eat pray love (film)

Has it already been a week since my first post?

In the past week, I got a job (yay!), took care of my sick nephew (exhausting!) and saw Eat Pray Love. As is always the case, the book is better than the movie. It's impossible to distance myself from what I expect to happen with what actually happens in the film. I could understand how different events needed to be tied into one event for the sake of time constraints, but nonetheless found it annoying.

My sister commented that the one thing that really bothered her about the movie was how put together Julia Robert's was in India. She expected some sweat and no makeup (or at least movie makeup that looked like no make up). She was there to pray! But Hollywood is Hollywood. Everything is packaged neatly. Even Liz's depression was glossed over. (and her mosquito bites looked fake)

What I loved most was traveling through the world for a couple hours. It made me want to go back to Italy, actually stop in Naples this time and eat some pizza! There is a scene in Rome where she's watching a couple making out, and the man's hand is traveling around the woman's exposed midriff....then Liz is served spaghetti, and watching her eat it feels like watching the lovers. Indulgent. Forbidden.

I can't believe it has already been seven years since I first went to Italy to study abroad! The time went by so quickly. I knew so little about the country and think it was one of the first times I realized how little I really know about the world. Many of the (extremely well-known) sites we visited were completely unknown to me then. In a way, that ignorance I had freed me from the burden of self-expectation to hit every historical spot and see every major painting or sculpture and just love Italy for what it is now. Of course, this involved copious amounts of food. However, unlike most people, who gain weight after traveling in countries known for their food, with no restraint I lost ~25 lbs! I didn't even realize I had until one day I pulled down my jeans to go to the bathroom without thinking. No unbuttoning, unzipping. How could that happen? It was the first time I had lived without a car, walking everywhere, including up a steep hill to get to the studio buildings multiple times a day. So even the giant dinners and daily desserts didn't stay with me.

Since then, I've taken walking to be my philosophy for a good life. If you can walk everywhere you need to go, fantastic. If you can get to all the extra places on a bus or train, even better. So even in New Zealand, where it seems most long-term backpackers (we were there for 2 years) buy a car, we didn't. We took the bus, the train, and mostly lived in each town for a long time and walked.

So, even though I gained most of that weight back, I'm still a walker. I think the obstacle now is that we live too close to everything, which requires very little effort, and feels very luxurious.