It's too hot for me to think of a witty title.....

Ciao bambinos!

It's been a few days since my last post so I thought I'd spread a little of the Italian sunshine your way, electronically.

On the agenda today, in no particular order:

Weather

Drinking

My annoying flatmate

Bus drivers

AOB

So, yes, weather. Whoever says Italy is a sunny country has been lucky. Or maybe I've been unlucky. Hot, yes. Sunny, no. After Monday and Tuesdays biblical flooding, it's been alot better. By better, I mean hotter with sun. It's yet to reach a happy balance between rain and boiling sun, so every day is a treat as I either get soaked or bake. It keeps me on my toes I guess. Today is particluarly hot (I broke into a sweat eating my focaccia on the way here). But it's the weekend, so I don't care. Bring on the sun.
Tuesday is St Genova day, so the whole town takes the day off. They have this great (lazy) theory that if you take a Tuesday off, you automatically get the Monday off too. Good times. However, my school is getting round the Tuesday holiday by sending me out of Genova, to Cortemaggiore. Bad times.

I've previously mentioned that they
give large measures of gin.
Here's a photo to prove it
(all gin apart from 3 ice cubes.
My liver quivers at the sight):

Roberto, my annoying flatmate, is increasing his campaign of irritation against me. He now whistles when I'm trying to sleep, doesn't flush the toilet (he doesn't seem to need loo roll either) and is generally his reclusive self. Also, the other day I came home mid-afternoon and was minding my own business planning a class in my room when he came home. He obviously didn't know I was in, as he went into the kitchen, started banging about and proceeded to shout for about 15 minutes. At who or what I didn't know, so I gave him 10 minutes to bugger off and then investigated. Apparently he'd dropped a jar of tomatoey-stuff and it had smashed. Stupid jar!!!! How did I find out, I hear you cry? Well, I cry in response, I saw some big bits of glass lying about and then yesterday found another bit with my foot! I'd swept (he'd neglected this) and thought I'd got everything, but apparently I was mistaken. More bad times. I'm not exactly sure what he does, but he does go out some times. Probably to kill kittens or something.

To compound the fun of yesterday, I had a class first thing out in the countryside. I got the bus out fine, but when I was waiting in the bus stop on the way back I didn't see any buses for 20 mins. An old woman stopped and shouted "Sciopero" at me, to which I wittily shot back: "Non parlo Italiano". She shrugged and continued. Half an hour later I discovered that 'sciopero' actually mean strike, and that the bus drivers had gone on strike while I was teaching. So, I spent the next hour and a half traipsing home in the mid-morning heat and by the time I'd got back to the flat I was not only in a thoroughly bad mood, but also near-drowning in my own sweat. It was a joy to behold (in case you can't tell/don't know me well enough, I'm being deeply sarcastic).

On Tuesday I went to the pub to watch Italy scrape into the quarter finals of the Euro's. Stevie and I went to the 'Tartan Bar' round the corner from his flat, and tartan it quite literally was. They had lots of tacky tartan hanging about, Scottish maps and mementoes, but sadly we were the only Scots there. I did meet an old friend I like to call Guinness, so I spent some time with it. Oh, how I've missed its bitter darkness!

The other day I saw a snake, so took a photo off it. Sadly I don't have the photo with me, but I might put it on later. It was quite exciting. I'll upload more photos next time as this computer's taking fooooooooooooooorever to do it just now.

Until then friends, family and countrymen, I bid you adieu.