Postius I'm on a plane homeius

Having spent most of yesterday afternoon simultaneously packing my suitcase and helping Tancredi with his homework (italian homework I might add) I woke up early this morning to stuff my pyjamas into an already overly full bag, skull my last italian coffee, scoff down my last piece of Panettone in Italy and head off for the 7am bus to Milan. Sara drove me in to the bus stop and Tancredi tagged along too, despite it being obnoxiously early by Italian standards. He declined several social engagements with his friends last night to hang around the house with me and while his sadness at my departure has been somewhat eclipsed by his purchasing of a new phone yesterday it was pretty evident from his hug this morning that he'll miss me.

After plenty of half asleep photos on Tancredi's new phone Jace and I said our goodbyes and hopped on the bus. This whole morning it hasn't really felt like I'm actually leaving. Even as I was trundling down the stairs with my bag in tow this morning. Although now I am checking in and at the gate it does seem a little more real.

The bus was almost 15 minutes early and the line for checking only a few people long. I was slightly concerned that the 2hours from bus arrival to plane departure would be cutting it a bit fine since I couldn't check in online (my passport expires in 5 months 13 days and you need 6 months for online check in) but i really shouldn't have been worried. For all of Italy's usual disorganisation/mayhem I basically walked straight through, waiting maybe at most 5 minutes at both check in and security. So not more than 30mins after the bus arrived I found my self arriving at the gate. I'm glad Sara convinced me that the 6am bus was too early.

Having received a call from Nonna Irma almost exactly as the bus pulled up when my phone went off again as I got to the gate I thought it would be her once again calling to lament my departure. She is well know for calling multiple times in an hour or even hanging up from one call and ringing someone else in the house straight after. It is a bit if a joke around the house that whenever the phone rings everyone says 'ciao Nonna' before someone picks it up (usually to say 'ciao Nonna' again). It was not, in fact Nonna Irma calling me again but Tancredi, checking when I'd arrived and how my waiting in line was going (he was super impressed how fast I'd gotten through everything.

We chatted for almost 10 minutes, something which I'm personally quite proud of. Talking on the phone in Italian is hard; it's very easy to lose the thread of conversation and not being able to wave arms or have the other person see if I'm understanding or not is difficult. Not to mention my inability to work out what someone is saying if the signal is bad. Mostly we chatted about the airport, Tancredi's plans for the day (nothing beyond getting a micro sim for his new phone) and breakfast. After instructing him to take pictures of things at the markets to email and to eat lots of Panettone for me We rang off, him to have breakfast and me to finish this and nosh a banana.

(i should point out at this point Nonna Irma called me again to make sure I'd checked in and eaten breakfast and coffee and second breakfast)

With the Singapore Airlines sausages (flight attendants) having just boarded the plane and passengers moshing in front of the gate I had best publish then and then plan out my Facebook post for the grand reveal.

Ci vediamo in Australia!

Updateius the experiment is overius

So i was running a bit of am experiment with this blog while I was away (i forget if I've mentioned it before) where by I didn't tell anyone I was updating it and waited to see home long it took for them to go looking for information about my adventures. After several weeks I told my sister and a couple of friends about it but other than that only one person, my boyfriend, discovered it, and that I believe is because I mentioned it on twitter. I didn't cross post anything to Facebook and I kept my email updates to my family brief in the hope they would wonder where the rest was and go looking. But I guess my unreliability in updating when I was in exchange meant they didn't even consider checking.

My sister and I have spent weeks driving hints. Including a direct mention of a travel blog on the same day as mentioning the tediousness of uploading photos using H+. Still no bells rung, which honestly surprised me, I had thought that overnight as all the hint sunk in someone would work it out. So now on my last full day here, as I face packing my bag I have dropped the last hint. A Facebook status mentioning my 'Overseas Adventure'. Now it's quite possible that after all this time my parents have forgotten what my blog is called and it will mean nothing to them but my randomly capitalising letters. So tomorrow just before I head off I shall post a link on Facebook.

My sister has been urging me for a couple of weeks to just tell them about it. But after not being able to cotton on after an abundance of clues I decided it would wait.

Last time I was constantly hassled to update and never did. Once I'd gotten a little bit behind the task seemed impossible. So this time I've approached it differently. I've never been strong in written English, in making things make sense when they're written down, and having them flow. So this time I've approached it more as the telling of a story and less of a blow by blow account of each day and activity. That was where I got bogged down last time. It isn't necessary for me to recount my every action, my every meal and my every conversation. This time I've tried to keep the mood lighter, funnier and centred around specific events. I've found this a much more constructive way of writing. It's as though I've say down to tell someone a story rather than the recount my time here. I even have a little chuckle when reading bit back.

Another thing I've found helpful is updating via email. The internet at Sara's is extremely unreliable at night which is when I found myself updating most in 2011. I'd spent the evening slaving over a post only to have the internet crash 10 times in 15 minutes as I tried to upload. Very discouraging. This time, having a smart phone and internet data I've written all my photos from there and only used my computer for adding photos. I've also done most of my writing whilst pounding it out on the treadmill at the gym. It's a perfect piece of otherwise un used them I can dedicate just to writing with no other distractions other than how many steps I've don't and how long I've been walking for. Due to the nature of typing on a self correcting keyboard whilst walking at 6km/h I imagine there is a significant number of spelling and grammatical errors. I'll get onto fixing them when I'm home, with reliable internet and a screen bigger than my netbook. Although I hope most of the post are at least understandable even with the random errors thrown in.

I've got a few more post to go; tales of my adventures on the city these past few days and stories to go with other photos I've taken. But for now they will have to wait. I'm catching the bus to Milan at 7am tomorrow and have a lot of packing to do as well as having to go out and grab a few more last minute gifts!

Coming over with a 23kg bag 8kg and almost half the bag of which was gifts gives me not only plenty of space but also plenty of weight to fill up. Singapore has changed their baggage limit to 30 kg which is more than I imagine I can fit in my bag! So far I've bought 4kg of books and 2kg of food. So we're already close to half my additional weight and I haven't even checked how heavy the rest is. My job for after the gym.

Postius more about the snowius

I really enjoyed my time in the mountains and the novelty of being surrounded by snow never wore off. Who would have thought I'd enjoy tramping through slush when it was -1 out at 4.30pm just to take photos. Well that's what I did one day. It wasn't a terribly good day for taking photos unfortunately, there was quite a bit of fog around but I enjoyed the walk all the same.

One day Sara and I headed up the hill (16 flights of stairs in 1000 steps) to the second apartment to give the keys to people renting it for the weekend. I started taking photos of trees covered in snow while she was explaining things and afterward we decided to just continue on up the hill. And hour later we were sprawled in deckchairs 1890m above sea level waiting for Corrado and Tancredi who were skiing to join us.

We grabbed got chocolates to warm up and a couple of pieces of cake to share as we sat and took in the view. As the pre dusk fog started to settle in we all headed off. I declined Tancredi's offer to go down the pista on his shoulders, and instead made the wall back down the 'road' with Sara. It was much faster going down and before long we almost walked straight past the snow angles we made on the way up. I really enjoyed the walk, it was the same one we had done during summer when I was here last time to the contrast of picking wild berries to making snow angles was quite amusing.

I'm quite surprised how well I feared with the walk. I was in a pair of Sara's old hiking boots and wasn't wearing my orthotics, yet when we got back home the inside of my big toe hurt slightly, a testament to my lack of orthotics. I didn't even have any blistered or anything. Considering last time I was all but incapacitated the next day despite wearing my own shoes and orthotics I think it's safe to say that two years of pilates has done me some good!

The day Sara and I went up the mountain I climbed the equivalent of over 130 flights of stairs, my biggest day yet by more than double! 27 had been just after mining as we trekked home after watching and Italian comedy at the cinema. If it cost only $12 for a standard ticket to the movies in Australia I'd be there all the time too! Fortunately though I live near a small art Deco cinema that has cheap tickets though only a select few films.

The rest if the time when I ventured out of the house I often snapped photos on my phone to email off to my family to make them all jealous of my snow adventures. My only internet access while we were there was through the data connection on my phone and I dedicated most of one afternoon to supervising the very slow uploading of photos to this blog through a wireless hot stop from my phone. The whole thing was done using a H+ data connection, which as I explained to my mum is like the dial up of mobile data. It was a very tedious afternoon.

After 9 days in a beautiful white wonderland I was sad to be leaving but very thankful for the time I had there. My sister and I have resolved to come back for Christmas one year (i possibly have understated to her how hilly the village is and how much walking you do there...)

Postius emergency pound cake saves the same dayius

+ some photos

After the success of Tancredi's birthday cake Sara's friend Alessandra requested another one for her son's 8th birthday a few days later. Knowing the cake is much easier to work with the say after its cooked I set aside time to make it ahead of time. In one of my city adventures I'd headed to an Asian shop to pick up the ingredients to make a curry as Tancredi requested. With my time here dwindling to a close it was decided that cake baking day would also be curry making night. 

So in a momentary and unusual bit of time alone in the apartment I set out first with the cake and then once that was in the oven with the curry. Previously when Sara had been at the shops she'd called me up to check what meat I needed for the curry asking if chicken on the bone was okay. I pointed out that deboned would be better but she decided we could just cut it from the bones our selves. So whilst periodically checking on the cake of i definite cooking time I set out to debone 5 chicken thighs with the two bluntest knives ever. I should also point out that each was at least 20cm long and half the chicken thighs were frozen. Also I hate raw chicken.

By the time everyone made it home I was almost finished hacking the chicken, had potatoes boiling on the stove and the cake was almost done. Selene was super excited about the prospect of curry, not having eaten it since she was in Australia in 2011 every time someone asked what we were having with it I waved in her direction and asked her to explain it for me. Corrado kept insisting we were going to have something as a first plate and then curry second.

Remembering from last time that Sara's month couldn't handle spice I added about half the curry paste I would have normally and we had a very mild mussaman curry for dinner. I asked Selene (who asked Sara) to make the rice since we are lazy and have a rice cooker at home I've never learnt the proper amount of rice to add. Corrado was, as the Italians say, 'breaking my balls' about how I wanted the rice. Not only was I managing the curry and cake I also had some left over cookie dough defrosting to cook once the cake was done. Oh and there were 5 other people in the 45m² apartment. It's safe to say I did not appreciate his stopping me to ask how I wanted the rice, he was not in charge of the rice and I had already conveyed to Sara how it needed to be cooked. When he asked me about it I responded 'cooked' to which he started listing ways Italians cook rice as example of how I should have specified better. My rather short response was 'if i wanted it cooked like risotto I would have said' risotto' not cooked'. He seemed to leave me to it after that.

Everyone was pretty happy with the curry, though Selene complained it wasn't spicy enough, since there is still lost of paste left I explained to her how to make a second smaller and spicy sauce that people could add to their plate if they wanted. She seems pretty enthusiastic about cooking it again sometime so that's pretty cool.

The next day I had a lazy morning around the house before settling in to finish the cake around lunch time. After lunch Alessandra came over to borrow our oven to cook some party food and everything was going smoothly until at 10 to 5 she got a call from the person making a second cake to say that she'd dropped it. Eyes turned to me and I was asked if I could whip up another simple cake. I should point out the party was scheduled to start at 6.30. Glancing around the apartment to see what ingredients we had and taking on board the arm waving and explanation of a simple white cake I decided a pound cake would suffice. A did a quick google search and chose the first result (a taste.com recipe) without reading any others.

According to the rather waffley notes with the recipe it was apparently rather important the butter be at the right temperature and it be creamed with the sugar just so and the mix wasn't allowed to look curdled when you added the eggs. Considering i was doing all of the creaming with a hand mixer that would either break it jam every couple of minutes it's safe to say I disregarded most of the notes. Also when they insisted on the butter being at room temperature or else the whole thing be a catastrophe in don't think they had alpine room temperate in mind.

I eventually gave up on the hand blender and added the flour to a mix that was curdled. This whole time Corrado was muttering about how I shouldn't have been asked to make a second cake and they should have just bought a new one. After shoving the thing in the oven I retreated to my bed to escape people for the 50mins it took to cook. I as soon as the timer went off we rugged up and headed to the party, the cake cooling as we went! There were strict instructions to the person carrying the mud cake (Sara) that if they dropped it I'd kill them. We made it to the party without a drama, dropping off Tancredi's hired skis on the way.

I was quite pleased that within a few minutes of arrived I was given a glass of wine. After the stress of last minute cake making it was very welcome. Selene quickly grew bored of being surrounded by little kids and organised for me, her and Tancre to go down the road to the cinema and watch The Butler. We brought the cakes out and everyone was super impresses with how they looked. With the pound cake mostly cool I quickly covered it in icing sugar and stuck some candles in it. After singing happy birthday in both italian and English (who knows why) I was in charge of dishing out cake.

Everyone was super pleased with both despite the pound cake was still slightly warm in the middle. The party was held in a room of the ski school where Giacomo (the birthday boy) had been learning and most of the ski coaches pop in for a piece too. The three off us headed off to the film (that i'd already seen in Australia) leaving Corrado, Sara and the cakes at the mercy of 8 year old with party blower trumpets. I was surprised how much of the film Tancredi understood, there were only a few things, like him not recognising the Obama Biden logo, that he didn't get, and mostly because they were recent events and haddn't made it yet into history studies.

We saw Alessandra again the next day as we were picking up to leave and she was again super thankful for both my cakes. One cake would probably have been enough but only just. And I am told the extras were left at the ski school for their coaches party the next day.

Ski Diary Day 2ius

January 4, 2014
Woke up early for Ski lesson, it was snowing.
Snow continued all day.
I am told this improves skiing conditions for learners as it covers any ice on the slope. 

My instructor, Carlotta, spoke reasonably good English, with a few italian words thrown in where she got stuck. We started off on the super beginners slope, that is actually a 'road' yet no one drives on it because it's never cleared if snow. The first few corners I just had to kind if figure out what to do but then Carlotta explained which ski to put my weight on and how to shift my body and soon we were making good time. The end of the super beginners slope spits you out on the actual pista (track) so you go down the last bit of that on the way to the ski lift.

My lessons in falling down with Sara a few days before had obviously been useful as we had enough time to go back up again. Carlotta reckoned I had enough control to just go down the actual pista the whole way. I did pretty well, only falling down twice (the third time apparently doesn't count because it was due to the snow being too thin and my getting stuck on a rock and it was on the practice track anyway). Apparently I had a pretty good stature which I think is mostly due to the water skiing I did years ago. Dad's 'knees bent arms straight' mantra came back to me every time I put my weight wrong and lost control. The difficult thing is your weight is quite far forward compared to normal, your shins connecting with the boot and transferring weight that way. The few times I forgot, I promptly lost control and/or fell over. Once hilariously enough just after Carlotta commented how well I was doing in not falling over. She was however impressed with how quickly and easily I manage to get up again. So that was a successful lesson from Sara.

At the end of the hour I had pretty good basic control over the skis and so long as the slow wasn't too steep i was pretty confident. I also had a VERY sore bum from all the spazzaneve (snow plow) and was very happy to head back to the apartment, sit down and eat. I had eaten breakfast before I went out but was super hungry again. Sara laughed at me.

I went out again for another hour or so that afternoon with Corrado. He wasn't a very good teacher and I didn't really need teaching so much as someone to keep an eye on me as I practiced. Every time I did something wrong or lost control he'd tell me what to do, even if he'd said it a few minutes before hand, as though I didn't know what to do rather than couldn't do it properly. Honestly, I spent a lot of the time ignoring what he was saying and concentrating more on where my weight was and how I had my skis placed. We did the pista twice and the second time I was nearly at the end before I fell over. I was hoping I'd be able to. Make it down once without falling over but that remains to be seen.

The next day I hoped to go out again but in the end I got caught up cake making and didn't get to. Hopefully I can at least partially remember what I learnt the next time I get to go skiing.

Ski Diary Day 1

January 1, 2014
3:38pm
Learnt to walk up hill sideways.

4:08pm
Learnt to walk down hill.

4:22pm
Learnt to fall down.
Learnt to make other people fall down.
Learnt to get up. Sometimes.

4:32pm
Learnt to ski down half hill on arse.

Before heading up to the mountains Sara had asked me if I had any interest in skiing, I said that I didn't really want to spend days an days going down hills but that I would like to have a go at it. So one afternoon we set out with an old pair of Tancredi's skis and a borrowed pair of old shoes to the kiddies sledding hill so I could 'get the feel' of skis before paying for a lesson. I probably spent more time on my arse or walking up or down the hill than I did practising skiing but I did get the feel of it, at least to some extent. Apart from the one time I fell over straight onto my hip, most of my falling down was because I couldn't stop or turn around and ended up on my bum instead. Which since its gained some italian padding didn't hurt that much.

Postius Jace adventures in the snowius

Up at the mountains Jace got a bit jealous of me and Tancredi playing out in the snow while she was stuck inside watching it out the window. One morning when we opened the door to change the air in the room she made a run for it to get in some snow play of her own. I snapped a few photos before convincing her to put on a hat so she didn't get too cold. A few more photos and we managed to coax her back inside, dust off the snow and sat her in front of a heater to warm up again.

Everyone was quite concerned she'd get sick from going out with such little warm weather gear on. But when we came back for lunch she was just waking up from a nap next to the heater and was right as rain. We kept a much closer eye on her after that when we had the door open and made sure she was well rugged up /before/ we headed out again.

Postius Tancredi had a birthdayius

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Sara had to head back to Turin to work the Monday of Tancredi's birthday so had asked me of I could make him a cake during. He had deemed it needed to be a chocolate cake. My sister has this awesome chocolate cake recipe she uses to make wedding cakes, and having made a variation of it previously, I thought it would be the think to make. We'd packed a tin and were half way to Sauze before I remembered this recipe says, explicitly, to NOT use a spring form pan so i spent an hour or so in the morning plugging up all the leaks with alfoil.

Tancredi and I headed to the next by shops and his face when I picked up 5 blocks of chocolate was rather amusing. My response was 'well you wanted a chocolate cake'. The next glitch I came to was when I'd mixed together all the batter and put the bowl next to the cake tin it was obvious that it wasn't going to fit. I quickly texted my sister and emailed her photos of all the things I could find around the house that might serve as a cake tin. After she took a short icey pole break in the middle of my emergency cake correspondence we decided that using a large glass dish would me okay.

I quickly papered the sides and base and whacked the mix in the oven. Then began the giant waiting game. The recipe says 45 mins at 170c with my sisters side note being 'yeah right, more like 2x this every time' so you leave the cake 40mins and then start stabbing it every 10-20 mins to see how it's doing. At one point when I stabbed it raw mix started bleeding out the hole, yeah, I didn't think it was quite ready yet. Over all it ended up being in there a bit over an hour and a half, but I'm not sure exactly.

I probably got too excited about getting it on to the cooling rack and should have waited a bit longer, it was super fragile and with Tancredi giving me a hand I'm surprised the whole thing didn't break. Now I have enough trouble at Sara's /house/ funding things to use as a cooling rack so as you can imagine finding something there and big enough for a cake at that was a little challenging. In the end I decided to use the rack from the oven. Oh but it's just been in the oven and is hot you say? Don't worry there's a bank of snow outside the living room to throw it into.

With the cake on the cooling rack it was time for the second waiting game. How long will it take for a 10cm thick chocolate mud cake to cool completely. I was hesitant to put it out side this time since there wasn't really a good place for it and I didn't want it to get dripped on. The cake came out of the oven around 4 so I still had plenty of time to head to the shops and grab what I forgot for the ganache before Sara came home. In the end Tancre asked Sara to pick up the remaining few things since she was going to arrive before dinner.

As it turns out it was almost 9pm by the time she arrived. Realising they'd be so late she'd called to tell us to eat and then go watch a ski thing in the town where a while bunch of people skied down the slope with flaming torches. Tancredi by this point was pretty was pretty grumpy. Sara had missed most of his birthday, had to get his present in Turin AND was late getting back so the cake wasn't done either. I promised him he would have his cake on his birthday so when we made it home at 10 I set about hurriedly chopping chocolate for ganache and decorations.

While the ganache was cooling I pencilled out some letters on baking paper to trace with some white chocolate. Chocolate too runny for writing with? No problem, just cooled it in the snow out side. I sat the pan in the snow for a few seconds while stirring it to make sure it didn't set at the edges, once it thickened up a bit I pored it into a paper funnel and travel out the words. It was the first time I'd ever done any sort of chocolate decorating/writing and the fact I was shaking from the rush of getting the cake finished didn't help. I wasn't happy with my traced one so free handed a second set and it came out pretty good. I put the paper on metal tray and sat it out on the snow again to firm up completely. Then it was on to ganaching the cake.

I'd never made ganache before either. This really isn't sounding like the best cake to be making in a small unequipped kitchen in the middle of the night, is it? Liberty had said the chocolate to cream ratio was maybe around 2:1 and I needed it to be like peanut butter at the end. Not having chocolate to spare I added a little less cream to start off with. Again it was still quite runny when I came to putting it on the cake, despite the time I'd spend working on the writing. Back out to the snow I went. In the end I probably could have used the correct measurement of cream. The ganache was a little too stiff and a little too set. I had to work it quickly with the knife before being able to spend it on the cake. Only having a small flat knife I had a hard time getting the cake to look smooth, but I never had any expectations of the perfect hot knife ganache that my sister pulls off every time. I smoothed the top off pretty well, filled in a couple of places where the cake had stuck to the tin and then left the edges and sides rustically messy. Carefully easing my chocolate writing off the paper and placing it on top I was done. And all that in just under and hour!

I brought the cake out and Tancredi's smile more than made up for the stress of getting it done. I'd let him way the off cuts from when I'd evened out the top before we headed down for the ski thing, so he already knew it tasted pretty good but I don't think anyone was expecting it to look as cool as it did. I was super proud of how it worked out, it looked pretty specky so long as you didn't compare it to any of my sister's masterpieces. Everyone was super impressed, especially when I pointed out I'd never made it quite like this before and had never written with chocolate either! Sara's friend who was there too has asked if I can make another one for her sons birthday in a few days.

Later that night when we were in bed Tancredi said my cake was the best birthday present he got. =D

Postius like a dog in snowius

Sara has a apartment in a village called Sauze d'oux, 40mins outside of Turin, she infact has two. They were her husband's and they've had one 20 years and the other a little longer. Sauze is a skiing village so they're just small one/two room things with folding beds. In 2011 we came up here a couple of times during summer for fresh mountain air and walks and I had an absolute blast. Last time I managed to destroy me knees a bit from all the up and down hill walking so I had a day just around the apartment. Subsequently this is the only place Jace and I have slept that I haven't bought a bracelet for her, Annica and Bruce from. It's on my list for this time.

Since its ski season and school holidays for Christmas/New Year were up here again for 9 days this time. We headed up Saturday afternoon after I got back from Gabri's. When we first got up here we showed the second apparent to a family that's thinking of renting it for the season before heading to the better of the two where we're staying. It's quite nice for such a tiny place with two folding double beds, a folding single, permanent table, tiny kitchen and bathroom. I am quite fond if it despite how cramped it is with more than 3 or 4 people.

In the process of getting to the first apartment I managed to sustain the first snow related injury of the trip. We were still in our 'city shoes', mine which have approximately no grip. We were walking down a driveway to hid from the snow a bit and I managed to slip over and land (not terribly hard) on one of my hips. I got up, shaked off the snow and moved on. The next day I sat a bit wonky and noticed my left greater trochanter was rather tender. I was surprised though that it didn't bruise.

For dinner we headed out to meet up with one of Sara's friends and her daughter. The snow that had just started when we arrive picked up and I had a wonderful time walking around getting snowed on. I would point out to Tancre that it was snowing, joyfully turn my face to it and then complain that I got snow in my eye. Sara and Tancre, and indeed the friends too appear to have been quite amused by my joy at the snow. We had a few photos taken but somewhere in the gloved handing over of my camera we managed to get the camera on the wrong setting so none of them have worked out =( I'm hoping it snows again while I'm here to we can get some new ones.

We ended up at a pizzeria for dinner and had to brush/tip off all our accumulated snow before going inside. Which I found extremely novel and everyone else less so. The snow at more or less stopped by the time we headed home again and I amused myself by walking in a picking up fresh, powdery snow. I've seen snow a few times before but never that fresh.

Sara and Tan conned me into playing a board game (patente punti) with them, assuring me it would be less than a half hour and we'd be off to bed at a sensible time. As it turns out me were playing until almost midnight =( the game is designed to teach kids about italian road rules before they get their drivers licence. It's a great idea given how complicated their road rules are and how their demerit points work. As you can imagine it was significantly more difficult for me, not just because all the question cards were in Italian but also they have strange rules and tragic lights I've never seen before. Despite all this however, I was the first person to arrive at the end with all 20 demerit points.

In the process of playing a learnt a new italian word 'spinterogeno', distributor. I even got the question right, Tancredi got in (fake) trouble because he didn't know the answer and Valerio, his dad, was an auto electrician.

The next day we had a lazy morning before going through draws of old ski clothes so find some that fit me. It's pretty handy having a younger, growing brother. I've ended up with his ski pants and moon boots from last year, as well as his old ski boots and skis. I was amused that ski pants have build on braces so had Sara take a photo of me and Tan half dressed to show them off.

That afternoon Tan and I headed off to a near by hill with a toboggan and a plastic shovel looking thing to catch up with some of his friends. The bucket was not so much fun but the toboggan with two people in it made for an exciting trip down the snow. The friend we caught up with had a plastic disk about 80cm across and with handles moulded in on either side, while he and Tancre went down in the toboggan I made the mistake of sitting on the disk and ended up doing backwards half the time. Apparently it works much better if you go down head first on your stomach with your arms trailing behind for course correction. It certainly gives more of a thrill that way, something about your face being 30cm from the fast moving and hard ground...

Since it had snowed freshly the night before the bottom of the hill was a bank of fresh, uncompacted snow. Fresh uncompacted, deceiving, snow. You some to a stop on your chose moulded plastic of choice and go to stand up. Only to loose your leg, but to the knee, in previously unbroken snow. It makes for interesting work, getting out of an overturned sled with another person squished on/under you/the snow/the sled. Eventually this ends up in snow flying and Tancre, his friend Tommaso and I had a snow fight. Fresh powder snow doesn't make good snow balls but after you've walked around for a bit there are sizable chunks you can pick up and chuck.

It was during said snow fight that I sustained snow related injury number two. Tommaso was using the disk sled as a shield and as he was passing it to me Tan threw a chunk of snow at us, I didn't have a good hold on the disk and as the snow hit it is hit my forehead. We continued playing and by the time the lump was obvious to Tancredi I was too cold to take him up on my need to put my face in the snow.

We trudged back home for cups of tea and our books. Several times later in the day Sara could be over heard on the phone saying how it had snowed the day we arrived just to say welcome to me. And at one point Tancredi leaned over and asked me if I'd heard what she said, when I pointed out I haddn't been listening to her phone call he told me she was telling Corrado that I was playing in the snow like a puppy. I heard similar phrases in several other phone conversations she had that evening....

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