Tanti Auguri a Me!

It was my birthday last week!

I had a really good time. At midnight on May 10th, we ate tiramisu (That Valentina made!) at Val and Andy's with Nando and Agata. They also gave me the best present ever. They got an MP3 player and filled it full of Italian music! I was pretty pumped and I've already listened to all of it.

Then the next day, after my morning work, I did nothing, which was awesome, and then Ales had bought be a cake and we all ate together! Sarah was a little grumpy and cried because it wasn't her birthday, but I was too absorbed in the delicious cream/pinenut cake that we were eating to notice. Then, after my afternoon work, I took off to the theatre with Giorgia and Lucia and some of the Spanish girls from the dorms, and we watched 7 very beautiful Spanish men who were very talented at Flamenco, Ballet, and numerous other types of dance. I couldn't take pictures, but look them up. Los Vivancos, I think. Turns out they are 7 brothers, but there's 36 of them. 1 father, 7 mothers, 36 kids.

Then, we went to Caffe di Sole and had some birthday wine and I got presents! They gave me a nice wooden ring with a big seashell on it and an inscence burner. But the fun didn't end there! Well that evening did, but on Thursday I met up with Eliska, who is from Slovekia and I met her at my Italian lessons, and she'd bought Prosecco, gelato and bubbles! So we drank and ate out in the sun, and then started blowing bubbles around. Then these real cute little boys came over and started playing with them! It was so much fun. I thought they were German, but it turns out they were Australian so I wished them a good day and fun trip! It was a very fun day. It's nice to talk to other people who are here for prolonged periods and talk about what you miss and what you like about it here and what makes you crazy and stuff like that. It's really funny because we speak Italian together, but it's neither of ours first language. (Grammar on that sentance?)

Then, this weekend I was supposed to go to Fano, but the weather was awful, as it has been, and my friend Pamela was going to Bologna for a Reggae concert. Anyways, I called Val to see if she wanted to watch a movie, but turns out she was at her parents place with Andy. They invited me over, so I packed in literally 4 minutes in order to catch a bus to Pesaro in order to catch a train to... Civitanova Marche! The biggest baddest city around. Just kidding. It was pretty tiny and off the map. But, then Val and Andy picked me up, their smiling faces on, and took me to... Porto San'Elpedio a Mare! Which has no train station. We ate with her parents, who I met once before, and it was delicious. Chicken cooked with peppers, breaded eggplant, roasted potatoes and then cherries for dessert! I ate pretty much the whole bowl. No one else seemed very interested because they have them all year there, close to the sea. Then we got all dolled up and went to San Giorgio, which I guess is there old drinking pond. We spotted an ex of Val's and some friends of Andy's. It was fun! We went from one bar to another, though, because the first one was pieno di persone sciffose Which means it was full of gross people, as Val said. So we went to Joeys! Without the appostrophe and everything. It was a real pub. Turns out it's run by a bunch of Australians, but none of them were working that night. Either way, the funniest thing happened:

So, this girl walks into the bar. Ouch. We've all heard this joke. But seriously, she walked right into a glass door. Everyone stopped to stare, and it was right beside our table, so we made sure she was ok, and all was good. She went to the bathroom and came back and that was when we all noticed it. She'd actually broken the glass. All cracked up. The door, and us, too. So, we chatted with her and then her friend came over and murmered somthing to me.

"Cosa hai detto?" (What did you say)

"Non sei Italiana?" (You're not Italian)

"No, sono Canadese." (No, Canadian)

"I'm Irish!"

Ha! So they moved on over to our table, and we had a wonderful evening of Italian/English conversation and I tried a wonderful drink called Cleopatra's secret, which had red wine, cherry sugar and beer.

Then, around four, we rolled into Andy's parent's house, which is actually an Agritursm place, so I got a whole big hotel style room all to myself. I slept very well.

In the morning (afternoon, really...) we went for a walk out to see the baby goats they have and the olive trees and things of that sort that I come to recognize around here. They have a peacock, too! That's not so usual.

So anyways, it was Sunday, so they invited over the grandparents and we had a grande lunch of delicious pasta, breaded pork, roasted veggies and then cream with strawberries.

I really shouldn't eat for a week.

Anyways, then we took another trip back to Val's parents to pick up some stuff, take a stroll along the longest beach in Italy (it looks like Beverly Hills) and then head on the hour and half car trip home. It was a really wonderful week, but a shame that the weather has been so awful! I've heard from everyone that it's so unusual how cold it is, how much rain we're getting and that usually they are all going to the seaside by now. Like they're doing in the South.

Which, lucky for me, I am going to in two weeks. Well, a week and a half, really. There is my last concert out in Cavallino this weekend, then the next weekend I head South, then I come back for one more week of work, then 5 days vacation and then flight home.

I'll let that shock you for a minute.

(Ps, I'll be adding pictures this week! And I am starting to think that I'll have to finish the London trip and Switzerland pictures when I get home, because I sure don't have a lot of time to get onto the internet these days! Thanks, everyone, for your patience!)