It's been so long!  Last week flew by with school, soccer, zumba, and tennis (all Grace apart from my pathetic try at zumba).  Friday night we went to dinner at some old friend's place.  I worked with her about a hundred years ago when I lived here and taught at a language academy.  She and her husband and son live in an apartment in a renovated complex of outer buildings attached to a gorgeous villa in the hills.  Their place is rather damp and chilly but has an amazing view out over the city.  The road up is treacherous.  First a very steep, curving, but paved city street.  Then a turn onto a short, vertical entrance that leads to huge iron gates.  After the gates, a long, curving, steep and so narrow the plants touch on both sides, unpaved, private road up, up, up till you come out to a clearing at the top.  The property is jungle-like with acres of Palms and Dates and other exotic plants and they have 3 resident boars.  Mamma boar, Papa boar and Baby boar.  If you come upon one of these boars on your way up you have to honk your horn insistently to move them because they are big enough to make passing them impossible.  Woe is he who comes upon them on a motorbike as they have no fear and won't budge.  They might even charge.  This place is right above the center of Torino, a city of over a million people.  Dinner was marvelous but GP had to mind what he drank as we had to navigate the road back down in the rain.  Yesterday we went wine tasting and shopping in Le Langhe, a wonderful wine region nearby.  We took a couple we've met through the school who are here for the year and wanted to see the area.  It was rainy and cold but that made the strong reds and wonderful lunch all the more appreciated.  Unfortunately we couldn't show them much in the way of scenery as all the hills were shrouded in clouds.  We came home with a trunk full of wine and I took a two hour nap.  Today we are waiting for it to clear up then off to an Applefest in Cavour about 45 minutes from here.  We've never been so it will be an adventure for all.  xxoo me