Tonight for one of the first times here (apart from my birthday) I am in a fantastic mood. For the past several weeks I’ve been confronted with so many new things, people, sights, words, customs, and foods, it’s been difficult to just relax. Tonight, now on my third day of miraculous Italian anti-cold medicine, my nasty cold of several weeks is finally on its way out of my system. After dinner with Carla and Niccolo (Carla’s 4 year old adorable, but often difficult grandson), I sat down with my guidebooks.
There are few activities I enjoy more than reading a guidebook about a place I know I can go to. I think I will have to make this a life hobby because over the last couple months I have had an incredible time reading, planning, and dreaming. Tonight my task was to plan out my weekends -- with a huge list of places to go in Italy, I realized my long time here, although freeing, needs a bit of structure if I’m going to make it to all the places on my LIST:
Rome, Venice, Amalfi Coast, Cinque Terre, Florence, Lake Towns, South (Naples/Pompei/Capri), Dolomites, Sardinia, and Sicily, and of course to get out and about in Tuscana (sorry all my maps are in Italian and there’s too much of the language in my brain to write solo in English…so pardon my lapses in itanglish).
Confronted with the task of finding a perfect getaway for Saturday, I have many options and the top are Montepeluciano and Civita di Bagnoregio…now to find the bus schedules.
I think the primary reason for my lifted spirits is the set of classes I get to take in Siena. I swear the school is not paying me to advertise, but honestly, the classes in my mini school in an ancient Sienese house are to put it as I can’t help myself…pretty sweet!
In a varying schedule (on Mondays I have class straight from 9AM until 7PM with no lunch break! And other days I finish at 10AM) I’m taking Italian language, Italian regional culture (we pick a subject to study in local libraries and the city each week and make presentations in Italian every Friday--my first subject is wines of Tuscany), oil painting, creative writing, book making, and art history.
Book making wasn’t one of my top choices, but after meeting the professor I had to sign up. She is Mrs. Doubtfire (the real one). She is an older, quietly artsy woman. I think she’s from Australia originally, but studied at Cambridge, so basically has the “muddled” accent as Pierce Brosnan says in the movie--I know it too well. On the first day, in her perfect british-accent way of storytelling, she told us how she found her way to book making. Her husband’s collection of ancient books “fell into the sea” on a trip in South America, and she learned the art to restore them. I can’t help but imagine some chest of treasure tumbling from a ship and an old woman weaving the contents back together in a dusty library. There is something I’m not sure how to describe…humbling? about weaving the spine of a book. Granted I’m on day 2 of the class, but I can’t imagine I’ll grow tired of it.
In this blog I’ve left out a few taleworthy experiences, namely a 2 hour presentation in only Italian on heart failure recovery in a bank, the following buffet with too many already personal-space defying Italian older women, and last night’s brush with some local musicians in a failed attempt to find someone to play with me. One day I’ll write a long diatribe against a certain breed of 16-25 year old jazz musicians, but in my pleasant good mood, tonight is not the night. I hope as ever everyone at home is well. Goodnight.
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