It's Closing Time

Well, I am officially done with classes. On Friday evening, the school closed shop for (yet another) two-week vacation. The students will come back in May, but my contract is up and I am hitting the road. My first stop is Ireland. I have wanted to go to Ireland for a long time. Friendly people, rocky coastlines, green pastures, pubs on every corner with a delicious pint of Guinness waiting - just sounds like my kind of place ya know. I am staying with some people through courchsurfing.org, a networking site of travelers willing to share their homes for free. I fell in love with this site after a great experience in Torino, Italy. Speaking of which, I need to recap that....

Living less than an hour from the Italian border, it seemed silly to me that I would spend a schoolyear here and not hop over to say "Ciao!" to my neighbors. So I talked my friend Katie into roadtripping with me. Adventure ensued. After some crazy bouchon (the French word for traffic - it also means cork), we made it through the Mont Blanc Tunnel which is a ridiculous 11km long (!) and drove through some lovely Italian countryside. Every 30 kilometers or so, some ancient fortress on a hill seemed to appear our of the 15th century. It was a little bit like time traveling.

The rumor that Italian drivers are crazy is no exaggeration. Anyone who has driven with me knows I am too so I fit right in. After some serious detours driving around the city of Torino, we arrived at our destination to meet our gracious host Francesco. A guy in his late 20's, he lives in a small studio pretty close to the center of town, and just a couple blocks from a huge park. People were reading, playing frisbee, sunbathing, and of course kickingback with a coffee or beer like this guy in the pic. For the brief 24 hours we were there, we did nothing super special in Torino, but ate plenty of gelto and pizza. A place called Grom makes organic gelato that's pretty out of this world. My favorite flavor was Salted Caramel.

On Sunday, Francesco lent us old bikes that we rode around the city, going nowhere in particular. That Sunday was Palm Sunday and the palms were GIANT. Take a look at that pic below. I will have more posts of course about my thoughts about leaving France (it's a grand and emotional topic), but for now I'll just say Happy belated Easter to all you Christians. Here's a fun little jam about JC: "Jesus Was a Crossmaker" by Judee Sill