La bella vita.

Alright, so I know I'm only a week in, but tonight was the best night I've had so far (but I'll get to that eventually)!

This afternoon a massive storm hit. It came so suddenly that within seconds the sky turned from overcast to a dark, eerie green, and rain and wind ensued. Everyone here is calling it a hurricane, but I think that those in Texas dealing with Mr. Ike would say differently. After only 20 minutes, Sassari was under at least 6" of water and all small trees were floating in the streets. Regardless, we ventured on, and I was dropped off at Mietta's house, for what I honestly expected to be an extremely dull night. Mietta was one of the girls that was at the pizza restaurant my 2nd night here who wouldn't talk to me, so I resorted to playing with her little brother Riki. Again, at first, not much was said, and it was Riki who was doing much of the entertaining by showing off all of his Lakers memorabilia. Then Mieta informed me that her musical recital was that night, and invited me to go, and then we hit it off talking about Grease and dance, and also got to practice our language with her speaking English and me in Italian. We dropped her off at the theatre, and returned to the house with her father (a doctor, and who's name I believe is Salvatore, like mine), Ricardo (or Riki, 11 years old, love of my life), and were soon joined by the mother (Princilla? - surgeon - I was shown pictures of her surgery that day before dinner. Yum). I was introduced to pesto pizza and the finest chocolate... ever. At 8:30, after looking at all their family vacation photos and Riki showed off his piano skillz, we went to the theatre! They were kind enough to buy my ticket for me, and to my delight we had sweet box seats in an amazing and ancient theatre. The show consisted of many singers of all ages from 7-70, musical pieces from Mary Poppins, Cabaret and Batman (Mietta in the first and last), a traditional Sardo folk dance, and a beautiful orchestra. The family is absolutely incredible. The mother is constantly kissing me and telling me how beautiful I am. The father walks around repeating "one coke please, no ice" like a parrot, and actually teaches me Italian, which no one else had attempted to do. Riki is constantly smiling at me, and never stops showing off or asking me if I'm thirsty or tired or hot. Mietta is a complete doll herself and I've grown to really liking her. She texted me after I was dropped off tonight saying "Chelsy, you're very very nice! I'm very happy to have meet you! Goodnight, my dear Chelsy! :)" So aside from the fact that she doesn't know how to spell my name (to give her credit, there's no K in the Italian alphabet, and "ch" makes a "k" sound), is that not the cutest thing ever??

Io ho una bella vita.