When in Rome...

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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 want to").

To start off, if you e wondering what marzipan is, just know that its delicious. Cecilia wasn shy about claiming a marzipan diet while we were in Germany together. Its a candy bar made particularly in Germany and southern Italy, made of almonds covered thinly in chocolate, and is now one of my favorite treats, right next to Skittles and Milky Ways.

Now then, since I last wrote... I was followed by a girl from Taiwan through four Vicenzan museums, had one awesomely horrible interview by phone, met one of the Waldron boys in Rome, pulled my first all-nighter since being in school, saw my first wooden windmill at sunset, and sang along with a jolly, drunken German band in Düsseldorf, among some other stuff. Don worry, Ill explain :-)

The girl from Taiwan wasn a stalker :-)- we happened to both be in Vicenza with the same amount of free time to spend wandering, and wed found the same map that outlined one main walking tour of the city. But at least I found it awkward to continue bumping into the same person without acknowledging them, however in Italy Ive begun to assume that those around me don speak English, since most don , especially at this time of the year when "summer vacation" has ended and so the tourists are mainly Germans or those from surrounding countries. Anyhow, on leaving the fourth museum/villa and I saw this girl again, I took a chance and said something like, "well I hope you enjoy the rest of our tour!" and to my surprise she actually smiled (shed been very serious until then) and we continued the rest of our tour together in Vicenza, talking in broken English. This was about three weeks again and Wei Lin (the girl) and I have kept in touch through email. A very warm person, she invited me as a guest to her city in Taiwan, saying I was always welcome and shed be glad to show me around. She was traveling alone for a few days until a friend joined her from Taiwan and then they were continuing their Europe trip together. Shes very funny and we could share similar funny and annoying things wed noticed in Italy so far (like all the Hello Kitty stuff for grown-ups!).

Ive begun the search for jobs and internships again, for when I return to the States. Its slower-going now since the Internet is unavailable often, but one of my leads was a phone interview with a non-profit org in Seattle, WA. I said it was an awful interview before because it ended with Gabri crying into my arms, with every one of his wails going right into the microphone of my phone call, and me trying to excuse myself quickly from the contact. O Dio... I was using Skype upstairs in the main house for the phone call, and the kids were in bed while the parents were out, otherwise Cecilia would have intercepted him, but they were asleep until (as I understood it afterwards) Gabri had climbed into Gioias bed and she had woken up and pushed him off, and he became upset and furious. I couldn believe my luck though. Every other night that Ive had to put the kids to bed, they e in bed and in ten minutes they e sound asleep with no fuss for the rest of the time that Im there. You could say I was very surprised to get a friendly email from the contact later on, saying that shed like me to come to Seattle for a second interview to meet the head of the org when I return to the States. Well, Ill see what happens!

At the end of September I had a much-needed reunion with my brother Jeff, and family friend, Nuccia. I took off part of the work week to leave on an overnight train on Wednesday night and Nuccia picked me up Thursday morning for a couple of days outside of the city on a "girls trip". It was so much fun- we stayed in the charming Umbrian town of Spoleto (sleeping in a convent with rooms for rent!) and visiting two other neighboring Umbrian towns, Fogliano and Orvieto. Normally Fogliano is just "another small town" in Italy, but that weekend it was hosting a pasta festival. Get outta here, I thought. There were people dressed in pasta outfits, pasta artwork, all the doorways and display windows of shops were pasta-themed, and there were over twenty "stands" hosting entrees and appetizers of popular Umbrian pasta dishes. The gnocchi and orechiette were great, but the risotto with pumpkin sauce was one of my favorite. The next day Nuccia and I were almost too full for even the typically small Italian breakfast of a croissant and coffee, but we got ourselves moving in time to take a leisurely drive through beautiful Umbrian hillsides, to Orvieto. It is a small medieval town at the top of a mid-sized mountain, enclosed by a stone wall and well-known for its white wines (I wasn disappointed), ceramics, and Duomo (cathedral). Nuccia and I couldn stop going into all of the ceramics shops to admire the craftmanship, but we finally left little Orvieto to return to Rome in time to meet Jeff for dinner.

When in Rome... you walk around... a LOT! The first night we (Jeff, his partner Kevin, Nuccia and I) went to a nearby restaurant where Nuccia showed us true Italian style of talking outright and upfront to the owner of the restaurant and then being treated at the end with free cookies and limoncello (a lemon liquor, similar to a rich lemon vodka). The next day though, there were so many monuments, fountains, museums and parks to see, besides the fact that you are constantly getting a little turned around, that walking in Rome became a full day of exercise. But I prefer the walking to the underground metro system, and Jeff and Kevin were top-notch tour guides, even if we were completely exhausted by the end of the day.

Itd been a year since Id last seen Jeff, my brother. He was living in San Francisco at the time, and I had gone to visit him for a week. Now he had been living in Rome since January (working my dream job) and his partner Kevin had come to join him in May/June. Complete coincidence that we both ended up living in Italy for the same period of time (gotta love how life works like that! First Mikey being only an hour from me, and now two of us Waldrons in Italy??) Seeing him now in Rome was just so surreal, and obviously Jeff was thinking along the same line, because he laughed and said, "Jeez, when are you going to stop stalking me around the world?" Never, if you keep going to great places, I joked. Anyhow, we had a great time, since Jeff not only had a good grip of the historical places in Rome, but he also knew some great enotecas (wine bars), restaurants and gelaterias (ice cream shops). The latter should be given credit to Kevin, actually, since he is the biggest ice cream lover Ive met yet :-) Hes got it down to a science, haha. Jeff and I would let him choose where wed take an ice cream- hed walk into the busy gelateria (they e always crammed with people, since every hour is ice cream hour) and take a careful glance and either walk back out shaking his head saying, No the quality isn great, or hed stay inside waving for us to come in, not losing his spot in the line. Thanks to him Ive tried to the best pistacchio ice cream ever. If I wasn for the fact that Id be seeing those guys again in November, I would have been sadder to leave, however the Waldrons will reunite again, pronto, for my birthday. Can wait.

Executive decision: this is going to have to be in two parts, the movie has started over again and Im stanca/tired. Germany will be part II. For now, buona notte!

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Photos

Kevin and the one gelateria hell never return to
They charged him 15 euro for an ice cream!