Alright, Dad’s broken out the poetry – I guess it’s time I should post. : ) I better make this one epic, too, so for that I will need coffee. *gets up and walks the 10 feet to her kitchen, grinds some Haitian Blue Voodoo beans (I drink the coffee, but it keeps Kim awake), puts them in her Cadillac Coffee Pot with some water, pushes on*

This morning is going very nicely. We’re in the very beginning of our new monthly production cycle with the magazine and that means we’ve actually got some down time! Hooray! So I wake up all relaxed, and hop online. No work crisis emails, but I do have a couple of invitations from friends on-island to go out this week, which is great! I’m quite the workaholic here so I haven’t done much going out in a good long while. Anyway, continuing in the vein of small pleasant things that have made this morning awesome, I had the perfect amount of milk for my cereal and my bill from my mechanic wasn’ t nearly as much as I expected it to be. Yay! : )

Switching gears, Tyler (the publisher’s husband) put together 4 CDs of quality Bossa Nova for me, which I’m enjoying the heck out of. (This is the good stuff, FYI, all in Brazilian Portuguese and not at all elevator-y.)

On a slightly weightier note, I’ve decided on what I’m going to try for the next leg of Kelly’s Crazy Journey of Life. (In my head, my life plays out like the transition shots in the Indiana Jones movies where the little red line goes across the old timey maps… maybe I should get a bad-ass hat…) Anyway, I have finally found a Grad program that I’m interested in! And by interested in, I actually mean obsessed with. The program is a year-long Masters from the University of Gastronomic Sciences on Food Culture & Communication – and it’s in Colorno, Italy. And get this, it’s not just in Colorno, but the campus for the Masters program is housed in the Reggia di Colorno, an 18th century ducal palace, once occupied by Napolean’s second wife, Mary Louise. *swoon*

The link above will take you to a page with program details, but it’s basically a combination of courses on food history, food and cultural anthropology, food production, and food journalism! They basically sat down and said, “Hey, let’s take all the stuff that Kelly likes, and make a grad program for it – in Italy!”  Gah! Plus, the program incorporates “stages” (read: week-long field trips) that take you around Italy, France, Spain and Crete (?) to learn about how the local specialty food products (cheese, wine, sausage, oil, olives, etc.) are made and have been made for generations. The program finishes off with a few weeks-long internship in your field. I think Cucina Italiana might be a neat magazine to intern for… : )

Okay, so aside from the fact that Italy is virtually the only country in the West that I can think of with bureaucracy to rival the PRC’s, the program is also reasonably expensive. About a week into researching every scholarship or student loan option I could think of, it dawned on me that this might be the sort of thing I could apply for a Fulbright for. Scrolling down the Fulbright Italy page, I landed at the last entry… a grant offered to one student per year to attend THIS VERY PROGRAM!! I mean, it’s not just for any student who wants to attend this University, it’s for a student who wants to attend this University for the Food Culture & Communications program!! For the Fulbright, I do have to teach myself enough Italian to pass as “proficient” but I got a copy of the Italian Rosetta Stone, so I’m optimistic. : )

So that’s my longest Long Shot plan from Longistan. We’ll see how it goes. : )

(And by the way, this Italy plan by no means indicates that I am getting tired of living in the VI. Not at all!! But the Fulbright application is due in September, and the Masters program itself wouldn’t start ’til March of 2010. I’m mostly counting on getting shot down this year anyway, but I figure if I apply two years in a row, that ought to improve my chances. I’m just thinkin’ ahead. You know how I like having plans. ^_^)

Last tidbit of information for this post – Tegan and her esteemed colleague Christine Bachman are coming to visit me in a week!! Hooray!! I’m so excited I could just die! : ) We’re going to rent a kayak and paddle across to Whistling Cay, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. It’s this tiny mini-island with the ruins of a Danish customs house on it and it’s supposed to have phenomenal(!) snorkeling around the point. Also, there will be much rum, merriment and cooking. Hooray! My first flat-guests! (Annie was a house-guest, ’cause we stayed upstairs in the big house.)

Okey-dokey, I’m going on to my second cup of coffee and am going to get some interviews lined up and junk.

We’ll end with a picture of me and my scuba instructor from one of the holiday parties on the island.

Ciao!
Kelly