Meanwhile, back in Perugia, I was attending Italian language classes everyday trying desperately to learn how to speak to all the people around me. It wasn't working very well. Oh, I learned to say Buon giorno (good morning -- all day) to the shopkeepers, ciao (hello to my friends) and arrivederci (goodbye) and I could count a little and point to things that I needed but I couldn't say a lot. Thankfully, I could read a little more than I could actually speak so I got by in my class. But one day, after buying a new pair of Italian leather boots that I absolutely had to have, I found myself with two feet full of blisters and no bandaids for protection. So I got a friend, Carol - she's in the picture above, to accompany me down to the local pharmacia where we searched and searched for a box of bandaids. No luck. Carol, who is also of Italian descent and VERY good at gesturing, tried to somehow express the word for bandaid by waving her hands wildly while saying different words -- in English. Finally, as we all were about to give up in frustration I pitifully walked up to the counter and said the only word I could think of from my childhood days (not knowing if it was an Italian word or not)-- "Booboo?" I questioned. Carol looked at me and started to laugh BUT guess what? The man and woman behind the counter said "Oh, booboo! Si." and they sold me a small box of bandaids from their hidden cache behind the counter.

One of the side trips Carol, another woman from our group Marie and I made was to the small town of Deruta , home of Italian pottery. This was one of our best trips. The bus took us there in record time (the transit system in Italia is astounding -- you never need a car but you can go anywhere!). However, we forgot about siesta between 12-1:00 until around 3- 4:00. Since we had such a long time to wait before browsing the shops in a hunt for the perfect Italian teapot, we walked a mile or more past wonderful sunflower fields and houses surrounded by flowers to a small restaurant where we had one of the most enjoyable meals of our trip. The food was excellent, the wine was rich and made us sleepy and, instead of having to rush to go to class or board a bus for another trip to another famous site, we ate and drank and talked and totally enjoyed the setting we were in. I personally wanted to stay and open my own shop and make pottery and grow sunflowers, but as they reminded me, I didn't have a lot of money left and there were still Venice and Rome to see.

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