The best part about living in Italy

First, check out pictures from our trip to the US on my Picassa Web Albums. The link is to the right of this page. Second, don't forget to leave comments or send me your stories. It's hard to keep writing these with out any feedback!

Living in Italy has it's good points and it's bad ones. My least favorite is that practically everything is closed on Sundays and Mondays. It's getting a little better with grocery stores and some stores in Genola (Cuneo's version of Rockville Pike) being on Sunday and at least a few pizzerias being open on Mondays. But my favorite is on a beautiful day you don't have to go far to sight see and wander around beautiful medieval streets. Last Wednesday Fabri and I spent the afternoon exploring three small towns around Saluzzo.

Our first stop was Revello. We walked around the historic center and checked out a couple churches there. Then we set our TomTom to Barge, and passed through Envie along the way. We stopped in Envie when we saw a castle that interested us. Unforunately it looked as though it's a private residence and therefore unvisitable. I really have to go to the Cuneo Office of Tourism and get the Open Castles listing for 2009. That is a tourist pamphlet with information on all of the visitable castles in the area. Then we continued on to Barge. All of these cities are at the foot of the alps like Saluzzo. Envie was interesting because the whole city was terraced. The hilly portion of Saluzzo is not. Barge is the largest of the cities we visited. The Barge church featured in the slide show below was covered with square holes and every single one was fenced over to prevent pigeons from nesting there. The most spectaicular site was by far in Barge where 3 rivers come together. That's what I'm posing in front of in the last photos.



Also, we've had our first harvest from the balcony garden: baby greens! We had them with store bought lettuce for a delicious lunch out on the balcony the other day. We're really going to enjoy having this extra room.

From Blogger Pictures

Earthquake

I should have written this when it first happened. Fabri and I were unaffected by the earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy as were our friends and family here. That region is very far from Saluzzo and nothing was felt up here. It was incredibly devestating and upsetting even more so because that is a poor region of Italy whose people will have trouble rebuilding. I think the Italian government is doing a good job though, much better than how the US government handled Katrina.

I heard on the news that about 50% of Italy is in an "earthquake danger zone" and only about 14% of Italy's buildings are up to US earthquake safety standards. That's because a LOT of Italy's buildings were built hundreds & even thousands of years ago. And what are they supposed to do, tear down Roman farmhouses and medieval churches to build something earthquake proof (which doesn't really exist anyway)?

I just wanted to mention that we are not in that 50% earthquake danger zone, and though we do occasionally get very small tremors, there's never any damage. Ok, I should have written that earlier, but better late than never.

Agrilus goldsteini

Fabri and I are in the US! He's being a bit unrealistic about his ability to stay awake. We arrived on Friday at 1:15 in the afternoon. That was about 40 minutes late. The flight was fine, but we waited for a half hour on the plane for additional passengers whose connecting flight was late. Anyway, we're here now and having fun and doing lots & lots of shopping!

I didn't get a chance to write about some of the museum-related events that occured before we came to the US. On Wednesday I went to the museum and while there I overheard Giovanni, the head of the museum and an ornithologist talking on the phone to someone about me. I usually tune out the Italian when someone's on the phone, but "entomologa americana" makes my ears perk up. He was reccomending me for a job. The museum had a project on the dragonflies of the national parks of Piemonte that began last year. The gentleman who did the project last year is now employed full time, but they are happy to have a replacement ready to go! The only hitch is that they have to verify the funding is still available. I am not sure what exactly I will be doing, how much it will pay or how much travelling I will be doing, but I'm happy that they love me at the museum.

Speaking of the museum loving me, Gian, the entomologist who I work with, named a new species of metallic wood-boring beetle after me! Introducing Agrilus goldsteini!! It's a very small beetle (approximately 1/4 of an inch). It's from the rainforest of Nicaragua. The larvae bore into trees and feed just under the bark. When they become adults, they leave the trees and fly around the forest looking for a mate. Anyway, I have a beetle named after me, s there! Also Gian thanks me twice in his manuscript describing this and about 11 other new species. Once for my work curating the butterfly and moth collection of the museum and again for helping him write in English. I spent about 6 hours correcting Gian's English. But I'm happy to do it to make a name for myself and hopefully get more paid work in biology/entomology!