Civitanova, Marche

Good afternoon everyone. Hope you are all doing well. Today I find myself after a day full of class, fairly tired. I haven't been sleeping the whole night through, so I'm experimenting tonight. I'm thinking about staying up as late as I can and then sleeping in tomorrow. If you can believe it, I might be getting too much sleep. Or the lack of a fan might also be the problem. But moving on from my sleep deprivation....

This past weekend our group took a tour to the city of Civitanova, slightly south-east of us. We began our morning on a train. There we sat and talked about the city that we were about to encounter with the sun blazing in the windows. Grant it - it's January, so it's still slightly cold but still beautiful and enjoyable. When we arrived at the train station, we got off and began our tour around the city. We follow Filiberto around as he told us the most unique details of every building that we passed. He finally lead us to the Adriatic Sea. I now actually believe that we are close to the water. We have been told that we can see the sea on a clear day...but so far...no luck. Anyways, it was really pretty and being that close to something that I have been learning about since the 4th grade was almost overwhelming. However, when we saw the sea, we also smelled it. Civitanova is a sea port and a fishing hot spot for Italy. Most of the fresh sea food for Italy comes from that port, which is cool, but how interesting can fish really be? We then learned everything there is to know every kind of fish. We followed a man around to all the docks, fishing boats, net-fixing-places, etc. We finally went into the coldest room I have ever had to be in for a long period of time (not including Mr. Hitchcock's classroom). It literally was like "Let's Make a Deal" - the fishermen put there stock of fish on a moving conveyer belt, then people bid on the fish and then run down and purchase the fish. Crazy...seriously only crazy people would do this....it's like the stock market...but with fish.

After we left that area, we went to the local Saturday market. They have tons of vendors that close off streets and sell dresses, shoes, clothing, tablecloths, toys, wooden things, meat, cheese, anything - they got it. I almost bought something, but then I decided to save my money and get a cappuccino. Soon after we headed to lunch at a local restaurant and had a 5 course meal that took 3 hours to finish. Let me tell you something. That was the freshest sea food that I have had - ever. It was really fun too because not only did we get to have really good food, we also began our filming for our documentary class (which by the way, I got a really sweet shot of spaghetti leaving the kitchen...thank you). After lunch ended, Whit, Dom, Kim (his wife) and I headed to this really cute chocolate shop and bought ....chocolate. It was amazing. I don't know what it is, but everything seems to taste better here. Soon after, we hopped the train back to Macerata, and I ended the night going over to Kasey's house, watching the Office, and hitting up Caffe Central with the group.

Overall it was so much fun and I really hope that I can go back soon. Again, I hope all of you are doing well and I love hearing from all of you. Keep me posted on everything that is happening in your lives....I miss all of you tons!

Love,
Audrey