...And Time Passes

Tomorrow is the last day of school here in Greve. Yesterday it started. And in between, time passed as it does--day by day. Some of those days I have chronicled; the vast majority have been unrecorded, left to the flashes of memory that promise to come over the years.

Casey is a year older--almost. He speaks two languages--getting them confused sometimes. He speaks and thinks and dreams in Italian. Willl it be hard to readjust to his mother tongue next year? Will it be hard to retain his new language? These are thoughts that fill our minds.

He doesn't want to leave--says he's a country boy, not a city boy. He thinks Italy is beautiful--rightly so.

Today I have 4297 pictures. Sort of sorted--thanks to Photoshop Organizer. They will make a screen saver that never repeats. Digital memories that don't need storage boxes--how fantastic is our modern technology! A year can become a lifetime in photographs.

Yes--nostalgia is seeping in as time closes--already I know what my last post will be because I know what I will miss.

There won't be many postings between now and then as starting next week, we travel. "No school" opens opportunities wished for during the year.

Tomorrow Casey is having a birthday celebration--buon compleanno; although his real date isn't for another month. He wants to host his classmates to a pool and barbecue party--as he does at home in San Diego. The weather man says the storms will stop tonight and tomorrow will be sunny and hot. I hope so!

Monday we drive to the Cinque Terre--a lovely part of coastal Italy that we have driven by but never explored. Rather an amazing neglect in all of our travels to Italy as for many it is a "must stop" place on a first trip.

At the end of the week we return for two days to have a special dinner at a special place (Solo Ciccia) with some special friends from Canada--a good friend from the world of the internet. This will be our first face-to-face encounter but there are no worries attached to that. We know each other well already.

Then we leave again for 5 days in the Maremma with Camilla and her family, a stop-over night in Pisa and then a flight to Sicily for a week at a friend's villa---facing Mt. Etna, hopefully with flowing lava.

That will round out June in its entirety as we return on the 30th.

July will be a little calmer but there will be a trip to an oasis in Piemonte--belonging to another friend--and tagged on to that a couple days in Turin. The only other away time before we leave on the 29th of July--364 days after leaving the United States--will be two days in Umbria to attend a big party with many friends from Slow Travel--the premier website for travel in Italy.

The rest of the month, we will again stay pretty close to home--enjoying Casey and Camilla and our friends here....and packing things up that are going home with us. Thank goodness it won't be as much as we brought. And.........saying good-byes.

So--friends--I'll try to do some short "this is what's happening" posts but we are nearing the end of our time together. There will be a finale--that's a promise!