July

So I have not done a post in a really long time. There has been a lot going on but just in random ways. Amanda's mom was here for two weeks which was a lot of fun. They got to do a lot of stuff which included me part of the time. Sometimes I had appointments with students and other times I had to watch Grant. It was good in some ways to be a part-time tourist in the land that we live since we do not always get to do it and never have an excuse.

I have been spending a lot of time with a lot of the summer project contacts like Emmanuele, Gaetano, and Giuseppe. Also some of my friends before the summer Andrea, Salvatore, among others. It is exam time in Salerno so a lot of people go MIA or set meetings up, having good intentions, and then cancel because they really have to study. The way school works here is you take all your classes for the year and then you take exams mostly in the summer (June, July, some of August because it is vacation month, and September). You can also take exams all different times of the year, but a lot of people take 2-5 of their 6-8 for the year in the summer.

The summer is a hard time for us also because of the heat and we do not have an air conditioner. Many people in Italy do not believe in air conditioning and they believe it can be expensive for your electricity. We are on the ground floor of our apartment building and there is no direct sunlight, but still without a breeze it can get hot.

We are almost done with our July update which will explain better where we are at.