8 May 2005
Torino, Italia

I haven’t been taken in by the Italian mafia nor swept off my feet and eloped by a denim-and-dark-glasses-wearing romantic Italian. I haven’t moved to Tuscany and opened my own gelato shop, never to be heard of again, nor decided to become a hermit amongst the beauty and overwhelming presence of the Alps. I haven’t gotten lost on a train circling Italy nor decided to become a professional pizza maker and move in with Lucca and Rosy above the restaurant. I am still here in Torino, Italia. Still a nanny for a wonderful family. And still loving every minute of it.
Though I have failed to share my experiences with you for an embarrassingly long time, it was none of the above that kept me from emailing. It was life. It was laziness. It was an overwhelming thought of trying to explain such things and such people and such happenings.
But alas, I must try. For to not share such things with you would be a tragedy.
Allora, ciao da Italia dopo otto messi qua!
(So, hello from Italy after eight months here!)
How does the time pass so quickly? I hope all of you, my dear friends and family, are doing well. That the winter is officially gone and the summer sun is officially there, warming your faces and turning your skin brown and golden. I hope life is great, that God is teaching you, and that you have been challenged in some way to step out of your comfort zone…and now enough with the motivational speaker…let’s get down to some updates!
Since it has been such a crazy-ridiculously long time, I decided to break up this email so it’s a bit easier to read (in different sittings, if need be!) So, first things first….

Travel!
The first weekend of February Jen and I ventured to Venice. Only about a five-hour train ride from us, we were so pumped to revisit this city as it seems so unreal and fake when you are there, no matter how many times that you have been. We left on Friday night and so had a full two days there as we came back late Sunday night. We chose this weekend to go because it was the first weekend of Carnival in Italy and we wanted to experience it Venice-style. Carnival in Italy is a crazy and awesome event that the whole country involves itself in. It’s basically a clean-cut Mardi Gras without drunk people laying on the streets. It’s a huge party and celebration, the kids get dressed up like Halloween and they even get a few days off school. Each city celebrates it differently, and some more than others. Venice is known for their Carnival and they even have two weekends of it while most others only have one. So, off Jen and I went to experience Venice in all its glory. I have never seen so many masks in my life and we are talking full-blown cover-your-whole-face masks so you don’t know whose eyes are staring at you from under them. Not only that, but people are dressed up in full costume, huge dresses, wigs, make-up…everything. The weekend was full of festivities and we participated in all of them from the parade to face painting to the “crowning” of the seven maids to represent a past Venician rescue from pirates. We danced in the main square to some band playing ska and punk, we met some students who attended university there and even tried our hand at eating at a local joint (though that proved to be a bit awkward). We roamed the streets at night and got lost in the dark amongst the twisting and turning canals and small passageways, we met a Venician man who lead us around and showed us where we wanted to go, all the while talking to us and happy that we could understand his Italian. We met a couple who hand-makes leather journals and bought a few for ourselves, we marveled at the beauty of the little canals used for streets, went on a few “water buses,” and watched a boat parade. We toured the old Venetian palace as well as the prison. We walked across the famous Bridge of Sighs, which is named this because it was the prisoners last walk before going to the dungeon and “sighs” of horror were often heard as they passed over it. We got covered in confetti, were in awe of the Venetian glass, and I took about 500 pictures of everything we saw. Needless to say, it was a fabulous weekend and we were so happy we went during Carnival; it made it that much more interesting and exciting…something our eyes had never seen.

For the second weekend of Carnival, we went to a small town called Ivrea about an hour outside of Torino. We went with my family to experience the special festival of oranges. I wish I could explain to you the history of this festival, but I fear you would stop reading at page five, so I will just say that it’s a historical side of Carnival in this town where they have a literal battle using oranges. There are different teams with costumes, theme songs and histories who represent the villagers or the king’s soldiers. Each side fights against the other in each of the piazzas of the town with, yes, that’s right, oranges. We are talking people pelting one another, guys wearing football pads for protection, and people walking away with black eyes, bloody faces, and orange-soaked hair and bodies. The ground of each piazza is about two or three inches thick with a mixture of orange gunk, peels and horse poop (as they also use horses that are dressed up to throw the oranges from and during the parade). This sight was seriously one of the craziest things I have ever seen. The seriousness of these people about what they were doing and the fact that they were using oranges just made it that much more crazy. Thankfully, if you have anything red on (preferably hats) then the “fighters” know that you aren’t fighting, just watching, so they try not to involve you in the orange pelting process. But if a cart-full of a team comes by and you don’t cover your head in protection, you could be involved quite easily. I got pelted a few times and couldn’t stop laughing at what was going on around me. Needless to say, it’s a long-standing tradition that we were happy to experience, I know that I will never be able to compare it to anything else because it was so strange and wonderful at the same time. After the fighting and the parade, there was carnival food, confetti everywhere, and the crowning of the “maiden” of Ivrea. Such history for this American girl who thinks traditions from just 100 years ago are great. I still have to scrub my shoes, by the way, they are caked in orange and horse grime. Great.

The next weekend I went with my Italian family to their cabin in Champoluc aka the Italian Alps, where we spent Christmas. Their British friends came to meet us there for a holiday and we skied with them for a long weekend. It was great for me because we all spoke in English the entire weekend, and I even taught the girls a bit if a British accent to try out before we arrived so they could be prepared for their friends. Once again, it was a beautiful weekend and the surrounding Alps and snow-capped peaks truly take the breath away, especially when you are staying in an 18th century cabin. Hmm. So despite getting sick on the winding road up there (when you throw up in front of people, you know you have become close to them…) and getting lost while skiing (about 10 minutes before the lifts closed having forgot my cell phone in the car and the numbers of Federico and Paola, not remembering what to say in Italian and being in valley #3 when our cabin is about a 2-hour drive away in valley #1, and finally being helped by some wonderful, English-speaking Italians who took me back to their place because the slopes were closed and then drove me to meet Federico….um, yeah, can we say humbling? Humiliating? Stupid American?…).. despite these two minor things, it was a fab weekend, really. The beauty surrounding us and the laughter that encompassed everything was really wonderful.

The last weekend in Feb. Jen and I did three towns near Venice: Verona, Padua and Vicenza. All of them were really lovely and quaint with their own characteristics. Verona is the setting for Romeo and Juliet where there is a fake home of Juliet and a balcony where you can go up and pretend that you are she. In the “romantic” courtyard of the balcony young Italian lovers have graffitied on the walls who they love as well as posted messages on paper and securing the notes to the walls with previously chewed gum. Yeah, we are talking high class and romantic, let me tell you. Though it sounds quite gross (and is, in a way) it’s also quite interesting to go around and read the notes and, of course, to pretend you are Juliet for just a moment. Verona is also home to a Roman arena, smaller than the coliseum, but in better shape and still used for concerts and operas today. Padua is famous for its HUGE cathedral honoring St. Antonio (another “lost” moment for Jen and I came when we got confused with another church in Padua called St. Antonino…our hotel was supposed to be right next to the cathedral, but only after a group of sweet Italian teenage girls walked around with us for about 30 minutes did we realize that we were at St. Antonino (little Anthony) not to be confused with the normal Anthony (Antonio)…good lessons, I tell you.) At this basilica they have remnants of St. Anthony’s tongue, jaw, and vocal chords on display – something hard for me to understand, but interesting all the same. Vicenza is much smaller than the other two and is more quaint with a charm reflected in its colored buildings, small narrow streets, and friendly faces.

Though for college I was away from home and my family, it just seems longer when you are in a different country than they are. So March was a month that I had been anticipating since before Christmas, as I knew that the five months of separation from my family would come to a standstill when they came over to visit. The month finally arrived, but before their visit came Avoriaz. Avoriaz is a tiny village in the French Alps. Once you get into France from Italy, you pass a few big towns and then start getting higher and higher into the mountains. Just when you think you can’t go any higher, there is a place where you must stop and put chains on your car wheels as the roads are slick with snow and ice not to mention they are steep and windy. Once and the chains were on, we were on our way up. I was told by my family about Avoriaz before we went. “It’s a small village,” they said, “You can’t take your cars there, it’s on the top of a mountain…yadda yadda yadda.” My family here goes there every other year for a week in March and stays at a time-share that was a gift from Federico’s parents and where he used to go himself as a child. They go for the sole purpose of skiing, as there is not much else to do, but skiing here for the French and Italian is how skiing in Vail is for us Americans. There are more slopes than your can count and they span across France and Switzerland in all different categories of difficulty with ski and snow boarding schools, multiple towns and villages in between, and higher mountains than I have dreamed existed. So, they told me about this Avoriaz, but it wasn’t until we pulled up that freezing cold night, exchanged our tennis shoes for our snow boots, unloaded our many bags full of clothes, food, ski gear, jackets, stuffed animals and ice skates and waited for Federico to park the car. It wasn’t until I realized that the “taxis” we were taking to our time share building were actually horse-drawn carriages that we sat on as the snow came down and we rounded the bend from the parking lot – the horse’s bells ringing all the while and Bea and I clinging to one another from the cold wind – that I saw and realized what exactly Avoriaz was and why they went to the trouble of coming to such a place. It’s right out of Disney World or a movie…a seemingly fake place that is hard to believe is actually real. No cars are allowed and so everyone either walks the two snow-covered streets or takes a horse-drawn carriage as we did first. It is made up of brown, tall mountain-looking buildings which are full of small spaces (time-shares/flats) with a kitchen and some beds – the essentials for before and after a day of skiing. The buildings are on different levels as the entire village is built into the side of a mountain peak and the whole village looks over a larger city below. Two ski slopes go directly through the town and pass cafes, restaurants, and a grocery each brimming with French cuisine that seems to melt in your mouth, especially after a long day of exhilarating skiing. There is an ice-skating rink, a merry-go-round, a kid’s play area. There are slopes in front of you that go straight down and skiers can be seen out the window of our flat as early as when we wake up, some passing directly under our window.

After lugging all of our luggage finally inside the tiny timeshare and finding a place for everything, going to sleep and waking the next morning, we were ready to go. Well, they all were at least. I was a bit, shall we say, intimidated? So, yeah, I had had some practice over Christmas and a few weekends previous, but all the people here seemed as though they were born with skis on their feet compared to me who has lived in such places as CA and FL…but, there that American nanny goes anyway, in her hodgepodge ski outfit. Though, for some reason, Federico thought it would be appropriate (I think funny is more the word) to take us (more importantly me) on a black level slope that just happened to be the slope that was used for the Woman’s Downhill Skiing 2002 World Cup for the very first run that we did, and despite me falling about 50 times (um, hello…) it was really actually fun and when I looked up to see what I had done after it was all over (and the small fact that I didn’t have any broken bones and was still breathing) I felt very accomplished and did fairly well for the rest of the 6 days of skiing.

For the most part, the weather was to die for and since it was March, the sun was out and it wasn’t necessary to wear tons of layers to ski in. The beauty of these Alps is something that is so difficult for me to describe to you. Every day my breath was literally taken away by the amazing beauty that surrounded us, that put the mountains in Champoluc to shame. We skied on slopes in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes we were on a slope and nothing else could be seen … no other people, no ski lifts, no villages…it was like you and God in His magnificent creation as the cool wind refreshed our faces and warmth of the sun and body heat from skiing combined with the incredible feeling of being able to experience such a place and such a moment. The peaks were taller than I imagined and the snow that covered the ground outside of the slopes was fresh from the night before and looked like a blanket had been gently laid over the mountain. One day we skied from Avoriaz in France, to a village in Switzerland. Another day we took a few ski lifts so high that we were literally skiing in and through clouds as we came down the mountain. One slope took us through a forest, twisting and winding us down so that you just stood on your skis and let the slope take you, looking around you, through the trees, and over the edge into peaks and mountains and valleys below.

It was an experience I so wish I could have shared with any of you…one that you have to talk about to others but can never describe it fully because it is a feeling as much as a description. Even my photographs cannot capture such moments. It’s a place that proves God’s existence, for such beauty and power in a place cannot happen by sheer accident. We ate French food such as croissants, baguettes, escargot (twice!) and French fries. We slept well at night, exhausted from the day, and at the end of the week, I was sad to leave…though I had my family’s visit to look forward to. It was a settimana bellisima…a beautiful week. One I will not forget, one that was another bonding experience with this Italian family, one where I learned how to ski much better, one where my eyes were yet again opened to new things.

We arrived home on a Saturday afternoon which gave me the night to do some wash, re-pack and sleep so I could get up the next morning to catch the 10am train to Paris. (I know, it’s a hard life….actually, March was kind of embarrassingly crazy as far as destinations in a certain amount of time. I was in four different countries by the time the month was over!) Mom, dad and John (youngest bro of 14 years, for those of you not up with my family) planned a trip to come over to tour Italy for about 10 days with a group from John’s school made up of parents, teachers, and kids. I planned to meet them for a a few days of their travels and use some of my vacation time. But the closer their time came, the more mom and I were thinking that we might need a little more time than a weekend with a group of Clermontians. So, though my dad and John could not come early due to school and work, my mom checked it out…changed her flight to a bit earlier…and even changed the destination for no extra charge. That destination? Paris, only a five-hour train ride from Torino and quite a grand place for a five-month mother-daughter meeting, if I do say so myself. So, I took the train to Paris the day after we got back from Avoriaz, spent the night at the hotel and then awaited her in the lobby the next morning as she came in from the crazy-long flight over. Being in Paris with my mom and being able to experience it with her was simply crazy and wonderful, but it was the time spent together that was really what I needed. To see her face and be by her side was enough. However, we did explore Paris since we were there! Though staying in the hotel room and just talking and ordering room service for every meal was actually a bit tempting, I did have an itinerary mapped out of what we needed to see in the short time we were there. We explored, saw the Mona Lisa, the Eiffel Tower, walked the River Seine, ate macaroons from a favorite spot on the Champ-Elysees, admired the Arc de Triumph, and even got snooted at by a Frenchman. We ate some good pastries, stayed out late, and even went to the ballet at the Opera Garnier (where the Phantom of the Opera was inspired). It was a fabulous 2 days of catching up and pinching ourselves to make sure we were in such a city together.

Wednesday morning we caught a train back to Torino where we stayed one night in my home here and with my Italian family. Being able to show mom around my world, introduce her to my family and friends, my favorite places and my routines was quite wonderful. She can now understand my experience here that much easier and can picture my life and my city. Jen and I gave her a tour, introduced her to the beautiful thing called gelato and enjoyed foccaca in our favorite piazza. We had dinner with my family and played Memory with the girls who were sad to see her go the next afternoon.

From Torino, the next afternoon, we hopped on a plane to Rome to meet Dad and John who were flying in with the rest of the tour group the next morning. We explored Rome a bit that night and found an adorable hole-in-the-wall restaurant, then met the boys at the Vatican Museum the next morning after they arrived. After already being in Rome twice, it was really so wonderful to be able to know my way around a bit and to watch my family as they experienced such a place for the very first time…seeing things that are simply photos in history books and don’t seem to really still exist. They stayed in Rome from Friday until Sunday morning and so did I, showing them my favorite gelato place (what a great thing to have favorite places in such a city!), have extended conversations of catching up over lunch and dinner, and simply enjoying being around my family no matter the crazy things surrounding us. It was a joy to experience it with them. Though Christopher (21-year-old brother) was absent, since he is coming in July I can wait to see him! And though my Italian family and I went to meet my family in Milan (about an hour and a half away from Torino) the night before they flew out and about a week after the Rome visit…on Sunday morning when I had to say goodbye and send them on to other Italian sights and take a flight back to Torino, I was unexpectedly emotional. Not that I didn’t think I would miss my family, but I think the thought of having to wait another six months to see their faces again suddenly became a reality that I hadn’t really thought about. It was difficult, but something that was comforting at the same time. The dinner in Milan was fabulous and I was so grateful to my Italian family for wanting to meet my dad and brother so badly that they drove so far for only one night. It was wonderful to have my two worlds collide, for each of them to know the other and be able to understand me that much more.

And, now, my dear, patient readers, I think I must stop writing. Though my travels are not quite up to date yet, I simply cannot ask you to continue to sit and read more of such a novel! However, I will send the next update next week with the remaining travels so far and the other details of this life in Italy such as new friends, revelations, humbling experiences, and God’s hand in it all.

I thank you for your friendship and interest in my time here and for reading this far…you are the troopers if you made it here. I appreciate your willingness to read of my adventures and time here away from our home soil and on a foreign one. It is interesting, to say the least. And what could be next?!

I hope your day is beautiful, that your air conditioning works, and that you appreciate our country. I hope that you plan a visit to this beautiful place called Italy sometime in your life if you have not done so already! I hope you enjoy the little moments of this week, for they seem to be the most important, even in a place such as this.