Back Porch

Matt came over today and helped me finish the back porch in time for the party tonight. The theme of our party is "Eat lots of leftovers from the church party last night." Sounds like my kind of party!

Sarah and I were voted in as members of our church this morning. We are very thankful that we have a great place to worship and good friends there as well.

Back Porch

Today we went to our church's Family Fun Day. We played some softball, volleyball, basketball, and ate a lot of food. The guys and I did the grillin' for the picnic. We cooked 30 pounds of burgers and 10 pounds of hot dogs and it actually tasted pretty good!

After the picnic, some friends came over and helped work on our back porch. We knocked out the wall and replaced it with some 4X4 posts. We got a lot done in a short time. I'll probably be able to finish tomorrow afternoon. "Many hands make light work."

The Things Women do . . .

My wife's newest makeup/facial pampering thing is a process/cream/torture device called "microdermabrasion," which she has encouraged me to use several times. She says that "it makes your face feel sooo good." I have declined simply because of the connotations of the word itself.

Let's break down the word "microdermabrasion."

Micro- very small.

Derm- referring to skin.

Abrasion- A medical term for "a scraped area on the skin"- commonly called "road rash."

Now put it all together. "Very small road rash on your face". Hmmm, sounds like fun to me!

What she says- "Hey, would you like to use my microdermabrasion? It makes your face feel really good!" What I hear- "Hey, would you like to cause road rash on your face with this abrasive cream that I have?"

I have to give it to her though; she does have a really soft face. Maybe there is something to this modern torture cream.

Picture Page

I now have a small selection of the pictures that we have taken recently on Flickr.com (I'm still trying to figure out what that stands for). The link is on the right.

House Progress

Here are the pictures of the dining room and the kitchen. The last door and drawer for the kitchen were installed about a month ago. The floor in the dining room was finished on Monday and we are moving all of the furniture into there now. The next big project will probably be the back porch. We will also be doing trim work on the inside as we have money. Let me know if you would like the name and number of my cabinet maker. He is definitely the best in the business!

Terror on Ice

What a day! I worked last night at my part time job. Shortly after midnight we got dispatched to a gas station for a "sick person." Yes, that is very vague to us too. When we get there, our sick person was in police custody after they had arrived on scene and found him standing in the road. Our patient was unable to give us any information. Useful information, that is. His answer to every question was "Jesus is here with me; you can't do nothin to me." Whenever I would try to provide any treatment for him, he would say "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." Interestingly enough, both my partner and I are new medics and had not come across this particular situation before so in a way, we may not have known what we were doing. (We found out later this gentleman was high on crack).

This afternoon Carina and I worked on obedience training. I have a training collar for her and today we were working on "stay" and "heel."


Tonight Sarah and I went ice skating with our friend Lana. There was supposed to be a larger group but no one else was able to make it. I've always found ice skating to be enjoyable but it is a delicate balance between pleasure and sheer terror. I wouldn't be quite as worried if there weren't other people there. That would lessen the embarrassment from falling and also make it easy to navigate. Ice skating is like driving a truck with no brakes through a crowded place. I managed to not run anyone over and Sarah and I took turn holding each other up. We escaped unscathed.

There was a small crowd of rowdy people there, but they weren't too bad. It wasn't very crowded for a Friday night. There was a little girl with the short skirt and thick tights and the whole figure skater get up who kept trying stunts that she obviously was not ready for; it was mildly humorous but I was afraid I might have to work.

From watching figure skating during the Olympics I kept hearing some phrases that I didn't understand. Like "sow cow" for instance. I never saw any sow cows at the Olympics, even in the stands. There were a few of them there tonight. They weren't very graceful either; I don't know why they award points for that in competition. As for "triple axels" I did see one set of three axels-it was on the Zamboni.

I don't get this skating thing.

From Wachowski to Nietzsche

This evening Sarah and I went to the library to return the books we borrowed to entertain ourselves on the way to and from Italy. We had a few novels, three travel books on Italy, and one non-fiction.

I find great irony in the diversity of books in a library. On one shelf you can find books on philosophy by Nietzsche, Plato, and Marcus Aurelius; walk down one shelf and you will find The Redneck Night Before Christmas. Go to the art section and you will find Monet on the same shelf as The Art of The Matrix by the Wachowski brothers.

In spite of the great diversity, it seems I can never find what I want. First of all, the Dewey Decimal System makes sense on paper, but I can never seem to find anything with it in real life. Secondly, whenever I am looking for a certain subject, they never seem to have the exact book that I want.

I usually go in to find a book in one topic but in trying to find that one book I stumble across other interesting books and stop and browse them for a little while. The short trip to the library ends up taking hours.

By the time I am done in the library, three or four hours later, I have managed to find three or four books from completely unrelated topics that look moderately interesting. Victory! Unfortunately the sweet taste of victory is short lived due to my inabiliy to straighten my neck after twisting it at an uncomfortable angle for hours to read the book titles.

Day 8- Rome to home

Saturday was extremely long. It seemed as if time slowed down for us; in essence it did. Our flight left Rome at 11:15 and landed in Philly at 3:30, 11 hours later. The exciting part was that our next flight, to Charlotte, left at 4:30 so we had one hour to be on the next plane. First take off the 15 minutes that it takes to get off of an airplane from row 31, then subtract another 10 minutes because boarding actually ended at 4:20. That leaves us with 35 minutes- not too bad, right?

Our first stop was immigration and Sarah and I got there quickly and were the second and third people in line. We were doing great, except the person in front of us ended up getting lugged away by the border patrol; so now our line was closed and all the other lines were full. Scott and Felicia were in the next line over and got permission from the immigration officer that was running their line to let us join them since we were together.

Next stop was the baggage carousel. That took forever and then some it seemed. By the time we got our bags and headed for the customs line it was 4:05. We got through customs pretty quickly since we didn't have anything to declare and we re-checked our luggage and headed for the terminal that our next plane was in. The last stop was security. For some reason, they had it arranged at that airport that you can't go from the international terminal to the domestic terminals without leaving the secure area. Fortunately we all made it through quickly.

We made it to our flight with no time to spare- 4:22. The plane was still there and we got on our last flight.

We had tickets all the way to Greenville, but had a 3 hour layover in Charlotte. Some friends of Scott and Felicia drove to Charlotte and picked us up. We went to their house, got our car, went and got Carina, went home and got in bed as our plane was taking off in Charlotte. I think we made the right choice.

The only downside was that our luggage was still on the plane. First thing this morning we drove to GSP airport and picked up our luggage thus ending the saga that was our vacation. Tomorrow we both return to work and real life begins again. Oh well.

Day 7- Perugia

After breakfast this morning Sarah and I went for a bike ride around the valley. Umbria, the province that the Di Bagnos live in, is 99% hills and mountains; the Di Bagnos live in the 1% of Umbria that is not mountainous. The valley here is very flat and makes for a very peaceful bike ride early in the morning. We avoid the busy roads because of the traffic (and the driving habits that I have already mentioned).
Our last destination city is Perugia. We drove the 20 minutes to Perugia this morning and hiked up the mountain to the city on the top. Perugia is the "capital" of Umbria and has about 250,000 people in it. You can see the city from the terrace at the Di Bagno’s house. As with most cities in Italy, the old city center is a large piazza on top of the hill. The unique architectural feature of the city is the large gate on the north side of the city; it was built by the Etruscans over 2300 years ago. Inside one of the buildings on the campus of the University of Perugia is a giant mosaic dating back to Roman times that depicts the animals brought over from Africa for the games.
For lunch we had lasagna made by the Di Bagno’s neighbor who fed us last night. Once again, it did not disappoint. We also had some leftovers from last night. We went to the grocery store today to pick up some chocolate and olives. We are almost packed for the return flight tomorrow.
All in all, I really enjoyed my vacation and I wish it could be longer. I am still trying to devise a plan by which we could move over here and support ourselves. Unfortunately, the EMS services over here are mostly volunteer so I would have to change careers. We will see . . .

Day 6 – Orvieto, Bagnoreggio

(My spellchecker is going nuts right now with all these Italian names)
Orvieto is a small city, built on a plateau just south of Umbria. It has massive cliffs all around the city that make it into a natural fortress. The city was first settled in the Etruscan times and was fought over for years after that. As a fortress, it was impenetrable except for one weakness- the town had no water supply on top of the hill. The Romans realized the value of this fortress and took it from the Etruscans after a two year seige. After the times of Constantinople, it became a refuge for the pope in case Rome was in danger. To solve the water supply, the Romans dug a well 400 feet deep and 20 feet across. The well had two spiral staircases around the edge that allowed donkeys to go down one stairway, get loaded with water at the bottom, and return up the other stairway. You can still walk down the well and see the water at the bottom. There is always about five feet of water at the bottom, no matter how much or how little raain has fallen. Also, it is always between 50-55 degrees down there.
The duomo in Orvieto is simply amazing. The blocks for the outside wall were laid in alternating white and black colored blocks, giving it a striped appearance. The front facade is Gothic with unbelievable carvings and decorations. The inside was not disappointing either.
We also went into the Orvieto underground. There are close to 1800 tunnels under the ground in Orvieto where the Etruscans, then later the Romans, then later the medieval Orvietans had storage and workshops. They also had pigeon coops underground, open to the cliff wall. This would provide them with a renewable source of food in case of seige.
After Orvieto, we made a quick stop at Bagnoreggio which is also called "the city that is dying." The city, like Orvieto, was built on a hill. Unlike Orvieto, it was built on sandstone which is eroding. Over time, as the side of the cliffs collapse, houses are lost into the valley. The Di Bagnos have recognized a visible difference each time they visit. The city is taking precautions to slow the process, but most likely it will all eventually fall away.
Tonight we had another adventure. The Di Bagnos next door neighbors hosted us for an enormous meal. We started with some bread with patte and some olives. Our second dish was penne in a spicy red sauce (I learned to eat slow; if I finished a plate too soon, it would be filled back up immediately). Our third dish was chicken legs in the same red sauce. Our fourth dish was a salad with "the best olive oil in the world" on it; I was inclined to believe it, too. Our fifth dish was a roasted chicken with a ton of spices on it; of course, no knife was needed to cut any meat. Finally we had some sort of pie for dessert. The whole meal lasted two and a half hours. The hostess apologized for the meal being "so simple." Whatever. It was bennisimo!

Day 5-Sante Angelo di Celle, Assisi, Deruta

The big trip of the day was to Assisi. Assisi is a small town, about 20 minutes from here, that was once the home to the famous Catholic saint St. Francis. St. Francis lived in the 12th Century and became a very famous man in his time. Because of St Francis, Assisi is the second most visited "Holy" city for Catholics, after the Vatican. There are so many tales about him in this area of Italy, that in able to have actually performed them he would have had to have lived 100 years instead of 44. I’m sure half of the stories are not true. There is a town which claims it originated when St. Francis spent the night there. It is said that Francis went to the top of a mountain and threw a stick off and said "wherever this lands, I will spend the night." So Francis slept in this place, it became famous and people began living there because they revered him so much. There is one glaring problem with this story . . . the stick landed 3 miles from where he supposedly threw it.
In modern news, Assisi is a very picturesque little town built on the side of a hill in northern Umbria. The streets are lined with little shops, pizzarias, and trattorias (restaurants). On the main piazza (square) there is a church which was originally built by the Romans as a temple to Minerva; it became a town hall for some time and was then taken over by the Catholic church in the Middle ages. The front facade is a Corinthian style building with six enormous pillars.
The Basilica of St. Francis is at the end of town and is the largest church in Assisi. The inside is built in the cross style typical of medieval churches and the walls and ceilings are covered with magnificent frescoes. It is so hard to describe how massive and ornate these buildings are. Anyways, underneath the main cathedral is another ornate chapel with more paintings and beautiful architecture. Below that level, is the tomb of St Francis. His body is actually on display, although his face, feet, and hands are covered with wax to make the body more presentable (the rest of him is clothed, naturally). Trust me, these "liberties" are not taken with all the saints that are entombed in glass displays in the churches over here.
Other than the churches in Assisi (and the pizzarias), we only saw one more notable sight. On top of the hill is a large fortress dating back to the 15th century. It was quite a vigorous climb to the fortress. After climbing the hill on foot, we sat down and caught our breathe. Then we rested some more. We are so out of shape. We went into the fortress and climbed up in the towers for a windy photo opportunity.
Our next stop after Assisi was Deruta. The Di Bagnos live in Sante Angelo di Celle which is actually considered a community of Deruta. We stopped by the Di Bagnos for a few minutes to get a drink. I had a splitting headache and stayed behind for this excursion.
Deruta is known for its exclusive ceramics. Sarah absolutely loves their style of ceramics and is always excited to go shopping for some. The town is actually very small but half of the stores in town sell solely ceramics. The actual center of town is, as most medieval cities were, on top of a small hill. It is typical of medieval town with protective walls and gates, narrow streets and really narrow alleys. There is a town near here called Citta del Pieve which boasts the narrowest street in Italy at 30 inches wide. The street is called Vicolo Baciadonne, which means "kiss the women Street," evidently because if you pass a woman on the street you don’t have much of a choice.

Day 4- Venice

This morning we started off with the hotel complimentary breakfast, which consisted mostly of toast and cereal with coffee and OJ. After breakfast we headed to St. Mark’s Square (Piazza Santo Marco) via the Rialto Bridge. The Rialto Bridge is one of only two bridges over the Grand Canal and has shops along both sides. It was fairly crowded but not as bad as the sights in Rome were.
After crossing the bridge we headed down to St Mark’s Square, which is essentially on the farthest corner of the city from our hotel. The square is enormous and is, like you will see in movies and travel books, filled with pigeons. We were earlier than most of the tourist so we were able to get tickets up into the bell tower beside the duomo (the duomo is the largest church in the city). The top level of the bell tower is the highest point in Venice at about 7-8 stories tall and gives a very impressive view of Venice, Mestre to the north (the city across the water on the mainland), the Adriatic Sea to the south and east and the Alps in the far north.
The duomo, St Marks Basilica, is a massive church with five domes. The interior ceiling and the front facade is decorated with gold mosaics depicting the lives of different saints and apostles. I will not even try to describe the church in detail because it is just something that you will have to see. It is just massive.
After visiting the church, we walked along the water and did some shopping, then made our way back to the Rialto bridge via an inland route. Since it was lunch time we started looking for a nice pizzaria to eat in. We found one on a back street away from all the tourist traps. The staff was all Chinese, which looked bad, but almost all of the patrons were Venetians, which looked very good. The pizza was very good and the service was not bad, which is really surprising for here. Sarah and I had capriccosa pizza which had olives, mushrooms, artichokes, and prosciutto on it. A lot of Americans ask me what the pizza is like over here. The crust is usually thinner, there is less cheese and the tomato sauce is thinner, but it tastes better somehow. My theory is that everything is fresh and hand made. A pizza like that in America would cost about $20 because of the time and quality of materials involved; here it was 5 euros apiece.
After lunch, we checked out of the hotel and left Venice to return to the Di Bagnos. This time we took the Auto Strada, Italy’s interstate system, back through Bologna, Ferrara, and Florence. We were not able to stop in any of those cities due to time constraints, but we did see the duomo in Florence from a distance.

Day 3-Venice

We left Sante Angelo di Celle early this morning and headed out for Venice. I had my international driver’s license with my but my SC driver’s license was in my wallet when it was stolen in Rome. Technically, my international license is invalid without my SC license, but nothing can be done about that now.
Driving in Italy is truly an adventure. Everyone drives as though they have nine lives. I love it. The Italians are the friendliest, most laid back people you can imagine . . . until they get behind the wheel of a car or scooter. There were several times that I was driving 20 km/h over the speed limit and people were behind me honking and flashing their lights to pass me. Not to mention that it is fun to look at the speedometer and see the needle on 120! There is an amazing law over here; on any four lane road, the trucks must stay in the right lane. Can you imagine if they passed that law in the US?
The drive to Venice is supposed to take about 4-5 hours and the route that we took takes you through some of the most scenic parts of Umbria (where the Di Bagnos live) and Tuscany. The fog was so thick this morning that we could not see very far. In addition, there were so many trucks on the road that I began measuring visibility in truck lengths. "It is clearing up a little; I can see up to six trucks in front of us." I spent a good part of the morning trying to pass the trucks and finally passed the last pesky truck and found open road about 30 km south of Venice. The open road lasted for about 5 km and we came to a dead stop. I still do not know what caused the delay, but we sat still for an hour, ate lunch; I finally ran out of patience and grabbed the map and found a route around the delay. 25 minutes later we were crossing the bridge into Venice.
Lunch, by the way was ham and cheese sandwiches, which I usually do not enjoy very much. Today, however, the ham was prosciutto (If you can find it in the states it is usually $18 per pound) and the cheese was some variety of local cheese.
Of course the streets in Venice are either glorified sidewalks or canals, so once you drive onto the island you are forced to either turn around or park in the garage. We parked and began the walk to our hotel. Venice is , of course, on an island and has a series of canals running throughout the city. The canals all connect to the Grand Canal that runs from the northwest corner of the city to the southwest corner. The smaller canals are about 2-3 meters deep and the Grand Canal is about 5-6 meters deep.
We found our hotel yesterday on the internet. The website is www.virtualtourist.com. I highly recommend it as all the information on it was left by tourists. We stayed in the Albergo Marin. "Albergo" means simply "hotel." It was only about two blocks from the garage and one block back from the grand canal. The hotel was great, especially for the price. It was set back in a small alley in a residential area; it was clean and the staff was very friendly (they even lent us umbrellas when it rained). It was not very ornate, but was attractive and quaint.
Rain was predicted today, but it way still sunny so we decided to take our gondola ride immediately so we wouldn’t get rained on in the boat. We found a gondola driver who was available and took our ride. It lasted about 40 minutes and was very relaxing. We went out on the Grand Canal and also went through some of the side tunnels. The driver’s English was not very good so Sarah and her mother interpreted for the rest of us (he also couldn’t/wouldn’t sing and spent about 20 minutes on his cell phone). All in all, we enjoyed our ride and saw a small section of the city.
We spent several hours shopping and walking around. Sarah and I bought some oil paintings on canvas and some knick knacks for some of our friends. Venice is well known for its hand blown and hand painted glass and there are about a thousand shops in town. We got turned around a little bit, but once I got a map of the city we did not get lost again. We explored several parts of the city near our hotel and countless churches.
Monday night for dinner we ate at a small restaurant on the north side of the canal. They have "tourist menus" that are a great deal. Italian meals are several courses and are designed to take 1-3 hours to eat. With the tourist menu, you get to pick an appetizer, a first course, a second course, and a dessert. I had gnocci with tomato sauce, salad, baked fish, and coffee. Sarah had lasagna, fried potatoes (essentially French Fries), baked chicken and creme caramel. Everything was good except for the creme caramel.

Day 2- Sante Angelo di Celle

Well, I have been having internet connection problems here so I have not been able to update regularly. Here is a run down of the recent events. I will attach pictures when I return to the states.

Today was spent in church and relaxing. We were able to see several of Sarah’s childhood friends (during those times, I stand there and smile and nod as if I know what the conversation is about, but I am totally lost). I actually know enough Italian to follow some conversations, but not all. I do get worried when I hear my name a lot followed by laughter. We had a wonderful lunch of pasta and roasted turkey with herbs today. Magnifico!

Italy-Day1

Day one was quite an adventure. We made it to GSP on time and got our tickets. Note for future travels: when you buy tickets on Priceline, they assign you random seats; none of us were seated together, on any flights. We were able to be seated together with a little begging. After takeoff, the flight was very choppy and the pilot came on to say that they were having trouble retracting the landing gear (to which I wondered- if we are having problems raising the landing gear, shouldn’t we leave them down? I can put up with a rough flight if it means an easy landing!) Fortunately, because the landing was rough enough with landing gear, the landing gear did come back down when we landed.
We suffered through a five hour layover in Philly and finally boarded the plane. We pulled away from the gate and began taxiing to the runway. After about 150 yards, we stopped and the pilot announced we were having technical problems and would return to the gate for repairs for about 30 minutes. Two hours later we taxied to the runway and sat there in line for an hour. The flight from Philly to Rome was one of the smoothest that I have ever had. Even though we were in coach, we still had individual TVs. I watched Monsters, Inc and read two books on the flight.
Upon landing in Rome (already three hours late) we breezed through immigration and customs, then waited for an hour in baggage claim. We finally met up with Sarah’s dad and left for the train station to Rome. We stored our baggage in a lock up in the train station and went out to tour Rome.
Rome was unbelievably busy today. This week is the one year anniversary of Pope John Paul’s death, Italy’s elections, and it is also American college’s spring break. Our first stop was the Coliseum. Even though I’ve been there before, it was still breathtaking. We went from there through the Roman Forum, the old downtown area. Next we went on the metro(subway) and visited the Trevi Fountain. The tradition is to each throw a coin backwards over your head into the water and good things are supposed to happen to you. What a great idea! Throw money away and expect good things to miraculously happen to you. What idiot would do that? We got our picture taken with all of us throwing money into the fountain.
After the Trevi Fountain we got some gelati, which is Italian ice cream, not related to "Italian Ice" in America. It was delicious! We also went to visit the Spanish stairs. I don’t know why they are called the "Spanish Stairs" when they are in Rome, but I will check on that. The stairs were very crowded and we had about an hour and a half before the last train left Rome so we took off to Termini, Rome’s Grand Central Station.
On the Metro to Termini, I was fortunate to be the only one in our group to fully experience the Roman culture. I was pickpocketed. Other than our group, there were two people close enough to me to rob me, one who mysteriously disappeared off the Metro when we stopped- just as I was saying "where’s my wallet?" I cleaned out my wallet before I came so all I had in there was 120 euro (about US $140), my driver’s license and two credit cards. It would have been much worse if I had lost all of my EMS certifications and such. Oh well, it had to happen eventually. I have been to Africa, Japan, England, and Italy and have traveled on subways in New York, Rome, Chicago, Boston, and DC. I was due.
We bought our train tickets and arrived at the platform just in time to see our train leave. We waved. We waited another hour and caught the last train out of town. The rest of our trip was uneventful and we made it to the Di Bagnos’ house safely.
Tomorrow and Tuesday we will be in Venice. Let’s hope that not every day is this eventful