Time flies when you’re… doing nothing at all. This Tuesday, we went to Vignanello with our culture class. We piled onto a weird little train with wires on top, that was a little like an above ground subway, if that makes sense, and rode for 40 minutes or so, and when we arrived when walked up one of the many hills the town is built on and got to the castle. The tour of the castle was alright, but the most enlightening part of the tour was when we learned about the family tree. You see, I got married in another palace, which was owned by the Farnese family. The Marescotti-Ruspoli family had Farnese women marry in, which is a nice first link. Most importantly, however, the first of the Marescotti family was a man named Marius of the Douglas clan of Scotland (Scozia in Italian). When he came to Italy, his name was created by squishing “Marius” and “of Scozia” together. Now, it’s been a year since I went to the Kirkin’ of the Tartan, but I am fairly certain that somewhere in my family history we are linked to the Douglas clan. Therefore, somewhere along the line, I have to be related to the Farnese family by marriage… and I got married in their palace, haha! That was ridiculously interesting to me, and probably not as much for you, but you are the one still reading, so whose fault is that? After the castle and the garden, we went to the middle school to meet some 8th graders. I hated middle school, and I did not enjoy going back, even for one afternoon. Luckily, we had lunch at the grocery store counter: 60 cents a sandwich for a deli-style panini. It was really tasty. We got drinks at the café next door, and we were pleased with our less than four euro lunch. We also went to the library and met some people from the town, and met an artist whose paintings were being displayed at the local library. He gave us all a poster, and some administrator-types of the town gave us goodie bags with a nice bottle of red wine, cookies, hazelnuts, and a map of the town. We were all very touched.
On Wednesday, we continued to learn the animals, and unlike our last class session, I was really good and behaved myself. Well, I did not “misbehave” the last time, but I was really interested in chipmunks. There are some here at a pet store, and I wanted to know if Katia knew what they were. She didn’t, but I was very intent on showing her. So, anyway, this time I was better about all of that.
Thursday was literature class, and it was actually pretty ok. I hate that I have to say that about one of my classes, but it really can be quite tedious. It hurts at times. This week it was perfectly harmless, just boring. I am really nervous about my own presentation, which is this week. It is over the one topic I am horrible at in English: poetry. I even told the professor this the first week, and no one in the class ever volunteered to trade with me. I worked on it a lot on Sunday night, and I am just really lost. Anyway, I digress. Most of Thursday was spent online doing our puppy search again. We were also looking for a photo for the newspaper for our wedding announcement, but we had a lot of trouble finding anything without Kevin’s hair being messy in the wind, or us making a face. It was really frustrating.
On Friday we went to Todi and Perugia. We were supposed to go to Assisi. I was really upset that they switched at the last minute. I did not even want to go. We went anyway, but we basically woke up early every day that week, and I was cranky. I got sick on the long bus ride (who is shocked, honestly?). We got to Todi, which is another hill town, this time in Umbria. It was really a long way up the hill. We went to two churches, and had coffee with our directors and Elliot (Stefano’s Great Dane). Eventually we went to a museum, where some of the group were really bored and so Tamara gave her tour, which included made up stories of how all of the pieces in the museum were from her personal collection, and how she donated them to the museum because there was not enough space in her house. My personal favorite was an Etruscan statue in the shape of an eagle that she said her grandfather cast in memory of her brother who was attacked by an eagle. It was really quite interesting. On the way back to the bus, we did not get to have a restroom break, so while other people were popping their heads into stores, we jumped into a café, and got drinks and a restroom break. When we went outside, we saw lots of USAC kids, and so thought there was another pause and that Francesca was who we were following. Nope. We followed Jeff. To the wrong end of town. Ooops. We made our way back, but we got in trouble for being late. When we got on the bus, the most memorable part of the day occurred. Now, sit down. You need to prepare yourself for the glory of what is to come.
As Kevin stepped on the bus he says to me “did you see that?” “what,” I asked. He points to his jeans. I see nothing. I shrug. He laughs and points again: there is a tear in his jeans that runs from the upper part of his front pocket to the hem of his boxers. We debated how to fix it all the way to Perugia. Now, this story gets better, folks. These pants were bought right before we left for Italy, and they did not even survive the trip. They were a good brand, even. We are still confused as to how and why they ripped vertically that way on his pocket. Anyway, we got to Perugia, got our sandwiches, and as we were walking down the sidewalk, Kevin missed a step and further ripped his pants. All the way from the belt down. We were supposed to go on a tour, and we were concerned about whether he would be allowed into the churches. So during the tour, we went to Benetton, and we bought him a pair of Khaki shorts (because all of the jeans were about 80 euro… which is just unreasonable, but they were the only store around that wasn’t Dolce e Gabanna or anything). The trip was rather unmemorable except for that, and for the fact that I got a necklace, earrings and a stack of bracelets for less than 13 USD all together. I was really impressed with my buying power. Oh, and we found a thong vending machine… yes that’s right folks: you can buy a thong from what looks like a candy machine, and apparently one size fits all. Some of the kids bought some as pranks, as they just look like cloth in those plastic bubbles.
Well, the whole weekend, the internet was offline at the college, so we went to two different places to get online. In the course of this, we found several more jobs and apartments that interest us. Also we found out that my poor mom is sick, so keep her in your thoughts and prayers: both of my parents are in a show this weekend, so she needs it! I think our weekend was again pretty tame. On Saturday, Kevin had to wake up early and go to a meeting with our landpeople and Stefano. I got a lot done while he was gone, and I felt pretty good about all of it, even though it would not have been a real accomplishment at home, haha. Italy makes me lazy! In the meeting, the four mature people who actually woke up to go to the meeting, basically decided to not decide what to charge us until we move out in two weeks, so we are in limbo. We are really trying not to spend any more money because of that, so I won’t get to go to Florence, but we think we will still get to go to Rome one more time. That’s about it on our weekend.
Mom, get better and don’t forget to water my plants!
A Presto!
Doreen