| Mexico (finally)

life. got. busy.

Sometimes life gets busy. I look up and all of a sudden it has been a month since I've posted an entry. It's already half way through October and I'm still not sure where September went. I fear it will be December and I'll still be carving pumpkins at the rate I'm going.

Instead of listing the million and one things that crammed themselves onto our calendar and prevented me from having the time or energy to post, I'll simply share with you a few images from our recent trip to Myrtle Beach, SC.

*note: if you want to go to myrtle beach, early october is the perfect time to do it. the water is still reasonably warm and you practically have the ocean all to yourself.

Stoltzfus Farm

During our abbreviated trip to Pennsylvania, we stopped by a farm owned by the Stoltzfus family. (For those of you from Lancaster County - yes, I realize that could mean a number of farms) Maybe I should say "A Stolzfus family." After city living, it was refreshing to pull into an amish farm off a country road and pick out pumpkins at my leisure, look in on the baby cows, peek at the horses, pet the dog, wander around one of the barns. It was just relaxing. Slower paced. Nice.

Side note: cows are easily spooked. I leaned over to pet one and scared three of them into running across to the other side of the pen. whoops. I'll stick with the dog.

Another side note: Yes, I carted pumpkins and indian corn the whole way back to Chicago. They're so much more expensive out here.

geocaching in a golf cart

Geocaching for those of you who are not familiar with the term, is basically modern treasure hunting. Based on the latitude and longitude you attempt to find a hidden cache. It's really quite fun. Last weekend we were up in Michigan and the lake community we stayed at had a bunch hidden around the grounds. We grabbed a list of the locations (with their clues), found some wifi to download the coordinates and hopped in the golf cart and we were off... until it got too dark to find things. Who knew a golf cart could be so much fun?

Capri

My apologies... I've been negligent in posting this week. Let me make it up to you with an onslaught of pictures from Capri.

Enjoy!

I love Italian doorways/entrances. I'll spare you the essay I once wrote on them and just say, "They're awesome."
Some day I'll make a book of my favorites.

tmam: parte tre

My apologies for leaving you hanging in suspense the last few days. It's just been so busy around here lately I haven't had time to think about writing more down. But, since you're being so patient, I'll try.

Let's see where were we... oh, right, Orvieto (the first time around).

When I think about trying to describe Orvieto to you, so many things run through my mind that I hardly know where to start. Coming upon it from the road below, it seems like a town rose right out of the tufa rock, high above everything else, sitting contentedly on a tall plateau. The town below it is quite modernized, but as you wind your way up to the top, things begin to take on a distinctly older hue. Roads are paved with cobblestone and sand and weave about in no particular order. Houses are tucked into nooks and crannies, with clothes lines hanging from balconies. The tiny cars zip around corners and make seemingly impossible turns on roads built long before macchine (cars). The church bells toll on random hours and from nearly all directions, as there is a church in almost every piazza.

The convent I lived in was built in the 1400s and had not only a courtyard, a terrace, a marble staircase, but also caves. Yes, caves that formed part of the basement, where our kiln for firing our ceramice (ceramics) sat in an abandoned corner. There were times when it felt like living in a maze of sorts. Stairs leading one way, hallways leading another, doors opening to rooms I didn't know existed. It made for an adventure each time I left my room.

The impact of not knowing the language was bigger than I could have anticipated. Because Orvieto is relatively small and doesn't get many touristi, very few people spoke english, in any amount. This meant every interaction I wanted to have outside of the convent (who's nuns didn't speak english either) it required speaking Italiano on my part. It became obvious early on that picking up a language was not one of my strong suits. I struggled to hear where the breaks were for each word, I confused my pronunciations, I labored over what article went in front of which gendered word (and what gender was it??). It was painful and time consuming and most of all humbling. I watched other students learn it with much more ease and for the first time I felt like the kid who sits in the back of the class, not at all confident in their ability to learn something new.

I can now look back and realize that my main difficulty was my unwillingness to make a mistake. If I was going to speak, I was going to speak correctly; grammar, pronunciation, all of it would be spot on. And so, because I set the bar so high for myself, I rarely spoke. Never in my life have I said so little for four months (or so it felt that way). I would study and study and figure out how to say something, only to break under pressure and forget it all. I distinctly remember being on a train, sitting with some of my friends and a few Italian women who had engaged my friends in conversation. It was soon apparent that I was saying not a word and so they tried to "help" me out by coaxing me into speaking. This was mortifying. Any vocabulary I might want to use was flying out of my head, scared off by the pressure. And so, as I had become accustomed to doing, I just smiled and shook my head. But they persisted and kept repeating words in an effort to get me to repeat them back to them. I remember thinking, "Is this what it was like for kids in school? For those who just didn't get it as quickly as others? Did we pressure them into feeling even more inadequate by putting them on the spot and forcing them to learn before they were ready?" If anything it gave me a great appreciation for students who struggle and overcome those struggles to learn. Because my natural instinct was to hide in the corner and be a mute. Luckily, the second time around was not so traumatic. In fact, it was quite full of great interactions, but only because I decided to allow myself to make mistakes, lots of them. And wouldn't you know? It worked.

More later, but for now I must get to work...

PS: I did make it to the library on Monday and I came home with Julie Andrews memoirs of her early years (brought on by a recent watching of Sound of Music on tv).

PPS: The picture was taken from inside San Lodovico, looking out to the stairs that lead up to the terraza that overlooked the valley below.

| straight from Capri

I was having some fun last night and updated our desktop wallpaper image to one I'd taken while sitting on the dock in Capri waiting for our jetfoil to arrive to take us back to the mainland. M was so impressed with it ("You took that? And didn't do any editing?" : it was very sweet of him) that I thought I'd share it with you and your desktop. So if you're in the mood for a nautical theme, just click on the link BELOW the picture for the large version.



Desktop version right HERE

lens flare and sun spots in orvieto

for a friend who's fond of those little spots...

|Via Della Commenda, Orvieto: just off the Corso|

firenze

I have a lot of pictures from Florence I want to share with you, so this will come in installments over the next few days.

|Il Duomo, Firenze : Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore|

|Cupola of Il Duomo, Firenze : designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, to appreciate the magnitude of this endeavor you can read more about it here.|

|Standing on Lungarno Torrigiani looking towards Ponte alle Grazie, with our backs to Ponte Vecchio, Firenze|

20 points to the person who can spot my Mom!

tmam: parte duo

Today's "to do list" is quite long, but I know you're waiting for the second installment of the story I started on Friday, so I'll tell a bit more to hold you over til I have more time.



M and I often joked that we spent the first year of dating apart more than together. Leaving him at the end of sophomore year was hard, and I immediately began counting the days until he would visit. He was in Colorado most of the summer so it wasn't like we could just drive to one another on the weekends. I have many wonderful handwritten letters from that summer, exchanged back and forth across the many miles.

He came for about a week just before school started and before I was to fly off to Italy. I was on cloud nine. I probably had the biggest smile plastered across my face all week. Watching him drive away at the end of that week nearly broke my heart (and his, I'm sure). My poor mother spent the rest of the following week trying to comfort my tear stained self. As any normal melodramatic young love, I was sure I was going to curl up and die without him for the next 4 months.

About a week after he left I received a package in the mail, that along with other things, contained a dated letter for each week I was in Italy. I wasn't supposed to open them until the date written on the outside. Each week was filled with anticipation of opening the next letter. It was a way of counting down the days til I was home and could see him again. I distinctly remember getting to half way and thinking, "finally... it's downhill from here."

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me back up and tell you about Orvieto...

(next time!)

ancient modeling

|Sculpture from Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome : a piazza designed my Michelangelo in 1536–1546, commissioned by the Farnese Pope Paul III|

|Fountain from the courtyard of the Vatican Museum, Rome|

|Sculpture from the Trevi Fountain, Rome : marks the terminal point of an aqueduct that supplied water to ancient Rome|

orvieto

All little info on Orvieto:

Elevation: 1,066 ft
Area: 108.5 sq miles
Population: 21,000
Region: Umbria
Name origin: "ancient city" urbs vetus in Latin

|View of Orvieto from our hike to a convent nearby : I love how it just sits atop the rock, above everything else.|

|Close up of Il Duomo, Orvieto - where I attended mass on Sundays|

|Some laundry hanging on a line off of Corso Cavour : Nearly everyone line dries their clothing as a way to conserve energy costs.|

|Fruit stand of a shop off the Corso : Apple = Mele|

lunedi, marzo ventuno

|Piazza San Angelo, Orvieto|

|Costa De' Magnoli, Firenze|

|Piazza Simone Mosca, Orvieto|

the post vacation let down

It is a blur. An 11 day blur of driving, plane flights, bus rides, site seeing, eating, sleeping, shopping, touring, more bus rides and then more plane flights. As our bodies have still not yet adjusted to being back on Chicago time, we awoke in the wee hours of the morning. It should make for an interesting afternoon and evening when our eyes start to feel the lag.

As for the pictures (and the videos) that's going to take me a bit to compile and edit them for you. After living there for 4 months I took a total of about 360 pictures, this time in only 9 days I took 1,755. Film vs digital.



The comforts of being home:
1. A scalding hot shower in my own bathroom, with my own fuzzy towels.
2. Putting my kettle on the stove for my usual morning tea.
3. Clean clothes.
4. Our bed, with our pillows.
5. Living out of my dresser instead of a suitcase.
6. Falling asleep on the couch.
7. My wooden floors.
8. Getting back in touch with friends.

The sighs of leaving behind:
1. Cappuccino every morning.
2. Melon wrapped in prosciutto.
3. Church bells to wake me.
4. Cobblestone roads that date back to BC
5. The quiet that comes with not fully understanding the language around you.
6. GELATO. No need to explain.
7. My feet in the Mediterranean while I search for the right pebble to take home.
8. Sharing Italia with my family.