What were you grateful for this week? *Friends. 

What was the most difficult or challenging part of this week?The trains. 

Tell us about a “wow” moment you had this week. I cleaned the house. 

Tell us about your week!Monday: I woke up early to go to yoga on the beach for some much needed stretching after walking all over London and Paris. Other than that, the day was very relaxed the family took a long nap in the afternoon so I just read a book until they woke up. I tried to teach some English but the kids weren’t having it. 

Tuesday: I slept in and vacuumed the house when I woke up. I didn’t go to the beach because I did laundry and had to register for classes for fall semester. I tried to teach a bit more English to the oldest kid, it didn’t go very well because I still don’t know a good way to teach them without them being bored to tears. The youngest still doesn’t want anything to do with me and that is starting to stress me out a little bit but I’m almost done so I’m just gonna deal with it as it comes. In the evening we played mini golf. 

Wednesday: [My host mom] had to go to work in another town so she arranged to have her mother in law to take care of the kids. So I essentially had an extra day off.

Thursday: We went to the beach in the morning for a few hours and lunch on the beach. The afternoon was very relaxed taking a nap and watching a movie. We also made tiramisu again.

Friday: A5 and I traveled to Cinque Terre and met up with other girls from the program. I really dislike the trains in Italy. They are rarely on time and you never get any information about what is going on. When we finally got to Cinque, the taxi was really easy to get and the Airbnb was very nice. We just relaxed once we got here and waited for the other girls to arrive. We got take away pizza and sat around the table in the bnb getting to know each other and sharing each others experiences while here in Italy. More good experiences than bad which is great to hear. 

Saturday: We tried to get out of the house early so we can get to Monterosso and do the much anticipated boat tour. We still managed to get to the boat tour in Riomaggiore that took us to Monterosso. It wasn’t terrible pricing but if we would have gone a few more towns in to Vernazza we could have gotten the same thing for much cheaper. You live and you learn. For lunch we got fried calamari at Mama Mia in Riomaggiore and it was delicious. For the rest of the day we hung out on the rock beach, swam in the ocean, and jumped off the docks. 

Sunday: This was a very chill day. We just hung out in La Spezia. I wish we could have done a lot more wandering around because there was much to see but we didn’t see it. There was a castle to see with a cool archeological museum with artifacts from pre-Roman times, we didn’t go through it. But there was also a nice public park that we wandered through. I will say I had the best gelato I’ve ever had in Italy in La Spezia. It was run by an older gentlemen and his wife, it is in a little square near a big fountain near the central train station. It is a must try if ever given the chance. I enjoyed Cinque Terre but it is very difficult to get to from Venice. I had to travel almost 6hrs before I got back to my host family.