kat 87

Hello dear friends and family, I’m embarrassed to look at the last time I wrote on here, it has been so long. Without rushing through everything too quickly, let me give a little update about the past two months ☺ First off, the somewhat lazy schedule I had before is no more. I started volunteering once a week in Padova at an organization called XENA where I lead an English conversation table for two hours with about ten Italian adults, who are probably my same age or in their early thirties. XENA is a global connections grassroots volunteer organization that works on integrating people from different cultures with Italians in Veneto region, and also provides overseas volunteer opportunities for Italians. I used to participate in the Spanish conversation tables at the UW, so I had an ... read more

Ciao (hello) to the outside world! Im alive and finally writing on the computer again. These past three weeks have been rather a whirl-wind of seeing family and friends in Italy and Germany, and even though Im kinda sick with a cold that I caught from Gabri, I couldn put off writing anymore. So now Im cozy here with a piece of marzipan and a cup of tea, and semi-watching the movie Stranger Than Fiction. (My parents didn really like the movie, but I find it inspiring and witty. Will Farrell is actually pretty cute while playing "I go the whole wide world" and you can go wrong when you add Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Queen Latifah and Maggie Gyllenhaal to the crew with the overall theme of "Its your life- live it the way you ... read more

I’ve figured it out: it’s a 9 to 1 ratio. About 90% of the time I enjoy working for a musically-talented, thoughtful and amusing family for 5 months as a side job for taking a break after college. Andrea and Cecilia are getting me back into playing the piano, which I’ve stupidly ignored for about 4 years, they are always recommending places to travel, and this Saturday night Cecilia and I are going to a performance at the Roman outdoor theatre in Verona. Can’t. Wait. Then there is the other 10% of the time when I want to pull out my hair and think get me out of here! That’s mainly when the kids whine, pout and cry if they don’t get what they want stat. They know they’re spoiled, and like two days ago, Gioia ... read more

Week number 3… Getting acquainted to a normal summer schedule here, where I work 4 days of the week and have off on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Not that bad. Pretty much I hang out with the kids in the morning by going to one of the parks in town, then we go back to the house where I make some lunch and they take a nap for a couple hours. From 3pm until the rest of the day I have off, although I usually join the family for dinner/hanging out. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but wow it’s taken some adjusting to taking care of kids again. My patience has been tried on more than one occasion, and I forget how much energy they have at all times of the day and ... read more

Well I am already falling behind on my travel blog, oops. So for the sake of time, this entry will be about my first week in Italy. As I last mentioned, we (Andrea, Cecilia, Gioia, Gabri and I) crammed into their small car to drive the 3 hours to the coast of Tuscany, and we stopped in Siena on the way there. Andrea and Cecilia felt that this was a decent-length road trip, so they were shocked when I told them how my 4 roommates and I had driven across the States for 15+ hours in one day to reach Colorado on our way to the Grand Canyon. They just couldn’t believe that we didn’t fly straight there, but driving there was a whole other adventure besides the actual hiking in the Canyon! (our engine ... read more