A Care Package from Ginnie

A few weeks ago, Bob's cousin Ginnie wrote in our blog and asked if there was anything we missed, besides the people. I had to think about that for a while and then came up with a list of a few things. A few days ago a package arrived at our door and since we are expecting a couple of packages of books that we left behind for Jessica and our friends John and Sally to send, it didn't surprise us. Until we noticed that it wasn't from either of them at all, but from Ginnie! She had taken my little list of "Things Missed" and put a package together for us. Upon opening it we found a package of Oreos, a box of Hostess Cupcakes, a box of crackers (not actually on the list, but ones she remembered we liked when we visited her house), a jar of grape jam and two boxes of zip lock bags! We laughed very hard to see all these sweet things lovingly assembled and of course tore open the box of Hostess cupcakes and ate a few straightaway! I'm hording the Oreos and rationing them so they don't disappear too quickly and enjoying them very much. The cupcakes are gone! The grape jam is waiting to be opened but I know I will enjoy it very much. As I said, here in Italy they aren't wasting their grapes making jam - and the selection of other fruit marmalades and jams is quite vast and I am sampling them all.

A funny thing with the zip locks bags also - I wrote about the day with the ExPats, wl Kellee, who picked us up also read about the things I missed and when she picked us up she gave us a big bunch of them which she had and was willing to share! (This being before the package arrived so I happily accepted) We now have enough bags to last us quite some time.

(A little aside - a helicopter just passed overheard. That is a sound we do not hear very often here. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the preparations for UmbriaJazz, the jazz festival they are busy setting up stages for in centro, which begins tomorrow. There is a small airport just outside Perugia but the planes do not fly over the city and we only occasionally hear a jet fly overhead - way up high. It is a sound I do not miss. Living in Phoenix, near the airport, there were planes flying over our house all the time. And helicopters, mostly at night and early mornings cruising over the freeway and flying to and from the hospitals nearby also. So the occasion of a plane or helicopter is quite unusual and I hope you don't mind my mentioning. Also absent around our apartment and palazzo is the sound of traffic. We live, as I have told you, at the highest point in the city and up a road from a parking lot in an area that is not accessible to cars. So there are no traffic noises. Apart from the sound of human voices, the occasional dog barking, bird chirping and bells ringing, it is very quiet here. The "street" Via dell'Aquila, that runs just outside our gate is actually a flight of stone steps, the other side of which are other palazzi with apartments, filled with people, whose voices can echo off the stones walls as we live this very communal life.)

Ciao,
Rosemary & Robert