Shopping and Exploring

Jonathan took many of the students into the closest town, Città di Castello, on Thursday and Friday for shopping. There is a Centro Commerciale (essentially a small mall) there containing a grocery store and an electronics shop. The two most popular items among the students were snack foods and alarm clocks. We also went to a store in a different location specializing in baby stuff, where we got a car seat for Richard and a booster seat for William. I followed Jonathan in one of the program's rented cars, and although it was my first time to drive in Italy, everyone escaped unscathed.

The students have enjoyed getting to know the Citerna residents. At the very top of the hill is an open area that was once part of the city's fortress; it is a popular hangout for the town's teenagers. From the first evening we arrived, the students went up there with their Italian phrasebooks and started trying to communicate. Everyone seems to be having a lot of fun with it. Yesterday I chatted with Linda, who is 15, and discovered she went to school in Sansepolcro, a town across the valley from Citerna. Citerna is too small to have its own school, but I was a bit surprised to find she goes to Sansepolcro, which is in Tuscany, when Citerna is in Umbria, a different district.

Yesterday, I took the family out for the first time in the station wagon that has been rented for our use this semester. We went to Monterchi, another small town on a little hill in the valley south of Citerna. There are some great views from there as well; this photo is a view of Citerna looking up from the church at the top of Monterchi. We also visited a small museum housing the "Madonna del Parto," a fresco by Piero della Francesca, the region's most famous Renaissance artist.

Today we have a shortened class schedule because we leave at 4:00 p.m. to visit Cortona, another hill town in the region. I hope to post some pictures from there after our return this evening.