Learning Italian?

I've had a good idea.

I think I've blogged about the Ilac Centre before. They have a library in there that's always full of people because there's a free language lab and there's a magazine section and you can just sit and read or do whatever you feel like. It's a cool idea, having a library in a downtown shopping mall.

Plus, there's a room in there where they arrange language exchange meetings. So I'm thinking, maybe I'll go there once in a while and study Italian. After all, my house mate is Italian. I won't tell him what I'm doing; that way if I start to understand I'll know what he's saying if he talks about me on the phone. Ha, ha!

I know there's an amazing library at college, but you know what? I'm there all day long and the last thing I want to do in the evenings is go back to Trinity. This will be a whole different place and I'm hoping I'll meet different types of people at the weekendly language exchange.

In other news, I've decided to learn how to make great soup. I'm tired of not knowing how to cook and I think soup is a good place to start. I have even bought a recipe book. I can show it to you on Amazon but I picked up a second hand copy at the Liberty Mall. I've only been there for a few minutes just before closing time but I'm gonna check it out this weekend as it looks like the sort of place that's in my budget!

Anyway, back to soup: I went down to the greengrocer with my new(ish) book and showed it to him, because I'm not so great at knowing what's what in the cooking department. I LOVE that guy and this is why: When I told him that I was going to get into soup cooking, he said that every day he'll put aside "imperfect" vegetables for me -- like funny shaped carrots and stuff: "They taste just as good, love," he said, "but there's a lot of people who won't buy them. I'll let you have them for almost nothing because I hate to see things go to waste."



So that's that: I'll be living on soup from now on! Let's hope I can get to grips with this whole cooking business.



I told my friendly greengrocer I was really grateful, and he said, "Sure I've a daughter meself and I'd like to think of someone looking out for her over there."

Apparently, she's a milliner in Manhattan! Pretty cool, huh? She does all that fancy stuff, and she's planning to come back to Ireland when she's ready to set up her own business.

So that's me today. Three cheers for the weekend!