“Latest” Updates, part 2:

After we returned from the states, we slept our way through the jet lag, and for Cori’s birthday we went camping at a recreational facility that the military runs outside of Naples. They’ve got a really nice facility down there that’s in the caldera of a volcano with well manicured grass and trees all over the place; We had fun, and it was a learning experience for all of us. For dinner on Cori’s birthday we went to the restaurant at the facility, and the staff there brought out a cupcake for her and sang “Happy Birthday” for her. After they gave Cori her cupcake, they gave Palmer and the other little girl who was there a cupcake as well; we thought that was pretty nice of them.

A couple of weeks later, we decided that we’d had such a good time camping the first time, we would try it again at another recreational facility, this time up north outside of Pisa.

“Latest” Updates, part 1:

Sorry it’s been so long since our last update. While things have been happening over the last couple of months, most of it is of interest only to those involved, and I suspect I’m not as entertaining a storyteller as I’ve tried to be. I’ll make an effort here, and you folks can tell me if it was worth the wait.

We went back to the States for a few weeks this summer. The flight there was an absolute nightmare.

Cori's class play:

Cori's class play was a couple of days ago, and I videotaped it. Unfortunately, the video is MASSIVE. I'm only posting the first act, and this will take you a few minutes to download before you can play it. I'll make the whole thing available for download, but I have to break it into more pieces. Sorry!

Paestum:

Palmer and I went on a 3 day field trip to an ancient Greek village last week. The Brownies from the school were going on a camping trip that weekend, so I agreed to drive one of the dads (who was going on the field trip, and also camping with his daughter) down there, and drop him off at the campsite on the way back (to meet up with his family).

Spring has broken.

Well, Spring Break is over. We’d been looking forward to it, and it met our expectations. We can also add another country to our list. More about that later.

Pisa… or Pizza. Take your pick.

We’ve been wanting to visit Pisa for a while, and the opportunity came up for us to take a long weekend up there. The 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy was on Thursday the 17th, so we decided to spend a 4 day weekend up at Camp Darby in Livorno, about 10 minutes from Pisa. Turns out, Cori had a field trip scheduled for the 18th, so Becca and Palmer ended up going up on Thursday, and Cori and I drove up on Friday after her field trip.

Cori’s teacher asked if I was available to chaperone on the field trip, so I ended up following the bus up to an archeological site about an hour and a half north (in the direction of Livorno, luckily enough!), and helping herd 24 second graders while they learned how the ancient Etruscans lived and worked. It was pretty interesting to see how they created the tools that they used. The kids learned how they created their arrowheads and other weapons from stone, how they learned to make fire, worked a bit with pottery, and helped grind some spelt into flour for baking. The archeologist demonstrated how they forged metal into a spear head that the teacher got to take back to the classroom.

Cori and I drove to Livorno after the field trip and met up with our advance team. They’d already eaten at the bowling alley a couple of times, but we ended up eating there on Friday night anyway… nothing else was open on the base, and after a long day, we just wanted to eat and sleep.

The base is very quiet… nothing opened before 8:30, and the majority of the places didn’t open until 10 or 10:30. I got up at 7:00, and couldn’t find a place to get a cup of coffee until the breakfast place opened at 8:30. Nuff said. Let us never speak of it again.

Pisa was cool. It was about 10 minutes away from the base… I’ve heard stories about the strict traffic restrictions in Pisa, and I wasn’t looking forward to driving there, but honestly, it wasn’t too bad. We were following directions we’d gotten at the base, and had no trouble at all finding parking. We walked over to the piazza where the cathedral and tower are located, and bought tickets to climb the tower; they allow a specific number of people (40, I think) up at a time, and stagger the groups by 20 minutes. We were able to get tickets for a tour about an hour and a half out, giving us plenty of time to take the requisite “I’m holding up/pushing down the tower” pictures. The climb was nowhere near as bad as I thought it’d be. There were over 300 stairs… I don’t know if it was the height of the steps, or the constant lean, or the continual right turn (most of the way), but climbing the stairs wasn’t nearly as tiring as I though it would be. There was an enforced break at the 2/3 point, to allow the earlier group to come down while we wandered around (and around) one of the exterior levels. We got all the way to the top, took pictures, came down. One cool thing that we noticed… the closer you get to the top of the tower, the more you notice deformities in the steps. They honestly look like butt prints, on the tread portion of the stairs (probably from water dripping/running down the stairs). This led to a family discussion about how they got down from the top of the tower in the old days. I’m pretty sure that I saw Galileo’s butt print about 7 stairs from the top.

We think the climb up Pisa was so much easier because we “trained” last weekend. Last weekend, we climbed down (and then back up) Cascata Della Marmore. Cool waterfalls… the highest man-made waterfall in the world, and one of the tallest in Europe. 541 feet. Next time, we’ll go when the shuttle service is running. Entrance to the waterfall area is at the top. You walk down stairs to the bottom for the best views of the waterfall, then climb/crawl back up the stairs. I need to do some research and figure out when the shuttle service is running… we can hike to the bottom, then ride a bus back up. The bus wasn’t running last weekend. Hence the easy climb of Pisa.

Dinner last night was in a local restaurant ; our pidgin Italian was sufficient to order pizza, pasta, wine, and water. Pretty good, but Becca doesn’t like the mushrooms that they use up north; they use some sort of funky seasoning or marinade on them.

Today was the drive back; 2 cars, boys in one car, girls in the other. Boys won. That’s all for now. Make sure to check out the pics!

"Recent" Happenings:

Not too much has been going on here, I’ll just update with the interesting things that have happened recently (interesting to me, at least!).

The letter bombings here seem to have tapered off (at least for now). The political situation in Africa and the Middle East (Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan) probably won’t have too much of an effect on us. There may be some demonstrations of some sort, but demonstrations of one sort or another happen about as often here as road construction back in the states. As long as we stay aware of what’s going on and where the demonstrations are occurring, it doesn’t seem to be a big deal to avoid those areas.

I got pulled over a couple of days ago. We live on a one way street, and for the last couple of weeks there have been Municipal Police parked on the side of the road flagging random people down and checking documentation. I got flagged down. I was a little freaked out about it, and had a bit of a blond moment; there are a few things that (as a foreigner) we’re required to carry with us: our U.S. driver’s license, an Italian translation of our U.S. driver’s license, an insurance card, and our MFA card (the MFA card is an official Italian document identifying us as officially being affiliated with the U.S. and negating the need to carry our passports wherever we go). I handed him the Italian translation of my driver’s license, then remembered that I’m supposed to give him the MFA card first… so I gave him my MFA card, then pulled out my U.S. driver’s license and handed it to him, then reached over and grabbed the insurance card (which we happened to have received in the mail that day). By the time I handed him the insurance card, he wouldn’t even take it from me; while I was digging the insurance card out, he had decided either (a) that I had provided all the necessary information and identification, (b) that it wasn’t worth any more effort to deal with someone who leads the conversation with “Mi dispiache, solo inglese” (I’m sorry, only English) and hands over an MFA card, or (c) that he felt sorry for me and decided to let me go out of the kindness of his heart (since I hadn’t done anything wrong to start out with!). I don’t really care which of those reasons turned out to be the real reason, but one way or the other, I didn’t get a ticket.

Cori was under the weather last week; I looked at some of the orientation materials we were given when we checked in here and saw a product that I thought would help her feel better. So I drove up to the pharmacy and took a number. While I was waiting for my number to be called, I pulled out my phone and translated “upset stomach” to Italian. Google Translator translated it (“mal di stomaco”) and gave me a phrase that it thought would be helpful:”Posso avere qualcosa per il mal di stomaco e vomito?” (Can I have something for an upset stomach and vomiting?). When it was my turn, I dutifully read the translated phrase, and added “sette anno bambina” (“seven year old girl”). The pharmacist said “Allora”, “Si” (“Ok”, “yes”) and disappeared in the back. He came back out a minute or so later, and in perfect Queen’s English said “This will help your daughter’s stomach. Dissolve one pouch in about this much water” (indicating about an inch of water). Well, just color me stupid. I’ve found that (as this experience demonstrates) as long as you’re willing to make an effort at the language, the people here are willing to work quite a bit to communicate with you; if I had walked up to the counter and only been willing to speak English, I probably would have been brushed off with random Italian phrases (“No, the temperature around here has been quite dim lately, but my father’s cow has a broken steering wheel” or something like that).

I entered the chili cook-off at Becca’s office. I only entered because they just had 8 entries, and I wanted to make sure there were enough entries. All told, there ended up being 13 entries, with two of them spicy enough to remove paint - but all were quite tasty. My chili ended up winning first place. I was quite surprised, to say the least. Now I have to enter a chili next year to defend my honor.

We’re planning on spending a few days around Naples later this month when my mother in law comes to town; we’re planning on going out to Sorrento to revisit the scene of my accident. I think I’ve come to grips with it now… it’s on the right side, so I don’t have to see the scrape every time I get in and out of the car!

That’s all that’s been going on here… sorry for the delay on the post!

History lesson + mini-vac:

We decided to take a long weekend in Naples this weekend, doing all of the touristy stuff. We arranged to meet some friends (from Rome) down here, and hung out with them some yesterday.

A quick history lesson: for 2 days in 79 a.d., Mount Vesuvius erupted in a big way, causing a bit of consternation in the lower boot area. Clouds of ash spewed almost 100,000 feet into the air, delaying flights worldwide for quite a while.

We first visited Herculaneum, a city on the northern flank of Vesuvius. This city was spared by the majority of the ash, and is remarkably well preserved. We saw frescoes on the walls, mosaic tile floors; most of the walls of the buildings are intact.

We met our friends for lunch afterwards; the kids enjoyed playing together, and Cori kissed a langosteen shrimp crawfish baby lobster. Becca and I couldn't decide what we wanted to order, so we decided to each get something different, and split both entrees. The gnochi came out first, and happened to get placed closer to me. The second entree (fetuccini with scampi) came out a few minutes later, and was placed in front of Becca. It was a plate of noodles with two 8 inch (not including antenna) baby lobster looking bugs perched on top of it. I quickly decided that the gnochi was for my meal, and I graciously allowed my wife to take on the bugs. Everyone at the table (including, to a much lessser extent, Becca) got a big kick out of these things... the kids were daring each other to touch them. Cori ended up kissing one of them. I wasn't at the table at the time, so I don't know what her motivation was for that.

After lunch was Pompeii, but due to time constraints, we didn't get to spend very much time there, only about an hour and fifteen minutes. Pompeii is pretty well known, so I won't spend a lot of electrons telling you about it. We have pictures that will be posted within a few days, and you can see the differences between Herculaneum and Pompeii for yourself.

Last night, we went to Sorrento for dinner. Well actually, for a car accident, dinner, a concert attended by everyone in the southern half of Italy, and the resulting traffic jam afterwards.

We knew about the festival in Sorrento, and caravan'd out there with our friends. It's about 20 miles away, but the roads are twisty and hilly, and there was quite a bit of traffic out last night. While searching for a place to have dinner, we got into a bit of a scrape with a cement bridge piling, and *presto* our car's now "Romanized". Big scrape down the right side. At this point in the night, we'd been stuck in traffic for over an hour, and after all this, I'm sure I was an absolute delight to ride with. We finally found a place to park and walked through town to find a good place to eat, passing through a picturesque city square with an enormous stage set up on one side. Had decent pizza for dinner, started wandering back towards the cars. Four adults, four kids. That picturesque city square was now a thronging mass of people. It took almost an hour to shove our way across. Finally got through, got to the cars, then took almost 3 hours to drive 20 miles, due to the traffic jam of everyone leaving early to beat the rush. We left Sorrento at 10:00, and got back to the hotel at about 12:40. All told, should've gone to the Chinese place across the street for dinner instead, but that's just my opinion. I was not a happy camper last night. It's over now.

This morning, we decided to skip the Mount Vesuvius tour and trek back down toward Sorrento for more punishment - but on the other side of the peninsula, to the Amalfi Coast. Absolutely gorgeous drive, straight up and down mountains, 5 mile per hour hairpin curves, we'll post pics of this too. Had lunch in Amalfi, did the tourist thing. It's my favorite town now - too bad it's so far from Rome. Not a day trip, anyway. Fun drive, perfect little town on the coast.

The natives are restless, and are bugging me about going to dinner, so that's all for now; sorry for the abrupt conclusion. Keep an eye out for pics, either on FB or here - I'll try to make sure I update all of the places you folks could check.