Well, I'm back in Turin. Back in a real house, where the people are familiar, the rooms and private, the beds are single storied, and the showers aren't filled with the hair of strangers. Altough it was sad to leave London, I'm glad that my hostel hopping is finally over. I had a real dinner tonight (as opposed to the wedges and tom sauce that I've had every other night in Londonin the interests of saving money - they were only £2.50) and now am settled down for...

Christmas is almost over for another year, and it was definitely the hardest one I've ever had. There was the obvious homesickness and sadness as I imagined all of my family sitting around in the sun on the deck sipping champagne and spitting cherry stones at a certain someone who cannot be named (the annual Hard Family tradition), coupled with significant lethargy from waking up late and going to bed early and not really doing anything in between. Plus, the boys...

I'm back in Turin, as of last night. It was weirdly sad leaving Rome (I even cried a bit in the taxt as we drove past the forum), but I'm going to be back there next week so I don't have long to wait! I haven't blogged in a while, because I ran out of big things that were manageable enough to see. I wanted to go to the Villa Borghese and the Vatican, but I figured that I should save those for Topdeck and the other things (like a dat trip to Tivoli) I was too ner...

Skiing was fabulous. We went to a mountain village and skifield called Bardonnecchia which, because it was Friday and so people were working or at school, was basically empty. You would ski down and maybe see thirty people maximum as you went. There were two chairlifts on our part of the field - the lower one was a four person one, and the upper one sat two people. I was skiing with Amedeo and the boys from the top chair, but then we got to the bottom of that cha...

After the party I slept until noon, and didn't get dressed all day. It was a public holiday to mark the immaculate conception (apparently Mery's gestation period was only two weeks, so there's more than miracle going on!), so the boys were off school and Amedeo didn't have work. Instead, we all just mooched around the house being blobby. Today, Meredith and I set out bright and early for Stupenigi, a big pretty building thing (maybe a church again?) which is abo...