"Heaven Sighting #2 and "The Flood"

The second heaven sighting happened for me on Friday when our Italian teacher, Ciara, took us to Perugina, the largest chocolate factory in Italy. In the factory 120 lines run each day to produce more types of chocolate than I should probably know about if I want to continue to lose weight here. The factory was first owned by two families, one of which was Sansepolcro’s own Buitoni family. God bless their idea to put the factory in Perugia, very close to Sansepolcro, but also God bless them for expanding it to be as large as it is today. After hearing about the factory we got a tour of it. As soon as I walked into the factory the scent of chocolate filled my nose and my pupils probably looked as though they were dialated. There was chocolate pouring into molds and flying down conveyer belts everywhere I looked. Baci are the chocolate/hazelnut candy popular to Perugia and only made at Perugina. There are 1500 of them made every minute of every day. That is a lot of Baci, a lot of Baci for Hannah to eat! It was apparent I had stepped out of heaven when I stepped into the gift shop and was repeatedly confronted by an “Italian” American woman. She asked if we were Americans and then went on to say that we were in her group’s way and we were being rude. I was quickly set off by this woman, who seemed American and judged me to be rude solely because I was American. She went on to tell us that she was American, but that we were “in her country.” Don’t worry; I was confused by this also. I tried to forget how offended she had made me and went on to have a great day with my friends and our teacher Ciara over a great lunch, which included one finally Italian lesson. She is done teaching us and our new teacher, Francesca, will come tomorrow. I experienced the mini metro on the way to the train station for Ferrara. The “mini metro” is a small one car metro which is run by computers I assume, as there was no driver.

From Perugia is was off to Ferrara where we were staying with our friend Giacomo and meeting up with Nicole, who studied in Ferrara last fall. We were too tired to last into the night the way the Italians do and got to sleep after a trip to LoboLoco, a bar Nicole took us to with the sweetest bartender. We got up a little later than planned and walked faster than the average American (so this is way faster than the average Italian) to get to the train station for our train to Venice. I think Samantha, Vi, and I all had a chance to catch up on our sleep on the full train to Venice, and when we arrived it was pouring. We were told it may rain, but we didn’t want to listen to anyone. We stepped out into the city and less than thirty minutes after being there we were all soaked. We each weighed about 10 more pounds than we had upon arrival simply because we were so wet! At one point Samantha and I walked straight through a puddle filling our shoes with even more water, looked at one another and could do nothing more but laugh. We reached the point where we decided we would only “see” Venice, we would not be “doing” Venice. I must include that another reason for time loss was the two and a half hour search for the Hard Rock Café where we ate burgers that CAME with fries and drank diet Pepsi (not Coke) which had free refills. I am ashamed to have gone there and spent the 25 euro I did on my meal, but was completely content on getting my one American meal complete with free refills and Rolling Stones playing in the back ground. It was time to accomplish our next and last mission for the day before returning back to Ferrara, going to Murano by way of the water bus. This city is the one known for its glass making and it had a charm which I enjoyed, especially when the sun began to peak through the clouds and force me to pull out my sunglasses. I peeked into a window to find a man (or perhaps it WAS a woman) blowing glass to create what looked like a wine stopper. This art has always fascinated me because blowing glass is a tedious job, which can make things frustrating. I have a friend from the summer who blew glass in his garage and had to keep everything he was working on at a certain temperature, while moving, and while making sure air was being circulated. I ended up making some good purchases before we left to head back to Venice. This time we took the water bus directly to the train station, and wished we had known about the stop upon our arrival in the down pour. It would have been nice to learn about a more convenient way around ahead of time, but would have made for an unexciting day. I left Venice planning to return back, and while I probably won’t make it back this time, next time I’m in Italy I will return!

We boarded another full train and Sam, Vi, and I were split up again, but this time Vi and I were sitting across from each other and beside two German men. After about fifteen minutes I decided they had to be German but I wanted to ask. I didn’t know whether to ask in Italian or English or at all. I am glad I asked because these two young men turned out to be very nice and know a lot of English. They taught me a few simple German words and after they got off Vi continued my language lesson by teaching me to count in Vietnamese. Vi and I ate a small dinner and instead of heading off for the discotecha we decided to return to Giacomo’s. Today we all got some extra sleep and Nicole showed us all the places she loves in Ferrara. The city reminds me of Sansepolcro in a way, but larger and with more stores (ones that I can afford) and many more bikes! Arriving back in Sansepolcro gave me the same bittersweet feeling it always does. There is a sad feeling that another weekend is over here in beautiful Italy, but amazing feeling of being “home” in Sansepolcro, which overwhelms me. I have sat down and written another blog as I always do Sunday nights upon my return, and I’ll now retreat to bed thinking about all of the things I should have done tonight before sleep, but won’t do because of sheer exhaustion. Buono notte!