and I’ve screwed up this post now that I’m trying to put pictures on it after the fact. So I’ll try to compose again. The school is called Centro Lingua Calvino Italia or CLIC for short. It is run by four hard-working people, Massimo (director of the school), Gabriella (director of the accommodations), Leonardo (director of academics), and Sven (in charge of the techno stuff). They are all right out front, like the receptionists at a hotel desk, available to us all of the time, and I am very impressed with the school.

Below see photos of Massimo and Gabrielle!

I signed up for four hours of group lessons and two hours of private per day. So at 9:00 a.m., we begin, five of us. Two of us from the U.S., one from Australia, and two from Germany. They are all younger than my children, or at least young enough to BE my children, but my Italian is neither better or worse than the rest of the group. Actually, the other American and the Australian struggle more than I do, and one of the German woman, though she is probably better in her vocab, gets quite stressed quickly. The other young German woman, with fabulous cheekbones, seems to have a pretty good handle on the language at this level, and we all have a group sense of humor for our difficulties.

The grammar half of the morning is taught by Daniele, who speaks faster than I’d like, but I catch a good bit of what he’s saying.

The second half of the morning group is taught by Marco, a mid-thirties young man with the most amazing blue eyes and the longest lashes I’ve ever seen. He’s quick and fun with our struggling group, and his hair looks like he slept with twelve books on the top of the thick mop. (I wrote some of this in a different form earlier, but somehow my blog-edit monster ate it, along with my original text about the school, Massimo, Gabrielle, Sven and Leonardo, etc. Sorry about that. I’m still learning!
See Daniele and Marco above or below or wherever you now find their photos!

After a very quick 30 minutes to catch my breath and try to eat something resembling lunch, I’m back in the same classroom on the top floor, this time with Leonardo who is my teacher privato, and who seems to have the ability to explain anything to anyone at any level in a way that makes the student relaxed, perhaps even laughing, while Leonardo smiles with the difficulties of someone who is new to the language.

He is, as I said above, the director of academics and I am very fortunate to have him for two hours in my afternoon. He helps me have conversation and then teaches a point or two or three in the midst of whatever we’re talking about, to clarify the usage or the idiom or the conjugation. Avere or essere? Which do you use with all these irregular and regular verbs when you are talking in the past? We spend a lot of time on this difficult process, but he seems to make it more clear and I’m grateful.

Today I’m going to the train station to check out the schedule for my weekend. I have made a friend, Marja Bot, a bit younger than me, who is studying for one week here from Holland. She is twelve years more advanced than I in her language study, but we are very compatible in friendship. I mentioned that I want to go to Lucca for the weekend and she happens to have a Dutch friend living outside the Lucca city walls, who runs a B & B there, with a beautiful garden. Marja gave me the e-mail this morning, I wrote to the woman, Ankie, and she called this afternoon after my class. She will send a transfer car to meet me at the train station tomorrow evening, and have dinner ready for me tomorrow evening. I will stay two nights with her, for 40Euro per night, and I’ll probably wander in Lucca for most of Saturday, perhaps eating in town before I walk or bicycle or take the transfer back to her house. Sunday afternoon, I’ll take the train back to Firenze and my host family (more about the host family in another post).

Must go now . . . a domani.

Ciao.

Woodswoman

. . . I am in bella Firenze! But NOT before a three-hour delay in Denver on Friday, which put me in Newark 20 minutes AFTER my flight left for Rome, and after RACING in a cab from Newark to JFK,WITH with the cab paid for by United and some very efficient and nifty re-booking work by a wonderful United agent (isn’t THAT unusual), and a VERY sympathetic Alitalia agent or two at JFK, I arrived with my bags (also a dream chance, since they were checked through to Rome and United actually pulled them off in Newark so I could take them WITH me . . . . , are you getting the drift of my initial experiece for the month?) just an hour before takeoff, at JFK, to a flight that was fully booked, (another person assigned to my seat as well, but that was minor . . . after all, I was ON the plane and they couldn’t remove me!) and I sat down surrounded by a bunch of great young people traveling to Italy for weddings and new-romance vacations, etc.

Of course when we arrived in Rome at the airport, and I schlepped ALL my stuff by myself to the train to the Rome train station, I got to the Rome termini three hours later than my scheduled train reservation to Florence, so my reservation fee was lost and I had to re-pay. THIS is why we have travel insurance, as well as for the lost bags. I’m going to file with United and with TravelGuard for these minor charges, and thank the United agent at Newark, named Torry someone, for her incredible efficiency!

I got to the Pendini and a smiling Barbara knew who I was, took me to my room, and I returned the message from my host “mother”, who spoke not a word of English but was trying to let me know that I had to change the time of my arrival today at her house. So I’m killing time for another hour.

It’s hot and humid and beautifully sunny here, about 85+ degrees, so I suspect we won’t have to worry too much about coats.

I wrote this on the 16th, but didn’t get dependable internet service until today when I signed up for the free wi-fi at la scuola lingua, so this post will be a bit old, but I’ll do some catch-up as well.

Ciao.

Joannah

and I’m not even packed yet. But I leave in less than 36 hours for Firenze, where I will study Italian at a language immersion program until September 28. I will live with a family, share two meals a day with them, and spent six hours each day adding to my rather impoverished vocabulary and grammar skills in the language of this beautiful country.

On September 29, I’ll meet Neil in Rome and fly to Palermo to join thirteen other friends at a villa outside of Castelvetrano (Torre Castelvetrano) for a week, and then spend the final week first in Venice, and then exploring the Adriatic coast of LeMarche.

I KNOW that once I’m packed, I’ll feel much better, but at this point, the lists and lists seem overwhelming, though I’m checking off many tasks. Just a few more ad copy confirmations and a last e-mail to my Lifeprints group list and I think I’ll be done.

I hope to write on a regular basis, to keep track for myself and to let everyone know what’s happening on my latest Italian adventure! Perhaps I’ll learn to post photos more easily as well.

For now, buona notte e ciao.

Well, I never did finish that old trip journal last May, did I? Downloaded the photos, but didn’t insert them, and perhaps sometime I’ll write the notes for the last few days of that Italy Women’s group in ’06.

Now I’m preparing for a month in Italy this fall. First I will spend two weeks in Florence with an Italian family while I take 6 hours of language classes per day. Then I will fly to Palermo and meet 14 friends who have rented a villa in Castelvetrano! My grandfather was from Sicily and I hope I can find some family there. At the end of the Sicily leg of my trip, I’ll fly to Venice for a few days, and then drive down the Adriatic coast, exploring Le Marche (the “new” Tuscany, they say). I hope to gather information for a new itinerary for Italy Women Part II.

Any excuse to spend a month in my heart country . . . and the language immersion will be wonderful.

I’ll keep this site posted.

Woodswoman

Rather than go back to all the previous posts and try to sandwich in the photos, I think I’ll try loading a couple of them up here, putting a title on each of them with a link to the date of the post about each particular photo, and leave it at that.

Here we go:

Fattoria de Corsignano – north of Siena, just past Vagliali.

Loui and Carol are standing outside the little building that serves as the office on the main level, and houses the wine casks from the vineyards on the level below. And I just love this wonderful flower cart, set right in the middle of the pathway one must cross to get to anything on the property. It is most picturesque! And the whole place is lovely, run by Mario and Elena. I’d love to spend a week here sometime in the future!

I’m playing with this site and trying to figure out how I got that first photo posted, way back in April. So I hope this one actually shows up. Here we are, at Denver International Airport, ready for the Italian experience.

Back row: Adell, Jan, Pat, Loui, Mary, Carol
Front row: Joannah, Cyndy, Debra, and Karen

If this one works, I’ll post more!

Ciao.

Woodswoman

Well, I am back in Colorado, and have been too wiped out to complete the details about the rest of our trip until now. However, my entries will be easier to read now, because my daughter fixed my paragraph formatting problem in the last couple of days. She called and said, “Mom, I hacked into your blog, and now your paragraphs actually show up as paragraphs!” Ah, the wisdom (and technical skill) of youth . . .

So I think I had completed most of our villa day trip details, having finished the San Gimignano and vineyard tour. And the last day of our villa week was spent lounging, re-packing, and preparing to leave Ambra for points north. The older couple who cooks for us sometimes when we’re at the villa, Anna and Pasquale, returned Friday evening with their son Patrizio, and presented us with a sumptuous meal. Any of you who are reading this could have joined us and we still would have had more food than we needed.

And at the end of the evening, Debra, Adell and I went into Ambra to find that internet point in the bar, about which I wrote on May 19, I believe. That was one of the highlights of my trip, and it made me realize that being in a little town with NO tourists, just soaking up the local color, is exactly where I want to be.

So . . . Saturday morning, we packed up all three cars and headed back to Florence to the car rental return. We piled all our luggage in one corner of the car return garage so our mini-bus driver, Marco, could load it up in the little bus, which we had hired to take us up to Cinque Terre. Marco’s eyes got bigger and bigger as he watched the continuous parade of bags from the ten of us, after ten days of shopping through Tuscany. We assured him that we didn’t mind some of the bags riding in the seats with us. Fully loaded, we made our way to our first stop of the day, Pisa, to see the Leaning Tower, Cathedral, Baptistry, and the junk-market circus that surrounds these beautiful treasures. We were scheduled to stay in Pisa for two hours, and that’s about how long it takes to visit the buildings, and make the decision NOT to climb hundreds of steps to the top of the tower, which leans more precariously with every second one considers how it would feel to hang out of the top of it.

Back in the van again, we continued our journey to Cinque Terre, the five villages on the Italian Riviera which are built on very steep hillsides above the sea. Typically one can drive to the edge of the village, unload one’s bags, and drive back up to the pay-parking lot half way up the mountain, but I hadn’t considered that these mini-buses are not allowed to do that, and they must stop quite a way up the mountain, much farther than we typically park. Marco parked the bus and turned off the motor. I tried in my minimal Italian to tell him I thought he could drive down so we could unload the bags. He folded his arms, glared at me, and said, “Non posso.” I certainly understood those two words. I cannot. He got out of the van and began to unload the bags onto the pavement. I gave him an early tip, 50 Euro, and he mellowed a bit. After a few phone calls to Andrea, our host at our B & B in Manarola, the National Park shuttle showed up to take nine of us down to the town, while Debra stayed back with all the bags. Soon a little 2-person truck with a large flat bed (picture a wide pick-up truck . . . now reduce the size by half . . . and try not to imagine that the vehicle needs winding before it will go anywhere . . . ) arrived to get the bags and Debra. Once the arrangements had been made, it was an easy entry, but at first, all I could think if was ten of us dragging perhaps 30 bags of all sizes (and WEIGHTS) down the mountain road toward the sea. Perhaps once we began, we would just roll down into the waves and float back to Boston!

Settled into our rooms in Manarola we set out to explore the village, walk down to the bottom of the town to the Marina Piccolo bar for cappucino all around. Over the next three days we scattered here and there among the five villages, hiking, shopping, eating, tasting wine, and enjoying the spectacular, take-your-breath-away views from anywhere, always out to the Italian Mediterranean where the water was blue and looked much friendlier than it probably was.

More later.

Ciao.

Woodswoman

Today we headed out, all of us, for the fortress of San Gimignano. This, another medieval hilltown, had 72 towers at one time, and still has 14 of the original standing tall above the hill outside Poggibonsi (we’ve all agreed this is our favorite weird word for the season . . . poggibonsi, which is apparently named after a famous Italian poet). We thought we had chosen a good day, because one of our guide books said that Thursday is market day in San Gimignano. That was a bad idea. The main piazza, Piazza del Cisterna, and the one next to it, Piazza del Duomo, are usually stony calm places to meet up with one’s group, but today, the market was actually dozens of tented tables, full of schlock, not artisan items, and we couldn’t find the Cisterna, thus it was difficult to find one another. But we all managed finally, with the aid of cell phones and occasional shouts across the fray, to locate one another, find an escape route on streets past the Duomo, and locate corners of the old town that were away from all the market hawkers.

Debra and I wandered up a hillside behind the Duomo, after a stop at the Leo Balducci pottery studio and shop (a favorite of mine here) and discovered a musician playing a harpsicord in the middle of a grassy patch of ground. We sat and lsitened, purchased three CDs, and wove our way back down through the main square, now devoid of the market mess, to find our car. The rest of the group was still in San G, but we, Debra and I, were on a different mission. We had contacted a woman named Franca Gatteschi, the owner of a small winery near Gaiole in Chianti, just outside Montegrossi (through the village, look for the madonna shrine on the right, turn right down the dirt road until it ends and there you are!). She had invited us to come to her house and vineyard, winery and tasting room, to have a look around. After many wrong turns here and there, we finally arrived at the Madonna statue and were stumped as to which dirt road to follow. But cell phones, even in these little bitty places, DO work well enough to get us where we want to go, and we met Sra. Gatteschi, a delightful woman of perhaps late 60’s or 70 years of age, who gave us two hours of her time and information, tastings of four of her family wines, and an exchange of e’mail information. She comes to Colorado twice a year and we are going to arrange for her to come to my house to do some cooking classes! Anyone interested?

After our Gatteschi adventure, we joined the rest of the group at the Trattoria at Colona Di Grillo for a sumptuous meal (I think I have not seen so many dishes on the table during this whole trip) and a fairly minimal bill at the end of the night.

Tomorrow we will stay close to the villa and try to pack our things efficiently, because on Saturday we will take the cars back to Firenze and get our mini-bus up to Cinque Terre, a completely different experience.

Ciao.

Woodswoman

This morning, a Wednesday, three of our group decided to stay at the villa to relax. Cyndy and Adell headed to Arezzo to see frescos and churches, while five of us headed northwest/west to the Chianti towns for the day. We first stopped in Gaiole in Chianti, a nice little place where we always do our first exploration of this region. There is a little walking street with a sort of hardware store, a kitchen store, a wine-tasting place and the usual ATMs and Tabacchi stores, for post cards and stamps and the ever necessary bottles of water.

After a short stay, we headed to our main destination, lunch at Badia a Coltibuono, a restaurant on the grounds of an abbey, Lorenza Di Medici’s cooking school, and a lovely little shop which sells the wines of the Badia as well as many other tempting goodies. One of our group nearly purchased a four-foot in diameter ceramic table top, until she realized that the shipping would cost nearly as much as the table. But in this lovely setting we had a fantastic lunch, with cream of fresh pea soup topped with goat cheese, grilled deer with risotto, goose carpaccio on creamed polenta with cream . . . you know . . . the usual restaurant fare!

After two hours enjoying our food and the magnificent view, we went back down the hill, toured the shop, and headed for Greve in Chianti, another favorite of mine. For the first time ever, I didn’t buy wine in the excellent wine store in Greve. I didn’t even ENTER the store. So good for me. I did get some practical items, namely dish towels, and sat at an outdoor cafe for the requisite cappuccino. Drinking cappuccino and bottled water are constant activities in Italy, which then require that one find a toilette, preferably not a ceramic hole in the ground, but a real toilet . . . perhaps with real toilet paper as well.

As the sun was smiling low in the sky, we made our way back to Ambra and our villa, where the three homebodies had gone grocery shopping and had dinner grazing ready for us when we arrived. Another beautiful day.

Woodswoman

Lake Trasimeno is situated just inside Umbria, just east of the Tuscan border, and has three islands, I think, one on which Neil and I, Ashley and a friend stayed for three days in 1996, if I remember correctly. The women, three cars full again, drove to the town of Passignano, caught a little ferry boat to the Isola Maggiore, and spent a few hours, eating, walking, sitting, taking photographs of the old doors on the houses of the fishermen who live on the island. There are five churches on this island, five churches in the space which one can circumnavigate in one hour or less.

The lake is calm and beautiful, but we all wanted to spend some time in Cortona as well before we headed back to the villa, so we were off again in mid-afternoon up to Cortona, the town made famous by Frances Mayes (Under The Tuscan Sun). Read the book, see the movie (not much like the book, but a fun movie nonetheless) and enjoy vicariously the life in another medieval village WAY up on the hill. There is a different feel to Cortona, somehow. More noble, a bit less junk for sale, I’m not quite sure. But I entered the walled town from a different entrance than I typically do, having found a parking spot JUST outside one of the arches. Ten steps inside the walls I stood in front of a tiny gallery full of whimsical original drawings by a young man (everyone is young in my eyes these days . . . either young or VERY VERY old . . . )who sat just outside the shop. Short story is I bought three of his pieces for a very reasonable price, and they are packed well and safely in one of my suitcases. For some reason I wanted to stay in Cortona on this visit. I sat at a little table in the square, sipping white sangria with something added which tasted like peach schnappes, and wondered what it would be like to have a Frances Mayes experience. I don’t think I could live without the dogs and Neil, but it was nice to fantasize anyway.

Ciao.

Woodswoman