Focus

I have run out of vacation topics, but I have tried my best to keep up the tourist pace. I have been working on several things.

First of all, I have caught up with the blocks of the month I have been working on. I was several months behind. The quilt shop put these blocks in a star setting, which I liked, but I chose not to buy the fabric on a monthly basis. I added a star around one block, and it reminds me of the Shakespeare in the Park block. I think I am going to continue with the straight setting, but the SITP is awfully tempting.


Next, the weather has been cooling, and my nesting instinct has kicked in. I have been cleaning and organizing various neglected parts of my house, especially my sewing storage / bedroom. It is very difficult to not to get distracted by the WIPs / UFOs. I am going to try very hard to stay the course and finish the cleanup first. Then I can get to those WIPs and UFOs. I recently looked at my 2010 finishes, which seemed rather meager at the time and it looks like I am going to really have to finish some things for my 2011 finishes to at least match the 2010 finishes.

Then, I bought the newest version of Family Tree Maker. I have been using one that is at least a decade old. It comes with a 30 day trial of ancestry.com. I have been trying to gather as much information as I can get during my trial. This time, I want to stay focused on the direct ancestors of the people I am searching, instead of getting sidetracked by other interesting family members. I decided to keep adding the information to my old FTM file, because I want to take full advantage of my 30 days, and I can learn the completely revamped system another time.

The Wilds

We took our Japanese guest to one other place besides Amish country, and that is the Wilds in southeast Ohio. When I tried to explain to her that she would see animals from a bus, she asked if it was like a safari. Well yes, it is exactly like a safari, and I'm not sure why I didn't think to use that word in the first place. I told her you could open the windows and take pictures. She said that there is a safari close to her home in Tokyo. They put meat on the bus, so the animals get really close to the bus. She wouldn't dare open the window.

The Wilds

It turns out that we didn't get a choice on opening or closing the windows, because our vehicle did not have windows! There are different kinds of trips you can take - you could take a bus, but we chose this one. We went with the extended family, which made it even more fun.  There was a shade above us and the breeze while we were driving kept us cool.  It is unfortunate that it was really hot the whole time Takako was visiting with us, but this day was a little bit cooler than the rest and was much more comfortable.  When she left, she took the heat with her. Hopefully, she dropped some of it off along the ocean instead of taking it all home.

We managed to get really up close and personal with some of the animals. We all got lots of beautiful pictures of a large variety of animals.

It had been a while since we had gone, and this was really nice. We chose to save the zip line and the horse back riding for another trip.

Zeus on Quilts

My dog is still new enough to me that we still follow the "no pet on quilts" rule, but when I saw the Pets on Quilts show, I didn't want him to feel left out.  Mostly I didn't want to feel left out.  So I put him on some quilts, and he posed nicely for me, and got off the quilt as soon as he was done posing.

But after this photo shoot, I think I need to do two things.

Teach him some new poses.

And think about changing his name to Vanna.

We're too late to actually enter the contest, but I did it for the pictures and not for the prizes anyway.

Amish Country

Berlin, Ohio

Takako, the tour guide we were hosting for the student exchange program, had been to Amish country during one of her previous visits, but she had not had a chance to do much there. I suggested we go again, and this time, go on one of the tours so we could learn a bit about the area. The tours are expensive, but they drive around the area, and stop at two artisans along the way, and we thought we would get a lot out of it.

Unfortunately, she had been invited to a party that she wanted to attend, so we were going to have to limit our trip so she could go to the party in the evening. We woke up early, much to my daughter's dismay, and left for a two hour trip to Berlin, Ohio. Most of Ohio is flat, so a lot of the journey was just fine. Then we got to the hilly side, and it was quite interesting to drive on. The speed limit is 55 on the hilly roads, which is a little scary especially going around curves and up and down hills where you can't see where you are going, and then all of a sudden, there is a curve that you are supposed to slow down to 25 to navigate. And there is the danger of coming up to a buggy and having to slow down suddenly for that. I got an even better appreciation for the bus drivers in Italy after that trip.

The tour starts at the flea market. We had a chance to look around the flea market before the tour. We wound up being the only people on the tour. We told her we wanted to see what the inside of an Amish house looks like. She said she had several trips, and one would take us to a quilt shop that requires you to go through the Amish house. The lady had hand sewn and hand quilted all of the quilts t. And they were quite reasonable prices for all that hand work. I didn't buy anything though. The tour was interesting - she told us a lot about what the Amish are like, and we were able to get our questions answered. In case you were wondering, no, the Amish in Ohio do not deliberately put mistakes in their quilts, but she thinks that Amish in other states might. The other "artisan" stop was a grocery store that was frequented by the Amish. We bought lots of spices, which were much cheaper there than at home.

After the tour, we spent more time looking at the booths at the flea market. We were going to go to a restaurant, but we were hungry, and decided that eating at the food place at the flea market would be just fine. There was live music, so it was an enjoyable time.

Then we went to another shop that also had lots of booths of hand made and other unique things. There were some purses made out of jeans - but Takako and my daughter were saying that the stylish jeans made purses that were too small, and the bigger purses had mom jeans. I thought to myself that I could make a purse like that pretty easily, but when I got home, I realized I would have the same problem. Stylish jeans are too small, and the bigger jeans are mom jeans. I bought a couple of wooden plaques.

It would have been nice to have been able to spend some more time there, but we had to get going. Of course, it started thunderstorming and pouring down rain. Going around those curves when you couldn't even see the street is even more interesting than when you can. I could only hope that the car in front of me knew the road, which they did seem to. We took a different way home than the way there, and once it stopped raining, it was nice to be able to see different parts of Ohio.

And just like in Italy, we left enough things unseen that we want to go back again another time.

Welcome Home

On my last post, we had returned from our trip to Italy.  The way our schedule worked out, the very next day, we would have to return to the airport to pick up our Japanese guest who was going to be staying with us for three weeks.  Since this was expected, I had been cleaning and generally getting things ready for her visit.  Since I am allergic to dust, I was starting to get severe allergies from cleaning behind cabinets, under the bed, and going to places in my house I don't normally visit, and moving things around. I did not want to have allergy problems on the plane, and worry all the other passengers about some awful airborne disease, not to mention being more uncomfortable than normal on a plane.  My ears already hurt on planes.


My decision was to clean up as much of the clutter and arrange things as I wanted, and clean and wipe counters, sinks, etc., but to avoid the dusty things, like sweeping and dusting and lawn mowing until we came back.  This meant that I would have to get over any jet lag quickly.  I had a little over 24 hours to do this, so I was not worried.

My family was worried, however, so during my absence, they all converged to my house and took care of those things which I had not.  It was very sweet, and a little demeaning that they thought I would welcome a guest in the dusty house. And you know they were talking about me while they were cleaning. I'm sure it was all good.


I have already provided a summary about our experience with our Japanese guest.  We went to two places that I want to talk about in separate posts, and then I will be back to providing current events stuff.

Italy - Sorrento and home

Sorrento Marina

I have been telling you about our week long adventures in Italy, which are nearing the end.  We have one last full day, and have to leave early in the morning for the plane.

I didn't create an itinerary for this day.  I had saved the day to do whatever we felt we missed, or found out about after the fact.  We could have gone to see the other small towns that were destroyed by the volcano.  We could have tried the Phlegraean Fields again. We could have gone south to visit Paestum (more ruins) and the resort town of Positano.  But the laziness serenity of Amalfi was still in our system, and we opted to have a slow day in Sorrento. We were planning to do souvenir shopping, but a lot of that had been done in Amalfi, and since we walked by the souvenir shops everyday, we pretty much knew what we wanted anyway, so the shopping was done relatively quickly. We went back to the hotel to nap, and then went out to dinner. It was a nice relaxing day.

Sorrento cloister

Nightlife in Sorrento consists of dressing up and walking up and down the main street, to see and be seen. We were generally dressed in our rumpled tourist clothes, walking back to the hotel.

Sorrento "statues"

These pictures were taken on various days.

Sorrento gelatto shop

The next morning we headed to the airport.  There is a shuttle that can take us to the airport, but it leaves at 6:30 which is cutting it close for our 8:50 o'clock departure, if we try to get to the airport two hours before, and it takes an hour to get there.  And I would think it would take longer to load than unload, since tickets would have to be bought, etc.  No one is willing to tell us if the airport requires us to get there two hours early for international flights.  We hired a private shuttle to take us.  It had been cheaper to stay an extra night than the leave the day before, but the shuttle ate all the savings.  But it was good that we had one full day with which to do as we pleased.

Sale!

So we left at 6:00 with the shuttle, but he drove very fast, and we wound up at the airport very early. We had coffee and pastries at a lounge in the airport, then the steps of going home was pretty much the same as the process of getting here, except that it was reversed, and took a little bit longer.

Ciao Italy!

Italy - Amalfi Coast

Amalfi coast

With the days quickly slipping away, we wanted to go down the beautiful Amalfi coast and spend time at the beach, and recover from all our sightseeing.  We were planning to go to Rome on the following day. So this day was all about rest and relaxation.  We slept in, and took the bus south along the coastline.

curvy roads - Amalfi coast

There was a man sitting in the front seat who was telling everyone how to stamp their ticket, and telling them to go to the back, etc. He had a musty smelling sweater even though it was really hot. He was irritated when the bus driver told him to let me sit beside him, but he did eventually move his legs so I could get through. I guess I can thank him for saving me a front seat view. I thought he might be the Italian equivalent of a Walmart greeter, but when he got off the bus, I decided he was just a crotchety old man. My daughter wound up somewhere in the back.  I'm glad we had discussed where we were getting off before we got on the bus. We skipped Positano and went to Amalfi.

Road - Amalfi coastline

There were cliffs and a steep hill down to the water that the bus had to navigate. Lots of times he had to drive blind, because there was no way to tell if someone was coming from the other side. I think I figured out his code, honk once to say "anyone coming?", honk twice to say "Watch out, I'm coming through!"  There was only one place that had a light to make sure traffic only came from one direction at a time.  It must be manually operated, because there was a man standing there with his walkie-talkie beside it.The traffic light was on the ground, and someone passing the bus missed seeing it.   They somehow managed to work it out by the time the light turned green for us.

narrow lanes with parked cars

The lanes were very narrow, and yet people parked there to take photos of the view, etc. A lot of the drivers are tourists and don't know where the narrow spots are, and the locals are pushing the tourists to drive faster. Sometimes the bus driver had to drive backwards to let cars through, yes even around curves, but our driver drove carefully and only had to go backwards a short distance once.

 
I was gearing myself to go down this road, but we didn't go there.  We got to the beach which has volcano rock instead of sand.  We got some lounge chairs and umbrella, got out our books and read.  I thought it was sweet when my daughter told me I should move my chair since the shade had moved, but she really wanted the sun since she was trying to get a tan.  We did get into the water which was very cold. I finally convinced her to go up to the shopping area.  An Italian souvenir grocery store had colorful beautifully shaped pasta, Italian spice mixes, candy, limoncello alcohol, and we wound up buying a lot of our little gifts for our family members here.

We could have gone to Positano as well, but my daughter told me that people generally go on vacations to simply relax and do nothing, and going to another town felt like doing something.  And since we had seen it on our way there, and we would see it on the way back, it didn't feel like we missed anything.