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

Sweaty Summer

Ciao tutti,
After Slutty Summer, Naughty Summer and Summer does Sydney, it is now time for a new porn classic: Sweaty Summer. Well... I hope you didn't get your hopes up too much while reading the title of this post, because you're not going to find much porn here, unfortunately... Not that there isn't any, obviously, but well... uhmm... that's private... - I'm beginning to wonder why the hell I started talking about this subject. It must have been my mind running wild randomly associating ideas after writing the title... Oh, whatever, just skip this paragraph, will you?

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that it's still as hot as Satan's fire island paradise in what I have recently seen someone describe as Milano Rock City. That's actually quite a good description. Living in this city makes one feel like one is standing barefoot on a level rocky plain that's been in the sun for hours and hours and is consequently too hot to walk on without being able to see any shade for miles... So we keep sweating, sweating and sweating some more. Every movement is too much and just a slight change of posture can be the source of an unstoppable outburst of sweat from every single pore in my body as if that movement had been the final crack in the Aswan Dam. But then again, I'm not complaining. It's a good reason not to wear clothes that often. I'm not working more than an hour a day anymore, so I've got a lot of time to lie in the park, exercise in the swimming pool and just get a tan - which is coming along nicely by the way.

The week after Werner and Jose left, we went to Marta's goodbye party at Slice Cafe. Marta is one of Olaf's colleagues and a lovely girl. She has been a visiting student for the past two years, but is now going back to her native Portugal to finish her PhD. We're going to miss her terribly as she is always the life at parties, incredibly funny and just fun to hang out with in general. She's one of Olaf's friends I actually like a lot. The party was really nice and at this great bar I had never been before. The aperitivo at Slice Cafe was awesome, the pasta was to die for and there was an enormous choice of side-dishes. So, we lost a friend but gained a new place to take visitors to!

That Thursday I went to a colleague's birthday party somewhere on the outskirts of Milan, literally overlooking the farmland at the edge of the city. It was an Arab/Cypriot themed party and we were supposed to come dressed accordingly, but Stefano, Elke and I decided not to comply. Phaedon (the birthday boy), a Cypriot colleague at CTL, had prepared a wonderful dinner which I enjoyed immensely. Unfortunately it was just too hot. The apartment didn't have air conditioning and we were burning up and left after we had spent two excruciating hours there just out of politeness. We didn't really get to talk to Phaedon because he was in the kitchen all the time, so in the end the party was kind of a disappointment. Well, at least we ate well... And Stefano told me he had read something about a Belgian restaurant in Milan! A Belgian restaurant! Can you imagine? A Belgian restaurant in Milan?! I couldn't even think of any typically Belgian food besides french fries (frietjes!) and chocolate and of course Belgian beers! So we had to check it out that weekend and the four of us went that Saturday. The restaurant turned out to be lovely and Olaf actually overcame his fear of mussels (which are worryingly called 'cozze' in Italian (pronunciation 'kotse')), which was a definite reason for me to opt for something different. I had an enormous 'stinco di maiale' or pig's shin. Well, actually it was more like an entire pig's leg. Oh well, it was very good I enjoyed that immensely - and some bottles of Kriek as well, obviously!

Last Wednesday Olaf and I went to Corporate English's summer celebration at Bar Bianco in the middle of Parco Sempione. It was amazing. After some initial confusion about where our table actually was, we were labelled as VIPs, ushered upstairs and found our table right next to food and the dance floor. As Caroline (the boss) was paying, we obviously drank too much and had loads of fun. I got to dance with all my colleagues who all thought I was looking hot (Yeah! Swimming three times a week is finally paying off!) and hadn't seen me dance before. Most of you have seen me dance before and already know that I've got some actually stunning moves and am admired wherever I go (Oh yeah, I rule!!! ;-) ), but they hadn't yet. And the more booze we had, the sluttier the dancing got, so you can imagine the bacchanal that night ended in - which Olaf didn't get to experience anymore because he went home quite early. All my colleagues are from Britain, Australia, Canada etc so they know how to party and we sort of decided to show those Italians what slutty dancing really is... I'm still waiting for the pictures! Caroline actually got quite excited and suddenly decided that 'my shirt needed ripping' and then proceeded to do exactly that. Something like that had never happened to me before and I was baffled for a couple of moments - apparently with an appalled face because Caroline's face immediately changed as she realised I wasn't amused... Well, I wasn't really angry but just stupefied, but that was enough for her to spend 5 minutes on the floor searching for my buttons and promising to sew them back on again.

Anyway, that sort of marked the end of the evening for me. When I had said my goodbyes and given Paola a big hug as she has just gone on a study trip to Kenya for a month, I had obviously just missed the last tram so I had to walk back. Which was fine because it had cooled down a little bit and gave me chance to sober up a bit, although I was afraid of getting arrested for public nudity or something... So, when I got home I put my shirt and the buttons in a plastic bag and handed them to Caroline the next day declaring with a smile that I hadn't washed it yet and that it might smell a bit dodgy (as I had been dancing in it all night and it was sweaty as hell), but that this was her deserved punishment.

That night Werner and José came back to sleep at our place for another night because they were flying back to Holland from Bergamo last Friday. So, we took them out to our new favourite place, Slice Cafe. We had some lovely cocktails, gorgeous food and a nice discussion about the teacher training programme at Radboud University which Werner has already finished and José is starting in September. After that, we went back home and played an interesting game of macchiavelli. They left Friday morning and we spent our weekend relaxing, not moving more than we had to. Last night, we went to a restaurant we had spotted a couple of days ago with Nina and Antonio who we hadn't seen for a long time. It was a lovely restaurant, the pizzas were nice and it was great to see them again, although we had to wait for an hour to get a table. We slept late this morning and have just finished cleaning our house which has turned me into a splashing sweat monster, so I'm quite happy to just sit here and tell you about my life.

Just two more days of work until my holiday starts on 1st August. What does one do with five weeks off? - Especially, since I've already been having a lot of free time because I haven't been working much lately. I can't remember ever having a holiday as long as that. When I was still in university I always worked during my summer breaks and just took time off to go on holiday abroad. Fortunately, Stefano and Elke have invited us to come and visit them in Toscana for a couple days and Belinda and Enrico want us to come with them to house on Lago Maggiore so our weeks will be quite filled. Which is a good thing, because I was really worried about what I was going to do until 20th August when we leave for Romania. Even my pools are closing, which amazes me. Who has ever heard of swimming pools closing in summer? Apparently, Italians think nobody uses indoor pools in summer are closing them all so I'm forced to swim in outdoor pools. This sucks, because I need the markings on the ceiling to make sure I don't hit my head against the side of the pool and outside pools are mainly play pools. They don't have lanes and there are always people jumping, playing and swimming in directions they shouldn't be swimming in so they're always blocking my passage! And let's not forget about the distraction of beautiful people in sexy swimwear walking around the pool or relaxing in the sun all the time...

As you can see, my life is obviously horrible...

Bacio, Fe