goodbye Italy

Hey everyone,

Sorry if my last blog was less than interesting, I got a little carried away by my new found knowledge of how to insert photos in the blog text, thanks to Ronan. Anyway, I think I paid less attention to the content and more to the novelty of programming (or rather typing meaningless garble into a page of more meaningless garble with the end result that a picture appears on my blog page - it's all so exciting, whodathunkit!)
Anyway, I'm heading home on wednesday morning and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. My work has finished, early, and I'm coming back with a good deal less money than I had been led to believe. Some schools cancelled so instead of doing two full day camps equivalent to 600 euro, I only did one half day camp - 150 euro, so I suppose you could say that I'm not the happiest of campers at the moment. Work has been a lot of fun but all in all I'm kinda glad to be finished for the summer.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing anymore. My plans have changed somewhat and I'm probably coming home til Christmas in the hope of getting my driver's licence and putting some money aside. The overall plan is to move to Rome after Christmas. we'll see.
It's gonna be weird being home. I don't think I've quite taken it in yet that I'm coming home even if all my bags are already packed and my room is just empty and white. That's not to say that it won't be nice being home for a while but I think I'm very used to living in Italy and independently, it'll be strange being back in my mum's house. I really wish that I could go back to live in Dublin but there's no point in that, living in Dublin would mean absolutely no possibility of raising money by Christmas. I reckon my time'll be pretty full though, I need to take driver's lessons, get a job, I'm gonna join my mum's gym and my dad wants me to teach him to swim for his holiday in Australia. I think if I'm honest I am looking forward to coming home, I miss my family and my friends and it'll be great to see everyone without having to charge off and get a plane or something.
So, hopefully I'll see you at some point between now and Christmas.

Take care.

Lu xxx

Visitors from afar

Well hello there.
It's been a while, I know, but I've been fairly busy/lazy/not fussed and lacking a computer and internet connection I just haven't got round to blogging for a while, my apologies to any of you who actually read this thing.

So, as I said in my last blog, Ger and Ronan came to visit a few weeks ago on their way up to Trieste. It was really good to see some friendly faces and just arse around together. I like my life in Italy but I have to admit that I get nostalgic fairly often for life in Dublin and for all my old friends.

Will and Dave Healy came to visit as well which was really nice but, all things considered, things ended up going very decidedly pear-shaped. The major problem being the fact that both Dave and Will thought I lived in Rome and Dave booked his flights assuming that he'd be able to get to Ciampino airport pretty damn early in the morning. Then Dave's flight was delayed and the two of them only got to Viterbo at 10.30 at night and I had to get up at 6am to go to work the next morning. Then I missed my bus back to Viterbo and didn't get back til 5pm leaving the guys to wander the city in the sweltering heat all day. Then they had to leave the next day so i think it was all a bit of a disaster and I'm a bit annoyed that I had to work and didn't get to spend any time with them. But, it was really nice to see them and I appreciate the fact that they spent 2 and a half hours on a train to spend what ended up being about 6 hours in my very grumpy company.

Ger and Ruf's trip was decidedly much more of a success and I really enjoyed having them here even if it made me realise that a year in Italy has destroyed any drinking ability I once might have had. I just can't drink anymore! We spent a day and a half in Rome wandering about in the heat, or at least Ronan and I did, Ger spent a large portion of his time in an internet cafe waiting for an important phone call. I felt pretty bad for him, it wasn't a fun way to start off his holiday.

Then we headed up to Viterbo and stayed at my place.

Can you smell something?

More drinking was done and once again my new lightweight Italian tendencies got the better of me and I crashed pretty early leaving the boys to the drinking in the kitchen while I sprawled on my bed in a state of near unconsciousness feeling fairly sorry for myself. We went to the student bar in Viterbo which is probably fairly unimpressive but at least the drinks are a good deal cheaper than other places and they let us buy a bottle of wine to take home with us. The saddest thing is that I crashed after 2 pints of strong beer, I didn't even manage the wine.

The next day we headed on up to Perugia for a dinner at my old flatmates' house with some of my friends and my old next door neighbour Stefania. I was expecting a much smaller affair than it ended up being but it was great to see everyone again. I've realled missed those dinners, it's something I don't have in Viterbo. Some of my happiest memories of University are probably the parties and dinners in Terenure and at Ronan's house and the same goes for Perugia. Afterwards we all walked into town to sit on the steps, as is the tradition in Perugia, and we Irish caused a small stir with our revolitionary idea of bringing cans of beer bought in the supermarket with us.

Us drinking on the steps of the cathedral in Perugia, knacker drinking is the respectable way to go in Italy.

Most of my friends made some effort to speak English to the boys which was pretty sweet of them especially since I didn't know some of them could even speak English until very recently.

The next day the girls, Bimba and Chicchi took us all to Assisi so the guys could see the Cathedrals.

Assisi

So, we did manage to get some sightseeing done despite drinking and eating taking up a good part of our time.

Me and Chicchi

We had a very nice dinner together in my favourite Perugino restaurant 'Dal mi' Cocco' where you pay 14Euro and eat like pigs and another of my favourites which costs a bit more but where the food is fantastic (that just so happens to be at the end of my old street).

Ruf in Dal Mi' Cocco

I miss Perugia.

I saw the guys off at 11 on the saturday and they took a night train up to Trieste and I left the next morning to be back in Viterbo to wait for Will and Dave.

It was a very full couple of weeks but I had a really good time... I'm heading home on the 27th July and I'll be home for a few months cause I'm giving in and accepting the need to have a driver's licence and I want to spend a bit of time at home. That's it for now.