It's been a while and I have excuses, but the point is that now I have internet in my apartment and I will be posting more regularly.
Now where to start because there has been a lot that has happened.
I think I will do this in installments because all that's been going on recently has been school and more school.
So this post will be about my trip to Italy!
The last week in September we had a break between when our PLP (preparatory language program) ended and the actual school year began. I have a friend whose grandmother lives half the year in a house in Tuscany and she invited me and my group of friends to make the trek down to spend the week there.
It was a pretty intense trip especially since there were 9 of us and we rented two cars to drive down. Just driving there was an adventure, only one of the cars had directions (don't ask me why) and the car with directions totally and utterly failed at caravanning. So we ending up taking a few scenic tours of some places in the complete opposite direction of where we were going not only in France, but in Italy too! We finally gave up after a while on the other car's ability to guide us and bought a map and followed it.
Finally after many a long hour in the car, we made it to her grandmother's house. It was like something out of a movie.
First of all it was on top of a mountain in the middle of the Tuscan country side.
Second, it was in this tiny tiny village of about 50 people that was I don't know how old. Seriously, it had a turret.
I have a funny story about that little plaza right outside the turret.When we finally got to the village in Fivizzano (that's the name of the area not the village) my friend Maya still had to go and talk to this woman to get the key to her grandparents house since they had recently gone back to San Francisco for the second half of the year. Well as you might have guessed Maria, the woman we were supposed to get the key from, was no where to be found. We even had this woman from the village help us even though we spoke no italian, whatsoever and of course she spoke nothing but italian.
Here is an illustration of just how small this village is, the woman who just happened to see us walking by trying to find Maria's house came out and showed us where it was. When Maria didn't answer she showed us to the village bar, where Maria usually is, but still no Maria. So she took us over to Maria's mother's house because sometimes Maria watches T.V. with her mother at night. All of these places were no more than 2-5 min walks away from each other if that.
I hope I have now convinced you of how truely teeny tiny this village was and is.
Anyways so after all this walking around with this woman and awkwardly trying to understand anything she was telling us, we still hadn't found Maria and had no idea where the key to the house was. After this realization half of our group proceeded to look for an alternate way into her grandmother's house (let me put a disclaimer here that NOTHING illegal was done on this trip... that we are aware of). The other half proceeded to gear up for sleeping outside for the night on the plaza next to the turret. It was quite a beautiful night actually, if a little cold, with a clear sky and you could see the entire milky way. Gorgeous.
Luckily for us though just as we were almost finished gearing up one of the others came up to the cars and told us we were saved! Maya's grandmother's neighbor was home and opened the front gate for us and we found the key under the mat in front of the house door! No sleeping outside for us!
Honestly sleeping outside wouldn't have been bad, but it was the end of september and I don't know if you know, but the end of September on the mediterranean means it's still Summer weather so none of us brought anything remotely warm enough to wear to sleep outside.
So we have a lot of history with that plaza up there. We almost spent the night on it!
Alright it's pretty late here and I have class in the morning so I will continue this Italy story tomorrow and let you read this portion while it's still daytime where you are!
A Bientot!
French word for today
le couloir: Hallway
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