Hello, Italy.

You're pretty, and kinda awesome, too.

- Going to find Blythe in Stanstead – she was at the pub the whole time and I was stupid not to check! Damn!

- Arriving in Pisa, getting the last automatic car in the entire airport of pisa from some hipster dude at “E@sy C@r” who told us to call a number if we went out and didn’t see our car. Luckily we did see it, and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, especially after I christened him “Jimmy the Splint” – a name I later made sense of with the phrase, "...because he always sets us straight..when we're lost." We got lost not as much as i'd expected - snaps to italian signage. Its fun to give inanimate objects, and people for that matter -signifigace or no -- some Runyonesque, boxer/gangster names. Yes I did just use Runyonesque in my blog!

- From Pisa we had the great pisa hostel drama of 2007, but eventually it was resolved with some apologies and an extra bonus pay to the hostel owner for driving to get us at the airport when we’d rented a car already, sending her about an hour or so out of the way. Oops, we’re lame. And then we were lame and way poorer. But the hostel was a magic country oasis, and the house we stayed in was older than America. There were sounds of hunters and their dogs in the hills, the smell of real countryside, and a horse! Wow! It was sortof unbelievable.

- Our hostel owner and her 2 buddies (who worked in film or for a newspaper or i don't know in Milan) hung out with us that morning, and we chilled with her 2 fluffy white dogs, a wild horse, and a dog that looked like a dr. seuss character, and who i think was 100 years old in dog years. Elenora, the owner, told us about how she produces jazz records, and her friends make movies or write or something, and they are just neat people who co-own a country house. Its cool, and everyone should go there. They were such fun to hang out with after all the drama, and it was just so easy to stumble through my semi-italian speech, it was so nice how everyone was so encouraging and like, Oh wow, speak italian! wooo. Makes it easy to practice when you think people want to understand you.

Morteau - land of watches and cows

And Emilie!
We had a lovely time in foggy Morteau! I arrived late thursday night, after I left early from the class that drew me a lovely picture.



Needless to say, another 10 minutes with those hooligans - 10 minutes that might make me late for a cheese drenched weekend in the french/swiss/german/alscace countryside - was really not on my to do list. So i left! And I got to Morteau in the fog and we went to the Terminus bar --- its called the Term if you are in the know like Miss Emilie. We chilled in the smoke-laden air, but before my contacts began to feel like Morteauciean sausages on my eyeballs, we met some locals!
Score!

They were nice dudes, and very encouraging of my not so perfect french, and keen to listen to emilie's pretty much perfect french.

The one guy who introduced himself awkwardly apologized for being of arab descent, which was a little weird b-c at first me and Em had no clue why he was apologizing and when we realized why he was apologizing....well, we still had no clue why he was apologizing.

A beer later we went back to Emilie's dorm and I passed out while she had to get up for class in the morning...yuck. But it was worth it, as now we had some local homeys.

After delicious morteauacien specialties with her buddy Ruven - "Groovy Ruvy" in some circles - we went to play board games like taboo and Uno with Emilie's teacher friend/colleagues. This one french dude kept on cussing like all the time in french and for that, I loved him. He was funny. What was his name Emilie? I tried some Pastis, and it looked like slime and tasted a little bit like licorice soap, but its something that I am not ashamed to say, I could enjoy from time to time with very little grimace.

The next day, we went for a walk? Did we? I can't remember, but it was a totally awesome walk. Hills and little houses, and random fountains and the obligatory WW1 memorial statue. And chickens, too!