A Week and Counting

Sadly enough I have less than a week left in Siena. We are leaving Monday morning and heading for Venice. It's so crazy how fast the time has gone by. I feel like I just barely got settled into my groove and even started understanding quite a bit of Italian. Such is life. I've decided that once you get comfortable in one place, the scenery somehow changes whether it be good or bad. Thankfully my change of scenery consists of Venice, Rome, London, New York, then the best one yet - HOME!!! YAY!!

I've been a bad little blogger this past week simply because I've been slightly busier tying loose ends before I depart. I'll give you a little run down of what went on this last week in a short and hopefully entertaining list.

-Monday I explored Siena and found a really neat library where Italian college students were studying. It looked surprisingly similar to good ol' Harld B Lee Library and I felt right at home.

-Tuesday Eli opened her mission call: Switzerland Geneva (French speaking) WOHOO!! We also got to visit a ceramics shop. It was pretty neat but I was slightly distracted by the man's disfigured thumb. I think the pottery wheel snagged it.

-Wednesday I experienced my second round of chestnut hunting. I now have a 10 pound package full of chestnuts that I'm going to send. There's some parmigiano reggiano coming Utah's way as well - delicious!!

-Thursday I went to....MILAN. Be jealous. It was so much fun! I shopped a lot and went to the Gothic inspired Duomo. Breathtaking! I also saw a very overpriced baby sweatsuit: 55 Euro for the shirt, 88 Euro for the Jacket, and 140 Euro for the pants. I loved it all!!

-Friday I came home to my fake little brother's (Giuseppe) hamster, Pipi, on his deathbed. His breathing was shallow and he was getting colder by the minute. Giuseppe was at soccer while this was going on. Right when he got home he saw that his hamster was dying and he instantly tried to revive it and kept encouraging it to live. He then ran into his room sobbing when he realized that Pipi wasn't going to make it through the night. It was so sad. It reminded me of when this happened to Trevor and my mom told me to console him. I was the person of choice for the job because I've had many hamsters die on me, including one that Jamie stepped on while we were playing. RIP Benjamin Franklin hamster...you were a great pet.

-Saturday I went to a Medieval Market in the Campo. It was fun to see all of the different items being sold. It reminded me a lot of Swiss Days. The market was really neat until this weirdy parade started. Road flares were pulled creating this creepy red light haze as intense music blared in the background. 4 interesting figures were dancing around - by interesting I mean dragons in masquerade masks flapping their wings. I forgot to mention that they were also on stilts. It was very crazy!

-Sunday I flirted with the missionaries that are serving here in the Siena branch. SCHERZO (joke). I have hardly talked to any missionaries since my family made fun of me for "flirting" with other missionaries in Florence. Just so you know, talking about college with missionaries is not flirting, it's making conversation to avoid awkward silence. Everyone knows that dearest family of mine. Anyway, round 3 of chestnut hunting after church - they're passionate about chestnuts. I was also approached by my host mom Sunday night. She wanted me to curl her hair like I curl Elizabeth's. She plopped right down on the toilet and handed me her blowdryer and the brush and put me to work. It was really cute. After that Alberto - the 15 year old fake bro - had me straighten his curly hair. It was fun to play beauty salon for the evening. They told me it should be my 2nd job. Love them.

That was my week in a nutshell, a big nutshell. Sorry, I failed miserably at making it brief!! Life couldn't be better here in Italy!