Ciao Nonna!

Yea! Tomorrow my Grandma Terry comes to visit us. We are going to pick her up at the airport in Pisa and then come home. She is going to stay for two weeks. With her we are going to Rome, Pisa, Sienna. We are going to go to a lot of museums because it is free entrance this week! We will see The Accademia, Uffizi, Bargello and the Museum Of Archeology. At gym class on Saturday we played tennis which is my grandma's favorite sport. I had never played tennis before, but its really fun. And i got second place in the tennis game!! One thing I am really excited about though is that my grandma is bringing....
1. Peanut butter
2. Sunscreen
3. Books
and 4. Maple syrup!!!!
Everybody give her a round of applause

in the past

Last week Ingrid asplund came over from Germany. The first day she was here we wnt to the Duomo and the Uffizi gallery to see the Birth Of Venus. while we were at the Uffizi along with The Birth Of Venus We saw two paintings by Leonardo DaVinci and lots of Madonas. Later that week we went to the Academia to see Michael Angelos David. At the end of the week went to Siena to see some stuuf by a sculpter named Bernini who Ingrid likes. We saw the Sienese Duomo and the town square. In the town square there was a fountain called the fountain of joy. It was just a copy but it was still fairly old and very beautiful. It was a very beautiful marble fountain with stories from the bible carved onto the sides. There was also a faucet in the square by the fountaixn so you could drink water from the fountain of joy. The Sienese Duomo was also very beautiful. With lots of marble and stained glass windows. But along with the beauty it was a little gaudy. With green and white marble zebra stripes. Also in the Sienese Duomo was a library that a pope from pienza built in honor of his uncle pias the second. Pias the second was a great librainan and had a large collection of very expensive books that were going to be placed in the library. Unfortunetly none of the books ever made it into the library and now it is filled with extremely expensive and old chior books from the eighteenth century. Along the sides of the librarys walls are frescos of pias the seconds major events in life starting from when he went off to war as a young man and enading when he died ight before the sixth crusade against the turks.

San. Gigiminano

Today we went to the town of San.Gigimano. It is a small but popular town in central Italy. *History*. In Italy people started runing out of space to build two tto four storie bulidings so they started building them as great big towers. In Florence they made a law that these towers shouldn't be more than 20 meteres high so all the towers that were taller than that got knocked down to 20 meteres.the average hight for one of these towers was 60 meteres. It is one of the only citys in Italy with the original towers. Original hight stone etc. The tallest tower in San.Gigimano was fifty-four metres tall. Inside they had a small museum with a few paintings afew busts and some weapons and armour. We also climbed the tower and got a great view of the city as well as the Tuscan countryside surounding the small city. One of the busts inside the museum was of a teenage girl named St.Fina. At age ten she caught a very serious illness. she refused to stay in bed so she layed on a wooden table in the basment of her house for five years. After time her body started to bond to the board. Her flesh became food for rats and bugs. When she was buried Wisteria grew where she had layed. She died at the age of fifteen. When she died she bacame a saint imediatly because of her great faith. Sge was said to be the nicest person to ever have lived. Also in San.Ggmnano we saw a small cathedral. It had magestic frescos of stories from the old and new testament. In San.Gigimano we ate the world champions for gelato for the years 2006-2007-2008-2009. I got Rasberry Mint And Nutella. My mom got Pistachio, and Pear. Ingrid got Mango and Orange chocolate

6.3

this morning at 3:30 am in central Italy there was a six point three earthquake. near the city's of L'Aquila and Onna was the epicenter. Although the quake waves reached out to Rome and Florence more than sixty miles away. the quake killed at least a hundred and left one hundred thousand homeless. (we slept through it). yesterday we visited the town of Pienza only a few miles from the two most involved cities in the earthquake. we are alive and well. After shocks are likely. And we will see if our along waited vacation spot of San Gimignano is still standing. This is the first earthquake i have ever experienced. Although i slept through it it was very scary to hear about it through the English teacher and the news.