Today's agenda:

1. Nothing
2. Anything I want to do. 

I sit here thinking of how this happened that I can do this trip. Here is the story: I was talking to my counselor over a year ago when she told me about her son who was doing a Peace Corp tour. I just got this excited feeling that I wanted to do something like that. I began researching programs and was applying for a program teaching English in Georgia over the summer when I decided not to be married anymore.  Just 2 weeks later, I met Carola- at a NAMI National training. Here is where the adventure begins. I sat one night with the 2 Italians who came to the training and told them I have always had this secret desire to live in Italy for a year or so.  Maybe it sprung from the film Under the Tuscan Sun.  Maybe everyone has this desire?  They both responded, "DO IT!  You can stay with us!"  So on the plane ride home I began to think about how this could really be possible to do. 

My plan was to finish up teaching, license, get divorced, save up money, find someone to rent my house and in January go there for a year. Carola corresponded by email that I could stay with her and and she would help me.  I discovered she was coming over the summer with her family to do a National Parks tour, and I planned to meet up with them in Zions and Moab so I could meet her family and see if it was really ok to stay with them. That is where that fateful mosquito zeroed me out and gave me the gift of the West Nile Virus.

Plan B: recover and save up more money and go for the summer. So here I am...

Here is what I did:

1. Got out of bed at 8:30, ate breakfast on the balcony and felt the earthquake.
2. Looked up tickets for an opera and made reservations to see Da Vinci's Last Supper Fresco.
3. Walked to the castle close by, stopped at a church, went the wrong way and ended up in a park, resting on a bench, eating an apple.
4. A man with a purple shirt, whom I had seen in the church, stopped to talk to me. In his broken English and my very limited Italian, and google translator when needed, we shared his homemade sandwiches and talked for 2 hours.  He walked me to the castle and went back to work. 
5. Sauntered around the gardens and lounged in the shade reading Pride and Prejudice. Dozed some.
6. Walked back home buying a 10 pass metro ticket and buying stuff to make a salad at the grocery store to support Carola's idea of a diet for herself.  Me I am non-committed.
7. Skyped with mom while chopping vegetables.  Tried to get Teri and Thomas to get on, but they were too tired. 
8. 10:10 pm and I am ready for bed.  Must get some rest for my busy schedule :). 

Ciao!

My lunch buddy, David