homesick sit-in

Thursday, August 25

It hit. Alex is the most easy going member of our family and not much gets him down. So today, when he was miserable and missing home, homesickness hit us all. Alex even staged a sit-in in his room by barricading the door and claiming that he was not leaving his room until we promised to leave Italy.

This lasted an hour. A long hour.

Eleni even tried to help lift his spirits.

We finally coaxed him out for lunch.

"I'm not leaving the apartment."

When homesickness hits, you have to go with it a bit, don't you? But then, you also have to keep moving forward, right? That became the itinerary for today.

So, we moped around in the AM and all the way through siesta.

But, when 4 PM hit and we were all stir crazy, the apartment doors flew open and we were on our way. We didn't have an exact plan, but we were on our way. The road led us to Tuscania, and old Etruscan city that was taken over by the Romans around 300 BC. The Medieval walls and Church of San Pietro, which you can see on the left below, are 8th century.

In 1971, and earthquake hit the town and many of the buildings were destroyed. This church, San Pietro, was beautifully reconstructed. I wish I could have take photos inside; the mosaic floors were so intricate.

Alex loved this piece of random rubble, "look, a pigeon!" Our life is so full of pigeons and pigeon sounds right now (they wake us up every morning), but I was willing to get excited by anything that Alex was interested in. If this helps homesickness, then I'm all over pigeon art.

And, of course, these photos had to happen:

The light...

It was a long emotional day, but it ended well. We found some Roman or Medieval (haven't researched this bit yet, but I do know the ruins are not modern!) bath ruins outside of Viterbo. We walked along the wall and dipped our feet in the hot sulphur and water. Alex was pretty psyched about this and it helped bring him back to Italy (for the moment).