Neglecting my duty as a blogger

Sorry, there have been things going on here, just haven't felt like blogging them.

We went on a drive last week and ended up taking the scenic route, up long very windy roads into a mountain and back down, it took us a couple of hours and it had breathtaking views. We ended up coming down only around 40 miles fromwhere we started. I was SURE we were going to end up at the Adriatic sea or something. But noooo, we ended up back into...... Umbertide! This time we passed up the restaurant in the town square and found a restaurant in a hotel along the main road..

We understood absolutely nothing in the menu, except the word green and gnocchi. No handy English explanations under the Italian dishes so that we knew what we were ordering, so we ordered the gnocchi and the dish with the word green in it. The house red wine was one of the first wines I have really enjoyed here. I don't know if it is this area of Italy or what, I have expected so much more, but will try the wines north and south when we go in those directions to see if there is much of a difference.

The gnocchi was amazing, in sort of a butter sauce, and tasted like maybe it had scallops in it, but as we ate, we noticed these weird shaped things in it, sort of long red thing with a white round thing, sort of a head and......antenna????

Picking one out, I looked at it, and it was a cooked snail! I mean this perfect little round part where the shell should be, then the long redish thing that was the part of the body outside, with a head attached and little cooked antenna. I couldn't believe it. I was able to set one standing up on my plate and had it staring at Jessica the whole time we ate. I ended up putting one in my pocket wrapped in a napkin, took it home and took a picture of it. We haven't transferred the pictures yet to the web, hopefully I'll have it for you in the next day or two.

We really didn't do anything all weekend, a real shame, we've been so lazy, BUT we have a 4 day weekend this week, our reg Friday off and next Monday is a holiday here. We only have the car for one more weekend after that, so we are planning some trips IF people will make sure I wake up in time.

After writing in here, I am going to check out driving to Venice, then on to Zurich. Possibly as an overnight trip, then a day break and then I would like to go to southern Italy maybe.

Our classmate Ruth should be going with us, this way we can split the hotel costs 3 ways.

After school today we made a run to Deruta, only about 15 minutes away by car. I either missed the main part of town or there isn't much to it. We were hoping to be able to go into a factory setting and see how they make the ceramics.

School is going well, I am actually able to understand more on TV already. Amazing!
Lots of fun in class, the teacher is really fun, makes it so much easier to sit in class up to 6 hours a day.

We ate at the University cafeteria for the second time today. Food was NOT as impressive as last week, but for 1.80 euro, it was great.
Only choice of pear or peach, then depending on what they had out, either spaghetti noodles or shells with a white cheese sauce, or shells with a red sauce.

Today they actually had carrots!!! Carrots in a can are hard to find, at least they have been for me, and since cooking at home here will only consist of heating things up, no boiling fresh veggies for me, thank you. So I was happy to get the carrots for lunch. (hey, simple pleasures in a beautiful country)

Salad and only one choice of bread, so it was a plain meal, but was cheap, healthy and filled you up. Who could ask for more!

Before oging to Deruta, we finally stopped in at the local cemetary. I mean, this is not JUST a cemetary, this is an Italian cemetary, chock full of crypts and beautiful statues, underground crypts(maybe not crypt, but you are able to go down stairs and look down a long hallways with I am guessing bodies encrypted in the walls.)

EVERYWHERE are fresh flowers in set in urns attached to the walls. I have never seen so many graves decorated with fresh flowers. You know people visit because there are candles lit in many of the family crypts. The majority of the sites have photos of the deceased and many of the larger monuments that are built into a long building actually have carved likenesses of the deceased in stone or marble, as well as huge angels, Jesus, you name it. The place was truly amazing. Of course we had no camera with us. GRRRRRRR.. But we will be going back in the next couple of days to take some pictures. You could walk for hours there, and of course there was the beautiful view over the valley into the hills. I could die there, no problem. :-)

Other than that, I just keep getting up every morning, looking out the window and thanking GOD we are here in this beautiful country. Everything sacrificed has been well worth the trip.