A month off the radar

Peek-a-boo....It's me, your old and faithful girl abroad. I know you all are short on time, like me, so I'll save you the laundry list of excuses for why I haven't written. Let's just chalk it up to shoddy Wi-Fi on the road coupled with a paying writing gig which leaves little time for any personal writing.



But now I'm in Piano di Sorrento glued to my laptop for the next few hours before I catch the train to Paestum (south of Salerno) to begin another ACLE camp so here's my month in review:

Leaving Treviso was sad but rejuvenating. I like being on the road in summer...it just seems right. My first road trip was from Treviso to Torino, making a stop in Milan for a catch-up with my Italian friend Guilia and a sushi boat at Hama, officially called Ristorante Giapponese Sushi Hama Di Cai Xiao Hong. No wonder they shortened the name.







In Cirie', a small village outside Torino, I spent some quality family time at my home away from home, the Torchias. Every time I'm there they plan something special. This time we drove up the winding roads to Piano Audi, a minuscule mountain village where everybody is family and the water is so fresh you can drink it from the fountain (where Zia also does the washing).

While in Cirie' I stopped by the local dance studio to watch the dress rehearsal for a local Italian dance school where many of the girls who I taught English to last summer take ballet. They were practicing The Sword in the Stone, and the rhythmic tapping of the teacher's cane gave me flashbacks of my days in pink tights and my Parisian ballet instructor Madame Elvira. Her bun must have been wrapped too tight because she was always in a bad mood and yelling commands in French.
Anyway, more about France in my next post on Paris. Before I left Cirie' the entire Torchia family including aunts, uncles and cousins threw a Sunday BBQ that lasted about 10 hours and ten courses. It was a perfect way to say goodbye to Italy, even if only for a week.