Ciao Tony,
I hope things are going well for you in Atlanta and things are still good for you and Miss Allison. I am having many adventures and learning a lot! The language is coming along, need to memorize things so I can easily speak to people, but otherwise I can hold a decent conversation if the person speaks slowly.
Italians really have no qualms touching a stranger. On my way home from Lucca this past Sunday, I had this old guy, old enough to be my dad, keep stroking my hair and tell me how pretty it was. Not just once mind you, THREE times.. totally creepy. Otherwise I haven't had too many bad run ins with the Italians.
I am staying in Macerata and at first it was nice because it was a smaller town and could easily access things. Now I am wishing I was in Siene (sp?) and in a much more central location. Macerata is about 30min. from the Adriatic sea. I only got to spend half a day in Siene and am making plans to go back cause I simply loved it!!!! I have yet to go to Florence (it is one of the excursions we are taking as a class, three day trip, pretty cool!) and Assis. I only had three hours in Assisi with my parents and my mom wasn't feeling well so she was not interested in anything but the S. Francesco chiese. It was awesome seeing his grave, but also a little creepy.
I am VERY surprised to see how many people in my group are NOT religious. I am pretty much one out of 3 religious people. I guess I should have expected that seeing as how they are from America, I simply thought since it was a program in Italy more people than not would be religious in some sense..... maybe it is because I am in an extremely art dominated program.... I don't know shrugs*
The people in the AHA group are pretty nice and we get along great. Drinking here has become our past time and we have started calling our favorite starting point, Cafe Central, Cheers because we seem to run into the same people on certain nights and they know us and we know them type of thing. It can be rather fabulous as one of the guys can get us into the club Numero Uno for free, normally it is €15, and we always make sure we are quite liquered up and have no money on us ortherwise we may be too drunk to care that a drink costs €8 each and are definately not worth it!!!! I learned my lesson the first time......
So I am not sure if you are checking my blog or not but I have been trying to keep a good record of events.
This weekend, actually this afternoon, I leave for Capri and am glad to make my way to warmer climates. I keep thinking back to when I would catch you online while you were in Italy and you saying how cold you were even with so many layers and you had no heat. I am now in that situation. The heat in this region can not be turned on till Novemeber 1 and it is already cold enough to wear jackets and gloves. Last night I was so cold while doing some of my reading that I already had a t-shirt and sweater on and decided to put another sweater on but was still cold so put my new zip-up sweatshirt on and then had to leave for my class and was still really cold so put my jacket and gloves on. I was tempted to put another pare of pants on but they were all wet from doing laundry the night before.... not having a dryer sucks ASS!!!!
My jeans are so stretched out that I have to wear a belt otherwise they fall down so far that if I bend over they might just fall off my ass.... kind of crummy!! I asked if anyone went to the laundrymat to use the dryer and Nate had gone once and it cost him €4 for 15min. on the dryer!!! Totally not worth it, those €4 could go towards new pants....
I looked into changing my ticket to a later date but because of the price change during the holiday season and when my classes start I won't be able to change it at all so am trying to do as much as I can with the time I have here. I see it as a very valid exuse to come back after I graduate. Perhaps some day we can travel together...
A lot of people are going into Europe during their 10 day break but I have so much I want to see in Italy that I decided to do all my Sicily sight-seeing during this time. I am going to be Island hopping on the Aeolian Islands. I am very excited.
Well please keep in touch, I try to read your blog when I can but would really love to hear from you as well. I love all the new pictures, they are very entertaining and like showing them to the people here. Most of them are from Oregon but there are a decent number of people from Michigan so we are not COMPLETELY out numbered and I am not the only one with the midwest accent....alright I must go finish packing....
Ciao!
Elena
P.S. when you were here in Italy did you have weekly excursions to nearby towns that totally sucked ass and ate up all your precious traveling time?? I was totally mis-informed about that part of the program and last week I was so fed up that I actually skipped town and got yelled at by the site director. OOOOH WELL! I payed too much money to leave here and feel resentment that I couldn't go to a lot of places I had hoped to go to.
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