Things are picking up....

Thanks to the car. Ok, we were lazy today and even drove it to school instead of walking, but it was raining, so I think that justifies it!

Yesterday we made a friend in class. Her name is Ruth and she's from Australia. She's only 18 but jess and I get along really well with her, nice to have a third party around.

We finally got to go to one of the main University's 2 cafeterias for lunch. If I am not mistaken, it is pretty much open to anyone. they never asked for student IDs and we saw older people, workmen etc.

For the amazing price of just under 2 euros. about $2.40 American you can have a very filling, really decent lunch. It consists of four what they call "courses" here.
You get bread, one fruit, which consisted of your choice of banana, plum, apple, peach or a big slice of watermelon.

Then a piece of pizza (more like 1/2 a pizza) and/or a bowl of a pasta or rice dish.

Then either a vegetable like zhucchini or mixed veg or a fresh salad.

Then and empty large plastic cup for either water or pop at a fountain.

WOW! when you are on a budget, this is a real find. We got in there about noon, and there was a small gatheirng of people. We saw food inside, but it didn't open when it said it would. After about 15 minutes, someone banged on the door and asked when they would open. They said in 45 minutes, but something was said, and they very quickly opened the doors. (threat of a riot from hungry students??)

We sat there the entire two hours, and when we came out, there was STILL a huge line. I think they feed the entire population of people under 25 in Perugia as well as some older.

After eating we headed back to class from 4 pm to 6, then walked back to the apt to pick up the car and headed off to Assissi.

Just a disclaimer, although i always try to be accurate, I make no guarentees that anything i say is true when it comes to any area of Italy we visit. I try my best, but that is all I can do.

When we entered the part of town that was not up on the mountain, we noticed a LOT of nuns and monks walking the street, and then on the right a duomo with a LOT of people singing. All excited, we parked and walked back, noticing a line of people slowly walking into the Basilica with a sring of people surrounding them. A lot of them had peace signs, or PACE signs. That was then I realized that wahat we were watching was the end of the Peace march that I think had been from Perugia to Assisi.

We watched for a bit and then decided to go in to see the inside. Normally they would not have let us in, I had shorts on, Jess a tank top, and Ruth a skirt that was not to her knees, but we lucked out, being that so many people who had done the walk was dressed similarly.

Now this was the first time I have even been inside something like this since coming to italy and I had no idea what to expect.

Let me tel you, i am certainly not much for organized religion, etc, but when I went inside that church, as corny as it may sound, I was honestly moved to tears.

I have never seen anything that even came close to this. It's almost impossible to describe and pictures don't even come close to doing it justice. The paintings, the arches, the..... heck, I don't even know what to call them. Angels heads out of stone, beautiful marble everywhere. Beautiful carved wooden confessionals. I mean, it was everything you think the inside of an Italian church would be, plus so much more. You can check Jess' blog for some pictures we took of the outisde as well as some pics of the inside that she got off the web. We didn't dare take pictures inside with all the people.

We stayed long enought to listen to the beginnning of mass in Latin before taking off for the part of Assissi up on the mountain.

Just a note, anytime we talk about me driving into a city that is up on a hill or moutain, just picture us in a tiny car, careening(sp) around the corners with Jess hanging on for dear life to the "oh shit" handle of the car, yelling "Slow down! MOOOOMMMMMM... SLOW DOWN!!!!!!"

I love driving the roads here, but it makes Jess absolutely nuts.

Anyway, up into the town, as far up as we thought we could drive, then parked the car in a space that was realy too smal for the car, but was the beggest spot I could find. It was outside a little bar/cafe, and we decided to see if we could walk to the top of the city, which had what looked like a fort or a castle. I am not into the history lesson tonight like I was about out trip to Rome, but we had guides then. Without them, I'm just making wild guesses about everything.

The first thing I noticed that was interesting is that all the building were made out of a different type and color stone them Perugia, and the apartment/houses we walked by seemed to have so many more plants and flowers outside, it was really lovely.

We found the road leading up to the highest part of town and started hiking up, t was pretty steep.

By my calculations, the amount of stairs and steep hills I have climbed X the amount of healthy food I have eaten since coming to Italy, I honestly think I should weigh something like 98 lbs by now. No such luck. I have lost about 12 pounds, but most of that was when I was sick. I still have hope though, we have only been here a month. (and don't you DARE say I am not losing weight because I am gaining muscle. Say that and I will clock you upside the head.)

The walk up there (as well as down), you had to stop about every 15 feet and make every come over and see. The scenery changed into something more magnificient every time we looked.

You could see down across the entire valley, and byt the time we got to the top, you couild see everything within almost 180 degrees. You had the valley infront and to the left, and the right. OH MAN! On the right was the first time we had been close to proper hills and valleys/mountain range valleys.. Unbelivable.

I was going to have so much to say to describe it, but nothing I could tell you would make you understand how amazing the view was.

I AM SO FREAKING GLAD I QUIT MY JOB, SOLD MY HOUSE AND CAME HERE. I don't care if I get sent back and have to live on the street. Everything here I am seeing and experiencing is so worth it.

And that's all I have to say on that subject... :-)

New subject.... The bathrooms at school. I found out yesterday that they are coed when i went in and there was a man standing at the sink washing his hands.... Oh! hmm.... I looked at the door and there was a stick figure in a dress, so I knew I was in the right place. Obviously he didn't knkow he was in the wrong place, and being that I really had to go to the bathroom, I decided to have pity on him and just go use a stall. thats when I saw something along the terms of the word MEN on one of the stall doors. Hmm... coed.... okee dokee then.

To be honest, they are more like enclosed little rooms, each with a window, at least the bathroom I use.

There is one stall there, that has the most beautiful view of the coutryside out it, it's like a picture postcard. Amazing. Everything here is amazing.


Well, almost everything. Today after school Jess and I decided to take a drive out of town, to one of the nearby towns to find a different place to have lunch. We ended up driving about 40 miles out of town, to a place called Umbertide.

It had been pouring all morning, rain is seriously needed here, even thought everything is still green, we hadn't had a good rain in several weeks.

Anyway, the rain had also cooled off the temperatures a lot, which was wonderful. As you drive down the hill to get out of town, you have this amazing view of the valley and the moutains to one side of you. Today along several of the ridges was a line of clouds that sort of hung onto the lines of the mountains. i have never seen anything like it, it was....... you guessed it.... amazing!!! LOL It was like someone had erased all the color of the background up one side and down another. As we were drving towards Umbertide, one moutain even had a little top of fog, looking like there was snow on it. there were also very low clouds, or fog in the valleys between the moutains... Dorothy, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore.

We found a hotel restaurant in Umbertide that served full meals, not just panini or little sandwiches.

We went in, the waitress seated us, gave us menus and were deciding what to order, when the waitress seated a couple at the table next to us. Jess and I were discussing had just ordered when we noticed the couple had asked to be moved to another table, next to some other people.

What? Do I smell, I shower every day, etc..... I was truly offended. It wasn't like they wanted a table away from people, they still had a table next to others. I'm reasonably sure that neither Jess nor I were drooling, yelling or picking our noses. Maybe I was being too sensitive, but I honestly thought they asked to be moved because we were American. (filthy beasts that we are)

I felt a little better when I saw they were not Italian, but were German. I'm not sure why i felt better, but I did. i spent the rest of the time wishing I knew the owners of the restaurant so that I could make some sort of American spectacle of myself to justify the Germans' imagined or real opinions of us.

But of course, being freaking Minnesota nice (grr) I made sure jess and I were meticulous in our manners so that they could not go back to Germany supporting my imagined opinion of American's being pigs at the very least.

Ok, I seem to be rambling, so I'll just get on with it and tell you what we had for lunch.

Neither Jess and I could pass up the first of a pasta with a marinera type sauce with wild boar in it. This was the first time we had seen a dish offered that had wild boar in it. It's very common in i THINK quite a lot of parts of Italy, and the dish was reaaaaaaally tasty. Very good. We had also ordered a quarter liter of house red wine, which was just enough for both of us to have a glass (yes mom, I did not drive drunk) as well as a bottle of water.

Second, Jess had steamed green beans, and I had zhucchini which tasted like it had been grilled.Not bad.

Third, jess had pork chops, which were really more like riblets sort of, but longer. Again, cooked like they were grilled over an open fire, really great. I had what I though was just going to be chicken breast (which when i pronounced pollo the Spanish way when ordering - POY-OH instead of what I think was simply POLO, I made the waitress laugh. oh well)This too was smply grilled over what must have been a wood fire or something, honestly it was great.

Last we decided to order dessert because there were items we didn't recognize, so of course we needed to find out what they were.

I asked the waiter if he spoke English, he said he spoke a little and asked him to explain to us what they were and Jess and I both ended up ordering the same thing. We still weren't sure what it was, but somewhere along the way the waiter had said chocolate and cream, and that was good enough for us.

What we got was a plate with three round, puff pastries filled with a white cream. These had been dipped into a sort of chocolate mousse. Our experience with italy and sugar is they do NOT make things overly sweet, which really is a nice change. This dessert was the same, we could eat all three and not feel like the whole thing was just too rich. Oh man... all in all the meal was a real treat for us. Perugia seems to consist of mostly pizza places. UCK.

Anyway, back home we came, and now we've just finished laundry and jess is going with Ruth to the outdoor movie that we have right by our apartment.

You go down this back alley, and out a door in the wall surrounding the town, down past a little outdoor bar, and over to a screened off area. When you pay your 4.5 euro you go inside to small, ancient ampitheater(sp) built into the hill outisde the city. There are only about 10-15 rows built out of stone, but it's amazing to sit there under the stars watching a movie on a nice movie theater screen. (small theater screen)

we went this monday and watched "Finding neverland" It was the first time we had gone there, annd what a feeling to be out in the night air sitting in an ancient ampitheater under the stars in Italy. You could see the lights in the valley, and there were even lightening bugs in the bushes on the walk down. Truly wonderful.

Have i mentioned that I am happy we came here?? :-) :-) :-)

Well, I am off to the apartment to get some sleep. School at 8:30 am tomorrow.

buona notte.

OH wait! Jess posted pictures of Assissi on her blog, check there. I'm posting pictures of Gizzy on mine...

Gizzy from under the bed

Gizzy foot!

Gizzy nose.. Gizzy feet!

Footses

Busy, busy day!

BUT you will have to wait until tomorrow to hear about it, the computer place is only open a bit longer.

Preview: school, new friend, lunch, ASSISSI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Duomo (church) VIEW!
Come back tomorrow! :-)

WE ARE IN ITALY!!!!!!!

Some luxuries are nice!

Ok, first things. Wayne emailed me! :-) and Annn said she would call after we have been here a month (That is the 4th of August) Yeah!

Ok, I picked up the car today, and as much as I love the Italian way of trains and busses, which work for every day to work travel, and even going into places like Florence or Rome, I LIKE HAVING A CAR! (we put the air conditioning on full force for the first 1/2 hour, then had windows open afterwards.

I don't have to wait for busses, I can drive in the countryside all I want, I donàt have to be back in town by 9 pm in order to catch the last bus up to the apt. i like having a car!

I am scared I'll never get over it when I have to bring it back in three weeks. :-(

But for know we plan on going somewhere every day after school. We ha dour first day today. We love the teacher, and there were only three of us, because others were testing to see what class to take.

It is challenging because the teacher will not speak English, but lots of fun to get around the language to explain your question etc. We have class Monday thru Thursday and have 3 days off. (road trips!) Tues is the tough day, we start a little later, 10:00, but the go to 2, then have a 2 hours break, then back at 4 and on til 7 pm! Ick!

Every other day we go 8 - 1, that is more like it, though I hate having to get up at a certain time. Being unemployed has been NICE that way, sleep as late as you want......

Anyway, we finally started school, and we will be taking more trips, so things should pick up on the blog soon!

Oh, I was even able to navigate this car (we rented the smallest one they had) down our street that is blocked off, turn it around, and park it without hitting anything! I like what the rental guys says when he showed us the car. He goes "don't worry about those scratches on the front, you can even make more, no problem!" They have a special waver (CDW??) where basically you don't have to worry about scratches, NO one gets away scratch free inthis hill town. Yeah! ok, later. Ciao.

We may even move about, tomorrow

Stayed inside today, in front of fans. Only moved this even when things had cooled down to 96.

There is an antiques market tomorrow as well as a market that we plan to go to EARLY in the morning, so should have something to write about tomorrow.

Ann, why haven't you called me with the phone card?

Wayne, how come you never email me??? what's up?

Bye

Hot time in Perugia

It got to over 100 here today, too hot to do anything. Even the coast is topping out in the high 90s. There is nowhere to hide. RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! Going back to sit in front of my fan now. ciao
:-)

When in Rome.......

Woohoo - finally got to see some of Rome. Didn't get to go in anywhere, except to see the resting site of the Pope! That was awesome, but at least we got to know where everything is, so it will make it easier when we go back.

I'm going to start with some stuff that I wrote down in the morning before we went, then will just start to ramble about the day.

Oh Wait! I think I am going to start a word of the week, at least for this week. It is allora. I think that is how you spell it. I am calling in anyone who lives in Italy to see if I am right when I say they use this word when we buy something and are done. I THINK they say a lot of times, "allora?" If this is the right word that I looked up, it meant, then or well then or even so.. I never know how to answer, when used in the context of like "is that everything? I think I just end up lamely saying "si." Is there a correct response for that?

Ok, enough rambling about allora.

Here is some stuff that I wrote down yesterday:

I know this will be hard to believe, but it is 6 am and not only am I awake, but am showered and dressed, and even waiting across town at the bus station.

Just what do you ask could make me get up this early? Money? A man? no, Roma! Today is our spoon-fed tour of Rome. We've been there several times and not once seen a monument, etc. I decided it was much safer to let someone else do the driving and show us around. I just want to sit in an airconditioned bus! Especially because it is supposed to be in the mid 90s today.

Waiting at the bus station, Jess and I had our first stand up at a coffe bar coffee today! Long overdue, but in a way it is sort of intimidating, all the men elbowed up against each other, and if we were going to make a stupid mistake, better to do it with less people around. Since it was so early, we decided to go for it. We belly up and Jess says "Due cafes" (doo-ay) and lo and behold, he gets us two espressos! They are simply called cafes here, I think if you want a cup of american coffe, you ask for american coffee, but I have been told they just water down the espresso for you and put it in a bigger cup. NEVER would I dare order, or want to order that here. Instead the cafe here is in tiny cups as you probably know, with a little spot of almost foam on the top. I have learned to put a lot of sugar in it, and Jess decided to ask for "latte" (milk) in hers after she tried it. Very strong stuff.

So now we are very proud, no longer cafe virgins. :-)

A few minutes later while we wait outside, a young, CUTE, blondish guy comes up and asks if we are here for the tour. We both say yes, thinking he is here for it also. Well, he is in a way, he is our tour guide. (God has smiled upon us)He was from Belgium and spoke French and English. His name was Antonio, but the tour guide place I had called had said his name was Antonino. When I mentioned it to him, he sort of scowled and say if we preferred. But we could tell it must be their pet name for him, (like little anthony) so we chose to call him Antonio.

We walked around the corner and there was our bus, sort of a short version of one of the huge tour buses. Yeah! Airconditioning. We sat it the front two seats and until I figured how to bring UP the armrest, every time we took a right turn I was trying to nonchalantly hang on to whatever part of the seat I could, to keep from falling off it and onto the floor. First I put the seatbelt on. I felt stupid, but hey... Then after we had picked up a few more of the people going I saw how someone brought up the armrest, and then all was good!

My memory may be a bit different from Jess' as far as the people we picked up and what countries they were from, but...

I knew the place I had called to reserve this trip has said they usually pick up people at Lake Trasimeno, but they would have the bus come to pick us up in town.
Now we went in that direction and stoppped three different places. The first in a tiny little town, we picked up a man and his wife who I think were German. Second stop A family that again I think was German. Somewhere in here was someone French because I remember Antonio taking that group aside to explain things in French. Anyway, the third group again was a family and I know the two girls were from Holland because we talked to them quite a bit on the trip, they knew English well.

After picking everyone up, we head to Rome, via Tuscany, which was fun. We saw LOTs of sunflower fields, which I never managed to get a decent picture of, sorry.

At about 9 am we stopped and everyone got something to eat and drink, went to the bathrooms etc, then on to the city.

Last time we went to Rome there was a bus strike, which is what caused all the problems on our Ikea trip. We should have just gone home when we knew that.

This time there was a train strike. Luckily we weren't using the train, but traffic was really bad, and we unded up getting there 1/2 hour late, which is when we found out this was a walking tour.

DAMN! There goes the air conditioning.

We met our other tour guide that would be staying with us for just the morning part of the tour. She had a closed up red umbrella that she would hold up in the air and we were to follow that. I felt like a first grader following Mary Poppins, and asked Jess where the rope was with the knots in it we were to hold onto. The umbrella turned out to be not such a bad idea. Not only because in huge crowds it became a very good way to find her, but also because it was the norm for a tour guide to have something to stick up above the crowd for the people to follow. We sow scarfs at the end of wire pointer sticks, sunflowers, just about everything you could imagine.

I still felt dumb following this lady inside the Termini station and down to the subway. We stopped there to go to the bathroom again, but out of two bathrooms, only one was working, and after the second person went in, the light about it started flashing and there was a loud beeping, it too was out of order.

It was another bathroom you had to pay 50 cents for, BUT it was a self cleaning one! After every person it would close, and the entire thing was sprayed down inside with water and cleaner, when it opened up the entire thing had been sprayed down, pretty nifty!

We found out we would be taking one of the two subway lines in the city over to the Colosseum. This (the subway)is where they told us to be wary of gypsy children, that you should hang onto your purse, etc not to get pickpocketed.

Of course me, who never wears a purse, had decided to carry my huge Indian purse so that I had everything I needed. Now I had to figure out a way to keep it safe from those dang gypsy kids that I could just picture would wrestle me to the ground, tearing it out of my arms while I screamed for help.

Anyway, Mary Poppins marched us onto the subway train with her red umbrella, and we are all clutching everything we brough to our breasts looking scared. All the regular people on the train were really trying not to laugh out loud at us, and I saw quite a few smiles when they looked at us.

Of course it turns out there was not one gyspy child or pickpocket on our train (Mary Poppins said it was proabably due to the bus strike, or they were all on vacation with the Italians) Either way I kept a veeerrrrry close eye on the old lady sitting down next to me (I was standing) and I was ready to smack the life out of her if she even tried to get her old bony fingers on my purse. (poor woman)

Finally off, safe and sound, went outside and right there was the Coloseum. WOW!
Mary Poppins walked us across the street and into the shade (which she said was free) and started to tell us about the history of the Colosseum.

Where we found out there was no mass slaying of Christians. Turns out that is not true, that Nero who supposedly did that, was dead by the time they had even started to build it.

More facts (hopefully I am giving you correct information!)

The Colosseum used to be covered in marble, but along the way one of the other civilizations was into recycling and stripped it of the marble as well as the steel pipes that held the marble on. What was left was pitted with holes where they had pulled out the pipe. We also did not get to go inside, which was a big dissapointment, but is ok, for 42 euros we got the whole path of where we needed to go to get to these sites, plus a HUGE amount of information.

Anyway, no massive killing of Christians, and everything stipped off the outside, which turned out to be true of a lot of the places we visited.

We also saw our first gypsy beggar woman. Just like you would think, hunched over and in rags. I wander if it hurts to hunch over like that all day long? Jess got a picture of her. Jess has uploaded all our pictures, to another site. I'll give you the link later. Also there were men dresses and Roman gladiators, and they invite you take take a picture of them, after which you'll need to pay them money. We were warned in advance not to do it unless we were willing to pay. Several people were taking their pictures while they weren't looking. I'm not sure if Jess got one or not.

We went on to the Roman Forum, which was in effect a small city, showing different aspects of Roman life. The path the Emperors went down during their victory parades when they had conqeured(sp) somewhere. An interesting thing our guide told us of was that during these victory parades, there was a young boy who rode with the Emperor and held a crown of flowers over his head and was to whisper to him things like "You are mortal, you are just a human, you too can be killed" Which I thought was cool, so that he didn't start to think he was so much better than anyone else.


Hrere again most or all of the marble stripped off, and what was even more interesting that a lot of it has been colored in its day!!!!!!!! I am going to have to look online now for artist's renditions of what they all loooked like intact. It must have been amazing.

It was getting pretty darn hot by now, and I was really longing for that bus, but....
She told us that of the many fountains, you could fill your water bottle with fresh spring water. We ended up doing that several times during the day.

Another piece of information I though really fascinating was the fact that all these different empires ended up builing on top of the empires' building. She said in many spots there were 8 or 9 layers deep of things that could be excavated, though most would not be. I could just pisture all the amazing things that we could possibly be standing on top of. Amazing! There was one spot where they were doing some excavation, but she said doing this was really expensive.

Next stop was the Capital building, which we told was actually one of the newer places. I guess the unknown soldier is buried there. Again, we did not go inside this trip.

Alao there was a fascinating tall column with pictures inscribed in circles around it fromtop to bottom. It was standing by itself. What the encriptions were, were telling the tale of going out and conquering a place, the story from beginning to end.

In the past there had been a building around it that had openings on each floor facing the column so that you could read it all by following the nuilding to the top. Again it had been colored before. It made me want to get out some watercolors and just wash over it so that you could see better.


Next we were walked through a bunch of streets to the Trevi fountain. Tons of people at the fountain, as well as street vendors, gypies and more Roman galdiators. Mary Poppins said to throw a coin in you had to do it over your right shoulder with your back to the fountain. Jess and I dissagree on whether or not you are supposed to look to see where it lands in the water. We both did the coin toss and got water from a fountain. In the pictures there is one of how big the crowd there is.

Next we walked thorugh a lot of back streets where a ton of little shops were as well as people selling outside. About every 5 feet was a place to get your name written in Chinese. We didn't get to stop to look, Mary Poppins was going at a pretty good clip during this part.

We came out at the Pantheon, which is a pretty amazing building, the top half is a perfect dome, that if you were to turn upside down would just touch the floor. The very top is open because of the way it was made, anything put there would collapse. At noon the sun shines right in, in a circle and of course when it rains, it comes in. They had built the building with little drainage holes in the floor.

There was some restoration going on, so we had to go back outside to talk, but there was some amazing frescoes, or maybe they were just pictures, inside.
By this time I was a little overloaded with information, but I remember that everything was spaced perfectly. The columns outside were probably 20 feet high and they were spaced the exact distance apart from each other. The were made out of single pieces of granites, some coming from one of the Italian island, weighing tons, ferried over and brought across land etc.

Also, the dome itself had squares inside squares. The most inside square had been colored blue to represent the sky, the others had been covered with bronze, which had been removed at some point and put onto the ceiling in one of the arches at the vatican buildings. St Peter's arch????

Anyway, by then we were just hot, hungy and tired. We broke for lunch. They gave us about an hour and 1/2 to eat and Rome around. Jess and I found a chinese restaraunt that said it was airconditioned, but airconditioning in Italy is just NOT the freezing cold it is in the states. In fact alot of times you go outside and outside feels cooler than it was inside. I keep hoping one day I will find a freezing cold restaurant.

Anyway, we found a chinese restaurant that offered the four course meal for 6.50 euros.

Jess had a chinese pizza for first. a ball of dough with I think mayo and broccoli inside? I had wontons for first. Second we both had Shanghai rice which was delicious, no soy sauce needed for pretty much anything we have ordered in Chinese restaurants here.

For third I had sweet and sour chicken. I THINK there were tiny bits of chicken in the dough someonwhere, but it tasted great. Jess had a chinese omlet? it was almost like a panakoken, but small, and I think had chicken mixed in. She'll have more details in her blog.

Fourth we both had fried fruit. bananas and pineapple deep fried in a dough.

It may sound like lot of food, but really, with the exception of the rice, the portions were perfect sized.

Water to drink and we were off again.

Next stop, the castle of St Angelo. Looks like a big Noah's arc to me, but was brilliantly beautiful to walk up to. You cross a bridge that has huage stone angels on both sides.

The story behind this was that I think an emperor built is as a mausoleum for his wife, and then future emperors etc started buying their own there.
At some point it was used as a fortress, and even one of the Pope's lived there, hiding all the richest of the Catholic church inside and even emprisoning poeple trying to bring down the church. There is also a tunnel that goes from there to under the Basilica!

Next stop, Vatican city! yes! That was awesome, to look up and see thewindows of the former Pope's apartment, to be able to go inside and see the cryptsof all the Pope's including Pope John Paul! Jess andI both loved this. You did have to go through metal detectors. And the place I really came to see, the Sistene Chapel, we didn't get to see. That's ok though, I want to spend a LOT of time there.

Anyway, that was the end of the tour, got back on the bus, and drove back, getting home about 9:30, when our bus didn't run any more. So we took a taxi and put up our aching feet and went to sleep! Day off today, Going to a local town, Assisi tomorrow, early in the mornign Ihope, temps up in the mid 90s again.

Here is the link to all the pictures. Enjoy!!!

http://journals.aol.com/itvixen/RomePictures/

The lost blog entry!

I wrote this in a journal at 3 am when I was the sickest, I think it was arounf July 7th, about 3 days after we got here.. I kept meaning to put it in the blog. It may not be the most interesting, but it really should be in here. :-)

Three in the morning here, I really need to move my bed upstairs. These college kids never go to sleep. The lower level of our apartment is facing the alley and street. Upstairs we face the roof tops and valley. Much less noise.

About 3 am, the wind started blowing like crazy! Storm coming I think.With the screens in the windows you can hear the wind howl, and I swear the more I listen, I can hearmen singing either a soccer song or "Ric-oh-lo!". Maybe my fever is higher than I thought. For some unknown reason I decided to wrap a scarf around my neck and it's like 90 here. It just feels good for some reason. I wanted something to clear my nose up so that I didn't sleep with my mouth open. I think that is part of what is giving me such a bad sore throat. The only thing I could find for my nose was Icy Hot.

So it's 3 in the morning, the wind is howling and I am laying in bed with a scarf wrapped around my neck with icy hot under my nose listening to men sing Ric-oh-lo down the hill. hmmm...

Finally a few pepl make it up the hill towards our apartment. They are singing "canta, canta, canta" (sing, sing, sing) then Dove Maria in time to a drum they are banging on. I swear I am not making this up!

I think Italian men love to sing, it's so cute. Maybe it is something that they only do when they have been drinking (i have since learned that they seem to do it anytime, esp to the women they are with.)or maybe they are just happy. But I always hear them coming up the street singing little songs. They seem to have pretty good voices too.

Jess and I both have a crush on the pizza guy at the pizza place down the hill. He is one of the few people here who speaks to us in English. Last time we visited he made a point of doing some sort of rap dance while he was heating up our pizza. They use the big brick ovens at this place, and they use the paddle with the long stick to get things in and out of the oven. It was nice to have a guy paying attention to us, we were both laughing at how silly he was, but the girl who was working with him wasn't very amused. Oh well, what is life without a little flirting!

Anyway I need to get a couple of hours sleep before the church bells wake us up at 7:30 or so. We are still trying to figure out what all they ring for. Of course the time, but there are many other times they are ringing. I haven't been able to figure out why yet.

The medicine we got at the farmacia is just not working. I think I may have to go to the dr and get an antibiotic.

Anyway, when we went to the farmacia it was kind of cool. I had learned the words for sore throat. fa male golah, so they were able to give me some pain medication. I made sure there was no aspirin in it, because it had the Bayer sign on the box.
The layout there is cool, they have about six or seven very thin doors in the wall behind them that they pull out and have all the medicine there. They ring up your stuff and then srap it in one little piece of paper folded like a present. I was so proud I was like trying to show it off as we went home, as proof I could handle myself in a farmacia. LOL

Another thing I have noticed in a lot of the stores is they have a large ceramic plate that they put you items on as well as change you get back. Kind of cool.

Well that is is, going to bed now, hoping I feel better in the morning.

Italian TV

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but never seem to think of it when I am at the computer. Since we have taken the day off from life and been sitting at PCs all day, I suddenly remembered it.

Besides the fact that it is all in Italian, with the exception of CNN at 3 am, there is not a whole lot to watch. We seem to watch MTV when we have it on, and have found that after a certain time of night about 5 stations show nothing but soft porn, well i think it is soft. There was one the other night when I switched stations that was like some old balck and white porno where the woman had HUGE underpants on, and the guy came over and gave her a spanking. (Oh yeah, very tittilating!) HA!

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was the fact that we found the equivalent of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on tv the other night! Very interesting. The same music, format everything, except the name of the show was I Fantastico V, i think that was the name of it. We watched the whole thing, didn't agree with everything, including the fact the the guy being made over had to style his own beard into a goatee type of thing AND color it himself. i thought that was kind of funny. But they even had the same poses in the beginning, the guy with the hairdryer, one brandishing a cooking utensil, etc.

We were SO hoping that they would play the show "Blow Out" afterwards, we got hooked on that show right before we left the states.

Anyway, it's also fun to watch things like My Best friend's Wedding in Italian, because with movies like that (i have watched about 50 times) at least you have an idea what is going on.

To be honest, we watched more when we first got here. Now we have more of a tendency to hook up the portable dvd player we brought to the TV. It will only play in black and white, but hey, it's better than nothing. I anticipate that someday I will be able to turn on the Tv and actually understand what is being said on the truly horrible game shows, before I turn the channel. *g* ciao!

The dog days of summer

It is sort of like that here for some reason. Not a lot going on. There is a bus strike today, so we are doing laundry and hanging out on the internet. Are still planning to take the tour to Rome on Tues, but am not sure about when we can do Switzerland. Most evenings are booked, but I somehow only has to pay 18 dollars for car insurance this month, so i may well just pay full fare to get out of town and have some fun.

Yesterday we went to Lake Trasimeno via train. 2.10 euros each way, not bad. I will post some pictures in a bit. Jess posted them on her blog too.
I thought it would be really crowded but the place was dead. We took a boat out to Magiorre (sp) but it was one of the last boats, so we did not really get to walk around much. Saw a couple of stray cats. I know, I know, just too much excitement. We are just taking it easy for now. It was nice. I hate to say how nice it is to sleep late and wander. We have to watch it, we will get too complacent and end up seeing nothing of this beautiful country!

I also bought a present for my mom at one of the stores, but left it on the train. Sheesh. We called the train station in town and they said it would be at the lost and found at city hall, god only knows where that is, but maybe someone found it and was nice enough to bring it in.


Here are some pictures

The city of Passignano from the boat. (just a note for Wayne, the nitpicker. After these were taken I had Jess change the date on the camera so it is now correct. sheesh.)


We went in a smaller boat out to the island, but came back on a bigger boat. This is a bit of the seats on the second level where we sat.

A little restaurant on the island of Magiorre.

Coming up from the boat, little souvenier(sp) shops. Of course we went over with no money, or I could have gotten a cool bright blue dolphin or something similarly touristy!!

The shoreline


A picture of kitty. I know, she was not with us on the boat, but Nick will like this.


Silver on the windowsill at the apartment.


Just a note for those of you who have to wash your clothes at a laundramat(sp) prices here are crazy. 3 euros a laod, which runs about 3.6o in dollars. 5.50 to dry a large load for 21 minutes, towels do not even get close to dry. so about 6.40 to dry one load. Ouch!

Yeah, trips to Switzerland and Rome next week

We've been laying pretty low the last few days, but I just realized that school starts in another week or so, so we need to get off our butts and make a couple trips.

Tomorrow we are taking the train to Lake Trasimeno, about a 25 minute ride away. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so we'll have to see. But for 2.10 euros one way, we should be going out to the lake more often, especially with this heat.

I was going to rent a car and take off driving, but everything in town is rented out, I'm guessing for peoples' August vacations. So that is down the drain for now. Jessica heaved a sigh of relief, she HATES my driving here.

Next to one of the two bus stations in town is a little tourist information place we stopped into today. They do bus trips all over, Florence, Pisa etc, but not until September. We are looking forward to that, they go all over, art trips, cuisine trip etc.... looks awesome!! The only trip they have this time of the years is a weekly trip on Tuesdays to Rome. 42 euros, includes the bus, tour guides, etc. A really good deal, we can take our cameras, relax and play tourist and let someone else do the driving!

Then when I was at the Trenitalia site looking for places to go, since car rental is out of the question, they showed a special to Zurich! Yes! You can leave Florence at 11 pm, get a 2 sleeper compartment, sleep all night, get to Zurich around 7 am. Then you have all day to wander around Zurich, get back to the train by about 8 or 10 pm, then sleep all night and get into Florence about 8 am, then take the train back down to Perugia! That will be our big outing before school starts. We will have to leave the cats alone a day and 1/2, but they should be fine for that amount of time.

I'm pretty excited to go see the Alps, the weather is only in the lower 70s now, which will be wonderful! We can go, have breakfast, yodel a bit, see the Alps, sing a song from the Sound of Music, buy some Swiss chocolate, maybe a watch or two, dinner, then head back home. Yes! It will be nice to get out of town, I have to admit.

Well we are running late tonight, mom just called and I had to tell her to call back in 45 minutes. Going to end this here. Ciao!

Taking a breather

Not much going on today, slept late, went to the post office to pay our insurance, by then the questura was closed so we couldn't finish registering. We decided to try to get out to the mall outside of town, but started so late, ened up riding busses back home. Planning a trip in the next couple of days, not sure where yet, maybe Sorrento, but not sure how busy those places will be. we need to get out of Perugia for the day, I'm starting to go crazy here!

*singing* You aaaaaare the wind beneath my winnngssss.

Sorry, I hate that song, but we have fans!!!!!!

Art of Barb and Art called today and read me the riot act, (nicely) saying we should be asking for help. He is right... He had me call Bob and Rosemary, telling me there were fans at the SELF store near us and they would know how to get to the SELF store.

I called and spoke with both and Bob told me to get to his friend Francesco at Casina Della Rose. We hopped the bus and spoke to Francesco who was wonderful! he had to go to SELF also, to get one of his daughter's drawings framed, and gave us a ride to SELF, pointed us in the direction of fans (which were on sale!) and even gave a ride back to our apartment. A wonderful man! It turns out he and his wife and daughter live right up our street. Talk about a small world.

The SELF store was wonderful. I would have liked to look around longer, but didn't want to take up Francesco's time. We even found some different cat food that even Kittie loves. :-)

So now we have fans! We splurged and put both on this afternoon. Also a test to see if we blew any fuses. We both just sat with goofy looks on our faces.

Now that I've finished my antibiotics, tastes are starting to return to normal. Everything doesn't taste like some strange mineral anymore.

Ate at a chines place tonight, very cheap, though next time we will know that you have to order rice, it does not come with the food.

Short blog tonight, I need to see if we can do a day trip to Pompeii inthe next couple of days. A lot of the shops are closing down until the end of the month, so it is a good time to go on some trips. Ciao!

Sunday, the day of rest. (sort of)

Wayne, where are you????


Well, no crazy adventures today. Just trying to stay cool. We cleaned up the apt, mopped the floors and are now doing laundry while we surf. I made some scrambled eggs this afternoon. I think we really need to get some iced tea\koolaid types of drinks. the water just doesn't do it, and i am not that big of a pop drinker.

I just received an email from a friend who went down to Venezuala for school this summer. After reading his email I feel better about us. I think the highlight of his trip so far has been catching a ride in a pig truck when their car broke down and being taken out to sea with some other people then told to turn over all their money or the person would not take them where they needed to go. Glad to know we are not the only people who's trip has not been picture perfect.

Speaking of pictures I have some. I think the same ones are on my daughter's blog, but will post a few in case you don't get to hers. Double click on the picture if you want to see a large version of it,and more details.


Bammy in a bag (on th way to Italy)

Rome

Coming up the stairs to the second floor of our apartment in Perugia


The amazing view from our bedroom window.


Another view from the window


sitting on our balcony

One more of the view. Spectacular!

Bammy LOVING the heat

The ones taken today of the apt turned out blurry. Jess posted them in her blog, so if you are interested you can look for the link to hers on the right. I'm going to wait until we get better pictures. Well, am off to look for regular tourist tours in Florence. I'm adventured out for the next week or so. ;-)

Trains, strikes and other adventures.

Its 3 am in Italy and Jessica and I are in the back of a van flying down the autostrand with two strangers in the front seat. I look out the window and see the big dipper, but we are not talking about some weak version, this is huge, hanging in the air near the horizon, unbelievably grand.
I can tell that our driver is trying to keep us safe because he is driving down the exact middle of two lanes, the white line running under the center of the van.

Everyone is silent while the radio is softly playing what sounds like an Italian Paul Anka. When that song ends I hear Phil Collins singing "Another Day in Paradise" I kid you not.

I just laugh to myself and look back out the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the bid dipper again.

Have we been abducted? Are we being smuggled to or from some foreign country? Ok, it's been a LONG day and it's way more fun to play a game like this than admit we are simply taking a taxi from Terontola to Perugia after missing the last bus from Rome. HA! I havenàt had this much fun in a long time. On the other hand, I'm thinking I'll seem some grey hair on Jessica in the morning.

The morning seems so long ago. Our intention was to go find one of the Ikeas in Rome and buy ourselves some things we needed as well as a fan. It was either get up at 5 something to make the 6 am train in to Rome, or sleep a little later and take the 11:15 in. We decided on the one at 11 and of course running late, there was a line, and we barely made the train. I though second class was really nice, two big seats on both sides, the airconditioning was working, we got seats next to one of the best looking guys in Italy, longer curly hair, young, cute..... Ahh.. Italy.

So off we got no Rome, checking out the countryside, all the hilltowns going by, on some of the hills\mountains you could even see the end of the tree line, where nothing grows above. Really nice, everything isbrown though, being mid -July, but still beautiful.

I start getting sleepy and before I know it, the conductor\ticket collecter stops by. Now the fun begins.
HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I READ ON SLOWTRAV THAT YOU HAVE TO PUNCH YOUR TICKETS BEFORE GETTING ON THE TRAIN? I have read this at least 40, 50 times. Guess what I forgot to do? Punch our tickets. So now everyone around us is looking at me as the consuctor is going on in Italian about this, and I'm half asleep so coming up with "I don't speak Italian" is not an option, unless of course you want Spanish mixed in with it. (I have to tell you, this Spanish thing is becoming a real problem for me now)

Finally he just says "Non Italiano?" and I just sheepishly grin and hit my hand to my forehead like how could I have forgotten, and mumble some Spanish. He writes something on each of our tickets and hands them back,and I slink down into my chair.

Note: Don't worry about all the beautiful places in Italy, get to Italian classes.

The rest of the ride is pretty uneventful, other than I get to exchange smiles with the cute Italian guy across from me when we go through some killer tunnels and everyone's ears are popping.

We get into Rome Termini train station and go to find the bus. All we really have as far as directions are the bus numbers that say will go to the store. What do they say about a wing and a prayer? I think all we really had was the prayer, because we go outside and find out there is a bus strike that day.

Note: Check for bus strikes when going to another city.

IF we had been smart we would have turned around and gotten bcak on the next train to Perugia, but no, come on... We are here, we can jus catch a cab.

This was the weirdest cab catching experience I have ever had, you couldn't just hail one, I think it was because everyone was calling the radio cabs, so they had to go to the person that called him. Well finally we got one to drive us to Ikea. At first he didn't want to, I told him we knew it would be around 40 euros, but after the experience I think he would have made a lot more money with quick trips downtown.

It took us forever, so much traffic, and yes about 40 euros, but finally we see the Ikea sign. It was sort of sad, it felt like being home again. Here was one spot in Italy we were familiar with. I was hoping they might even have ice cubes!

The first thing we did (after kissing the floor) was go up and get some Swedish meatballs. We needed some little taste of home. Ohhhhhhh man, good stuff. No ice though.

Note: Never go to a country again that does not have ice cubes.

I'm telling you, it's becoming an obsession with me, truly horrible, like being a drug addict or something.

We took our time in Ikea, airconditioned but still not as cold as I was hoping for. Bought trash baskets and toothbrush holders and rugs and tea kettles and all sorts of stuff. We start getting towards the end and I'm asking Jess where the fans are?? Guess what? No fans. I think they are just trying to wear me down and make me cry uncle.

Trying not to go into the corner and curl up in a fetal position I try to smile and say it's ok, but it really isn't. I just want ice cubes and a fan. I can bypass the airconditioning, I just want air movement and something frozen to crunch on. For some reason this would make everything in the world right. No more war, hate killing if everyone just had a fan and a supply of ice cubes. OK, maybe a Sierra Mist too.

Anyway, we get our stuff bagged up and go to the cash machine to pull out some euros, and go stand outside to see if maybe there is a taxi out there.

Nope, no taxi, so we hang out a few, it's hot but windy so it doesn't feel too bad outside. We hang out a while and see a taxi go by down a side road, and try to flag it down. No luck, he had someone with him, so maybe he'll come back.

After probably 20 minutes or so we decide to stop the cart boy and see if he know where we can get the number of a cab company. He explains to us in faultering English that the numbers are up by the pay phones. We are willing to try out Italian with him, buthe really wants to be able to speak to us in English. The first person to be honest, that has tried to hard to communicate with us in English. I think he even said at the end "sorry about my bad english." We sais he did great, and go to find the taxi numbers.

This part may vary a bit from Jessica's story because the taxis were called so omany times in the next couple of hours. If I remember correctly the first time we called they said fine, and we went down to wait.

Rather than gothrough every time we caleld, let's just say that in the next couple of hours we called taxis so many times it was unbelievable. Twice we even went into Ikea and had customer servcie call for us. In fact the second time Jess had like three or 4 people all on phones calling. No one wanted to send a taxi out this far, they were making a killing in Rome I'me sure.

Finally Jess told me that the Ikea people said I should call the yellow pages on my phone to get the number of a private driver, but to wait a few because they might have someone that would come pick us up.

The private driver thing may soudn weird, but itàs what we had pick us up from the airport and drive us into Rome, it only cost 40 euros and we weren't that far from the airport.

So in Italy, and I think this is for all of Europe, you call a yellow pages number, talk to a person, tell them what you are looking for, they hang up, go into the yellow pages and start text messaging you all the different people available, to your phone. Ok, this is probably the coolest thing I have heard of, my god what a good idea. The only problem with my yellow pages guy is he wouldn't give melistingd for personal drivers. I begged him, nope, he was bound a determined we would be able to find a taxi through the listing he would send to me.

I must be a real wuss in my old age because I agreed, which didn't matter because they got us a cab a few minutes later. Either way I have about 10 text messages with numbers of taxis in Rome, so if anyone needs one...... :-)

By now it's something like 8 in the evening and we know we've missed the last train to Perugia that we knew of, but I'd rather stay all night in the train station than outside Ikea.

After about 10 mille grazies to the cab driver we set out,and boy, this guy knows his way around, about 30 minutes later and only 18 euros on the meter, we are at Termini station. Unbelievable. So telling him he is perfect and many more mille grazies and a HUGE tip for being the only taxi in town to pick us up,we're back at the train station.

Note: Not one tourist site has been seen on this trip.

At the train station again we run to a self serv machine to see if we can get a train back to perugia tonight.

Note: these machines lie, they have the option to have us read in English, but they lie, the most important stuff is still in Italian. No Perugia that we see, so we choose other and type in Perugia. Bingo! There is a train to Perugia at 23:40 that will get us there by 1:40 am.

Ok, that didn't sound right but who are we to doubt Trenitalia! We purchase the tickets and even feel so good about getting to go home we upgrade to first class. Yeah! Only 4 hours to wait!

We wonder over to a restaurant. i donàt think we had even eten that day. Oh wait, at 2 we shared a sandwich when we got into the train station. (Have I mentioned that I have lost about 12 pounds since being here?)

We are carryoing these three huge blue plastic Ikea bags that we bought, so Jess goes first to get something to eat and come back with gelato. That just isnàt goig to do it for me, I see real food and go to get a plate of spaghetti wiht fresh tomoatoes. YUM. No problems that it is one of the two last servings of the evening and some of the noodles are dried up, this is awesome food. I also see something frozen and slushy. whenever i see this i must buy it, it's the closest to ice i get, so i buy two waters and one of these orange slushies. PARADISE!

I go sit down and let Jess try the spaghetti, which makes her go by the last service. This is heaven.

After eating and resting we decide to go explore the train station. I have not seen one gypsy throw a baby at someone to pickpocket them, nor have I seen any ragged gypsy kids singing songs while they pickpocketted you. I'm sort of dissapointed, I was promised a big adventure in this train station, dang it!

No gypsies, just lots of tired travelers from all over the world. Very interesting, but not the most exciting. So we sit to wait, and wait, and wait. My mom calls and I assure her that we are safe and fine and that I am having a blast. 10 at night in Rome at Termini station, milling around with hundreds of other travelers. I'm sorry, but this is living to me.

We keep waiting to see Perugia listed with a track number, but nothing is coming up on the the departure board. We start getting worried and go the information center, where they tell us no, there are no more trains to Perugia this evening, what we have booked in our ignorance is a train going towards Milan. We stop at a place called Terontola and fromthere we have 10 minutes to catch a bus that will drive the opposite direction for another hour to bring us back to Perugia.

Oh.

OK then,well at least we know why we haven't seen Perugia listed. So we start looking for the Milan train bin.

Finally our train bin number got posted. Jess has the word listed as binore, I can't find a translation for it. It's like the track number you go to.
So we go to it, making sure to punch our tickets this time to validate them..
It seems like everyone is taking this train to Milan this evening.

The train that comes in is filled with sleeper compartments! Not sure where first class is, we ask a gentleman who tells us the other end of the train. (of course)
Walking all the way to the first cpmartment of the train we see the types of compartments you see in a british train. You have an aisle along one side and about 7 or 8 compartments that each seat 6. We nab one and drop down into the seats. THIS is cool. Like the Orient Express or something, very nify.

About 1.2 hour after we should have left, start wondering why we aren't going yet.

People are hanging out the window, so I go out and ask if there is a porblem. Oh no, no problem. They are changing engines. Oh, ok, no porblem... LOLOLOL

Wondering how we are going to make our bus when we are just about an hour late, we finally get going. YEAH!

It slowly moves out, and the first half hours it does nothing but go at a decent clip, then slow down. We finally decided that even if this is an express, they must have to slow down when they are near towns close to Rome. (we prefer that to the possibility of the engine having trouble)

Finally we get going, we know that our stop is about two hurs downt he road, but we still don't know what we are going to do once we get there, if we are an hour late for the bus.

When the conductor comes by we ask, and he starts explaining something abour retardo. OK, now I allow my son to call me a retard, but this guy really has some nerve! After a minute we realize that he is saying the train is oging to be an hour late. Gee, thanks, but what about the bus? After about 5 minutes of retardo, we just shake our heads and say ok, no problem.


We settle in to enjoy the ride. Jess is trying to sleep, but the adrenalin is going crazy in me, I am loving this. Riding in the middle of the night on a train in the middle of Tuscany, not knowing what is going to happen but just accepting that everything will be fine.

Finally the stop before ours the conductor comes back in and tell us something about chef and taxi. Sounds good to me, I donàt care who pays, just get us home.

He walks us personally out of the train and to the care of the station master in Terontola. There is one other gentelman waiting for a taxi too, so between all of us we realize that trenitalia is picking up the tab for the taxi. Yeah!

We wait and wait, a guy from England is there, trying to get elsewhere but he doesn't have our luck of getting the one taxi in town. He doesn't quite get that it doesn't matter if he is willing to pay, he is going to have to hnang out until 4 am when another train will get him to his destination.

Finally we are waved to a waiting van\taxi to be wisked off into the Tuscan night, like people being smuggled somewhere under dead of night.

Hail Italy. I do love it here. If I could just get a fan and some ice. :-)



Note: Italy is so much easier when you know the language.

Whaaaa?????

I don't know, that's how I feel today. We really should know more Italian, after all it's been what, 9 days now? Every time we go in a shop and start with our pigeon Italian, I feel like the people are looking at me saying "Oh come one Diana, It's been what, 9 days now and you are still doing the non parlo italiano bit with us? Get off the stick and learn some Italian."

Maybe I'm hoping like Bart Simpson in the episode where he gets kidnapped or something and is like a slave in France. One day he just wakes up and speaks fluent French. HA! That would be nice. But for some reason I feel like a slacker for not knowing more. Well, the being sick part didn't help, but I am going to sign us up for some individual lessons until we can start class August first.

We walked all the the area where the Umbrian Jazz fest has one of the stages placed. Lots of people, lots of police, even saw some taking someone away. I have a feeling they are doing a huge sweep as far as anyone even remotely or possibly connected to a terrorist organization. I think that is how it should be. Get them before they get you. It seems like a big problem in America is they think, Oh my, we'll be taking people's freedom away if we just start arresting people. Well, tell that to all the victims of 911 and their families. Crack down and do something BEFORE it gets you.

Oh yeah, you tell them Diana. Sorry. Just rambling.

This will be short, am already falling asleeep at the keyboard sitting here. Will ramble more tomorrow. ciao

Back with the living

(Sorry, my writing seems off today)

Good lord, it's so hard to believe that we have only been here a week, being sick has really dragged time along.

Yesterday ended with a trip to the hospital for antibiotics so I am starting to feel a bit better today.

Maybe I should have named this "Diana's Wild ride to the hospital!"

Yesterday morning I was so sick that I knew I had better get into a dr, so we went down tothe school and asked where we could go. Turns out the school has a clinic you can go to. The woman whips out thenow very well know photocopied map of Perugia and points to a spot that to me looks far away, especially when I have a raging fever. I ask her if there is a bus that goes there. "Oh no, no, maybe a 5 minute walk."

Looking back on it now, I'm wondering if she does this sort of thing for kicks! (j\k)
So we start up the hill and walk... and walk... and walk... about 15 minutes after, we get to a spot that we can place on the map. Ok, 1/3 there. Augh. So we keep walking and keep walking, finally we get to the spot where we have to differenciate between 4 different buildings as point of reference. All on a hill. We went up, we went down, we went from building to building and found every other one but the one we were looking for. Even the people who worked in these buildings has no clue.

By this time my fever has gone wild and I am just disgustingly "glowing" (so I not put people off too much)

Jess says "Come'on, let's just go down one level more" She's starting to walk down another set of steps. That's it, I'm now kid and she's mom. "No way! I'm not moving from this spot until I know where we are going!"

Then a man comes up the steps asking if he can help. IN ENGLISH! We tell him what's going on and he says to wait, he will get his driver to come take me to the hospital. Yeah!

The lovely man was our godsend, he worked at a large art museam on the east coast and was there lecturing. The whole time he's telling us this, i'm in sort of a fog by then, so all i seem to focus on is "HEY, I want a driver!"

So he gets his driver to come down, we all pile in the car, i even get the front seat and off we go.Giovonni was the driver, a very kind man, and a TRUE Italian driver.

Ok, busses and taxis go around turns like crazy in this town, but Giovonni was a man with a mission, get this woman to the hospital quickly!

I kid you not, I am not faint of heart, but there were at least two times where I had to close my eyes. One of the times was when he was blindly going around a corner and there was another car coming, and I know for a FACT there was not enough room to get by. I can still picture the color and the corner of the brick as it as flew right against my face outside the window. I expected to become a mangled statistic. But no, he made it without even touching the brakes! Bravissimo! (hope I spelled that right)


Anywayt, it turns out the hospital we were going to only accepted certain illnesses, so we had to go to one across town, and there was very bad traffic egoing there, so Giovonni I THINK actually took us through another town to get us there faster.

ok sorry, I am dragging this out too long i think.

We get to the hospital with our "ontourage" sp?? of 5 people spilling out of this tiny car, and they all drag me in talking loudly. Everyone int he waiting room was looking at us, and if you know me at ALL, this is my worst nightmare. Luckily I was so out of it I didnt really care. Well all that yelling and waving and saying i was really ill didn't get my anywhere, because we ended up waiting over 2 hours to be seen. with cases they though more important, like psained ankles, went before us.

FINALLY after Jess goes up several times and reads them the riot act and everyone stares at us again. (I am proud of jess for doing that though) we get seen.

Just a note here that very few people that we have met in Perugia have little more that a spattering of English.

They sent us with the only nurse who spoke a little English, and told Jessica it was patient only. well, one of us must have looked panicked because the nurse said something to the other people and then said she could some in.

The examinations room was a different experience thatàs for sure. There was a man behind a desk putting things into the computer, the nurse, the dr, at some point someone who I though was a paramedic ?????? and maybe even one other person.

The dr must have thought I was an idiot. (No remarks Nick) because he addresses everything to my daughter, which I though was hilarious. It could also have been the fact that every time he asked me a question, I was answering in Spanish! At that point I was so sick, I lost the Italian part of my brain.

After checking things out, he wrote prescriptions for amoxicillon (which I hope works on the bugs over here), and a pain killer.

Ok, I have to stop right now, jess is getting antsy. anyway, I am starting to feel better, we are going to start taking some day trips by the end of the week.

BYE!! I love you all!

If you are going to be deathly ill, be deathly ill in Italy!

UGh, I have been so sick, I dont even remember the last couple of days. The sore throat and fever has been the worst, I think the back of my throat is in shreds. I seem to have broken the fever last night, but now my ears are killing me too. Looks like getting sick on a weekend when no one is open is a universal thing. No fair! I got out just long enough to check email etc, but I think I am heading back home to crawl into bed again. Eric, sorry I havent emailed you, I will asap.

Traveling with Cats and bombings in London

I have about a half hour before our laundry is done, so I want to put in a post about the cats.

But also something about the bombings in London today. We didn't find out about them until we were eating dinner. The whole thing is horrendous and we are obviously more interested since it hits closer to home. Also the threats on Italy. We planned to take the train to Rome this weekend, but decided to put it off a bit, thinking that Rome would certainly be the place a bombing could happen. In the meantime I am waiting for a hysterical call from my mother at 10 pm, in about a half hour. Hopefully she won't be, but I don't know, I think I would be worried if it were my child and grandchild here, even though we really don't feel much of a threat other than the rail system.

Anyway, on a happier subject, I have to let everyone know that travelling with the cats was ceratinly stressful, but they have been fantastic and certainly none the worse.

I think a lot of it was because we were moving around a lot the month before we left, so they were used to the kennels. I have no idea what was going on down in cargo as we flew. I know they had to go to the bathroom in their kennels, and they did not smell all that great, but I think they know that they will be fine as long as they are with us, and as long as they are all together.

Bammy was the only one who flew in the passenger section with us. Well, with us for about 2 minutes until the guy in the seat said

Cats ..... no cats I am deathly allergic.

This is my luck, right. so Bammy had to spend the entire time under the last seat in first class. I really need to send a note to NW to let them know how wonderful the stewardess was. She took great care of her, looked out for him, came back and let us know how she was doing. A really wonderful person. They also said we could move to the other side of the plane, into the extra stewardess seats for landing, so that Bammy could be near us. We had said we were worried about the loud whining of the engine, brakes etc. Bam has a tendency to yowl when we even yell across the hosue to each other. Anyway, after getting off the plane we lost the other three cats for a while, and about 45 minutes later found them by the regular baggage carousel, with guys and kids all checking them out and talking to them!

No worries, they are not International travelling cats!

One more thing... I read so much about not wearing tennis in Italy, not because we will be tagged for tourists, which I am sure we already are, but because they would not be good for walking on cobblestones etc. I have to tell you, I am sooooo happy I wore mine. we have a three block hike uphill everytime we go back to our apartment. Perugia is nothing but hills, and my feet or legs have not bothered me once!

Alana, I am sure this is from you and I walking the stairs at work, thank you for coming to get me twice a day every day!!!

Well, have to go, will write more tomorrow. Ciao.

Like a dream

Ok, that could be because I have a whopper of a sore throat and a fever, but who knows. I went to the farmacia spelling may not be correct, i seem to be having problems with the keyboard again, probably the only frustrating thing here in italy is they difference of the keyboards, makes me crazy!
they gave me something called Sanipirina, it had the bayer sign on it, so i had to make sure there was no aspirin it it, this was all done with a lot of pointing and head shaking. yes i know we have to get to school. monday i promise! i did look up male golah. bad throat. Anyway.

Today we were looking at the map that the school gave us, and finally located the big piazza where the webcam is located. Piazza Novembre. duh, it was right next to the university building, through this huge arch, duh again, the Etruscean arch. ok, all I can say is that I was checking out other things when I planned this trip, not the tourist atractions in town.

we walked up through a sort of arched cave thingy that had shops and restaurants on both sides, and finally saw the piazza. they were setting up for the Umbria Jazz festival, and it was also full of tourists. The festival starts tomorrow so we will be steering clear of it unless we want to hear music, but i am hoping we can hear it from the University side. Walking back down home we were laughing about how we were coming back to the real world, the university side.

We also did the one thing I said I had to do here, and sat out at the tables at the piazza, had our first espresso and people watched. yeah! pretty good!

Then we went walking around all the shops around the Piazza, and there are a lot! I am leary of most, it being a tourist area, but we did find a little place that sold fabric and household items where we were able to buy some bowls for ourselves and also to put cat food in for the kitties. As far as clothing, there is no way we can fit into any of it, talk about feeling like fat Americans, which I know we are, it is so depressing. We have hope though, you would not believe the hills we walk every day, just to get back and forth from our apartment.


OK,I just realized that I missed a whole day of information here that I thought I had posted. I didn't blog yesterday, so we are going back on day, sorry.

Yesterday we went on our trek for screens for the windows of the apartment. The only reason we need them is because of our cats. We had been keeping the shutters closed because of the cats, and opnly opening them when they were in a cage. WHAT a pain. We couldn't find a place that sold screen. We are up on like the 3rd and 4th floors, but the one time I told Jess to open up the shutter and just see what kitty did, the dang cat tried to jump. sheesh.

So we had seen what looked like a fabric store on the way down to get groceries and decided to stop there, but it was more of an upholstery shop, so we decided to walk down a bit farther to the gelato place *place a amiley face here, the dang keyboard is making me crazy. and found a tiny mom and pop hardware type store. Now we haven't been bringing our dictionary with us, so i had to figure out a way to tell them what we wanted. it was pretty hysterical, but by the end of the transaction both sides were look ing pretty proud that we had figured each other out. Have I mentioned just how much I love it here.

Iknow my son will be rolling his eyes reading this, but hey, we did it. i made a big square with my hands and tried to show something covering the square, then of corse my frigging spanish gets in the way and i say ventana, hoping like crazy it means window in italian too. nope, BUT I see a thing with a bug on it, and point to that. AAAHHH! Mosquito! zanzara is the word, everyone has huge smiles on their faces and the gentleman goes in back and comes back with a roll of green screen. si, si! Grazie!!! we are waving our hands in the air and making complete fools of ourselves, but they don't seem to care. so now they wany to know how much. oh yeah, like i can say that, so i notice the length of the counter and point form one end to the other, and the woman says to the man what she thinks that length will be. yes!!!

suddenly the man says bianco. ok, I admit i should have know thatone, it means white, but we have no idea what he means, so he goes in back and bring out white screen. another round of si, si, grazie happens and then he starts measuring.

In the meantime I know we need tape because we don't want to harm walls, but I don't see any rolls of tape around. Finally peeking arounf the side of the register I see a roll they use, and point at it for the woman. si, si she says, and I'm sure says the word for tape, but i couldn't remember it if my life depended on it. Have I mentioned we need to get our butts to school.

Then she says bianco! yes, yes I think, the screen is white, thank you. She goes to the side of the shop and returns with a proud grin on her face and a roll of white tape! Hey! We are coordinated now.At least the tape want show so much because the walls are white.
Again a a round of applause and many grazie and mille grazies happen.

On the expats site that I link to here, someone gave me the names of a couple of places that are like home depot, so I am looking forward to finding them and seeing if we can get screens for our windows that have frames.

Well, daughter is going crazy waiting for me, so I need to cut this short.

One last thing, my daughter has a blog also, so I am putting a link on my site to her blog. Please take a look at it.

Excuse me, but we live in Italy now!

We are here! I tried to log onto the expats forum to post, but I am unable to make an at sign with this dang keyboard. Can nyoe tell me how please. Also please excuse any mistakes in typing, this is a weird keyboard.
Annika I am going to copy and paste what I sent to you to make it easier for me right now.
We are here! In Italy! Really! We are!!! and it is wonderful! Our little apartment has a balcony on the roof overlooking all the other roofs and looks out over the country in to the hills!! We can stand out there and feel the wind and hear church bells! There is always the noise of students and scooters and there are actually old men that sit out at on the street and the end of our alley! We were so tired for the first two days but today we are much better. we haven't been to school yet because we are tryingf to get settled.
Jessica was so dissapointd at Perugia the first day, it make me sick to my stomach,, but she loves it now.
I am hoping we had insurance on my rental car because I think I burned out the transmission on it because roads would be closed and I would have to go backwards up hills.
Driving the autostrans was great! Even friving in Rome was fine, not nearly as bad as I thought. The thing about driving here has to do with my theory on driving. It it lke a dance, and everyone must know how not to step on the other persons toes. They don't know how to do tht in the US, they DO know how to here! I had such fun, and the autostrand was not bad at all. I have NO clue how fast I was driving but 120 km per hour was the speed. Can someone tell me how fast that was.
I am very glad to get rid of the car and use buses, walk. The Universita per Stranieri Perugia is right at the bottome of out street! I thought we lived across town from it, so we are very happy.
Tomorrow e may go to ikea in rome. I should go now. Ciao!

End of Phase One. Beginning of Phase Two

The end of phase one. Today we try to cram everything we've accumulated(sp) into two suitcases each and a carry on. I think I can do it, but am a bit worried about my daughter. I think this will be her third round of throwing away things.

In a bit we are going to go to the Post office to send out two M bags. (bags of books sent at a special price) One to Italy for my daughter, and one to Sweden for my friend Annika who has been so patient. I've been telling her I would send books on Italy for a couple months now. "Annika, I am finally sending the books!" I think there are six or seven, including Living and Working in Italy and a novel. I swore there were more novels, but it looks like mostly tour books and language books. I hope you aren't dissapointed after all this time. I think they are great books, but I think you wanted more about life in Italy, for dreaming. ;-)

Well, tomorrow I leave here a bit more jaded, if that were possible at my age. :-) I've been very dissapointed with the whole experience. So much money and time down the drain, but hey, nothing in life is perfect.

Tomorrow morning I pick up our SUV from the rental place. SUV you say? *L* I know, but we are taking the cats to the airport in the kennels they'll be flying in, so they will need more room.

I pick that up at 10:30 I think, then back to the hotel to pack up, which will be sooooooooooo much easier this time, everything will be in the suitcases.

Then we drive the 4 1/2 hours to the Detroit airport, hang out til 7:35 pm when our plane to Italy leaves. Direct flight to Rome. (yay!)

Thanks to information on both the Slowtrav and Expats In Italy site, I called one of the Rome limo services, who will be waiting for us outside customs holding a card with our name on it. (shades of being a movie star!) We booked a van into Rome to drop us off at the rental place rather than trying to fight the crowds in the airport. (ok, now I am just starting to be proud of all I actually learned from the sites)

THEN from the car rental place we pick up another small van and drive to Perugia.

NOW comes the scary part, driving. Oh my god, if it hadn't been 600 euros to have someone drive us, I would have gone that route. I've just posted a note on Expats, so we'll see what they say.

The best I can hope for is to be able to endure the screaming of my daughter as I drive!

Ok, off to the Post office. Later!

Tomorrow all will be known

Well, we are still struggling with the Italian Consulate in Chicago. Jess has been there every day, tomorrow is the do or die date. If we can't get our students visas tomorrow then we'll have to go with tourist visas. I'm pretty numb on the whole subject now, BUT I REALLY WANT MY STUDENT VISA SO WE CAN MAKE SOME EXTRA MONEY!

On a brighter note, I've got some pictures from the window of our hotel in Chicago! We are on the 23rd (top floor) so I took a couple today. This is the first time putting pictures in. If you double click on them you'll see a bigger image.

Hanging around Chicago

While I would not want to live here, Jess and I have been having a lot of fun in Chicago. Other than the fact that the hotel we've been staying in the last three days is a DUMP (when we stayed in it last year, it was so much nicer) we love being somewhere where there is so much going on.
At least starting tomorrow we move to a decent hotel for the duration on our stay.
We decided not to go back to MN, we would rather stay here and drive up to Detroit on Sunday the 3rd. So now we have over a week to not get bored and for me to TRY and talk my daughter out of spending any more money. My budget was blown about 2 weeks ago. IWe'll now have to stay in Italy simply because I won't have enough money to go home and start over!
So Friday we were so exhausted both physically from driving all night, and mentally from dealing with the consulate we simply went back to the hotel and slept all afternoon. Afterwards we drove up out of the city as close as we could get to the lake. Saw some beauiful houses as well as signs that said "Senior Crossing" We thought those were hysterical.
We also ended up getting lost on the way back and going into a "questionable part of north Chicago"
Today we decided to walk down Michigan Ave, the main shopping street of Chicago ( at least I think it is) We ended up walking from about 12the down to about 5 blocks south of the river, about 17 city blocks in all, and ended up at the Taste of Chicago. That was fun, good food, and then walked almost to the Navy pier to watch fireworks. About 15 minutes before they were about to start this truly awesome fog bank very slowly over the pier, unbelievable sight.
After all the walking we decided to take a cab back to the hotel. We've had a lot offun being able to hail cabs to get around, what a treat.
Well tomorrow we will be in the new hotel, up above the 18th floor and in a room with a view, so I'm signing off to try and get some sleep. Things are really starting to come together!

Finally at the consulate!

We are now in Chicago and have been to the consulate and it looks like we'll be getting our student visas! (barring any problems). Even though we are still waiting for the original document to come from the University in Italy for my daughter's prooof of enrollment (i got mine like 5 days ago), the consulate said we could start the paperwork with a fax from them.
So Thursday night at about 1 am we called the university and asked them to fax a copy to the Chicago Consulate, and at 1:30 am we headed out to drive the 7 hours to Chicago. We got here at about 9 am, no sleep, didn't even shower or anything, and got papers together to go to the consulate.
We catch a cab to the consulate, go up to the 18th floor and there are like 15-20 people all sitting down waiting. By now it's like 10:00 and I am even more panicked, but it turned out most were for passports. Only three were ahead of us for visas.
The gentleman(sp??) who was doing visa apps asked if anyone was going for student visas, and had everyone take a paper saying that if you didn't have everything on it, you could not apply. Of course everyone started to panick, and starting calling home to get someone to get plane tickets for them , etc....
We had about a 20 minute wait, and then somehow we managed to jump line. (Would Italians be proud of me? )
My daughter and I went up to the window together. The man, not even having spoken to us goes, "Yes I received the fax."
My daughter and I were speechless! Then he asked "Mrs Ortega?" I'm like freaking out by now. And he goes, "I figured it was you, you are the one who sent like thousands of emails to us!" I think coming up with my daughter gave it away, and Ok, I sent about SIX emails in the last two years to them, (and maybe a couple of phone calls) but we thought it was cool he knew who we were! Well, we were hoping it was good and not bad. I don't think he was too impressed with me, but he was very nice to us.
Anyway he starts asking for and going over our paperwork. We had everything except the original for my daughter from the University. I had also picked up the wrong itinerary, an old one. so we bring that in on Monday. I also had to run down and make copies of our passports and licenses, otherwise everything was in order.
There was not one other person there who had even close to everything. When I went downstairs to make copies Jess said she saw him mark everything accepted for the student visa so I am hoping we are set. We asked him to call us when the visas were ready, that we were not leaving town and counting on even fedex.
We now fly out of Detroit (5 hour drive from here) at 7:30pm on the 3rd of July, missing the first two days of school, but the flight is nonstop so the animals won't be sitting out on the tarmack any longer than they have to, that makes it well worth it.
One of the consulate's first words to us was: "don't tell me you need this by today or tomorrow or yesterday!" He was pretty frustrated by everyone coming at the last minute.
I told him that we were supposed to fly out today, but that we had rescheduled the flight for a week from Sunday, he seemed pretty happy about that.
I have to tell you that I was so nervous, papers were flying everywhere, I couldn't find anything, my daughter said I was driving her crazy. But let's face it, this is the most important person you will me, they decide your fate. No student visa, no part time work etc.
So anyway, barring my daughter not getting the orinigal paperwork in the next week, we are finally on our way!
We celebrated with a nice dinner in Chicago tonight, tomorrow it is back to cheap food.

Hair today, can we please go to Italy tomorrow?

Well, Jessica and I both got our hair cut and colored in Chicago. Hair color and cuts looked great on us both, nothing drastically different at all, but my stylist got all the gold/orange out of my hair and managed to make it a nice ash. I'm pretty sure we could have gotten something similar done somewhere else for several hundred dollars less but oh well, a person has to pamper themselves sometime.

We also both got our makeup done. I'm not one to wear much more than mascara, some foundation to cover up flaws and sometimes some blush. I thought since we were going to Italy I should really get some advice on eye shadow and more importantly lipstick.
I didn't want to trust my makeup to some 18 year old at the Mashall Field's cosmetic counter, that's why we scheduled makeup sessions along with the hair. I think I would have been safer at Mashall Fields. The first hint of trouble was when my "makeup artist" turned out to be a gay male. Trust me, I have nothing at ALL against gay males, except when they are doing my makeup.
When he was done, my worst fears were realized, I came out looking like a drag queen. AAHHHHHHHHHH. As much as I wanted to believe that everyone who worked in the salon was staring at me because I was a vision of beauty, I'm pretty sure it was more shock. I was scary, with cream makeup base applied with a sponge, eye shadow lining my eyes both above and halfway below, then dark brown eye shadow, scary blush on my cheeks that made my foundation look like wax, and lips outlined with a sort of mango lip pencil. By the time he did my lipstick I think he was giving up on me, and had just gone ahead and filled them in with the same pencil!
Those who know me well are aware of just how much I hate people staring at me. This truly ranked up there with dreams of being naked in front of a crowd. Every time I got into a spot that only had a few people, I was wiping my lips and blush off with the inside of my shirt. Never again will I do something like that. Luckily I won $30 later on a scratch off which at least paid me back for the cost of the makeup session, but not for the humiliation endured.

Jessica had a wonderful girl who did her makeup in soft young colors, and she came out looking great!
Oh yes, the movie wasn't filming that day so we didn't get to see any stars. :-(

Friday - still no letter from the school in Italy, so we headed back to Minnesota.
It's now Saturday night and still no letter.
I'll have to call the school again at about 2 am Monday morning our time, to see what address they sent it to.

I was also thinking that maybe the school could fax a copy to the Honorary consulate here in Minnesota. So I am also going to call her first thing Monday morning as well as the Chicago consulate and see if maybe they would accept the faxed copy if the consulate here notorized it. I'm thinking the chances are slim they'll accept it, but anything is possible.

TIME IS RUNNING SHORT! Our plane tickets are for Friday afternoon. *sigh* I am running out of happy thoughts.

One more attempt to catch up

This is the SHORT version.

Packed everything up including 4 cats, drove 7 hours to suburb of Chicago. Cats being transported went pretty darn well. Nice hotel, no confirmation of enrollment from Italy and it's late Wed and no consulate til we get it. If they don't get it in MN by Thursday I am going to have to drive the 14 hours there and back to get it on Friday to bring Monday. That is 4 days before we leave and is really pushing it.

Weather is great here, went to Six Flags, it rained and we should have saved our money. Cats are all fine in hotel, though Kitty wants out badly. We go into Chicago tomorrow to get haircuts, color and makeup at a salon that was rated #1 in Chicago by some magazine. It's on a street that is blocked off because they are filming a movie with Will Farrell, Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Glyllyhall(sp) and someone else, so hopefully we will have to ask permission to go through and also be able to watch them make the movie. Maybe our names are on a list!!!
Excuse me.... Diana and Jessica Ortega............. Right this way Ms Ortega... (they open the barriers and let us through, making the crowd wonder who we are) *LOLOLOL* yeah right... *s* ok, all caught up on the blog as far as I am concerned. :-)

Still catch up on what has been happening

After booking Rome and Chicago, we now have to give up our two dogs and one of our cats. This has been the hardest thing for me so far.
Our dog Toby we have talked "Home For Life" into taking. This is a place in Wisconsin that takes in dogs and cats that are unadoptable. Toby is at least 17, and I didn't want him put to sleep. Home for Life will keep them until they die naturally. I'd been trying to get in touch with them for a while, no one ever returned my calls. Finally I got through to a live person. Unfortunately this happened a day after a news story on them had aired, so now I'm thinking I sound just like all the other people who have called after seeing the story. Making a long story short, they accept a crap load of money to take my older dog. Thanks heavens, now I know he won't be put to sleep.
I tried to get them to take Gus also, but they said they didn't have room for a dog that might have problems with other dogs. Kitty could go to a woman that worked at the shelter. She said that she would work with Kitty to be an indoor cat and then find someone to take her, That really isn't what I wanted, but time was really running short and I didn't know what I was going to do with her.
We had been waiting for the house to close before we could place Toby, Gus and Kitty because the shelter wanted cash up front. Makes sense, person promises money for taking dog, shelter takes dog, person dissapears. Best to get the money first.
The day that we took Toby, Gus and Kitty to their new homes was a tough one. We started out with both dogs, driving to Stillwater to drop off the money at the shelter's accountant. I felt like I was selling my dog into slavery or something. Bring a wad of money to a location, at that point they will tell you where the shelter was, including the fact that there is an electric gate at the entrance. Very weird.
The place was great, much smaller than I had thought, but lots of healthy animals all over. Still very hard to leave Toby.
Next was Gus. Gus the Wonder dog. The woman taking him is sure that he is her now deceased dog by the name of Gomer. Same shape and size, type of dog. I believe her. The name Gomer fits Gus perfectly. Hey, two Gs also! She had touaght Gomer to wink. Guess what, Gus winks. *Twilight Zone music*
We drive back to the house to get Kitty, and then drive into Mpls to drop them both off.
Oh yeah, I didn't mention that we have a rental car, black interior. Well it was black, now it looks grey under the massive amount of Gus hair that is all over the car. Since then we've vaccumed it, but I'm think 2 more vaccumings should get most of the hair of the car. *sigh*

As soon as we started driving to the house, I started freaking out about Kitty. I didn't want her adopted out, and I didn't want her in S Mpls. She is so great at going out, which we had allowed her to do. When you would come inside the front door she would zoom out before you knew what happened. Anyway, I started obsessing(sp) about this until I was in tears.
To make it short, Gus went, Kitty in now coming to Italy with us, making it 4 cats. I just couldn't take away her freedom like that. i'm hoping we are in an area where we can let her outside.
Gus loved the place, didn't even look back. The woman who took him called me the other day to let me know how he was doing. It's like he lived there forever. That is so good it made me cry. I'm not mad he's not missing us at all, just thrilled he's happy.

Catch up day

It's been a while since I posted, I was feeling like blogging is sort of a self centered thing to do, but then my friend Eric said he actually checked back for new entries, so I thought I should really make an effort to keep it updated. I suppose if I want anyone to read it I should also give out the URL to people!

Quick version of what has been happening:

9 pm the day before closing the house the sale fell through, buyer didn't qualify (the night BEFORE?)

We sit over a week waiting while they scramble to get approved.

My friend Jody who is also my realtor is going to do some fancy footwork to buy the house in her son's name, then resell it.

This doesn't work and she (my dear friend) ends up buying me out of my equity, keeping the house in my name and giving the the majority of the money in cash.

Ok, so after all this, we have money. YES. Monday June 6th I finally fax in our applications to the Univsersity in Perugia and Western Union the money to them.
I start checking online to see if they have picked up the money. In the meantime we actually get our plane reservations. We leave Minneapolis on Friday June 24th, get into Rome in the morning on the 25th. Ok, now this is starting to get a bit exciting, BUT from past experience I know that if I start to enjoy things too much, something will happen.

BINGO. Two days gone by, no pickup of the money by the University. I send an email to them in English. 2 more days go by. I get a reply in Italian that says when they get the money, they will send confirmation. GRR

2 more days go by, now it's Friday, I send another plea in Italian, knowing they won't get the email until Monday. Jess and I end up going to an all night Kinkos to wait for a reply.

Oh, I haven't mention the lack of internet problem. We are now sleeping on air mattresses in the house to save money, so we have no internet access to check up on things, play games on Pogo etc, all those important things a person does online. So we have sort of a system of hitting all the places that have wireless. First we starting the morning with Dunn Brothers coffee, morning being a pretty loose term here. We have been getting to bed about 2 in the morning, and sleeping til 1 or 2 in the afternoon, about 3 we are up and about and go to the coffee shop and check mail to see if I have confirmation etc.
After this we seem to go shop. I have to tell you, I'm not a shopper in the first place, I mean I hate it, but every day there seems to be something that is absolutely essential to our well being in Italy. Converters, special purses so we won't get pickpocketed, new shoes... :-)

I go back and forth on the question of whether or not I should get a new laptop, this one is so old it doesn't even have USB ports, although the port I can hook up to does have them. I decide it will do as I plan to be sitting in Piazzas drinking wine and checking out Italian men, not surfing all the time.

Anyway, after shopping, most of the coffe shops are closed, so we head out to the restaurant Buffalo Wild Wings, where it turns out we are the only ones who have ever used their wirelesss internet. We also find out there is only one spot in the restaurant were you can pick up a signal. We develop a ritual. I head in first, handing my computer to Jess, at the same time asking what she wants, she scopes out the table to see if it is open. If it is, she races to the table telling me over her shoulder what she wants. If she manages to get the table all is well, she plunks down the computers on the table and comes back to change her order to what she really wanted.

Only two times have we not gotten our table, the first was when we decided to go to Kinkos and pay to surf (in my opinion this should be against the law). The other time we tried a different table on the other side of the restaurant. (there are only two places where there are electrical outlets) No go, signal was so bad we went to Kinkos.

The first time at Kinkos we pull all all nighter. This is because when you sign up to pay for internet through T-Mobile, you get a 24 hour free pass. I'll be damned if I am going to pass that up. So from 11:30 pm until 9 am we surf. I'm all business, we need to get a hotel outside of Chicago, by Six Flags so that we can play and then run into Chicago for business. The hotel has to be cheap, close to the gates, accept pets and be available the dates we need.
This is no small feat. It takes probably 4 hours of my going back and forth between many sites that book hotels. It's amazing how there is such a price difference when you book online.

I get the hotel booked. Country Inns in Gurnee, nice place, king sized bed and sofa suite is all that is available. This turns out to be an awesome choice. Room is big and on the top floor, I get the king sized bed, Jess is happy with the sofa. Except for the family next door who let their kids run and scream for hours on end, it's the perfect hotel.

Booking Rome is harder. It's the high season, and you have no idea what the hotels are like. They all describe themselves as the perfect hotel. When you read some of the people's reviews of them, it's a but scary. Even the hotel I decide to boook says the shower is so small you can barely turn around in it. Prices are sky high though there are a fair amount of hotels that take animals. I start looking at sites that have reviews of the hotels. This takes me about 5 hours, but I find a great deal. The Hotel Luxor, small rooms, but clean and near the center of Rome. They accept pets, so I book it for 4 days. Yeah! We have a hotel booked in Rome! I feel like a big shot now. Diana - International Woman of Mystery. Hmm.....

I've been keeping an eye on Jess, who is sitting behind me. She has either been surfing, playing games, reading or trying to sleep with her head on the table. I have to say she's been a real trooper during all this. We've had arguments, but only when we are so totally exhausted we can't see straight anymore. Thank God she is like me and doesn't hold a grudge. The perfect travelling partner.

OK, we have reservations for Chicago and Rome. I still need to book Perugia for the days before we can get into our apartment, but that will have to wait until some other things are settled. I can only do so much at one time or it gets too overwhelming.

I'll continue this update later, Six Flags and that icky guy in the old man's suit is calling me now. :-)