Fairytale land - San Gimignano, Tuscany

This is a repost for my new friends here on Blogger who love Italy...I think I've got one or two more on my old blog and I'll gladly repost them...I was watching some little videos I posted on Youtube and found one from San Gimignano, one of my favourite places on Earth, this little Medieval jewel hidden among Tuscan hills...That year (2007) I had lost significant weight and was going through a bad time so a friend in London had the idea of me visiting there. I said yes, especially I hadn't visited England before...And my friend Erca and my cousins Dana and Dan wanted to visit Tuscany so I did that too at the end of August...It was a great year for travelling and that worked miracles for me...Anyway, here's the repost, it's more like a note with photos and videos. I think my post about Florence was better...I think...ha ha ha!:

"VIAGGIATORE DI PACE

e' qualcosa che sei

che costruisci

che dai agli altri

anche qui

ora"

TRAVELLER OF PEACE

is something that you are

that you build

that you give to the others

even here

now

These are the words that welcome you when you go up the Rock of San Gimignano, one of the most wonderful little medieval towns that have survived history...I had been here a few years ago, on a beautiful afternoon, right at sunset and the image I had of it was that only fairy-tales can give you...So I went back there this year to see if the time passed over me will make me change my mind...And no, it didn't...It's all there...the towers, the little streets, the magic...Not even the too many tourists could distract me from my thoughts and constant wonder...

We witnessed two weddings too...the first couple was British...:)

We discovered there are lots of British and American visiting this place, as they do with the whole Tuscany and when we entered the church of Sant'Agostino we saw an add saying they celebrate mass every Sunday at 11 in English...:)

I would go back and stay only there ...definitely so...Oh, I loved a jeweller's shop...all hand made...so beautiful!
Here's a little video I took at the Rock there...forget about my voice...(actually it's kind of funny cause I say at some point "we've arrived here...pause...pause...pause...by bus...ha ha ha!)...I took the video because of the lady playing the harp. Sorry for the quality of the video...:(



After one year, in august 2008 I returned to Italy because my mother hadn't been there in like 15 years...and I found the same lady....I did have the chance to make a short video out of her playing...and I bought one of her CDs...

European Day of Languages

Yes, I only found out the day before yesterday that such a day exists (since 2001) and that there is going to be some kind of a poster contest supervised by the modern languages teachers. I was a bit upset at first that I hadn't been notified in advance like other colleagues had been, but I think that in the two hours 5 kids and I took to create a poster we did a great job. We'd have liked to add some font colour or our fan but we didn't have any time left.

European language diversity was supposed to be celebrated and the only "clue" that these kids study Italian was that we wrote the title in Italian. Then I looked on the internet for how people say "hello" in all European languages and that's what kids wrote on the little stars...The other posters were beautiful, but...different because they posted photos of wonderful monuments and such of the countries they study the language of and quite frankly that would have been much easier...we'd have printed some photos too for that matter...I loved this one on the right, made by the colleagues who teach German, also the "French" ones, similar to this.

The important thing is kids had fun, I had fun and I needed it because I've got such busy days these days... They all won, of course, even though they were highly disappointed that no awards were given, I guess their little competitive sense is not so little anymore...:)

The first photo was supposed to be posted at the bottom of the entry, but oh well, I still haven't got Blogger...It's a funny pic of me and 6th graders who made the poster. We were saying "formaaaaaggiooooo", "cheese" that is in Italian.:)

As for blogging...I moved here because I like this format and because I know that the people I care for from my old blogs will come here to be updated about me...I'm done reposting, I only reposted a few entries from one "challenge" I used to participate in, "Writer's Block". I will probably miss "Picture Perfect", who knows? All the rest will stay on the old blogs, being rather personal, and my friends already read them anyway.

So this is a fresh new start in blogland. Cheers!