Week 1- Il Cielo Verde

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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 light coming on in the middle of the desert with no sign of life in sight; eating twizzlers, spooners and goldfish as our main source of food; driving through dust devils; etc)

Anyhow, this car ride with the family was my first real chance to talk and get to know them better. Andrea loves to tell me random facts (“Did you know that the Italian Prime Minister makes 3x the salary as the U.S. President? Our system is very corrupt you see.. it shouldn’t be that way”; or “Obama- most Italians like him”; or “We’ll have to buy some Tuscan bread for you to try, because the Tuscans ceased adding salt to their bread since the 16th century when the Pope added a high tax on salt in the region, which makes it unique”). I like this because it’s just like talking to my dad, except Andrea likes to add his own piece of mind to all the stories he has, and Cecilia always reminds me of this with a smile on her face, to which Andrea then rolls his eyes. While we were chatting away, I also learned that Cecilia has a family full of musicians who each studied at the music academy in Berlin- she is a professional pianist who teaches lessons and is studying to be a certified musical therapist, her brother Rafael still lives in Germany and is a professional cellist, and her sister is a professional violinist in Italy. Her mother (“Nona”/Luisa) and her brother Rafael and his two kids would be joining us in our camping that week.

Well we arrived to our destination after a very warm hour of driving in the heat from Siena- it was a large campground called “Il Cielo Verde”/The Green Sky that was on the outskirts of a town called Grossetto on the Tyrrhenian Sea. While I enjoy camping, I was kinda overwhelmed at first by the lack of internet access at our campsite (yes, people my age aren’t used to not checking their email at least twice a day, especially after they move to a foreign country :P). But you make do with a situation, especially when they’re paying for this trip for you, and things got better. We had a camper with a porch and big table that was maybe a 20 min walk from the beach, and every day that week was a perfect “beach day”- no clouds or rain, always sunny and warm. I’ve never stayed at a place like Cielo Verde- the best way I can describe it is that it was kind of an all-inclusive campground that mainly attracted Italian families in the month of August when most Italians with non-governmental jobs have a summer vacation. There were two parks for kids to play in, a small shuttle train to take families to the beach, a stage for kids’ shows in the evenings, a bar, grocery store, pizzeria restaurant, and a place to rent bikes for the week or a day.

A couple mornings I did some short runs along the beach to get the muscles moving for a day of carrying Gabri and playing with Gioia at the park (it’s a lot harder to run on sand that I thought it’d be!), but for the most part every day was kind of the same routine- wake up around 8:30, have some breakfast of Tuscan bread and Cecilia’s homemade jam from the grapes that grow outside my window at home (delicious I might add!), pack things up for the beach on the stroller and take the train shuttle, stay at the beach till lunchtime, go back for lunch, sleep for a couple hours (nap time for the kids/my free time to do whatever), then lounge around at either our campsite or Rafael’s until dinner (which was usually some table wine or water, melon, and a pretty hefty pasta with “melanzane”/abergines, squash, onions, tomato sauce and fresh parmesan). Not very eventful, but not stressful and it sure was nice to be able to swim in the sea every day. I learned the basics of Italian to get around on my own and to establish a relationship with the kids (Cecilia and Andrea already speak English which makes my life a hell of a lot easier). I started catching on to the German and Italian songs that the kids would sing at dinnertime, but I only know what one of them was about- a stinky mushroom who was getting fried up against his will… weird, huh? I also learned words that only come with the territory of nannying, like Gioia tugging my arm and saying, “Caca” means, “I gotta go poop- find a bathroom!” and oh yes, along those lines, one night I was carrying Fede (short for Federico; Rafael’s kid) and he peed on me. But he was so damn cute at the moment as he had just eaten an ice cream at the kids show and was falling asleep in my arms, I could only laugh about it and then rush off to the showers.

On my day off (Wednesday) I rented a bike in the morning and rode 12 km to the nearest sizeable town along the coast, called Casteligione della Pesca. You can see in the pictures that it was a pretty cool-looking town with an “old-city” appearance and winding streets that make it difficult to find the church at the top of the hill. I managed to find some sunglasses there for only 5 euro (much needed in the hot climate, and I had already broken a pair I had brought with me… if you didn’t know this already, I have a problem with losing or breaking my sunglasses all the time :P). And by the way, it’s so weird just having free TIME to do whatever you want! Love it, especially because I know it’s short-term, haha. Anyhow, I took my time and made it my goal to find the church, then found a place for Internet to email happy birthday to my dad, bought some lunch and enjoyed a gelato (ice cream) during the siesta hour when all other businesses shut down. I was just glad I didn’t fail miserably on my first real day of being alone in Italy.

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Photos

Pane di Toscana
Tuscan bread with no salt

Federico "Fede"
Rafael's son/ Cecilia's nephew; the adorable kid who peed on me.

Casteligione della Pesca
Me and my rental bike (it had a bell!) having just arrived at Casteligione

Chiesa di Casteligione
I reached my goal of finding this church in the old part of town.

Comments

[Ian]

: )
Atta boy Federico! Cuteness lets you get away with anything!