I don’t know what I expected to find in Italy the day I left on August 27, 2007. I expected adventure in making a new home in a foreign country and teaching English. I expected to improve my Italian to whole new levels of fluency. I expected to resume my friendship with my friends in [...]
Archive for June, 2011
#40: Family
Posted in photographic, reflective, regular on Thursday 30 June, 2011 | 1 Comment »
#20: Family
Posted in Uncategorized on Thursday 30 June, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Now that I’m at home (I didn’t quite manage to finish my goal of finishing all my entries before leaving), it’s wonderful to be with my family again. This summer I’m looking forward to spending time with them here–long, quality time without stressful consulate visits. It is my superlative parents who made my initial trip [...]
#29: Friends
Posted in descriptive, photographic, reflective on Thursday 30 June, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Leaving friends behind, however, has been heartbreaking. I was doing fine at home today until going on Facebook and reading all the good-bye messages. Now I’m a mess again. I’ve always had good friends wherever I’ve gone, but never before had I had such a large network of such good friends. Friends made that first [...]
#19: Friends
Posted in reflective, regular on Thursday 30 June, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Now for the really emotionally loaded topics. I couldn’t be more excited to reunite with all of my Stateside friends again. Some of these friends are ones I’ve stayed in touch with and will be able to see again on a regular basis. Soon I’ll be reuniting also with Thea, Natalie, and Emily in DC–exciting [...]
#38: Students
Posted in descriptive, photographic on Tuesday 28 June, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I was terrified the first day I went to the Circolo Leonardo to teach my first class. It was an intermediate level class, with I believe five students. I could only remember the unfriendly glares of the students in my first class as a teacher in training and feared the same. But then they walked [...]
#18: Opportunity
Posted in Uncategorized on Tuesday 28 June, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
These last three entries will be each separate, and in reverse order. I have come to love teaching more than I had ever expected. But I never intended to make a career out of teaching English. There are so many other things I want to try my hand at doing, and some of these things [...]
#27: Lunch by Giordana; #17: Brunch
Posted in descriptive, regular on Tuesday 28 June, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
This entry shall be short, for I am exhausted and have four more entries to go before I travel. I wish it didn’t have to be, since it merits a long-winded description. It’s been a tradition of Riccardo’s and mine in the last two years to have Saturday and sometimes Sunday lunch at his mother’s [...]
#36: Favorite places; #16: American wilderness
Posted in descriptive, reflective, regular on Sunday 26 June, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
This is a catch-all post for all of my favorite places in Bologna. Feel free to use it as a Lonely Planet guide for anyone who might visit someday. In order in which they occur to me: – L’Infedele: One of my absolute favorite bars in Bologna. It’s tiny, so it can sometimes be hard [...]
#35: Anglo American, co-workers, and commute; #15: Air conditioning
Posted in photographic, reflective, regular on Saturday 25 June, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Sure, I’ve complained before. There are times when I grumble, things that I’m pretty sure could be done better. But all things considered, it’s been a good job, and I’m sad to leave it. To begin with, the commute there from my house is splendid. No rush-hour highways or crowded subways for me–nearly every day [...]
#34: Crescentine and tigelle; #14: Bagels
Posted in descriptive, photographic, regular on Saturday 25 June, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Last night we went out for my last dinner of crescentine and tigelle. I took a picture but it’s blurry so I’ll just have to steal one from the internet. Crescentine (the Bolognese kind) are a kind of puffy fried dough (made with that omnipresent strutto), often called gnocchi fritti in other zones. Tigelle (confusingly [...]
