Qawwali

awsome qawwali

Charli XCX

I work for you all alone, in the field of lies I won't go home

First Week in Italia

It's been almost two weeks since I arrived in Arma di Taggia. Since then, I have spent many afternoons walking around the town, trying all flavors of gelato and granita, and lying on the beach. I have also started officially babysitting and tutoring in English. Though my schedule varies from day to day, I'm always upstairs and ready to go by 9:00 AM, when Luisa leaves for work (Massimo has already left by then). I wait until I hear Emma shouting, "Mama!" from upstairs (meaning she has woken up) and go and get her and start the morning by watching cartoons. Mostly we watch Pippi Longstocking (the film from the 70s that we have in the US has been edited and dubbed into a TV series in Italy that is just airing now! So weird.), which Emma loves (good for me because less screaming is involved than with other activities). We try to sing along to the intro song, but we can only sing the part when they say, "Pip-pip-pip-pip-piiiiipppiiiii," me because I don't speak Italian, and Emma because she is 2. I get a little bit confused when Emma says Pippi, because it's pronounced "pee-pee" which is the same thing as when she has to pee; we've had a few issues with the yellow peepee stuff...

The porch at Luisa and Massimo's house (where we eat most meals).

View of the beaches from the house.

Anyway, after Peepee (the redhead girl with braids, not the yellow stuff), we usually go play outside. And by play I mean run around and throw things, usually dolls, into the pool. Sometimes we throw balls over the fence and then we can't use them anymore (because we live on a mini mountain, so over the fence = down the mountain), and sometimes we actually kick the balls to each other (I think Emma will make a great soccer player someday). Sometimes we go in the pool for a little baño, but sometimes we shout instead. At around noon, either we go to the grandmother's house or the grandmother comes to our house and makes "pa-pa" (babyfood) for Emma, and lunch for me/the family (the constant refrain in the household is that Luisa is a terrible cook so I guess the grandparents want to make sure their grandchildren are eating). I think eventually I will be alone with Emma until 2 when Luisa gets home, but they are trying to ease her into being with me (which I think is working...).

Scott! Ciao Scott! He eats everything except lemons but including plastic.

 In my afternoons I help Nico with his English homework for about an hour (though this week and next week he is at tennis camp). He is hilarious and very personable, so even if he doesn't really like doing his homework, we have fun. I'm burning him a CD of American music since he seems to share my taste for danceable techno beats (i.e. Calvin Harris/David Guetta. He has to translate an English song into Italian for homework, and he chose Calvin Harris' "Drink from the bottle"). After this, I usually head into town and walk around or to the beach. I've found a new spot on the rocks at a public beach that is a little bit of a walk from the house and away from the more crowded beaches in the center of town. It's really peaceful and is a great spot for swimming!

View from one of my walks down the coast, such clear water, notice the couple in the water on the right for a sense of scale.

Peace rock. Bliss.

This past weekend the Carleton alum who contacted me for this position invited me and the other 3 Carleton students who are working as au pairs here to her house. She lives about 15 minutes away, into the valley behind Taggia and up the side of a mountain. She drove the four of us in her tiny car up all the bends and turns in the road to her isolated country cottage. Basically, she and her husband bought this run-down, centuries-old stone shack and slowly rebuilt/remodeled it themselves. It was adorable and just as one would imagine an Italian country home to be, i.e. kitchen with a brick, domed ceiling, a woodstove fireplace, grape vines hanging above the patio, roses growing up the stone walls of the house...it was lovely and the perfect getaway from living with a family of five. At night as I was falling asleep, I noticed that the air coming through the window above my head even smelled different--fresher, more like grass. The five of us had a great time drinking wine, eating cheese, and reminiscing about Carleton (then and now) into the wee hours of the night on Lynn's patio. It was also nice to have her two dogs, Q and Ruffolino (another golden!), around.

View from Lynn's house.

Lynn's patio with beautiful views and a ceiling of grapes!

 We slept at her house on Saturday night, and then on Sunday we went out and drove through some of the surrounding valley towns. We stopped in Badalucco for gas and a snack, and went to a secluded spot on the River Argentina to go skinny dipping, crossing an old Roman bridge in order to get there. The river was freezing, but very clear and very nice to swim in after a short hike.

Roman bridge, looks a lot smaller than it is.

Climbing down to the River Argentina.

高山，流水

Streets of Badalucco

This weekend I might venture into Nice/Monaco, which are both less than an hour away from Arma, but I need to start planning! At the very least, I'll head into San Remo, the nearest city. Luisa and Massimo promised me to get their old bike out, and there is a great bike path that runs between Arma and San Remo. I plan on taking advantage of it now that I've practiced biking with Sara, ;).

Ciao tutti!

Arrival

Yesterday at around 11:30 I got into the Nice airport after a quick layover in New York and a 9-hour flight (on which I got to see fireworks all across New York from the plane--stunning). Customs and baggage claim went very smoothly, in fact customs was no more than a woman glancing at and stamping my passport--no arrival form/declaration thing needed. Also there was only one person in line. Crazy and so different from the past few places I've been.

I waited in the airport for my family to pick me up, and after a bit of a struggle trying to connect with them, just when I was about to go buy an Italian simcard so I could call the woman who arranged this, I saw a boy holding a sign with my name on it. This was Nicolo, the 13-year-old son. He took me to his dad, Massimo, who was buying a chocolate croissant to have as a snack. I found out later on that they had accidentally gone to the wrong terminal, but all was well! We drove the 45-50 minutes from Nice to Arma di Taggia, a beautiful drive along the coast through the tiny towns between France and Italy. We also passed by Monaco--maybe I will go there for a weekend!

At around 2:00, we arrived at their beautiful house in Arma. The house is three stories. The second When you come inside, you enter the second floor which is basically a big open space with a kitchen and living room. It leads to the wooden patio outside where we ate lunch. They have a tiny pool on the patio (which they really take advantage of--I feel like a lot of American families have these large pools outside that they rarely swim in, but here the pool is just a few meters wide/long yet someone is constantly taking a dip before/after meals) and an amazing view which overlooks the whole town and the Mediterranean right below them. The bottom floor has a pool table, a couch, a laundry room, another nice porch area, my bedroom, and the bedrooms of Nicolo and the other son, Lorenzo, who is 17. The top floor is Luisa (the mother) and Maximo's room and bathroom, and I think Emma (the daughter) sleeps in their room as well. They live a short walk up the mountain from the beach (very steep on the way back! Similar to the walk to Spars Lodge in Shimla, but longer/at a lower altitude).

Yesterday afternoon I took a short nap and then went to the beach with Luisa and Emma. Luisa showed me the salon that she works at. They had some cousins over for dinner, which consisted of two giant pans of homemade focaccia, one giant pot of handmade pasta with prawns, some Italian wine, and homemade gelato for dessert. I think I'm going to need to run more often...

Anyways, it sounds like I will have weekends off, so today I'm just planning on exploring the town a little bit more, and maybe hitting the beach. Then the real work starts Monday...

Ciao!

Eurotrip: Au Pair Edition

In a few hours I'm heading to Dulles airport to catch my plane to Nice, France. From the airport in Nice, I will head to Arma di Taggia, Italy (about an hour away by car), where I will begin my job as an au pair for a family of five! The mother's name is Luisa, and she has three kids who are 2, 13, and 17--quite a big age range! My job is to take care of the 2-year old while the parents are at work and to speak English with the two older boys. Arma di Taggia is a tiny town on the Italian Riviera (hellooo Mediterranean!), so I'm also supposed to make daily trips to the beach with the kids. Rough life, huh?

Coast/Arma di Taggia

More pictures and stories to come upon my arrival : )

Seawolf/Josh Ritter Come to Carleton

So apparently this Josh Ritter character is a pretty big deal? Anyway, I went to the concert last night and it was fun, though I was starting to get sleepy after Seawolf played and I thought most of the Josh Ritter songs sounded very similar to each other. However, I did appreciate how enthusiastic Josh Ritter and his band were. They sort of reminded me of the tabla players that did a concert for us at the program center in India. Anyway, I really liked this song by Seawolf. Enjoy!

Sharks, Korean Pancakes, and Ice Cream

A warm hello from Auckland! This Monday marks the beginning of my third week away, my second week in Auckland, and my first time using internet since I've left! Our first week was spent on the small island of Rarotonga, living in little apartment-style rooms at the "Paradise Inn", going for morning snorkel excursions, eating heaps and heaps of passion fruit, searching for the perfect cowrie shell along the beach, and occasionally drawing some palm trees. I went on my first SCUBA dive(!!!) since certification which was AWESOME to say the least. I felt like I was inside a giant aquarium. The water was SO clear and SO blue, and some highlights were seeing a spotted eagle ray and a shark! I can't wait to go again when we get to the Great Barrier Reef. Saw some pretty cool fish while snorkeling as well--two rays, a sea turtle, giant clams, a large school of trumpet fish, and two very large flounder hiding on the bottom.

For the past week in Auckland, we have spent every day in the print studio from 9-5 with a break for lunch. I chose to do relief prints, so I did my first woodcut last week and am starting in plastic this week. My first print was a tree--wood on wood, so "meta" right? It's a lot of fun, and I really like how tactile the wood is to work with. The studio is located very close to the busiest section of Auckland (which is still incredibly tame compared to every other city I've been to) which means any variety of foreign cuisine is available for lunch, from Korean pancakes to Chinese dumplings to falafel kebabs to excellent sushi to mango lassis. It's lovely, and it makes up for the terrible dining hall food for dinner. In the evenings, I've been exploring the city with friends, trying out different gelato places and walking to the wharf to sketch the boats and sit in the wind. It stays light until about nine PM, which is great. Tomorrow I'm going to see Crystal Castles, which should be really fun. This past weekend the whole group went to a Marai to stay with a Mauri tribe. We were welcomed into their home like family and slept in one giant room all together. We went swimming in the river and ate some yummy smoked eel for dinner! The whole family was so sweet, and there is much more to say about how heart-warming the experience was, but I'm running out of internet time! So I will elaborate more on that later. Anyways, warm greetings from New Zealand, and I will write again before departing from Auckland on Saturday.