Getting to Know You

Our morning may have been devoted to the school and sitting our placement tests, the afternoon and evening was ours to do whatever. I had two things on my to-do list: get food, get to know my surroundings. You may know by now that I love exploring, and I was keen to get to know the place I'd be seeing a lot of in the next month. I went back to my flat with Gaby and we made some plans.

 For a start, this is what the view was from our kitchen window. I literally couldn't get enough of it. Unfortunately our room looked out over the street, but when we were cooking this is what we saw.

Camerino is a peculiar town. It is typical of a medieval town in central Italy: it sits on top of a hill and is enclosed by walls. Our flat was basically built into the walls so if we looked down from the same window that afforded us such a lovely view, we'd look down into a ditch a couple of hundred feet below at the foot of the town. It was certainly spectacular.

As I said before the view from mine and Gaby's bedroom window looked out over the street. For the majority of the month it was a building site because of damage caused in an earthquake. I was never totally sure when this earthquake happened - whether it had created some sort of subsidance over many years, or whether it was a reasonably recent phenomenon. But whatever the cause of the problem, there was a large hole, lots of diggers, and workmen that liked to start at 6am - and who says the Italians are lazy!!!

Back at the flat, Gaby and I decided we'd go to a supermarket. She seemed to know everyone and invited a couple of Portuguese guys along for the ride. I shall call one of them Carlos. I shall call the other one Carlos' friend.

We found that the supermarket was quite a walk away and spent a good half hour getting to know each other. When we arrived at the supermarket, Gaby and I went round together buying food for our flat, the idea being that we would cook together.

Gaby was awfully efficient (or at least gave that impression) and knew exactly what it was that we'd need. At that stage I thought she was in her twenties and was a seasoned pro and courses like this - she had just finished one in London. It was only three weeks later that it came out that she was only 19 (at this point I was 20). If I had known this, I would have realised that she was a little immature and had never lived on her own (I had been living on my own at university for two years at that point). That would have allowed me to pull rank and not waste as much of our money (and that of our housemates) as we did in buying bananas that would go off in approximately five minutes.

Oh well, that's only a taste of what's to come. We bought many things and soon realised it wouldn't be much fun having them back up the hill. Carlos, however, seemed to know when there would be a bus and we hopped on outside the supermarket and got off at the main piazza. Job done.

We packed our shopping away and then started to deal with the second of my tasks to do - get to know your surroundings...