Attack of the Zombies

We had class every day this week through Thursday. Papers are coming due, and several students have subjected themselves to the dreaded all-nighter in order to complete their assignments. Cautions from professors that all-nighters result in terrible papers continue, as at home, to fall on deaf ears. Compounding the problem was the insistence of quite a few students to stay up all night on Tuesday to watch election returns, as if by doing so they could somehow influence the outcome. The result was dozens of zombies roaming the hotel on Wednesday and Thursday.

Realizing that our time in Italy will soon come to an end, my family made an afternoon excursion early in the week. On Monday we drove to Castiglion Fiorentino, which lies between Arezzo and Cortona. We had driven by the place the first week of the semester when we went to Cortona and thought that it looked interesting enough to visit. We easily found parking outside the old city walls and spent a couple of hours wandering its streets. It obviously contained a number of shops and such that catered to tourists, but it was equally clear that tourist season there was over. We had the streets mostly to ourselves, and the places we would have liked to see the inside of were closed. (It didn't help that we were there on a Monday, when many things in Tuscany are closed.) The kids were upset that we weren't able to get into the tall tower on top of the hill, but it required advanced booking for visits in the off-season. Still, we enjoyed the town, which commands an impressive view of the surrounding valley in addition to having some nice architecture.

On the way back to Citerna, we had to make a detour to Fighille so Vickie could run into the supermarket and buy diapers for Richard. I certainly won't be sad not to pay European prices for staples when we get home.