Feliz navidad

It’s Christmas time and I ‘tis the season to update you all on my latest happenings. I will try to be brief but interesting. I left many of you with my last mass email in the summer of 2006 during the course of a beautiful summer spent in Tuscany as a nanny, enjoying life with a great family with two little boys, Tom and Elliott. After taking full advantage of summer festivities including Italy’s World Cup win, the Palio in Siena and outdoor summer dance parties, as well as visits from the Saupe’s, the family in whose basement apartment I lived back in Athens, from a favorite old friend, Stephen Bailey and from my mom-climber of mountains and sister-climber of Sienese towers, I ventured to Bulgaria for a visit to my friend, David Elden in the Peace Corps. I returned to Cortona in September for a stint working for the same study abroad program of which I was a student the previous year. All went so pleasantly well, topping it all off with a visit to beautiful Switzerland just before returning to the states to find myself completely dumbfounded with what to do with myself. So, for 10 months I remained in this state before being visited by a twist of fate (or rather, a favorite professor of mine) who presented to me an opportunity of which I am currently taking advantage. This opportunity involves teaching English to Spanish high school students and though I made genuine attempts to prepare myself for this tank, it seems that there were a “few” things which I was not prepared to anticipate…