I was laughing so hard at Highland cafe that a waitress thought I had something wrong with my mentality. I didn’t care and kept laughing at the book I was reading. I really adore Elizabeth Gilbert, a talented romantic writer, a beautiful woman by physical nature and a brave person who dares to leave her comfort zone to look for her self-balance in other countries that she barely knows about.

And what made me laugh at the most was about Elizabeth attending a soccer game with her Italian friend, Luca, and also the way she explained about how an Italian family become a huge fan of soccer team till death. Elizabeth came to Italy to learn how to speak beautiful Italian and yet, she was “showered” by tons of “beautiful” words and idioms by the old man sitting just right behind her. Words and idioms that Italian language school would never teach you but real life will.

And I love Elizabeth for her complaint of gaining so much weight after enjoying to the fullest each and every piece of cheesy, cryspy and yummy pizza in Naple, the messiest yet simplest and most honest town of Rome. I enjoy the way she describe about her ridiculously handsome Exchange twin pals who are willing to help her practice her Italian and in return, get a chance to practise English for leisure. I am so fond of how she wrote about how she was brought up in an old rural town of Connecticut, where her parents originated from and how different her sister and she were. I felt totally touched when reading about her journey of seeking for inner balance and true meanings of love, together with the definition of the relationship between her and God.

But most of the times, I was laughing so hard at hilarious things she observed in different places and situations. Even language barriers sometimes can make us laugh at our own stupidity or silliness. Just like me trying to learn Swahili (Dan’s mothertongue). Last night, thanks to Tony, my old lost friend, I learnt these:

Mimi = I

ni = is

Wewe = you (okay, now you can imagine how the sound would be)

Asante sana = thank you

ndio = yes

pole = sorry

And I started composing sentences like “Oh Tony, mimi (meow) ni so confused now. Could wewe please explain these and those? Pole for disturbing wewe. Asante sana”

You know the result already. Tony laughed his head off.

Tony is a patient teacher, by the way. I don’t think Dan can be as patient as Tony. Perhaps Dan can tolerate a little but later on, he would probably yank his hair (if he has any) and scream out of frustration and horror. And I think English will again become a peace-making tool that would help preventing 3rd World War from happening. But I love the language, though. Swahili sounds very cute, friendly and close to me. It’s not because that’s Dan’s mothertongue but it is something that I find familiar to be with.

I guess Dan would be so happy to know how I feel about his mothertongue.

By the way, today my mom asked about him.

“When is Dan coming?”, my mom frown her brows as high as they could be.

“I don’t know. No news from him since he left for home to renew his visa. I guess he would be back to the States to finish his studies and we’ll see what’s heading to next”, I gave her a long yawn.

“So would you both want to stay in our house?”, her question made me feel doubtful a bit.

“I’m not sure yet, mom. But probably we’ll live separately. You know, pri…”

“Privacy and noise filtering… Yes I know”, mom quickly cut in.

Pregnant pause…

“So you would not be sure how long you will remain in Vietnam, would you?”, she asked again.

“Yeah, that’s the problem”, I nodded.

“You need to let me know so I can plan how to rebuild or renovate the house”, she turned at the TV.

“Yeah, we’ll see”, I headed downstair to pack up and return to my flat.

Oh, mom is really concerned about how I’m gonna live after getting married. She gives me all sorts of advice regarding failures & successes in marriage. She was so obssessed with this topic that I really had to stop her half way before she was going too far. There is still a long way for me and Dan to go before thinking of tieing the knot although we did think of it and it’s definitely listed in our plan. We still have a lot of things to work on now and can’t quite think about a fabulous wedding just yet. Settlement is something that needs more planning and weighing options.

Okay… enough for now. I would be rather in bed now, dreaming about a busy day tomorrow.

I’ll update you guys more often, promised!