I aint there no more

Raised in a barn?

When I was growing up back in good ol' Frederick, I was always taught to shut the door behind me when I went out to play. The perfectly logical reasoning being that heating was expensive and we shouldn't let all that money out the door. I'm sure that most of you will agree with me. Apparently the ENTIRE nation of Italy didn't get this memo.

Over here, it is ludicrously expensive to heat a building. Gas prices over here are so high, there is a city wide regulation on how long you can heat your house. To combat this, Italians have taken to wearing sweaters indoors, something I've had to get used to. Also, Italians think it odd that we Americans can't handle a little cold in doors. Normally, I would agree but I don't think we are completely at fault. That little memo that the Italians missed is pretty obvious.

Just the other day, it was about 40 degrees out, not exactly a balmy spring day. During one of our midmorning breaks, I stepped out of the classroom for a brief change of scenery only to find that the hallway was a good 15 degrees colder than the room I had just come from. So I asked myself, "Self, why is it so cold out here?" I walked over to the door that goes to a set of outdoor stairs which, of course, was gaping open. So I again asked myself, "Self, does this door need to be left opened? Perhaps it locks automatically?" No. Nothing of the sort. It was just open, allowing all of that "precious" heat to escape right out the door, making the rest of the country approximately .0000000000000000000000000000000001 degrees warmer. We here at Villa Aurora like to do our part to support global warming.

Basically what it comes down to is this: WHY THE HECK DO ITALIANS LEAVE THEIR DOORS AND WINDOWS OPEN IN THE WINTER?????????? If someone knows the answer, I would love to be as enlightend as you.

Brian

I can read!

So in light of my recent accomplishment of finishing a 20 page childrens bedtime story book, I've decided to go big or go home. I just bought the Chronicles of Narnia in Italian. Brian, you might ask, are you ready for such an huge undertaking. Brian might respond, of course not, but thats the whole fun. Anywho, I'll post another blog up when I finish the first book(next year sometime) Take care faithful blog-readers.

Brian

I have a Job!

Guess what ? I have a job! Ok, so I don't actually get paid, but I do get free buss passes which is as good as getting paid anyways.

I will be starting work on Tuesday at a downtown community center teaching children, young and old, to speak English! How cool is that?

I know that a lot of you are thinking that this might be counter-productive what with me being in Italy to learn Italian, but I assure you I will be using Italian, meeting people, and having a ball the whole time. I'll post blogs as things happen but I thought it would be cool to give a little bit of a preview. I am teaching with Jeff, Vivienne, and Kelly. Possibly more but I'm sure of those 3 for right now.

Ciao,
Brian

Ok, this is going to be a short blog and for all of you who have been patiently waiting for an update from me for so many months, I know, I dropped the ball. I'll try to pick it up this coming semester.

So, last night, I went with my friends Devin, Carolyn and Stephanie to a Jazz Club in downtown Firenze. To put it mildly, it might have been one of the coolest things I've seen thus far in Firenze.

When we got there, which is not to say it took us a while to find a poorly lit door in the middle of an alley at night, we ended up being the only ones there for about half an hour. We had to go downstairs into this underground basement of sorts. The music made up for the sketchyness of it. There was a house band consisting of a pianist, bassist, and drummer. It was amazing and eventually when more people came, with them came more instruments. Saxaphones, guitars and others arrived and jammed out for the better part of 2 hours. About 12:30 we left to go catch the last bus home. Tired as we were, we felt refreshed after hearing such wonderful jazz. We will definitely be going back as a one time cover charge of 5 euro was a rather fair fee in our eyes.

Greetings again faithful bloggers,

Go to picasaweb.google.com/brianpgauthier to view my most recent pictures. Enjoy!

Brian

Woo whoo!!!

I can finally read your comments after many weeks. I had not been able to view comments from you guys but now I can so keep em coming.

Ciao,
Brian

Michelangelo\'s got nothin.

Dear faithful blog readers,

I\'m so sorry it has taken so long to write another post. Please rest assured that it wont happen again. I will try my best to catch you up on what\'s going on here in Italia.

Quickly on that note, Michelangelo was not a genius. It\'s true! All he did was look out his bedroom window(or balcony...er...whatever) and there was inspiration winking him in the face. Lucky for you all my faithful bloggers, you can now see that inspiration. I just set up a gmail account(brianpgauthier@gmail.com). I think that if you go to picasaweb.google.com, create a gmail account, you can view my pictures online. It takes about 5 minutes and is probably the best email provider out there. Enough about that though.


Much has happened since the last posting. I have learned a lot about Italy in the last few weeks, even things I didn\'t realize I learned. For example, Italians don\'t dip their bread in oil. They see us Americans doing it and shoot us very inquisitve looks. Despite the odd gestures, many of us continue this tradition and show no signs of giving up. Maccaroni Grill is good but I think they crossed some wires up.

Within the last two weeks I have been fortunate enough to see two of the most beautiful sights any person should have the right to behold. The Cinque Terre(Five Cities) and the town of Poppi.

Our trip to the Cinque Terre was lots of fun. I hung out with Jeff, Chelsea, Emily, and Allison. We had a great time going from town to town, snapping pictures, exploring the Italian coast and generally just raising kane. You know, that old chestnut. We hit all but the third town which, to our dismay, turned out to be the most beautiful of the 5. The towns were much smaller than I\'d imagined. Only one 1 and 1/2 car road through each city. And the paint jobs were out of this world. No two houses next to each other had the same paint color. Anywhere from red, to blue, to yellow and back again. It was pretty cool to see. And, *sneaky laugh*, I got to dip my feet into the Mediterrenean sea! Not swim. Too many jellyfish, not withstanding the temperature dropping to around 70 farenheit.

As luck would have it, it started to rain the very second we all stepped on the train to come home. On our way home, passed the quarries where Michelangelo used to get his marble. I\'m not joking when I say that the mountain looks snowcovered. There is still that much marble.

Our next trip was last weekend to a little SDA church near the town of Poppi, about 50km from Firenze. It was great to escape the urban setting of Firenze. The duomo and downtown are magnificent sites but the country trumps them like the Rook over an ace. It was wonderful. They had a foozeball table and ping pong and many hours were spent there while others decided that nature was more to their liking. We left Poppi SDA feeling rather refreshed.

Classes have been getting better. At the beginning, I thought they were rather childish. We learned vowels, the alphabet and sang songs. All the lectures were in English and I started thinking that we weren\'t going to be immersed like I\'d hoped. That changed today.

Until now, all the sermons at church had been translated so we could get the gist of the message. Erica, one of our teachers, still translated softly for those of the ACA people who didn\'t feel that comfortable with their Italian. A few brave souls, myself included, had only a dictionary and our wits to try to interpret the sermon. While I didn\'t have any idea even what books of the bible they were preaching from, I did recognize many words, enough that I counted today a success.

We watched Paycheck tonight. All dubbed in Italian. May the next time be a movie that doesn\'t have a very bad dub of Ben Affleck. Yikes

Well bloggers, it\'s late, I\'m tired, and the room is getting warmer.(we always, for some unexplainable reason, have our windows open) Ci vediamo e buona giornata, wherever you are.

Love,
Brian