Io sono felice tornare a casa

"I'm glad to be back home."

It already seems like Italy and everything there is a million miles away. Some of us on the trip had a theory that it would still be June 6 in the "real world" when we got back, but things have obviously been moving along here as well, so there is a lot to catch up on...bills, mail, work, etc. It seems daunting right now, but I will take a break of four days or so to relax and be with family before heading back to LA on Tuesday night.

Our last day at the site was very nice...at the end of the workday the Italians gave us all a small gift...a CD with about 100 pictures of the dig and the entire team, plus the newspaper article that was published on us last week. I haven't had time to look through it all, but look forward to it!

After we finished working for the day, Jenn and Genna and I decided to stop for our last post-digging popsicle on the way home. While we were in the shop it started to rain, and by the time we got out we were caught in the middle of a freak hail storm! Instead of running to the hotel as fast as we could we decided to walk slowly, enjoy our popsicles, and laugh it off. Jenn said it was God advising us to get out while we still could!

Enrico came later to take me to the train station (I left a day earlier than everyone else due to a snafu in the communication processes between me and the Academy when planning the plane tickets). Jenn and Genna rode into town with me for a quick meal and to see me off, which was nice.

I had been worrying for weeks about getting all of my luggage, now with the addition of souvenirs for everyone, from train to train to train to plane, because they were already so heavy that on the way to Ravenna from Rome I had had to rely on Jason and Taco to help me get them from place to place. I was very excited Thursday afternoon, though, to find out that one of the benefits of the month-long manual labor lifestyle I had just been enjoying was that now I could actually lift both of the suitcases, one in each hand! It was definitely good to know that I could handle myself if need be, but I soon found help along the way anyway. A nice young man from Senegal, who had studied medicine in Prague in the Czech Republic and then moved to Italy, helped me get my luggage on the train there in Ravenna, then sat with me and chatted all the way to Ferrara. When we got off the train he helped me find my next platform and move my luggage there, then found me a place to sit and offered to run to a restaurant outside the station (all the shops inside were already closed by this time) to get me some food. I politely declined that last bit, but the company was nice for awhile.

Waiting for the train from Ferrara to Tiburtina was bizarre and unnerving. My train was not scheduled to arrive at the station until 1:40 AM the next day, and there was NO ONE at the station for most of the time I was there (I arrived about 10:00 or so). The platforms of the stations are outside, but the building itself was locked so the only people coming and going were those getting off of trains, but at about midnight that stopped happening and I was basically alone in an empty train station, standing outside by the tracks in the middle of the night. About 1:30 a train pulled in and stopped, on the tracks my train was supposed to pull in on, and some people were leaning out the window smoking cigarettes. I asked them if it was the train to Naples (the terminal stop on my train's line) and they said yes, so I ran to the appropriate care and started heaving my luggage up. A conductor appeared and yelled at me in Italian and threw my bags back down. All he would say in English was "Not this train!" I had no idea what to do, buthe obviously was not going to let me board, so I let the train pull out and stood there wondering if my train was going to come or if that had been it. Mine did finally show up about 30 minutes late, and I made it to my box...I mean bed. I think I slept a little, but I kept waking up very disoriented, as you can imagine.

Once I got to Tiburtina though it was no big problem to get the train to the airport, and from there to get checked in and on the long flight to the US. Customs in New York was a pain as usual, and by the time I got on that plane to TExas I was completely exhausted. What a relief to see Mom and DAd and Nonnie and Foy and Calinda and Billy and William waiting at the luggage carousel! It took the luggage FOREVER to show up, but finally it did and we all went and joined Celia and Kevin at Christina's for some long-awaited Mexican food and some souvenir handouts. Then finally back to Nonnie and Foy's and a nice soft full-sized bed.

I guess that is the end of the adventure, at least for now. Hopefully the friends that I made will be around for a long time, and I would also like to offer my services as an Italian tourguide, so start making plans! Oh, and if anyone thinks the backbreaking, sweaty work sounds appealing, let me know and I will tell Enrico that he can have some more American workers for next season! I just might go myself...

-Candace