Back in Italy, Back to the Blog

I just spent the morning reading through old blog posts from my last 6 months in Italy and how nice it is to have so much of the cool moments captured and the memory refresher was fun. The blog is again open for the world to read, I can't help myself from wanting to share the experiences. Also, this saves hours of personal emails. Now I have internet access via a key but only 100 hours a month. Not a lot of time if you're me.

I am now in Italy, Phase II. I'm in no-man's land at the moment meaning that before, when I was here taking classes, cool, I could consider that my "work." No-man's land means that I am fairly well occupied, just on my own schedule learning-wise and employment-wise (aka I have a whole lot of zero income at the moment). It's definitely a slight feeling of unease, but I know I have to invest this time now in order to be more effective in everything I do in the future.

So when I say "invest" time, what does this involve? Yesterday is an excellent example (I just got all moved in and settled, not far from Perugia, the "everyday" is beginning)...I took a long walk up a really big, pretty hill (nicely forested, but enough traffic to not be lonely). As I walked, I read a dual-language book: on one side is Italian and the other is in English. Handy when walking!

I ended up at a bus stop so I took the bus to town where I found cappuchino, the daily paper and read. Two articles in an hour...I can pretty well understand what is being said so could read a lot faster than this, but the guilty part of me made me write down and look up every word I knew I didn't know well enough to use on my own in conversation. Word lists grow fast using this method. Long ago I gave up memorizing words, I found it didn't work. Old dog, new tricks. But see a word 7 times and it literally affixes itself inside the brain. It's pretty cool learning new words every single day and being able to access more all of the time, but not deliberately memorizing. Good feeling. Impossible (at least for me) if I weren't fully immersed.

I was fortunate to co-guide a Ciclismo Classico Bike Across Italy trip early in October. It got me back to Italy and bought me a little more time here. We had an excellent tour (7 guests) and I saw Italy in a way I hadn't before (Bike Across Italy #3 for me). Fall here is a very cool time when everyone is back to routine after a summer (particularly August) of being away. The temperatures are lower, but not too low so even if it rains, it's not too cold to get out and play. Some of the trees turn colors for fall, but the vast majority remain green. I'm glad as I think that will help the colder months remain more pleasant visually. Fall is my favorite season and I can't remember a fall I haven't liked in all of the places I've ever been for this season.

That's the short update, if this can be considered short. Back to reading the newspaper and then going for a nice ride.