oat meal?

So because of our fiasco with our door the other night, we decided to bake our friendly neighbors some cookies. Or "no bake" them. So we head to the grocery store for a few simple items. First we cannot find any sugar, and finally find it tucked away in the corner of the store by the frozen goods. Why it's not with all the other baking items we have no idea. Then it's time for some oatmeal. You would think anyone would have simple, dried oats, but no one here has ever heard of such a thing. We opt for some chocolate mueseli and hope that it will suffice. As we are checking out I ask the worker, who recognizes us by now because we're in there all the time, "hai oatmeal?" He looks at us and says "oat...meal? no." and continues to keep repeating the word oatmeal as he rings up our groceries. it was pretty funny. So we make our no bake cookies and go on over to Franco's house. He answers the door in his white boxers and white undershirt and has us come in and sit down with him. He was great, a real George Hamilton with his Italian tan. We converse in broken phrases for a while about art and his family and then head over to Alesias home. His family answeres the door and we talk to their son Marco, who's 19, about how to get to the beach the next day. He can't explain the directions well enough so he opts to take us to the bus stop in the morning. When we leave, we see Sergio coming home so we run upstairs to hand him his cookies. He let's us in his flat and directs us to sit out on his terrace while his wife brings us biscuits and sanpellagrino. His terrace was about the size of our flat, filled with trees and flowers. We sat out there for a while talking to one another in broken english and italian. It was really fun. We found out his wife is a seamstress and she showed us some of her things, they were beautiful! Sergio is so animated when he talks and told us if we ever need anything just to "ding dong" on his door and he will help. haha.


Saturday we met marco outside our door and he walked us to the bus stop and made sure the driver would let us know when to get off. Once off we weren't sure where to go and an old man, out of no where, takes us to the trainstation we need. It's so nice to know God is looking out for us. We make it to the beach, and enjoy the day, although it was the first cloudy day we've had here and it started to sprinkle some. But despite the clouds we all managed to get burnt. It was pretty funny on the beach because there are people that come by about every 5 minutes trying to sell you things. It felt like we were on the MTV show Boiling Point, waiting to see how many people could come and annoy us before we just went crazy. After relaxing on the beach we made it home to our roommate Steph, baking lasagna for everyone and we had a nice family meal together.


Last night in Rome was also a huge festival where all the shops and museums were open late. It was called white night and as we were getting ready to go, Marco stopped by invited us to come out with him and his friends. We thought sure why not, even though they're all in highschool. So we see some crazy acrobatic stage performance for a while and then walked down toward the city center. By the time we wrestled through the crowds to come to a piazza we were exhausted! It was late, and the three of us were tired so we told Marco that they could stay and we were going to head home. He offered to walk us back, "I ama Italiana, I shoulda walka youa back" But we told him we could do it on our own and finally found a bus that wasn't overcrowded.


Now we're enjoying our Sunday after an english church service and will be heading back to our flat soon to work on homework the rest of the day. I am looking forward to sitting and doing nothing. Our bodies need rest!