Author: ana

a busy week, sunny and warm throughout. it feels like summer is here to stay now, no turning back. did a couple of zombie runs, an art class and a couple of chinese classes. stopped to admire the bursts of color that the season brings.

i finished listening to peter hessler’s book about egypt (the buried: an archeology of the egyptian revolution), and what a mammoth it was, the full 17 hours of it. but the result is a book that is about so much more than the revolution — it’s a snapshot of a land at a crossroads, deciding how it’s going to move forward. it didn’t make me want to visit it, but i feel like i understand the country a tiny bit better now.

one of the highlights of the week was the knife grinder that passed on our street, playing his tune on a loud pan flute on sunday morning. i ran out the door with a random kitchen knife to get it sharpened, not because i needed it but just because i want this to continue. sometimes i feel like the world is sliding towards a neutral homogenous mix — same brunch and ramen and third-wave coffee places everywhere. i like those too, but i want the bits that are typically ours to exist as well — i want to hear this whistly sound echoing up and down the street for many years to come.

also, we started watching the murderbot series on apple TV! they only put out one episode per week, which is infuriating (and probably a good way to make people hold on to their subscriptions)… but it’s so good! in my head, i always pictured murderbot as female, but i think alexander skarsgård does a great job portraying it too. i can’t wait for more episodes!

a week in tuscany, working and exploring! we saw many churches and towers, enjoyed walked the streets of these yellow and red tinted towns and slurped many a pasta and pizza and gelato, as one does. ended up visiting exactly zero museums, but both the big cities and the small countryside hamlets were brilliant. and though it rained a bit, there was still plenty of sunshine and warmth to enjoy.

the theme of the holidays seems to have been “lao gan ma” though, as we consumed an inordinate amount of the stuff with all kinds of veggies at home. our friends have been really into asian supermarkets lately, and we visited a few throughout our stay, bringing home lots of strange delights to try.

one of the nice discoveries of the trip was this wafer from montecatini, unbelievably light and crispy and filled with sweet almonds. yum!

the week started with a huge energy blackout on monday. we were at the boy’s parents in the countryside, and spent half of the day without electricity, phone or internet. it felt weird, refreshing and also a bit worrisome — especially the part about not knowing whether the website was up or down and having no way of checking. so we read, listened to the birds, tuned into the news on a battery-powered radio, talked and puttered around uselessly on our laptops, slowly draining their battery.

interestingly, some months ago we had watched a video on practical engineering about re-starting power grids and remembered how complicated it was. so we just waited, grateful for modern infrastructure and all the people working on it, grateful that we were not stuck in elevators and did not need need refrigerated medicine at that moment.

being with laura this week meant we got the opportunity to give her one of the best children books’ discoveries in a long time: rotraut susanne berner’s “wimmelbooks” — books with lots of stories and no words.

it’s been such a joy to discover children’s books through her eyes! i hope she’ll be a reader one day. :)

later in the week, we took a flight to italy, to spend some time with our friends who live here. we picked a place in tuscany up in the hills around pistoia, where there’s quiet all around us and the views are just breathtaking:

we spent the weekend exploring the nearby cities of pistoia and florence, in awe of the many tones of yellow in the buildings, and at the churches and towers at every corner.

while i’m looking forward to exploring tuscany, the best part is just spending time with our friends. the older i get, the more i realize friendships need time together and active nurturing, if they are to be kept — it’s too easy to just be lazy and not keep in contact… and then regret it later. my dream is to find a big place for us to retire with friends when we’re old, living and doing things together, supporting each other, inviting other friends to join us. we’ll see! :)