La Vita (alla Villa) e bella!

This week has been a week of preparation for final exams, scholarship applications, term papers, and my 18 day tour of Europe (to commence shortly). As such, I haven't left the villa much, other than my daily run through the mountains. The workouts are getting more enjoyable each day as more of the trees burst in to life with the continued arrival of Italian Spring. Each day, flowers of purple, pink, white, and green explode from the trees on my running routes, providing ample distraction to help me forget that running is actually not that fun. Running up a very steep, treacherous hill is even less fun. But when you're on a mountain top in Italy overlooking ancient farmhouses, Renaissance villas, the Duomo, and all- it's very much tolerable.

Yesterday was my final morning of teaching English at the middle school. It's sad to see the internship end. This has really been my favorite part about living in Sesto. I wish I could have taught more than only one morning a week. Our final lesson focused on American idioms, slang, texting, etc... All the good stuff you don't learn from the language textbooks. The material ranged from traditional cliches such as "I have a frog in my throat" and "I'm in the doghouse" to modern favorites, including "BOOM ROASTED!" and "Do Work Son!" We live in such a great country. After the lesson, the kids taught me some Italian text message abbreviations. Since I'm a forgetful person, here are the two I actually remembered:

TVB: Ti voglio bene (I love you)
XKE: Perche (Why?)

Anyway, I will miss all these kids. Luckily they all friended me on facebook. Ah the wonders of technology!

Last night I met again with my conversation partner for the final time. We walked to the Sesto Festival (for my 9th time in 3 days) where I purchased a cannolo (cannoli) from a Sicilian vendor. My conversation partner also showed me the different regional specialties- all the famous cheeses, sausages, breads, and desserts that somehow don't make the Italian people horrendously obese (Io sono ingrassato un po in Italia).

During this final full week at the villa, I've taken advantage of our garden, which has come to life with the planting of lemon and orange trees. I promise I'll add pictures later. But having a class outside in such a garden is considerably more inviting and more conducive to discussion than the cement fortress that is the Humanities building... Ciao per ora!