How lovely lazy life can be when all you have to worry about is applying enough suntan lotion...

Ciao tutti,

I am happy to be able to report that the sweating has lessened. And it's high time for another update before I won't get around to doing it because of all the holidays. In between visits from friends and holidays, I must say I haven't been doing anything. I swim, I read and generally relax. Almost everybody has left town now, which kind of sucks because the temperature has finally gone down and I would be up for meeting people, oh well, alas...

The week after we went out with Nina and Anto, I finished my last lessons and was surprised to be offered a couple more in August by CTL, even though my contract with them ended on 31st July and we're not going to renew. It was just a substitution for three lessons, but hey, that's E 50,- more than I expected to earn in August! That Friday, just before Marike and Rosie arrived from London, I went out for an early aperitivo with Bruno who was leaving for Puglia the following day and who I hadn't seen for a long time. We had a very interesting chat and gossiped a bit about his classmates (he is a former student of mine). As he came by car, this gave me the opportunity of looking at Milan from a driver's point of view and I'm telling you, it's not pretty! I'm glad I don't have to drive and find parking space in this city.

And then Marike, my former study mate and flatmate in college, arrived from London where she's doing a PhD at the moment. And she brought a friend we had never met before: enter Rosie. Well, we had sort of already met on Facebook, but that doesn't really count, does it? Anyway, it was lovely. I hadn't seen Marike since last November and we had loads to talk about. You see, Marike likes talking and always incites me to talk a lot more than I usually do - and a lot faster. I'm afraid we may have gone a bit overboard there and I sincerely hope we haven't annoyed Olaf and Rosie too much. We did the usual tour, relaxed a lot and obviously ate and drank too much. Here are some pictures:

Marike & me

Me & Rosie

Marike, Rosie & me at Wasabi (the girls are sushi freaks!)

The weekend Marike and Rosie were there Olaf got an email from his long-lost friend Bart who turned out to be coming over to Italy with his girlfriend Tineke that week. Consequently, we could start entertaining some more guests on Tuesday. It was only a short visit but Olaf of course wanted to do the tour so I had my days to myself. I got really angry because they closed the outdoor pool on Tuesday because of 'maltempo', which is supposed to mean 'bad weather' but in this case it just meant 25 degrees and a bit of rain. Italians are crazy! That evening we experienced a short thunderstorm though, which presented us with some amazing views from our window. Unfortunately we forgot to take pictures, so it must remain kind of a 'should-have-been-there' moment. Having Bart and Tineke over was of course a perfect excuse to eat and drink well again... Well, it's safe to say that when we got up at 6.30 on Thursday to send Bart and Tineke off to Toscana and to catch our own train there, we weren't as rested as we could have been...

But that was OK, because we had a 5-hour train ride ahead of us, a train ride that would take us to the lovely country town of Castagneto Carducci in Toscana, where were meeting Stefano and Elke who were staying in a house down there. It gave me a lot time to read and that was quite necessary because - and this is a little confession I regret I have to make - even though Harry Potter 7 had already come out, I hadn't even read number 6 yet. Reading HP6 immediately before starting HP7 turned out to be a good idea though, because it had been a long time since HP5 and I couldn't remember who all the characters were anymore. HP6 was wonderful and HP7 was downright amazing, although it did turn into an interesting gorefest at the end which I'm not sure is suitable for young children. Anyway, chapeau J.K. Rowling!

The advantage of leaving Milan really early was that we arrived just after midday and still had a lot of time to spend at the beach, which we obviously did. We worked on our tans, slept a little, read, talked and had a great time in general. The first day the sky was blu dipinto di blu as was to be expected of a Tuscan summer, but Friday was a strange day. In the morning we took a long drive to get to Calaviolina, a very secluded beach they don't allow more than 250 people on and where the sea is as transparent as in the Caribbean. So we parked the car, took a long walk to the beach, spread out our towels on the sand, took off our clothes, lay down and... it started raining and hailing as if the monsoon had arrived. We picked up everything and made a run for the nearest cafe and hid underneath the cover together with many other people.

The rainstorm lasted for about an hour and when it finally seemed dry again we started our ascent towards the car. Once we had passed over the top of the hill, the weather was lovely again with blue skies and small white clouds. We thought it might have been a local thing and decided to drive on to the next beach and have lunch there. On the way there, however, we noticed that the black skies and thunder were following us and we arrived just in time to be able to dive into the sea before the bad weather arrived. Here we are on the beach - and yes, that is a lightning flash behind us!

The rest of the day we spent trying to outrun this stormy weather and we managed to get to one other beach where we could tan for about 10 minutes before all hell broke loose there as well. So we went home, had a shower and waited it out. In about two hours the storm had passed, the plants had been fed and we were ready to go again. That night we went out to Castagneto Carducci, shining on a hilltop after the storm...

in order to do some wine tasting at a local festival. Unfortunately, this event had been cancelled due to the bad weather and we just had some wine outside criticising tourists' outfits and trying to avoid the herds of Dutch people that had seemed to invade this poor, poor little town. The next day we went to the beach in the morning and it was so hot that we got sunburned completely. Well, that was our going home present, I suppose, because I have been as tanned as a Californian bimbo ever since. Here are some more pictures:

We got home again quite late Saturday night and unfortunately I had planned a picnic with one of my students Sunday afternoon so we didn't have a lot of time to rest and regain our strength. It was a nice barbecue (Nissrine was there as well, as it was one of the students who had been in our shared course) and a good opportunity to practise our Italian (as none of the guests spoke English that well), but we were really tired and were home again by 5 pm. Olaf has gone back to work again now and I have gone back to doing virtually nothing the last couple of days. Belinda is in town and we had a girls' night of watching bad videos with beautiful men taking their clothes off (at least we thought we would but were sadly disappointed) and tomorrow we're going to meet her and Enrico at their house on the lake to spend two days there with them. And when we come back, it will be holiday time for real...

XXX, Fe