"

I'M NOT KIDDING!

That was annoying.

But all in all we had an awesome day!