Pet-rified in Italy, and The Fattening begins

We are currently in Vedano Olona, Italy, a sleepy little town of about 1,000 people approximately forty kilometers outside of Milan. We are staying with Rowan’s former host family.

We arrived here after a fifteen-hour bus ride. I had to store my backpack beneath the bus because it is a backpack; other guys carried on much larger European man purses.

This is Rowan's host brother.

None of the men in Italy wear shirts. This is a completely true yet little known fact.

Here in Vedano Olona, everyone has been very helpful and friendly, though they may be trying to fatten us up for the slaughter.

The grandma cooked for us right away when we arrived in town. We had a pasta salad with olives, tomatoes, basil, tuna, egg, prosciutto, and sausage. It was good, so I had seconds. Then I was informed that we had the meat course next, despite all of the meat in the pasta. I ate carpaccio for the first time. I was full, but then they brought out fruit. That was also good, so I ate quite a bit. Then I was informed that there was also tiramisu. After all of this, the grandma informed me that I don’t eat enough.

We then went to a soccer game. One of the players was Rowan's host sister's boyfriend. And yes, that is a cornfield beyond the fence. Just like Wisconsin, sort of.

That evening for dinner, we went out for some real Italian pizza. Buonissimo!

I’ve been trying to learn some Italian so that I appear less like an ignorant oafish foreigner. Someone at the house has an introduction-to-Spanish book that came with a magazine. The book teaches Italians to speak Spanish, so I’ve been trying to reverse-engineer some knowledge of Italian from the Spanish book. This process would probably be more effective if my Spanish was better.

The family has a litter of seven five-week-old Labrador puppies.

They are melt-your-heart cute, especially the one they call Bianchina, Italian for “little white one.” She's somewhere in this pile.

They also have two cats. One is named Chipi, and the other Palina, Italian for “little ball.” Apparently she was fatter when she was younger. She likes sleeping in front of the computer monitor for some reason.

The animals are filling the pet void we were feeling in Barcelona.

The weather is cooler than in Spain, which is nice because I’ve had to start wearing long pants. In the evenings, the air is filled with tiny little bugs that bite like giant bugs. My legs are covered with painful wounds.

They don’t bite our arms, and for some reason only seem to like my left leg. Rowan has been bitten less, though her bites are just as painful.

We went to check out the local church the other day. It is where Rowan’s host parents got married, and it has been recently renovated. They have replaced sections of the floor with glass panels so that visitors can look down into the crypts beneath the church.

We will stay here in Italy until we wear out our welcome or we get deported, and will then figure out the next part of our plan. It appears that Indonesia is still a month away.

I will leave you with one last puppy pic (puppy in Italian is "canelina"). Arrivederci!