Noticing Quietness

Well, I officially live here.  I know you already know that but I am still realizing this fact.  Salvo, our landlord, has left for his home in Sicilia and the apartment is ours for the year.  I did one load of laundry this weekend and for some reason this really confirmed the fact that I will be here for a long time.  Maybe because I never even did laundry in San Jose but brought it home instead (Thanks for the free water Daddy and Mommy!).  I still don't feel completely comfortable here, and I'm not sure why, but hopefully that will change over time.

Salvo left us a little drawing, a note, two bottles of wine and beautiful sunflowers upon leaving.

I have had the opportunity to visit a few cities outside of Firenze this week and it has been a very welcome and much needed break from the city.  From these day trips I have realized that being outside in a quiet place is extremely relaxing and refreshing to me.  I haven't found a quiet place here in Firenze and I think this will be a goal over the next week or so.  It also contributes that American college students are extremely loud as well and and I seldom spend time alone when I am out lately.

Volterra was a beautiful city.  Extremely medieval and much more quaint than Firenze.  I know it sounds like I am just bashing my city, but in actuality I think a lot of my frustration is due to tourists oozing out of every crack.  I think things will be a lot different in a month or so when the tourists are chased away by the brisk autumn weather and the students come back for school in October.  The only thing that would have made this visit a thousand times better would have been if the sunflower fields were in bloom.  Unfortunately they were brown and crunchy for fields and fields as we drove by, leaving it up to the imagination to picture the hills covered in yellow.

Volterra on a beautiful day.

San Gimignano was another city I visited and it was by far the most beautiful place I've seen in Italy since arriving.  Although the piazzas were swarming with tourists the outskirts of town were quiet enough to hear the laundry flapping in the breeze.

San Gimignano was breathtaking!

This captures the peacefulness on the outskirts of the city.  It was as quiet as it looks.

Yesterday, Sunday, I went to the Chianti Wine Festival in Greve with five of my new friends and was able to enjoy the same tranquility in some areas of the city.  We paid 10 euro for a glass and sampled wines and walked around for a couple hours.  Who knew there was such an enormous array of wine flavors even within the same colors of wine!? (Probably everyone except me.)  At one point we were all feeling like we should take a break from sampling for a while and decided to rest on the steps.  Two men walked over and started talking to telling us how we all had beautiful feet and that most Americans did not have very nice feet.  Then they gave us a Touring Tuscany book they had won at an auction and obviously didn't need since they were Italian.  This gave them the brilliant idea to also break open the bag of make-up each of them were carrying and hand out each piece of make-up to the five of us individually..."This one is for you. And this one is fooorr...you." Ect...  After all their cheap cosmetics were distributed they realized they had also won a poetry book, pulled it out of their bag and began reading to us poetry in Italian and then trying to translate it into English (which proved quite comical).  Well there ya go, if that isn't the Italian stereotype I don't know what is! Two men performing poetry and giving out gifts and compliments to five women with wine glasses seated on the steps in front of them.  It's a shame the men were so unattractive!

Ballet classes all over the city should be starting back up this week so I am looking forward to being in my own little world and speaking that universal language of dance very, very soon.  I feel like it will help to bring me out of this funk that I've been in since I've arrived.  I'll let you know how it goes because no doubt it will still be a different experience than I'm used to.
(Some of you may know that I absolutely hate proof reading so I apologize in advance if there are any typos.  I did not want to re-read this time around.)