Welcome to my new blog. Since I'm heading out to New Orleans and leaving everyone else behind in various parts of the world, I am submitting to the vast blogging "community" in an attempt to keep in touch. So here's my first synopsis: my summer.
This summer has been a whirlwind as always. I began by graduating. That progressed to the most care-free week of my life, and then I packed up my belongings, put half of them in storage, and drove to Maine to work my fourth summer at Hidden Valley Camp. Working there four years in a row lead to one of the summer's highlights: I was in the candy drop airplane. The photo above that is very green is the view of camp from up high. We weren't on target, but dropping the candy ended up being a not-so-significant detail. The real thrill was seeing the beautiful landscape and being swayed by the heavy gusts of wind in an airplane with a seating area smaller than an average car. I want my new hobby to be small-airplane pilot.
Notwithstanding, the hours were long and as always I wish I could have had more time in art studios, but I was only contracted for half the summer and I'm happy that it was the right decision.
I left camp and drove back to Burlington for a couple days to collect the last of my belongings and enjoy a few extra hours with some loves, and then I hauled myself down to NY. The trip was great, because despite the excessive hours in a car, I returned to see what used to be my country-house. I had had a dream a couple days prior that the property was being developed and the house was in shambles, so it was a relief in addition to quintessentially lovely to walk around the un-changed property.
When I got back to the city I had just enough time to dump my things in a mini-storage and then hopped on a plane and flew to Vienna with my mother.
I spent 2 days in Vienna and then my mother and grandmother and I drove to Hagenau where my grandmother was born. The next day my cousins and uncle and aunt and great uncle and aunt joined us at my other great-aunt's castle and we celebrated my grandmother's birthday.A couple days after that we were back in the car and drove to Salzburg for lunch to visit family friends and meet my dad. After a lovely afternoon I said goodbye and joined my father as we drove to my cousin's house near Switzerland. The next day we decided to avoid tunnels and drove over the Alps instead to get to Italy. It made me indescribably happy to be on top of those mountains looking at even higher peaks with glaciers and and and...
Few things make me as happy as mountains.
And then I found myself in Italy at my father's place, but it was not yet time to relax. We drove to Venice for lunch one day, had the best octopus carpaccio in the world, and a day later we drove to Tuscany and visited some more friends of the family there.
When we got back to Valeggio (my dad's village) there were finally 3 days of nothing but reading Atlas Shrugged and playing guitar, and then I got on a plane again and flew back to NY.
And that's where I am right now. Trying to take it easy a little before the big move...and on Saturday the next adventure begins. I'll keep you posted :D
P.S. I'm sorry that many of these photos are not visible, I have yet to figure out how to do this properly! But if you click on them they'll open fully in a new window
