I will never be a good blogger. But that’s ok.

I am back on Boa Vista after a very badly needed 3 week vacation. I went off to Sal for a couple days before Christmas, to hang out with Kyle and generally have a good time. As usual, crazy things happened, and we stayed out until 8 am on Christmas eve, and not much earlier the next day. It was the first time I celebrated Christmas morning with a beer at 7:30 am on the way home from a party. It is not generally traditional to spend most of Christmas day asleep, but I thought it went very well.

I flew to Italy on the 26th and arrived the 27th, because of course my flight was delayed until night. It was harder than I thought to find the apartment we had rented for the week (every doorway on the block looked just like the picture), let alone get to Rome from the airport due to money and bank issues, but I made it, and my parents arrived that afternoon. Our whole week in Rome consisted of wandering to various ruins, punctuated with delicious meals and rests. New Year’s was ok, but nothing crazy. I met up with my friend Jon, who was in the same study abroad program 4 years ago, and we hit a few bars around the Campo de’ Fiori area. My parents liked the history and archaeology and stuff, and I was amazed at how much of it came back to me. I would look at a temple and all of a sudden realize that I knew what god it was for and who built it. I don’t think I could have remembered that stuff sitting here. My Italian also came back to a smaller extent. I couldn’t form any fancy sentences, but I got us by for two weeks. I couldn’t have asked for much more.

After the first week, my parents and I picked up my sister and her boyfriend at the airport and drove up to where my mother had rented rooms at some sort of Tuscan farm-like thing. But after a long stop at Orvieto to eat and drink some Orvieto Classico, we were behind schedule and didn’t get to the town until after dark. Plus it started snowing about 5k north of Florence. The place turned out to be up a long steep dirt road that was now covered in snow, and our rental Renault was absolutely not going to make it. So we turned around, drove 20k back to Florence, and found a really nice place to stay there. The end result of all this is that instead of staying in one place for a week and doing day trips, we pretty much drove our way back towards Rome through Tuscany, which was a pretty good decision. We spent two nights in Florence, two in Siena, one in Montepulciano, and then the last one at an airport hotel in Fiumicino, plus some lunches at other little towns along the way. I’d be lying if I said we did much beyond just eat. Caroline and Ryan aren’t big into museums, so we mostly skipped them and concentrated on restaurants. On one glorious day in Siena, we woke up, had breakfast, walked to the duomo, discovered it was closed until 1:30, had a brunch-ish snack, went back to see the church, ate lunch, took a nap, had aperitivi and snacks, then ate dinner. Then I went out with Caroline and Ryan and had three pints. Five feedings in a day is a damn good day.

The finale of the whole thing was when I got an email the day before I was supposed to leave from the travel agency in Boa Vista, basically telling me that there were no more seats on the flight and that I didn’t have one. She made it sound like it wasn’t her fault, but I can say with 95% accuracy that she simply forgot to make the reservation until the day before. Those flights just don’t fill up that fast. So I went to the airport, found the ticket desk and managed to get myself on a flight out of Milan leaving two days later. Yes exactly, those flights don’t fill up until the day beforehand. I scraped my cash together, bought the plane ticket, and put myself on a train to Milan. I guess it turned out to be a good thing that I got stuck there, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to see another city. Still, I spent some money there that I would have preferred not to use. I did eat some shockingly not bad sushi on my first night there, which I was pretty excited about. Milan seems to be a more ethnically mixed city than Rome or Florence, so I had some kebabs for lunch the next day and tried to mix it up a little bit before returning to the land of no culinary skill. I wandered around the city aimlessly for the better part of the day, accidentally ending up on some of the premier shopping roads, where I watched people buy things that cost significantly more than my entire two year Peace Corps stint. I wasn’t too impressed with Milan, mainly because I think shopping is wretchedly lame and there didn’t seem to be much else to do. I went to a natural history museum which was decidedly average and was actually kind of blown away by the Duomo in the center of town, which was probably the most impressive church I’ve seen in Italy. I poked around a few other cool churches and museums, but…. Eh. I wasn’t heartbroken to leave Milan, and I was looking forward to coming back to Boa Vista, but sweet Christ on a bike I miss that food.

Anyway, I am back here and feel very well-rested and motivated for my last 8 months of service. I’ve got some good projects in mind and with any luck things will get rolling this week. I also have a huge wheel of pecorino, some boar salame, and a bunch of wine to tide me over for a little bit.

Also, to whom it is relevant: I have more or less decided to return to the US after my service.