There's not doubting that Camerino is beautiful: Camerino, Rome, Assisi, Perugia, Frassassi, Porto Recanati, Macerata, Caldarola, all of it. You can understand, therefore, a) why I decided to take pictures at every opportunity, and b) why I felt I just had to share it with the wider world.
Ok, so I'm blogging about it - but it happened back in 2009, so quite a lot of time has passed since then. What I did in the heat of the moment was to write emails to my family and friends all about my time away. For this to happen I needed the internet. Fortunately the school had a number of computers connected to the internet in the main foyer; unfortunately the room was a complete sweatbox and the computers were all paintfully slow.
My solution came in the form of a brand-spanking new netbook I'd bought for my year abroad: it was portable, had a long battery life, and wireless internet. This meant I could sit in the main piazza (just outside the school) and construct these entertaining emails and Skype my family back in the UK. It was great to be able to share my experiences and catch up on what was going on at home.
There were two downsides to this: quite often many people serendipitously has the same idea and so there was no room to sit in the piazza, and sometimes it rained. I wracked my brain for an alternative and remembered that in my flat I was near the university buildings. Great! I'll just connect to their network.
So there I am chilling in the kitchen. I load up my computer and click on the internet connections. Yes! The university network is listed. Oh. You need a passcode. Oh. Bummer. Still, I asked at the school and they said I just needed to go to IT Services at the university and they'd sort it for me.
It's the start of the third week by the time this happens and to be honest, if it wasn't for the frequent thunderstorms that rendered Skyping in the piazza a bit of a bad idea, I'd have left it alone. Nevertheless, one break time I went down to IT Services and asked them to sort out my computer. There were a couple of guys hanging about and one of them got to sorting my netbook right away. The other seemed to just be chilling there for fun. I don't know what he was doing there during the summer, but he was harmless enough.
They fettled my netbook and I headed off back to the school. The hanger-on decided that IT Services wasn't as exciting as escorting a blonde English girl back into town. Nice. The other guy gave me a look as the offer to take me back into town was made, but I don't like hurting people's feelings so I agreed.
Now this is Italy where guys enjoy female company, but this guy was a bit more English - soppy, wet, not very interesting, certainly not an Italian stallion: I got rid of him before I even reached the main street. But Camerino is a small town and it's quite hard to avoid people. That said I like a challenge and spent the remaining fortnight ducking into alleyways, having loud conversations with my friends, and doing lots of ignoring.
It sounds cruel, but let me tell you it would have been much crueller to tell him exactly what I thought. We had plenty of outings planned over the next fortnight so as long as I could avoid him during the days, I'd be home and dry.
So after all that you would kind of think it was worth it because I got internet in my flat. Well I didn't - whatever they tried didn't work; I thought about going back and thought better of it - Skyping in the rain was a much more attractive prospect.
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