The Italy Saga Begins!

I got home only two days ago from six amazing weeks in Italy. I still can't believe all of the things I saw, and the people I met, and the places I went, and the food I ate... It really was a dream. I am so blessed to have been able to do it.

It wasn't all pasta and paintings, though. I arrived in Nice on time, but my luggage didn't. When I got to France, my luggage was still at JFK in New York. I'd had my luggage lost only once before, and it was when I was going to Michigan so it wasn't a huge deal--I had clothes. But this time... I at least had the forethought to pack extra undies, a toothbrush, my insulin, and a towel in my carry on, but the luggage also took FOUR DAYS to show up, mostly because some idiot delivered it to the wrong place. The day I got it... I can't even tell you. It was a happy day. I'd had to resort to washing the three pairs of underwear I had in the sink, and trying to dry it over the heat of the gas stove in our room at training. Lovely.

I was fine with all of it--borrowing basic necessities, wearing the same clothes, not having makeup or a hair brush, for the first two days and then... day three I just had a break down. I think I deserved it, at that point. I finally went into town and bought some essentials--razor, deodorant, a new dress--so that I could feel somewhat human again. My suitcase came the next day, and British Airways is going to owe me some money.

So I arrived in Nice and there were two adorable Scottish girls waiting for me at the airport. We all headed to the hostel together, and then headed out to meet another girl, and have a wander around. We saw these amazing yachts by the water, had a little bite to eat, and enjoyed being in Europe. We stopped to have a glass of wine, and another guy met us there. We formed a little posse, I guess, and had a lovely dinner in Nice. I ate rabbit (which I enjoyed a great deal!) and had this awkward dessert that no one could really figure out but was good. We had a wander back to our respective places to stay, and saw these guys, who changed colors and just basically looked cool. I thought they were Buddahs, but, in the light, they're really just dudes sitting on platforms, chillin' and changing colors. No purpose for them was determined, as far as I can figure, except that they looked cool.

The next day, we all met up again at the train station to take a train into Italy for training in San Remo. This was my first view of Italy, which I thought was strangely beautiful, and, it turns out, appropriate. There was quite a bit of graffiti in Italy.

This was what we left behind in Nice, though. But I knew I'd have some time at the end of my adventure to experience it again.

By the time we actually got to training, we had gathered quite a group and even found two more Miami chicks, who ended up being my room mates for the week, and my co-workers at the camp, which was awesome. Another thing that was semi-awesome, was not having to carry luggage. I only had my small backpack, and not my huge one (still lost at this point!), so getting on and off trains and busses was a breeze. I even helped one hapless member of the posse with his six bags in return for him fulfilling a dream and giving me a pair of socks at the train station.

Training itself was great, although we began each morning at 8 am with half an hour of camp songs, which were addictively annoying and would get stuck in our heads perpetually. The people I met were from all over the English-speaking world--America, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, England, Wales, and, of course, Canada. We spent our mornings singing, and our afternoons learning what camp was all about. We had tons of time to plan, learn games, and prepare for what was to come. Then, of course, at night we'd play.

One night there was a talent show and booty shaking contest. Of course, I use the term "contest" loosely, since there was very little competition involved. All I every do is win, basically. lol. You can see from the picture below that my competitor was mystified by my booty shaking abilities...

Clearly, I am awesome. And my acceptance speech was one for the history books--if only it'd been recorded. It's a shame, really. But that night was really fun, just this chilling beach party with, like, 70 new friends and this crazy orange moon that I still think about. I tried to take a picture of it, but the photo does not even begin to really do it justice--a theme I found throughout my sojourn in Italia. Here's a little taste of what it looked like... but it was so much bigger and more beautiful and perfect than this can show.

Later in the evening, after talents had been shown, booties had been shaken, drinks had been imbibed, and moons had gone back to normal, there was a little beach sing along, followed by a game of telephone played in the parking lot at 3 am. The sing along made me extremely happy; I'd been longing for one since I saw the magical combination of a guitar and a beach. For me, the sing along part was minimal because I was starting to lose my voice at this point, but it was perfect anyway. It was just one of those pure, perfect memories that I'll think about for years to come and remember why I travel and what life's really about.

There are two more significant training stories I want to relay. One was the quest for Golden Jesus, seen here on top of the church in the town near where we trained.

A group of four of us gathered and attempted to quest for the Jesus. We asked for directions from those who had seen it, and, thinking we knew what we were doing, we set out. We walked... and walked... and walked, and eventually we climbed up the side of a hill (literally climbing up) to a bike path which we thought would lead us to Jesus, only to discover that it didn't. Soon, we were on the other side of a giant brick wall, the side opposite of Jesus. After this point, and after turning around a couple of times before this point, we decided to stop our quest. In all honesty, I'm not even sure Golden Jesus was real--it may have been a mirage. Or maybe He's like the Holy Grail of King Arthur days--we were not pure enough of heart to find it. Whatever the reason or reality, it was still a nice walk and a funny memory.

The last training story took place on Friday, everyone's last day together before departing to our camps the next morning. A few of us went out for pizza because the dinners at training got... repetitive. I couldn't bear the thought of eating more pasta, mostly because my voice was completely gone at this point, and I was certainly incubating some sort of disease;I felt like crap and pizza sounded better than a bowl of pasta. My mom says whatever sounds good when your sick is what you should eat, so I joined the group for pizza. I'm so glad I did because it ended up being really cool. Not only were the people I ate with awesome company, but the guy who owned the shop came to talk to us. We actually sounded quite alike, because my voice was gone and he'd had his voice box removed due to, I think, cancer. He came and sat with us and just chatted away, and I discovered that I could understand Italian better than I thought, probably because of the Spanish I know. He spoke to us of his family, and where we were all going the next day, and he was a really sweet man. He also gave us lemoncello, a pretty famous Italian drink that tastes sort of like PineSol with a little more lemon, but almost in a good way. Almost. Still, I'm glad I tried it, and had a lovely meal with lovely people.

The next morning, we all parted ways to head to our camps in various parts of Italy. Mine was in Campogalliano, near Modena (which you may not have heard of) or Bologna. We had a staff of seven, so the camp was pretty large but... more on that later.

For the full album of pictures from training on Facebook, click here.