3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage... all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ....into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films..... {completely crushworthy}

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

yep, I think I'm in love....

The thing about a long California commute is that it allows you a lot of time for reflection and thoughts. The past few weeks I've had a lot of wonderful, new people appear in my life. With that comes opening the Italian door, what my experiences were like, the food, the people, life in general and the dreaded question ...of what brought you to Italy.

Maybe it's the long week I've had, a happily full plate of projects at work but tonight on my drive home I wanted to escape work-mode reflecting back on all the conversations I've been having lately about Italy, and my experience there. It reminded me of how much I miss zia- among so many other things. In between pacific coast highway and the five freeway,  tears began to roll down my cheeks as I remembered this woman. A lady unlike any I've ever met and with a heart bigger than the world. I was immediately family, it didn't matter that when we met I didn't speak Italian, I was family. Tonight I missed her like I would miss my own grandmother, with so much else from that bitter-sweet experience.

{me-pre brunette- and zia}

It began filled with so much anticipation, overwhelming hope, passion and excitement. Embarking on a new adventure in a foreign country, ready to conquer life and the world together. Nothing was going to stop us...

And yet it ended with betrayal, and deceit...with broken promises and crushed dreams. Life showed me it's one-sided unfairness, and peoples selfish choices, and it arrived again at my door in crushed boxes.

My dad protected me as much as he could for months in his Emily safety bubble, keeping me from having to deal with the beat-up boxes bursting at the seams with painful memories and a lost life.... until today.

Today as we moved the boxes in the California storage. I realized that I'm not the woman who excitedly packed up those boxes in anticipation for our once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I'm not the woman who was forced to leave Italy due to someone else's choices. I no longer look at those boxes and see the brokenness of that woman, or of the world, but a woman who has overcome dauntingly overwhelming odds, a woman whose life isn't packed away in those broken boxes, but who's life is happily in this moment. A woman who's able to walk into a room and hold her head up high, who's learning to fall in love with her new life path, a woman who's learning to accept another person's free will and choices made for her life. Learning to fall in love with herself and God all over again. A woman whose boxes may still arrive shattered, but she herself is no longer so.

Da sola

{photo credit}

In challenging myself, I wanted to take the most frightening thing for me...and learn to break away from it. My biggest fear...being by myself. But not just being by myself, but to be comfortable doing things by myself.  The last seven years, I've had a partner in crime so to speak to share life experiences with, and while I think of myself as an independent woman,  I think when faced with doing things by yourself (and especially for yourself) we can tend to take a step back and let the fears or insecurities take over and miss out on something beautiful all together.

This week, amidst some crazy emotionally challenges, I took the opportunity to really start branching out on my own- breaking free of my comfort zone of friends.  I threw myself into new experiences, a new community group from my church, a meet up group of like minded non-Italians {and Italians} who've lived in Italy to speak and watch La Tigre e La Neve, and spending quality time just by myself {ok, so this one was a little easy to do- but it's good to do nonetheless}.

What did I learn...that I can do anything that I put my mind too. I met new people, made new friends, and found a new level of hope in myself.  I found that I can hush out any insecurities that come into my head, and the more I do...the more quiet they become. Re-building yourself {and your life} involves challenging yourself, and in challenging yourself becoming a better version of who and what you want to be.

Now, where will I go this week?

 {photo credit}

This last week was an emotionally difficult week for me, but it made me stop and think about all the wonderful things {and people} that are a part of my life right now...

This week I'm thankful and happy for:

* The warm weather!  There's no reason to be sad when it's almost 80 degrees out in the middle of January!

* My dad because along with his honesty, love and support, he also sends me photos of new record players for me to purchase and helps me dream up new dreams for Emily.

* Shower curtains {see below!}

* Baking brownies with Grandma

* Spending some quality quiet time with God 

* Challenging myself with new experiences...even if they're only two minutes away

* Friday morning coffee dates with ladies who challenge me to think outside of my own understanding

* Quality time with Emily- seeing my growth, challenging myself, learning to a better me. There's nothing quite better than that.

Gratitude

I love this photo from The Selby...it reminds me of our bathtub/semi-shower situation I had in Italy.

What I'm thankful for this week, having a shower with curtains.

So long, farewell 2010!

To a new chapter, new friends, new challenges, new adventures, peace, love and joy.

Have a fun and safe new year!

{photo credit}

{photo credit}

As the new year approaches, I've been spending a lot of time thinking and reflecting back on 2010. 

For me, 2010 started off to be one the best years of my life. In fact, it was my goal that 2010 would be filled with lots of love, happiness, new dreams and new adventures. That reality quickly changed, and life for me was put onto a new road, back home with nothing but two suitcases filled with clothes and a hope that I'd figure out what the hell just happened. But this isn't going to be a post about overwhelming obstacles that God brought into my life in 2010 but rather, the new found promise he gave me.  

The fact of the matter is, while this past year will be known as one of the darkest chapters in my life, it's ending with a light at the end of the tunnel. God has used this time with me to open my eyes, not only to myself, but to the people that are in my life. He has taught me about the selfishness of people, their actions, decisions and how they and I handle temptations and trials. From that, I've learned the true definition of what it is to love, to communicate, to stand by promises and to handle overwhelming trials in life. He has taught me not to be anxious for what lies ahead in my life, but to rejoice in the promise that he's in control (and not me)- to take each challenge that he brings me and look for the lesson that he's trying to teach me through it- to constantly learn and grow because I am loved.

I look forward to 2011 because I know that it won't be perfect. I know that there are a new set of challenges that await me (and not only those that I know about) but with each new challenge I'm bringing a new sense of optimism and confidence with me. Most times things don't have to go down the road the way they do, but in the end I have to give it back up to God and let him work in my life- he hasn't disappointed me yet. 

So 2011, all I have to say is bring it. I'm ready to go!

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11

dear good guys,

I'm sorry us good girls fall for the bad boys first.

They may have had our heart for a brief moment in life, but you my dears will have our hearts forever.

{photo credit}

love is patient, love is kind

nom nom nom

Getting back into the Italian swing of things, I've been starting to cook like I did back in Italy. Slowly but surely, the recipes are coming back to me, and I'm trying to make everything (food-wise) just like I had back in Italy.  This last weekend I made the traditional Bolognese ragu for the family.

While you're supposed to eat with tagliatelle, I cheated and just used pasta on hand (bad non-italian)

Buon appetito!

Ingredients:
150 g of onions (half an onion)
70 g of carrots (one full carrot)
50 g of celery  (one full stalk of celery)
50 g of lard (I used olive oil- enough to cover the bottom of the pot and it worked beautifully.)
600 g of beef (1-2 packages)
1 or 2 glasses of red wine (2 in the sauce and 3 for me! the more the merrier)
1 bottle of tomato puree or tomato paste
salt as needed
pepper as needed

Mince all the vegetables and add to the lard (or olive oil) into a single mix. Brown the vegetables on a medium heat until they change their color ( a light hazel color) The rule for an authentice "Bolognese" sauce is "it must be prepared to the way it smells." Yep, no timers here- just your nose. The next step is ready when the you smell the carrot, the celery and the onions in one perfume.

Add in the meat to the vegetables and brown on a high heat. Once the meat is browned add in salt and pepper (to taste) and 1-2 glasses of red wine and keep stirring. Blend until you can't smell the wine and meat separately but together (it works) at that point add in one bottle of tomato puree, stir and let simmer for 2 hours- stirring occasionally.

I made this on a Sunday morning for lunch with the family. The house smelled...well, unbelievable and having the family around the table, wine flowing and spending that quality time with everyone...life couldn't have gotten much better.

Love is...

Love and honesty.

 simple, no? 

{photo credit}

This morning I had a meeting in which I was given an assignment...learn to love.

We think we know love, we think we know how to love... that love is this mystical emotion in relationships and marriage that either stays or goes, and a given among family members. Some think love never changes, their ideas and concepts of love can never change. But can it? 

I think I know how to love, and yet I thought I knew how to love. But in an effort to be honest with myself, be honest with those around me, I've decided to explore this idea of "love" further. 

 Is my idea of love so far from the truth? 

This is my journey- and it starts with this. We've all heard it time and time again, but have we really stopped to reflect what it means in our everyday life, our interaction with people? I can honestly say I haven't, till now.

1 Corinthians 13:4-13
 ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
 ⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
 ¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

This week I'm learning that Love is patient, and this I know will be one of my biggest challenges.

I {heart} New York

My whirlwind of a week has finished, and I'm back in sunny southern california.

The week flew by, just as I had expected it to- filled with meetings, press showings, meeting up with friends, networking, living up the reputation of the "city that never sleeps" because I never did.

I'll be honest, I was worried about heading back to New York. Worried that I wouldn't want to leave, that I would completely fall to pieces. Why God is so great, he didn't let that happen to me. He didn't let me break down, but rather just the opposite. I wasn't sad over what I lost but sensed a great strength and was grateful that I had a job that allows me to work in such an amazing city, for the experiences that I shared in that city, that I was able to see the people that we're in part the motivation for wanting to move back and at the end of the day, I still got to come home to my family. New York will always have a piece of my heart, and I guess that's the blessing & curse wrapped into one, that my heart will forever be split into three equal parts for California, New York and Italy.

Getting on the plane back to California, I had a sense of peace, a feeling that I've been longing for for months. I have God to thank for that.

Next challenge, eventually making it back to Europe.

life meet art

I recently stumbled upon Jenny Holzer, a conceptual artist from America, and her light projects on public buildings. 

Her sharing of intimate moments of love and desire for the world, around the world, makes me stop and reflect back on my own memories of love and life in those particular spots. 

Rome

San Diego 

New York

Paris 

Florence

New Chapter

{post run fun}

Saturday I ran my first 5k! I may not have gone at lightening speed, and my running buddy might have ran the slowest 5k of her life, but we finished and we finished together.  I loved running the race, and it was even more special to do it with my sister. She's been there for me in every possible way, always cheering me on and never letting me fall, and I love her dearly.

I can't wait for my next race!