On to Cortina D'Ampezzo

Well, the Italians won the match which we could tell by the silence and cheers.  2-0 over the Irish.  The town is happy.  Today is market day, and so the old men have been shuffled off to the side, and the women are out checking out the goods.  It will be 101 degrees here today, more than I can bear.  Since I was a small child, I have not been able to abide the heat.  My face turns into a purple ball, my skin is itchy, I seem to lose focus, and then I lose all energy.  One time when I was in the Tunisian desert, I thought of Camus' book The Plague and thought how easy it would be to just lie down in the desert and die.  The sun has that effect on me, as if it is just not worth going on.  Luckily before I reach this point I get extremely cranky, and the Stoic One gets me into an air conditioned place, such as our apartment.  It is cool here but we are rather held hostage by the weather, so we are heading up to the Dolomites, to visit Cortina d'Ampezzo.  One of my favorite towns in Italy, it is quite near the area of my father's family.

I have been thinking again about the whole retirement thing.  We met a lovely Englishman yesterday who is an architect.  He said he came here from England 3 years ago to retire, but after one week here he was bored, and began to work again.  This sounds much like my story.  I keep planning to retire, but I seem to leave one profession only to pick up another. I love the executive coaching that I am doing now and I am extremely ambivalent about leaving.  Every time I am here, I think can I do this life here 24/7?  I don't know.  I have become much more interested in writing.  I would like to put together a book on retiring to Italy, and do it by provinces..that way I get to explore each area and then comment on it.  We'll see.

My Italian teacher told me that my Italian is much better.  It is so much easier to pick up the cadence when one is here, but I am still a long way from fluent.  I was making our hotel reservations for Cortina and had to give my credit card number.  At one point there were 5 0's in the card's number.  I said, five zero which of course he wrote down as 50.  Another Alfonse routine ensued, in which Ms. Adelle began laughing hysterically, and finally he said, "let us try in English".  We were both very relieved to get the numbers done.  I am quite sure he will recognize us when we show up.