milan thunderstorm? lizzie likes

Will your system be all right
When you dream of home tonight?
There is no message we're receiving
Let me know, is your heart still beating?

-The Killers, 'Are We Human'

These last few days have been unbelievably hot. I go to bed with a slight sheen of sweat around my lips and at the back of my neck, and I wake up with my hair up in a messy bun (which I can never remember doing in my sleep), on top of the covers, feeling the way babies must feel when they're fussy and can't stop tossing and turning.

At camp each day, I just have this weird feeling, like I'm constantly nauseated from always being immersed in 80 degree weather. I drink as much water as I can, but it never seems to be enough.

Tae kwon do was absolutely brutal last night. Start with the fact that it was upwards of 80 degrees in the studio because it isn't air conditioned (or the AC wasn't on). Then add to that the random running and sprints, and then a little game I like to call 'Toss the paddle in the air while everyone is doing random running and see if anyone catches it; if they don't, everyone does pushups.' It would make an amazing softball drill. In fact, it brought out my softball instincts- I guess I laid out (yeah, on my stomach) to catch one that I saw falling to the floor. Everyone was impressed- at least, I'd like to think they were. And for the price my knees paid, they better have been impressed.

After that, there were a lot more pushups, which I failed at due to my weak shoulder (and just general weakness, really). I didn't even want to try and translate things like 'cortisone shot' and 'impingement' and 'hyperflexibility' so I just took a knee and started doing girl pushups. Unfortunately, my knees had already started to swell, so that wasn't really an option either. They are still nice and puffy today.

There were lateral kicks. There were flying front kicks. There were donkey kicks and roundhouse kicks. There were lateral kicks, bouncing off of a person and spinning to deliver a circular kick with the same leg (without touching the ground). There was some bounching off of a wall and a little bit of punching. All in all, it was a great time (although I'm sure my opinion would be a bit different if I didn't have my prescription anti-inflammatories to run home to after the lesson). I forgot to mention, the other two girl tutors opted not to return, and they hit up the mall instead, so it was just Taylor and myself. No comment.

This past April, while trying to survive my last college softball season, I basically entered into a torrid love affair with ice baths and freezing showers. I thought it might look a little strange if I dumped all my host family's ice (do they even have ice?) into the tub and sat in it for 8-12 minutes, so I took a shower with only the cold water turned on. I think I'd be feeling much worse today if I hadn't done that. After all, I had to lead a couple of songs in the warmup circle this morning, and there is a direct correlation between the amount of enthusiasm you display and the amount of enthusiasm you see from the kids.

We've had some interesting family meals since the horse and cheese fiasco that was the entire weekend. Just one I guess, tonight, unless you count the entire pizza that I ate solo (post-taekwondo) as a family meal (which I would not, since the family was watching Daddy Day Care while I ate alone in the kitchen (which is part of the living/dining/kitchen area). Anyway, tonight I had some sort of eggplant, zucchini, tomato, and cheese casserole while the kids ate kebabs.

Then after dinner, there was some of the ripest cantaloupe I've ever eaten, and CHEESE.

It was arranged in little cubes with seasoning on top, and it looked fairly appetizing. A couple of the kids were excited about it, but the mom literally said, "No, it's all for Liz; she is a vegetarian so she must eat all the cheese she can." Literally. In Italian.

What else. . . the final show is coming together, and the storyline is basically this: There's a girl sitting on a couch (my wheelchair-bound student) and she turns on the TV to the World Cup (which goes into halftime), and then changes to the news, then Twilight, then X-Factor, then back to the World Cup. This way, there will be multiple short, easy-to-memorize scenes and there should be a lot of action. I feel that it's solid. I absolutely forbade the children to sing any Lady Gaga, because I'd hate to have another Michael Jackson situation on my hands. Shakira and Ke$ha, however, are in my show, and they are fair game.