On Friday evening Barbara, the interim chair from Clemon’s language program, arrived in Genova.  Like last semester she will be here for about a week and a half to teach the students an intro to Italian.  She is such a lovely person and I am so thrilled to have her back in the villa with us.  Her first night she arrived just in time for dinner and then we shared a bottle of vino with her while some of the students hung out in the kitchen “pre-gaming” and chatting with us prior to departing for another night of clubbing.  Oh to be young again, and these students have surprised me, even after a night of partying the night away they are still up fairly early the next morning and out exploring the city.

My buddy Barbara

The weather finally broke today as it is has been rainy and gloomy all week long.  The sun was shinning and the sea looked beautiful so I talked Nick into getting out and about.  Even though is he able to walk on both feet now, the stairs and uneven sidewalks of Genova are still at times daunting for him.  We caught the bus and made our way down to Piazza di Ferrari, where I was thrilled to see the fountain was up and running again today.  Unfortunately for the past week it was not working, not sure if they shut it off due to cooler weather or maybe it was broke.  I proudly posed in front of it sporting my Panthers gear 🙂

Posing in my all black Carolina Panthers attire in Piazza di Ferrari

We made our way down Via XX Setembre, which is the large shopping street in Genova, due to it being Sunday not all of the stores were open, but we managed to find Nick a sweater at one, as I have somehow managed to shrink two of his sweaters since we have moved here.  Not sure how, but I am going to blame it on the odd dryers – and I don’t even leave them in there very long – yikes!  We stopped into a cafe that was open for some lunch, the food wasn’t really anything to write home about, but we were so hungry that it didn’t matter. 

Nick racing the pigeons across the street

While Nick was at therapy on Monday I decided to do my run around there instead of my usual run up the creuza, and back down.  I was so happy that I made the decision to do this as it was much easier, as it was much flatter than the mountainside terrain that I’ve been climbing.  This may not sound impressive to many, but I was able to go the full two miles without stopping.  When running around the villa, I make it about 10 steps up the creuza and then start walking, and then my goal is to keep walking as fast as I can, because man is it steep.  An amazing workout though and one that really gets the heart pumping!

View from my run on Monday