Ciao!

So, I've never been much of a blogger...but I have an hour to kill and exams to study for, so I figured, what the heck? My best friend actually met her current boyfriend through some kind of online journal type thing, so she is always talking about that. Not that I think or even want anything like that to happen for me...we'll just call it a sense of curiosity. I have my doubts that anyone will even read this blog, but at the very least, it should be somewhat therapeutic, no? I have never blogged before, and I am a firm believer in trying new things, so why not?
Now that we've commenced with the obligatory randomness, I guess I should talk a little bit about myself. I am an Italian student at UNC (as in I study all things Italian, not of Italian descent) getting ready to study abroad and apply for grad school. Thus the name of my blog, frivolezze...it's an Italian word that means "trifles" or "frivolities"...kind of what I consider this blog to be for me. How I stumbled upon the Italian major here is a thing unbeknownst even to me, I can't really explain it without sounding flighty or uncommittal. I knew that I wanted to take Italian as my foreign language to fufill my general ed. requirements, because I had been to Italy with my family and loved it, and the language is just so beautiful! So I was sitting in my Italian 101 class on a crisp Fall day, and my professor (a grad student by the name of Cale, to whom I am eternally grateful) decided to give a lecture on culture, including the mafia, in Southern Italy. From that moment on, I was hooked! That, as well as a book I read at the same time called "Christ Stopped at Eboli," a fantastic work which I would recommend to anyone. It could almost be compared to a blog of the 1940s in Italy. Carlo Levi, the author, had been exiled to a small villiage in the South of Italy, and the book gives an account of his daily life and interactions with the people of the region, still heavily under the influence of the feudalism which survived in the south well into the 1900s. The characters are so real, you find yourself enveloped in the story. So, between the two, I quickly developed a strong love for the language and culture of Southern Italy. Specifically, however, my interests have gone a little over to the dark side, as most of my studies now involve the development and influences of the mafia in Sicily, mostly from a historical standpoint...it's a bit dangerous to to a current events study of the mafia, at any point. No cement shoes for me, please.
I also teach piano lessons in Durham (which I am not fully convinced is a separate city from Chapel Hill). I have 12 wonderful little piano students, ranging in age from 6 to 12, who definately keep me on my toes, as a pianist and as a teacher! I have played the piano for about 13 years now, which sounds, to me anyway, like a longer time than it actually is in the grand scheme of things. I have only really been able to play what I have wanted to play for the past 6 or 7 years...the first bit was just learning the skills and music reading abilities needed to get to a point where I could start working on developing and perfecting certain aspects of my playing. I have never really been comfortable performing, I'm not really sure why. I have never gotten a bad review, and any concert I've given in the past always yielded tons of compliments on my style and expression. But I get so gosh darn nervous! My knees shake so badly that I can barely press the pedals, and I don't enjoy it for being so nervous. Maybe one day I will "grow out of" the nerves, but in the meantime, I play for myself, whoever can hear me through the closed practice room doors, my family, and my students. Speaking of whom, I had the extreme honor and privilege yesterday of playing a piece for one of my students, who composed her first piece of music, something her teacher hasn't even been able to accomplish yet! I have never been more proud! We spent about 20 minutes of her hour lesson yesterday just working through the first bit she had come up with, writing it down on manuscript paper and working with the chords to go along with her melody, and what a blessing it was for me as a teacher to be able to give her the tools so that hopefully one day she can share her music with the world! Maybe I'm being sentimental, but its my blog and I'm entitled. It has always fascinated me the idea of how one person can hear a song in their head, play it, write it down on a man-made system of bars and lines, and all of the sudden anyone in the world can now play and hear and love the melody that began in someone's head! Music truly is the universal language.
On that somewhat sappy note, I am going to have to wrap up for right now and head off to a meeting.
Tanti auguri!