Slept late today. And then I went had an omelet and a few cappuccinos and to read. Called a cab and headed to the train station. What an amazing place these train stations are. We just don't have them yet in the states. Maybe America is too big and spread out for them I don't know. but they just never caught on compared to driving. I wasn't sure where I was going. I looked up at the schedule and decided on Sienna. See some Tuscan countryside. And some mediaeval architecture.
They have the most beautiful ceramic in sienna. Breathtaking. I spent hours drooling over it.
Yes I am madly insanely and entirely self obsessed. It is something I am very good at. So please, there is no need to remind me of it. I know all too well... Hehe.
I love the train. I love sitting in the train and reading and writing. hard to write in English now. I am totally losing it. Writing half in English and half in Italian now and then going back and rewriting in English. Crazy. sat next to this old Italian couple. Man they must be 80. they teased me how excited I was. But every weekend I get up and go to some other town and just take off, just me and a book bag. And it is very exciting. in America it seems a lot harder to do that because you have to drive and all or take a plane. Here you just hop on this train and you pay like nothing for it. and then a few hours a later your in another town. If I wasn’t a tourist I am sure I would hate the train. And fly everywhere. so yea I am aware of that. you hear a lot of languages at the station. Every language you can imagine in a matter of an hour you hear all of them. but whenever someone tries to communicate with someone else they always go for the English. Like if the Italian attendant is trying to help some Japanese tourists she will go for English. Or the Germans or the French or the Israelis or the Spanish. English is now the standard. Its like our blackboard. I am happy I was raised speaking English as my first language. It is a relief. we are lucky with that. Italian is getting harder and harder. It has become a joke in our class how hard it is getting, rather than easier. Yes it is a little like Spanish and Portuguese. But grammatically it is way out there. our teacher takes a lot of pride in it and says that Spanish and Portuguese are very primitive languages compared to Italian and then laughs of course. They have a word for everything. ten words for everything. way more than we do. This is fun but it makes learning difficult. He says they have had thousands of years to perfect it. Grammatically the thing that really throws you the most is this. They have all these rules, and then right after you learn them, he teaches you that they break them all. a lot of times they just break the rules because they don't like the way it sounds the other way, so they change it to a totally different word that doesn’t even exist just because they like the sound better. Its crazy. I guess its no different than if you try to explain to someone why we say ‘gonna’ or ‘wanna’ etc.
We do not stop sweating here. it is non stop sweating morning till night. one of the students at the school told us last night that he sleeps in the bathroom in the shower. He is from central America and is here learning Italian. He cannot believe it. We were all laughing at him. Everyone has their own way of dealing with it. today it was 41 degrees. Hottest day in like hundreds of years. I don't mind it that much I have to say. But I'm not having to sleep in it so that could be why.
On the train I met a bunch of travelers from San Diego. Cool people. Seriously asked me if I knew this guy from cocoa beach Florida which is like seven hours away from Miami. That is a classic joke but this guy really did ask me. so I asked him if he was friends with Tony Robbins since he lived in San Diego. And of course he said no. and we all had a laugh. But it was great hanging with some Americans. I love America.
Museo civico in sienna---amazing frescoes on the walls that span hundreds of feet. It was in this museum that I had this epiphany.
Lunch in Sienna.
