Pleasant Suprise

Tonight Jared and I spent our evening eating some final gelato and pizza and then sitting by the sea and watching the waves and two little boys picking up wet rocks and putting them into their mouths to taste the salt on their tongues. We followed that up with coming back to the room and watching a movie (Definitely, Maybe… It’s a good one) procrastinating every bit of packing that needs to be done. Again. It’s kind of hard saying goodbye to this place when it has been a place of much-needed comfort, and also it is the place where we came to know that life as we know it will be changing.

Do you remember that story about the crazy bugs at the bungalow our first night in Cecina? Well, if you remember correctly you will remember how freaked out I was and how I forgot to grab even a change of clothes so I went to breakfast in my pajamas. Well, consider how extremely tired and stressed we were and then the waking up in a beautiful stone cottage surrounded by green and mountains and vineyards out the window. Now calculate in the fact that we had hours to kill there with no means of transportation until Rosella and Nadio came to get us at 3 PM. Now remember that I was much too tired and scared of the bugs to remember a change of clothes let alone anything else. I really want to keep this “G” rated, so let’s do:

A + B = C.

Being flustered and remembering to bring NOTHING + waking up in an extremely romantic place with lots of time on our hands = I’M PREGNANT!

I know, it was a shock for us too. I have really been wanting to blog about this, but I also have been doing the whole “Is it too early for us to let everyone know?” question in my head. We decided that it isn’t. Plus, the story is just waaaayyy too good. I just have to make a blog while it is fresh in my mind.

So a week or two after the mysterious, romantic cottage I was looking online at my ovulation schedule so that Jared and I could be certain to not get pregnant in the year to come and I glanced at the month of May, only to realize that the evening spent in the cottage was the day in May that I was most likely to get pregnant. At this point I could just see God laughing about it. We try so hard to make our own plans work out. God sent us bugs and stress and then a romantic afternoon all to wipe our plans out.

As you can imagine, for the next week or so I was anxious to see if I would be “late” and also trying really hard not to think things one way or the other. I actually, was extremely excited at the prospect that I might be pregnant, but also worried a little because it was not at all what we had planned. After all, we are in Italy with no home of our own to come back to. Our savings is basically non-existent, and the last time I put on a baby diaper I put it on backwards. True story.

As the week progressed I began realizing that I felt pregnant. Not really sure what triggers that in a woman, but sometimes we just know, I think. I eventually took a pregnancy test, and then another the next day but both positives were so faint that I just wouldn’t let myself believe it. Jared and I went out for a celebration dinner and we called it our “could possibly be pregnant dinner”. I promised myself that I would not believe it until I had a definite positive. Every time I wanted to talk about it, I would try as hard as possible (sometimes failing) to change the subject in my brain. I waited until May 25^th (Jared’s birthday) and took the third, and final test. I was so excited that I woke up three hours before I normally do just to take the test. Anyway, this one was undeniably positive with two bright pink lines. Happy Birthday, Jared!

From this point on we have been accepting the idea and coming to love the little sesame seed of a baby in my tummy. What a pleasant surprise! We are grateful that this happened at a late stage in our trip because had it happened any earlier I would have had to see a doctor in Europe. Luckily, I come home in about 5 weeks which allows me to wait until we get back to go. I am hoping and praying that for now that God’s protection would be all around and that everything will go smoothly and I will feel well while we finish our travels. We are also accepting prayers! :)

As much as I would like to write more and more about it because it happens to kind of consume all of my thoughts lately, I absolutely need to continue packing and getting responsible adult stuff done like work! As you can see, Cecina and the surrounding Tuscan hills will always have a very special, and comical place in our memories. Caio!

Living the Good Life

I haven’t updated this blog in a while because I have had nothing too crazy to write about. Jared and I have our daily routine of waking up whenever we want to, eating a long breakfast on the patio and then working or going to the beach. Sometimes we ride our bicycles into the city or I go on a run in the evening. Basically, we are just really enjoying the fact that we have some sort of a home. We eat out about once a week, normally at a pizzeria. They are the cheapest, plus we both love the pizza. Sometimes I eat my whole pizza… We watch the sky every night as the sun sets. It normally is a blaze of pink and oranges. We drink a lot of coffee here, probably much more than what is healthy. The weather here may be just about perfect. Normally sunny, slight breeze, 70s. Last night we rented PS I Love You on itunes and it really made me long for Ireland. It’s strange missing Ireland and Danville all at once. Both feel a little bit like home.

I have been picking up on some Italian words, but pretty much I just say “Caio!” to everything. Jared makes fun of me for it. We are getting to know the owners of the hotel pretty well because we have to go downstairs to purchase internet vouchers every day. They have started doing a buy one get one free kind of thing. That lightens the load for us a little bit. It’s really sweet. The father and son who own the hotel are Bruno and Maximiliano, which I think are both incredibly Italian names.

Last weekend we rented a moped and drove it all along the Tuscan coast and also along the mountains. We started our journey on Saturday. We had walked 4 miles to the moped rental place to pick up the moped and we were so excited. We started going and all was well. After about 15 minutes of driving Jared ran us into a swarm of bees. There was really nothing he could do about it since he couldn’t swerve to miss them due to oncoming traffic. One minute we are driving, the next minute tons of bugs are squished all over our helmets and clothes. We pulled over to see that they were bees. We flicked multiple bees off of our jeans and our shirts. Poor Jared had bug guts all over the front of him. I was lucky enough to just have them on my helmet and from the knee down on my jeans since he was blocking the majority of my body. After ridding ourselves of the bee-bodies we were both spotted with honey and guts, so we turned the moped around and went back to our apartment to change. This happening in combination with our first night in Cecina has lead me to believe that there are more evil bugs in Italy than anywhere else.

Our two days with the moped were so fun and beautiful. We saw wineries and rolling green mountains to one side and then I would look to the other side and see stunning cliffs dropping off to the four-shades-of-blue ocean. We drove North up the coast to Livorno for a day. They have streets like Venice that are made of water. Not as many, of course, but it is pretty! We actually decided not to go to Venice because of finances, so that is about as close as we are going to get. The second day we had the moped (Sunday) it rained until 1, which was depressing. When the rain stopped, we drove South an also East into the hills which I think I liked better than the day West. I love the tall, skinny trees, the mountains, and the grape vines around every turn. When we headed home we noticed more rain coming and just a few minutes after we got back from our day trip the rain started again. We got lucky! Needless to say, Jared and I had a great time. The bees were gross (and scary because I am slightly allergic) and my back was aching a little bit by the end of each day, but we didn’t get lost and the bees didn’t sting us. It was totally worth it considering everything that we had the opportunity to see.

We leave Cecina in 12 days and head to Florence for a week. We are staying with a lady who has a dog! She lives right outside of Florence just a few minutes from a winery. We are excited for that. Mostly though, we are counting down the days until we return home! We have like, what... 45 days??!!

Our Second Honeymoon

Normally I spend a few days figuring out what I am going to write my blog about. This time I knew what I was going to write about, I just spent a few days procrastinating it. Writing my posts has become one of those things that I put on my to-do list and that sits there staring at me until I get a moment of free time that isn’t devoted to anything other than blog. This happens to be one of those moments.

I’ll pick up where I left off. The bugs were dead and we were being moved to another house. As always, there was a huge language barrier, so we weren’t exactly sure what was going on. They kept saying something about “California” which was confusing. Turns out, they took us to a town called “California” which is 5 kilometers away from Cecina. They dropped us off at a tiny house, even smaller than the bungalow, which was attached to another house where an Italian family was living. We had hardly any space and we were also basically living with another family. We would typically be fine with that sort of thing, but we had paid extra to have our own place for a month with an acre and a swimming pool close to the beach and within a city. They took us 5 km outside of the city (5 km further away from the coast) and took away our spacious yard, and worst, any and all internet access. It was about 5 PM when they dropped us off at the tiny house in California, and we had about 8 hours to kill until we could fall asleep. After about 30 minutes we realized that there was no chance of our USB picking up any internet signal and that we would not be able to work. We found different ways to fill our time that night. I made dinner, we ate slowly. We played cards, listened to music, talked, gave massages, took long showers, painted nails (well, just me), etc. It was kind of nice to have no way of getting anywhere and no internet signal, but obviously internet is vital to our lives so we had to figure out an alternative, and with no internet signal we could not look up other options. We deeply considered buying plane tickets home, but realized what a waste of money that would be for us since we already have already purchased our tickets home for July 2nd and made that a last resort. We talked about calling Thomas and going back to Switzerland for a while. We ended up deciding that moving would be much too stressful and we would try everything possible to stay in Cecina.

We designed a plan and as soon as we woke up we put it into action. We rode our bikes into the tourist office where Sandra (Rosella’s translator friend) works and talked to her about what we may be able to do. She offered us information on internet and suggested that we ride our bikes into the city every day, but round trip that is 8 miles every day on a bicycle. Plus, we didn’t know of any internet cafes (yet). The café that advertised internet didn’t actually have internet, which was frustrating. Sandra also said she would look into the hotels in the area and find out if they offered internet and reasonable prices. We continued on our bikes into the center of Cecina and ran smack-dab into a café that actually does have internet! We were starting to get worried about not getting our work done, but God provided, as he always does. We sat there for part of the day and worked and then made our way back to Sandra who had found us an alternative place to live in Cecina Mare (on the coast of Cecina) in a studio apartment at a resort. She said she would let Rosella know and that we could cancel our reservation with them and get the refund for the days we did not stay, which seemed fine by us. She said she would call Rosella. I asked if Rosella could drop us at the resort since we had no car and two big suitcases, and Sandra said it should be no problem. We were supposed to meet Rosella at the house in an hour, but she showed up an hour late. I tried asking her in the little bit of Italian that I know and with some hand motions if she was okay with dropping us off in Cecina Mare (after all she did put us in a bug-ridden house with a terrible internet signal that she promised would be good, and then took us even further away from the city and put us in a tiny house with absolutely no internet) at our resort. She looked at me and rolled her eyes and then went off on me in Italian. The only thing I understood was "Mama Mia!" I guess she was really stressed from the whole situation, but somehow she had made it out in her mind that it was our fault. I don’t think she ever really understood that if we don’t have internet we would lose our jobs. I think she just thought we were high-maintenance Americans. Anyway, I offered to call a taxi, not even sure if Cecina had taxis, but she shook her head and said she would take us.

The drive there was completely awkward. The only thing she said was that the internet in Cecina Mare wouldn’t be any better than in California. I guess I can understand her frustration. She just lost a month’s worth of business. Hopefully she can learn from the situation to better her future service to renters. After we unloaded our suitcases at the door of Hotel Silioni I gave her a hug and a sincere apology for the inconvenience that we were and then she drove away. We went in and negotiated a price with the owner and took our bags up to our apartment. It has an awesome shower with never-ending streams of hot water, a kitchen, a king size bed with down pillows, and a balcony. It is also about a 5 minute walk down the stairs and across the street to the ocean. Most importantly, it has high-speed, wireless internet! We are feeling a bit spoiled this month.

Jared and I really lucked-out with the whole situation. Crazy bugs attacked us, and we had a stressful couple of days, but it lead us to renting an ocean-side apartment at a resort for nearly the same price. We have been working on the balcony of the apartment with our laptops and then spending all of our other free time walking on the sandy beaches, eating gelato and pasta, and riding our complimentary bicycles (that came with the room) all throughout the city. The weather here has been in the 70s and 80s with constant sunshine and a light breeze. The evenings are comfortable, and perfect for taking walks. The sunsets are bright colors and completely stunning. The city is decently small with lots of restaurants, 2 grocery stores, multiple beachwear shops and souvenir shops, and bike paths along all of the roads. There are 4 gelato shops on one block! We are both having a hard time realizing that we will be spending an entire month here. We agree that it feels like a second honeymoon, only it is going to last for 22 more days!

We went to the beach today and I listened to my audio book on my kindle while Jared listened to his ipod and we watched the sail boats and the people while getting a tan. Our month of May is most likely going to be blissful. I think it will be a much-needed, out of the city, break from being so busy and moving around all the time. I actually got to unpack my clothes and hang them in a closet and know that I have an entire month before I will have to stuff them back in my suitcase! What a comfort. Also, I have some pretty impressive tan lines already. Jared’s are probably better than mine, though… of course.

I am going to go make dinner now. Fried potatoes and chicken tenders. So American. We need some America in our lives. It’s strange that we are spending so much money and time to see all of these places only to realize that the place we are most excited to get to is Danville, IL. Every time we talk about it I get a longing in the pit of my stomach for my family and for Lily and for Buffalo Wild Wings (LOL), and for multiple other little comforts that I won’t mention now. I am finding that the biggest change this trip has made in me is that is has made me look at Danville in a completely different light. It’s not so bad after all.

Utter Exhaustion

So I guess I will start this post with the leaving of Switzerland and coming to Italy. Leaving Thomas was pretty sad for us. It measures even with leaving Katherine and her family in Ireland. We tried to pay him back for all that he did for us with as much money as we could possibly afford to give him, and he looked at it and said “this is way too much” and gave us 40 Swiss francs back. I tried to explain that we were leaving Switzerland and that we didn’t need CHF because we couldn’t spend it elsewhere (which was my plan because I knew he would have to take it if it was in Swiss currency) but he knew we were going to be spending the day in Zurich and so he gave us the money to spend on ourselves for the day. On the way to the train station Thomas took us to McDonald’s, which he calls Micky Dicky’s (and now he has Jared calling it that) for an American breakfast. Turns out they don’t serve breakfast at McDonald’s in Switzerland because when they tried no one came! So we had burgers and fries at 9 am, which was funny. Thomas treated us, as usual. McDonald’s costs about $12-$15 per person in Switzerland. Can you imagine?

When we left Thomas at the train station we left with a promise to keep in touch. If he ever comes to the Midwest he knows he will have a place to stay. He left us a review on airbnb.com that was so kind. It was kind of like leaving family when we left. After our goodbyes, Jared and I locked our suitcases away in a suitcase locker (the Swiss are so efficient) and then wandered around Zurich for a couple of hours before our train departed. We had some money to spend, so we did buy a couple of souvenirs for our family (Meredith!) and then I bought myself a few things as well 0:-), and Jared was so selfless and bought himself nothing. It was so fun to have money that we HAD to spend. We have been so stressed financially the last two months that it was the nicest gift ever for Thomas to give us money that we had to spend in Zurich.

The train ride from Zurich to Milano was 4 hours long and it was a beautiful ride. We went through the Alps, which we were really dying to see, and they were certainly beautiful. I can’t really describe them with words, so I am not even going to try. We arrived in Milano with 15 euros plus change and no ATM in sight. We looked for one with no luck. We had to catch a taxi, so not having much cash was a bad thing (when isn’t it?). The Italians are really aggressive when it comes to getting a taxi so even though we were there first we had to wait for about 10 taxis to go by until I realized that I had to be aggressive and fight for the taxi. Our taxi pulled up and a man who had just walked out of the train station tried to run in front of me and grab it, but I wasn’t having that, so I just cut him off and opened the passenger side of the taxi car. We won. I asked the taxi driver how much it would cost to get to our address and he said somewhere between 20 and 25 euros. Jared looked at me like “what are we going to do” and I said “let’s just get in”. I had just been reading about how the rich rarely have to rely on God because we have everything we need. I said a prayer in that moment that the taxi drive would miraculously cost less than 20 euros. We arrived at our apartment with a 13 euro total. Wow.

Milano was a short stay. We were there three nights, 4 days. 2 of the days were travel days. The other two we spent a lot of time working. On Saturday we went out and explored the city some. We saw a beautiful cathedral and had some really awkward language barrier moments, specifically at a restaurant. I also pet a man’s dog without asking (because I thought he wouldn’t understand English) and he turned to me and said in plain English “never pet a dog in Italy without asking”. Then he talked to us for 30 minutes or so about all of the languages he knew, how much his apartment was worth, how we pronounce Illinois wrong, etc. He tried talking to me in French and I said “sorry, I don’t speak French” and he said “And you went to France? Psh”. He was really full of himself and it took every ounce of self-control for me to not just walk off. All the while as he was talking to us multiple people came by and pet his dog without asking and he didn’t scold them. He ended the conversation asking us if the Italians were the most hospitable because he believed they were and we answered with “the Irish are” which he didn’t like too much. Anyway, that was one of our first experiences with an Italian. It was culturally interesting. The rest of the Italians we have met have been perfectly wonderful, except for one man on the train ride from Milano to Cecina who got really annoyed when I didn’t speak Italian. It makes me feel terrible to not be able to communicate with these people. I am going to try to learn the basics while we are here for 6 weeks!

Upon arriving in Cecina our landlady, Rosella, met us at the train station with her husband Nadio and a translator friend of theirs who did all of the communicating. Her name is Sondra. They were all completely lovely. The took us to our bungalow outside of Cecina down a long gravel road. The property is adorable. It is completely enclosed in stone walls with pathways of stepping stones throughout (covered in slimy snails that we kept stepping on which made me feel so sad). There is a large swimming pool, two bicycles for us to use, a ping pong table, a brick oven and outdoor pizza kitchen (!!!), a barbeque, and multiple terraces with vines and tables stationed all over the acre. The bungalow consists of three rooms: bedroom, bathroom, kitchen. It is tiny and cozy. It seemed perfectly adorable. The three left us at 1 AM (our train got in at midnight) and we laid down to go to sleep. This is where it gets juicy. Literally, from all the bugs that we squashed.

Jared was fast asleep when I noticed that crawling on the night light beside the bed were 3 or four flying bugs. I flicked them off the light and then looked over and there were 7 or so. Then I looked to my right and there were two bugs crawling on Jared’s leg. I smacked them dead, which woke Jared up (grumpy). I started to freak out as I looked around the room and noticed that there were probably 15 visible bugs just in the bedroom. Jared was annoyed and said “Ashton, they are just bugs. You sleep with bugs all the time”, which is true, but I had this overwhelming fear in the pit of my stomach and I just couldn’t sleep. I decided to take a shower to make the bug-crawling-all-over-me feeling go away. I went into the bathroom and on the floor were a couple of ants. I was a big girl and wadded them up in toilet paper and flushed them down the toilet. I heard a bug flying around the light so I looked up at the ceiling and there were bugs crawling all over the light and in the corners of the room. I ran out of the bathroom screaming and Jared sat up and said “What is going on??” in a very annoyed tone. The fear mixed with his annoyance made me burst into tears and exclaim that I wanted to go home (like a child). The only light in the room was the night light so he couldn’t see what I had seen in the corners of the bathroom or on the wall of the room. I curled up in a tiny ball on our bed and Jared held me while I cried. I think I was having a full blown panic attack because I couldn’t breathe. I had just started to settle down when Jared jumped up and swiped a bug off of his face (which was when he started taking it seriously). We flipped on the lights, revealing the room for the first time since we had laid down. In all of the corners and along the windows were bugs: hundreds of them, and they could fly. I sat up in the bed and looked around. There were bugs on the covers, crawling on my clothes, on the floor, and in my suitcase. I then really started freaking out. Jared made me stare at the pillow and stop looking around because when I did I would start getting chills and having a hard time breathing. I know it sounds so silly, but I felt like we had no escape. I finally pulled myself together and called our Sondra who called Rosella and Nadio at 3:30 AM. They got out of bed, came over, and were shocked. They brought bug killer and they started spraying it everywhere and on everything killing off these crazy flying ants. I felt so helpless because I couldn’t help at all because of my fear. 20 minutes later when they were dead and everything in the room was covered with little black speckles they explained in Italian that we were going somewhere else to spend the night. We weren’t really sure what we going on, but we got in the car. We drove for 20 minutes down a really windy road at really fast speeds (Nadio drives like a race car driver) and arrived in a tiny village. Italians. It was about 5 AM when we arrived (still no sleep) and Nadio and Rosella left and we could finally crash. They lit us a fire in the fireplace and Jared and I snuggled up and went to sleep bug-free.

The cottage that we stayed in last night was absolutely perfect. Too bad there is an even worse internet signal there and we can’t stay there! We woke up in the morning and looked out the window at the view that the night hid from us. Rolling green Tuscan hills and tall skinny trees lined the horizon. Not a house or a road in sight. To the right of the house was a little village. Jared and I went out to the village to find some breakfast and as we were walking through the cobblestone streets and looking around at all of the stone cottages with tiny doors and vines winding around them and I felt like I was in a movie called “Crazy Bugs Chase Young Couple into the Enchanted Tuscan Village”. It was so dreamy and romantic despite the crazy bug part. The cottage is literally exactly what you would see in a chick flick based in Italy. I really wish I had remembered to grab my camera, but I was much too eager to get away from the crazy ants. I didn’t even remember my toothbrush. I actually didn’t remember a change of clothes… so I wore my pajamas to breakfast today. Whatever… they’ll never see me again, and a girl’s gotta eat!

So now we are back at the ant house. They were planning on having us stay here, but Jared and I found more ants crawling in despite the bug spray and extra caulking around the windows. We pointed it out and they decided to move us again. I have no idea where we are going, but Rosella is going to be here in 10 minutes to pick us up. I shaked the dead bugs out of my clothes and packed them up again. We are beginning to wonder if we will ever catch a break. At least God never changes. He is always good. Jared is begging me to play one game of ping-pong before we have to leave the bungalow, so I am going to end my post here. Caio!