Hard to believe we have been in beautiful italy for almost 2 weeks already. It is everything we hoped for & more... well except for the week of continual rain. But if you have to be wet & cold, its a beautiful place for it! Our family have been incredible and filled our tummies with mouth watering food, lent us bags of warm clothes, & toys & helped with everything from mobile phones to playgroups & medicine. After 6 weeks of relaxation in the sun though we suddenly feel busy, busy. A million things to sort & set up. But its all worth it. Adam is 2 weeks into his masters in international development & got a bit of a shock that they expect 40(!!)hours of study a week, more than a full time job. Its not helping that our computer has not worked for 3 weeks. Only a blue screen stating "fatal system error". My technical knowledge is pretty minimal but even I can guess that this is not good! We have remote technical support and 13 (!) people have started to fix it only for it to crash half way through & then we lose them. We have given up in complete frustration & tomorrow are taking to a "friend of a friend" & will pay to have it done. Again demonstrating the incredible generosity of the italians, our landlord's son has lent adam his laptop each day!

This will be day 3 of my Italian course & I am loving it. I get to speak Italian (badly) at least 5 hours a day & I am having a ball. Feel like a flower being watered! Very energetic & extroverted teachers & a small class of 5 from all over the world, 3 japanese & a crazy, fun hungarian nun! Not a single syllable of english spoken as Italian the only common language! Time to get off the bus... More to come!