day 4 or 'when in tuscany'

today we said goodbye to allen. in a way it felt like he was our teacher for the past 3 days and now he was sending us off on our own. we are so glad that we were able to spend this time with him. his place is amazing and the friends he has made here truly care about him. we are so thankful that we were able to experience italy in this way. i really think he had no idea what he was saying when he said, 'anytime.'

so armed with our knowledge of the town, enough italian to ask for the bill and find the bathroom, and some driver's education we decided to STAY HOME! yup we napped and played scrabble and skip bo and read and watched tv, italian news. it's not that we were scared to go out, we just needed a day to regroup, take it easy and just spend the day being lazy.

one of the things that i really wanted to do was experience life here. take in the sights and sounds of the everyday, my own version of 'under the tuscan sun'. because it was so hot we kept all of the windows open and you could hear people talking outside their homes. you could hear dishes being washed. you could smell when dinner was cooking. you could hear the children playing on the street. you could hear when dad came home from work. it was life in tuscany and for one day we were going to pretend we were a part of it. i made breakfast, lunch and dinner. nothing like what the lady next door was making but i did my best. simple, easy and delicious. bobby brought some work along and he was busy doing that. we played a few rounds of skip bo and scrabble.

in the afternoon we needed to go to the market to get groceries for dinner. we knew where the store was but once we got inside you would have thought that we had never been shopping before. i couldn't find the garlic! really in italy and i can't find the garlic? we didn't have a list, we thought we would just buy whatever looked good. we didn't get a shopping cart because you have to pay for that. we just had a little orange basket. we got some peaches, put them in a bag and started to walk away when we noticed a line at the scale. people were putting their produce on the scale and then getting a sticker. hmm. so bobby went over put the peaches on the scale, found the picture of the peaches and pressed it. a sticker was printed giving the weight of the peaches. ahhh. that makes sense. we were on our way. we decided to have pork chops with pesto and pasta e fagioli one night, and pizza with salad the other. we got some eggs, not found in the dairy department, bread, biscotti, a bottle of chianti and cookies. we were set. and it only cost us about $50 which was the cost of our lunch the day before so we were saving money.

it was fun to cook together, something we never get to do. we heated up the pizzas in the oven, made a salad, poured the wine and sat down to watch a movie. allen has an extensive movie library here. we decided to watch 'cinema paradiso' since i hadn't seen it yet and it was in italian. and that was it. not many pictures. didn't go to a church. no works of art. no gelato! but this was just what we needed. a perfect vacation day.

in other news
sofia has been sick for the past few days. not terrible but she stayed home from school yesterday. could it be the swine flu? trying not to be paranoid about it. just loving her lots. we will be going to the library later today to get some new bedtime books. and making some muffins for a pto meeting tomorrow.