Venice - August 05, 2005

Hi everyone,

Sort of a quiet week here. Enjoying not having to wrack my brain at school. Did some maintenance around the apartment - cleaned out the showerhead so water will come out, and cleaned out one gas burner that wouldn't light.

Saw a water ambulance in action. I was walking down the fondamenta when a man coming towards me appeared to be in distress. He wobbled, then fell, hitting his head on the pavement. He appeared to have a seizure. A nearby pharmacist administered first aid, then the ambulance and the EMTs took over. They loaded him into the ambulance and took him off. Their stretchers are wooden chairs with wheels and handles, and stirrups to cradle the feet.

Christine, there are three times as many pigeons in St. Mark's square now as last year. It was really gross.

Wednesday I did a really dumb thing. There is a broken chair in the apartment that I put on top of some shelving to get it out of the way. (I don't have extra room to put things.) The shelves are next to a window that opens inward, not up and down. Well, around noon it started raining and blowing very hard, so I ran to the window and slammed it closed, forgetting that I had tied the window to the chair to prevent the breezes from closing it. The chair came crashing down on my face, and knocking my glasses off. They didn't break but were bent badly. My cheek got a little scratched, but not bruised, just real red. It took until today to find an optical shop with the facilities to straighten them out. They still need a little adjustment, and I have until tomorrow evening to go back for some fine tuning. Then they close for vacation for two weeks.

I'm still trying to find out what makes liver and onions "Venetian Style". My teacher said that the onions are sauteed first, then removed from the pan, then the liver is sauteed. A waitress said it's the polenta, but the polenta she served was a 1" cube, hardly worth bothering with.

With my windows looking out onto the bridge and the fondamenta beyond it, I'm fascinated with the morning activities. The meat man opens around six and spends the next half hour dusting inside and out, washing the pavement in front of his store and lowering his awning. His supplier comes around seven. The street sweepers are out by 6:30 the garbage man by 8:45. The construction guys in the campo to my bedroom side are on the job by 7 am. The lady across the bridge tends her flowers, and the lady next to her has swept her apartment by 7:00. The supply boats also travel back and forth all morning on the canal in front of me.

That's it for now.

Mom, Grandma, Lynanne