La Gavina = Tower of Babel

Day 2: VACATION DAY! I've barely done any work yet but I'm in Italy where vacation days are encouraged! I traveled to Siena (what what!) with my co-boarder, Emily/Emilia/Emiliana. I include three /s because frankly, I can't tell what her name is even though I've asked. Her answer was a shrug and a "tutto."  For the purpose of this blog let's go with Emily because it's the fastest one to type. Emily is Bulgarian and she does not speak Italian. Somehow she and Lorena manage to communicate nonetheless. She is lovely - I'm not sure how lovely because we can't manage to converse, but she always smiles and she invited me to join her today which is good because without her I never would have found my way to the bus.

The bus stop is about 1/2 mile from La Gavina. It's a direct walk (thank goodness) so I know I'll be able to find it again. Of course I did not have a ticket for the bus... but maybe less predictable was the fact that the driver didn't have any either. OK, this is when behaving like a tourist comes in handy. "What? No tickets?! NON COMPRENDO." So, he let us on. And cleaned his glasses while he snorted at me. The bus ride to Siena was incredibly scenic and a little bit nauseating because it was fast and curvy, and in a manual transmission... but it was well worth it. Endless green! I think rolling hills is an odd way to put it, but actually it's completely accurate.

Emily and I arrived in Siena, had a coffee, and parted ways after painstakingly agreeing to meet back at 2:15 PM. (So far our conversations involve a lot of pointing and yelling random Italian words.) I headed toward the Piazza del Campo, the central square in Italy, and there began a day of reminiscing, feeling so happy to be back, but missing my CET friends! (BTW - Ladies - I think I spotted some of this years CETers and we were WAAAAAY cuter.  And we also had a higher rate of buzz cuts... Sukester...)

So, I walked all over the city. Visited with L'Elephant. You know who I'm talking about. Li'l ole' Torre! OH, of COURSE! I stopped first at Nannini for Ricciarelli. I almost forgot! Sheesh. I missed those little puppies. Flour-less carriers for endless amounts of powdered sugar, this girls dream. I also went back to the Cathedral, which by the way is definitely not in use at the moment and I can't remember whether it was in use while we were here --- Also, they are "restoring" the mosaics on the floor, and their technique is to cover them with cardboard and tape, but remove the restrictive ropes around them so that now these monstrous Italian teenagers just step right over them! (I have no idea how those horrible teenaged boys become 50-year-old men who live with their moms and then grow into the old, strong Italian men who like to stroll around, "take a little bit of sun," and who I love so dearly.)

Anyway, at 2:15 Emily and I met at the bus to return to La Gavina. I forgot to mention that we left at 7 am this morning for some reason that is unclear to me - but I actually had amount of time in Siena. As we sat down on the bus, I realized that although Emily, Lorena and I can only use a handful of Italian verbs to converse, we're likely to become increasingly comfortable as a group over the next month, and even to thoroughly enjoy each others company. However, I was also thinking how difficult it is that we don't all speak a universal language. And that's when it occurred to me that during this May, La Gavina = Tower of Babel.

Oh, on that note I should also mention that last night after I wrote, I discovered that Sergio and Lorena's grandchildren are named Doroeta (Doro for short) and Cesare (Cece for short). I had dinner with them while Lorena and Emily helped the B & B guests. When Sergio left me alone to supervise them he did not warn me that his grandson doubles as some kind of spiderman/batman amalgamation. Within 15 seconds Cece was rolling around the floor of the kitchen and spilling yogurt on the couch. Let me just say - it's VERY difficult to discipline the grandson of people you have just met, in their house, in a foreign language! Cece had the time of his life. Luckily, Doro is extremely sweet and she helped me out, and made a large effort to make conversation with me. I think she was a bit confused about why I was speaking so slowly. She took a hanging album off the wall to show me, and she was very pleased that we'll be seeing each other again next week. Unfortunately, I must have misspoken at one point because when I asked her how you say "grandmother" and "grandfather" in Italian, she thought I was asking her what Sergio and Lorena's names were. Let's hope they didn't hear about that on the car ride home.

OK! That's it for now. The real work starts tomorrow, very exciting.