Cinque Terre/Swim lessons

Well, it is certainly time for a new post. In my long work hours I have fallen way behind on blogging as well as the uploading of photos. Here is the link to my facebook which is where I put a large selection of photos to check out:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050086&id=1438710136&l=f85d308ca9

I am currently sitting in Deja Brew, the coffee shop connected to the bowling alley, enjoying some nice starbucks caffeine as I savor my lunch break before I go back to work with the Advanced Preschool lesson Kari and I teach. Lessons started yesterday and although I continue to be nervous for them I can already tell that I am getting better at planning them out. Up until now, our job consisted of only guarding, so now that we are doing lessons, hours are much longer. Today I woke up at 5:30 to guard lap swim with Karen, and had lessons until 11. At 12 I go back for the Preschool lesson, and then from 1-7 we all guard open swim together. The other group that is now done with lessons have said that although the work is harder, there is a much bigger payoff with lessons.

Last weekend was a 3 day weekend that I spent with Kari pretty much just hanging around near Aviano and going on short day trips. The reason for this is that I was completely wiped out from traveling to Cinque Terre (5 lands) the weekend before. Cinque Terre is a series of 5 towns nestled on the Italian Coast bordered by the Mediterranean Sea. 

With the purchase of a day pass, you can either take the hike that connects all town, or take the train that does the same. In order to get there, we left Aviano and took the bus to Pordenone (the nearest significant train station) around 10. Originally, we had intended on taking 3 trains to get to where we wanted to be. However, after one of the people in our group purchased the last ticket, we realized that the rest of us would have to make 2 extra transfers. We met another American on our first train who was on his way to Florence. (You can see him in the window's reflection-Alec from Iowa)

The rest of the ride was a lot less exciting. I believe that we made our first transfer at midnight. The next train had individual "rooms" which we ended up sharing with strangers and didn't make for a very comfortable sleep. After this train, (which was about an hour long) we had a 2-hour layover in Bologna where we tried sleeping on our towels, but that wasn't too comfortable either. Our last few trains were short rides so no one really got a good night's sleep. 

The last place where we had a layover Annie tried to escape!

Once we arrived in La Spezia, we took a look around before boarding our FINAL 15-minute train into the first Cinque Terre town.

The hike between the first two Cinque Terre towns is called the "Walk of Love" and to signify the love of a relationship being locked, thousands of locks had been placed anywhere and everywhere along the hike by hikers of all kinds. 

 Below you can see what the view was from the hike of the next town!

The next town is where Karen, Kari and I decided to take our first Mediterranean swim!

On the next hike...

In the next town... Corniglia!

Prawns for lunch! I have never worked so hard to eat seafood...

After lunch we realized that all of our swimming and shop-browsing was causing us to fall behind schedule so we hopped on the train to the next town...

In this town we met a couplw with a baby from Oregon!

Swimming.. round 2!

After swimming it was only a few hours shy of when we were supposed to meet up with the rest of our group. So we hopped on the train a few more times and browsed the streets some more. After every got together, we took yet ANOTHER train to this town where we went camping.
This is what the tents looked like... all they had room for inside was 2 twin beds! That was also the night of the World Cup game between Espana and ...someone else (it was the semis, I think...) and about 40 people gathered around the tv at our "campsite" to watch..

.....and THAT was my trip to Cinque Terre!! On the way back we took a long train through Milan which was such a huge train station that it felt more like an airport. I definitely plan on traveling this upcoming weekend, but don;t have any concrete plans yet. Whatever I end up doing, I promise to stay more on top of the blog!