Home Is Where the Heart Is.

It's almost exactly a year since I came to Italy having followed my heart. And it was then that Luca had met with Paolo and discussed subletting his apartment for one year has he headed off to England. So as a year approached, Paolo returned and was ready to move back into his home, and so we were on the apartment hunt. 

It wasn't as easy as we had hoped, and I would say that there is an apartment crisis in Bologna. Since there are so many students and living in the city is in demand, there are too many apartments that are in terrible condition at a ridiculously high price. These apartments are purposely kept in poor condition since they know students will rent them anyway and will probably cause damage. 

Where we were for the past year was actually owned by the Vatican and so we were technically paying our rent to the Arch Diocese of so and so of somewhere. This meant that we paying very low rent and was a great way to save some money for year, but also meant that we used to not paying very much for a relatively large space in a great location in the city center. 

After a month of looking we found our new home  just a few streets down. It's a little smaller than our place before, however it has two spectacular views of the hills of Bologna and has recently been renovated and we were spared that horrible 1960's decor that still common today in Italy. 

The apartment wasn't furnished and so we too many trips to Ikea trying to buy nice enough, but cheap enough furniture that hopefully we can sell in the future. It's so nice to be in a place that's actually ours, not subletting, with our own things. 

Life of Pi

For my highest English class, Advanced 3, I proposed reading a book through out the course instead of bringing in short readings and the students really liked the idea. So back in October the students brought in some suggestions and in the end we couldn't decide between Life of Pi and The Giver.

We ended up flipping a coin to decide which book to read and the lucky winner was Life of Pi by Yann Martel. 

When we chose the book, I wasn't even aware that the movie was coming out, and I also hadn't realized that it was so popular. I had heard of it before and heard it was good so I was ok with reading it in class. 

The book starts with a prologue that leaves you with the idea that the whole story might even be actually based on real life events, however it's highly unlikely.  The beginning is quite slow and I would say a little difficult to get into, but once you start it's hard to put down. 

Even though the majority of the book takes place on a boat and you feel like there are only so many things that can happen when you're stranded in the middle of the ocean, the story moves along and is interesting to read. Many of my students complained that they were tired of reading and reading and reading about the life boat, fishing, catching rain water, staying away from the tiger, that the story got very boring. This is completely understandable especially if you must read slower than usual and over a few months it feels as if the story just drags on. 

I was frustrated with the ending, because I was hoping for something much for climatic. When I finished the book I felt short-handed, like I wanted a sequel to find out what happens to the main character afterwards. So many pages of reading about life on a boat, just to finish the story so abruptly with no solid conclusion was disappointing. 

I would recommend this book for a light, enjoyable read, simply for pleasure. 

Attempting to Snowboard

I have been terrible about posting new blogs and I apologize. I will try to do better! This post is long over due but it's never too late! 

Back in December, Luca took me into the Apennine Mountains in Northern Tuscany to go snowboarding for the first time. I had never been skiing/snowboarding in actual mountains before, my only experience had been the big hills of Minnesota which doesn't seem like such a comparison. 

I had also never been snowboarding. I had had many friends promise that they would take me snowboarding and teach me this cool looking, popular sport, but no one ever lived up to their promise, except Luca.  

I had been told many times before that you need more than just one day to learn. You need to be patient. You will fall, and fall again, and again, and again. It will hurt. It will be painful. You wont' be able to walk the next day. Etc. etc. etc. I had heard it all before ..... and it was definitely all true, even though I thought I would and could do better. 

I spent almost the whole day on the bunny hill. It was frustrating since the hill isn't long enough to even get a good trial run in. When you think you actually are getting the hang of things, the hill ends and you have to go back up to the top, work on standing up, making your way through all the other beginners, and then going just enough to stay on your feet for 5 seconds. 

However, at the end of the day, I was able to make it down a blue run (which here is our green, and thankfully Luca told me that, because it would have been a terrible mistake to go down a green run!) even though I probably didn't have any proper form. 

And I'll admit that at the end of the day after having fallen so many times, I was in tears from falling on bruises. My knees were bruised, my butt was bruised, I couldn't raise my arms, it killed to walk stairs, and I felt like my wrists were going to fall off. 

I haven't decided yet if the next time we go, I'll grab a pair of skis which I feel totally comfortable on, or try to conquer the snowboard again!