The Wind Down

Yesterday's sunset in Assisi

Well, Michelle and I have bought the tickets home. The last thing we want to do is get so excited to see people we know and love that we forget to live each moment of our precious time left in Italy, but I have to admit that it's a big temptation for me. With the days getting shorter and much of our time being spent with our host family, it is definitely easy to think of being home with my actual family...or at least with people who speak English around me and perhaps share a common goal or belief.

Lea and Michelle and Giordano's father's sculpture expo

Lea, the girl doing WorkAway, left today, which makes our leaving seem all the closer. The final checklist inadvertently comes up when we're doing menial tasks: Woah, are we really in Italy? Did we buy all the appropriate gifts? Did we buy too many gifts? What if some weren't blessed by the Pope? Wow, is this really where St. Francis lived? Will our luggage be too heavy for checked baggage? Which pieces of clothing are we leaving behind? Are we really going to grad school soon? Where will we live in a month and a half? How much money did we spend here? Which towns do we think are important enough to visit before we leave this country? When will we do our laundry next? When will we wash our hair next? Do we want to have children after living with this family? Etc. etc. etc.

Oh hey! Breaking news: We saw the head of St. Catherine of Siena. Wouldn't you know her mom wanted her body back in her hometown, but some more powerful people wanted her body in Rome...so her body is in Rome, and her head is in Siena. Quite the compromise, right? She's incorruptible. I don't know if you've ever seen an incorruptible body of a saint (I would suggest the mostly incorruptible body of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini under the glass altar at Cabrini Chapel on the north side of Washington Heights in NYC.), but it's awesome in an Angus sense of the word. We were also able to see the crucifix upon which she was meditating when she received the stigmata, and it wasn't even a super cool crucifix. Il campo, where the horse race Palio is held every summer, was not as hopping as it normally is, probably because we visited in the rainy season. Did I say rainy? The sweatshirt I was wearing that day still smells like mildew. Too much information? This is real life, people.

Entering Il Campo

Piazza del Campo

View of Siena from San Domenico

My final words of note for this rambling blog post: Lea shared with us today three things you should never bring up to Austrians. The first, she said, was that we're not supposed to ask them if they've seen The Sound of Music, which, of course, is the first thing Michelle and I asked Lea. (I'm pretty sure we sang several songs to her, just to make sure that she had never seen the film or play.) The second is that we're not supposed to compare them to Germans, and I think that's because the Austrians feel inferior. The third is that we should not confuse Austria with Australia, which is something that she says Americans often do. Michelle and I shrugged and said that some Americans confuse West Virginia and Virginia; can we really expect them to understand the concept of two countries having similar names?

Michelle bought roasted chestnuts! 

We will be country-hopping before we head back to the States, so stay tuned to see where our adventure takes us!