During our language course, Sundays were our days off; there were 'voluntary' excursions to places like Siena, Urbino and Venice, but in this particular case 'voluntary' means 'expensive'. Don't get me wrong I really wanted to visit those places, but not for 60Eur a time - especially when I was moving to Verona in about six weeks where I would be a 6Eur train ride from Venice and you don't need a degree in maths to work out the savings...
The first Sunday of the language course Bree and Gaby decided they were going to go to Venice, and because I didn't know many people by that point I decided I was going to chill out and, for those of you with a good memory, Skype the family in the main piazza.
There were two more Sundays on the language course and I think the general consensus on at least one of them was to go to the beach. My experience of the Rimini coast had, up to that point, been a little disappointing: shingly beaches and expensive sun loungers. This didn't really appeal to me and I really begrudged paying to not enjoy myself all day.
I shared my musings with Susan and Lynette and I was surprised to hear that they thought the same and were considering staying around Camerino too. Susan and I had gotten really close as we were sharing Wendy's class time banter. I had also started spending a lot of time in their apartment to avoid Hurricane Gaby.
They lived in a much more central apartment, but to be honest in Camerino no two places are that far from each other. They lived opposite the cafe from the first morning and always got a rude awakening when the locals would descend to read the papers (and then discuss them very loudly) at 7am.
It was a much older apartment to mine and Gaby's, but where our living space had a small table, a fridge, and a tiny television, they had sofas and a proper place to relax. If we'd had that in our apartment I might not be going so loopy about Gaby because I could leave her to hurricane about in our room and I could have shotgunned a sofa so that I could lie down in peace and think about rolling hillsides and gamboling lambs.
Anyway, so I tended to spend some of my time there, some of my time upstairs (in Bree's apartment) and then a teeny-tiny bit of time in my flat, rocking in the foetal position.
Fortunately for me (and for her), Gaby went to the beach with her 'new' friends. Bree went too because of the large number of Portuguese-speakers so she could have a day-off from speaking [very good] English and Italian. So that left the three of us to enjoy our Sundays by spending some quality time together.
Lovely.
Ever since the international dinner, Susan had developed a bit of a thing for my scones (no euphemism intended). I don't think there's a Croatian equivalent and so understandably this little slice of England had wormed its way into her heart (even if they were like pellets due to the lack of self raising flour in Italy).
I invited the girls round for lunch - we did it Italian style in that it was our main meal - and then I baked some scones for pudding. We only had a week of the language course left, but I would have been more than happy to study with these girls all through my year abroad. I was actually facing the real possibility of never seeing them ever again and that was something I didn't really want to happen.
I thought back to the month previous where I'd waved goodbye to my friends at Sanremo train station, and if you remember, I never saw them again. Obviously I didn't know that then, or even when I was thinking about the last week at Camerino I didn't know that it would just be so hard to keep in touch with people and that they really can be friends for a season and nothing else.
Still, I decided to make the most of the moment because I wasn't going to have very many more with these girls, in Camerino at least. We ate very well, shared some great times, and then for some reason I sang 'Lost?' by Coldplay very loudly and a bit too low - there's even a video to prove it (I'll spare you that one though).
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