Living a Dream

Bardonecchia was not on our "must go here" list in Italy. It was a matter of circumstance, however, as we'd heard it was a very beautiful area in the mountains and we could go quickly and inexpensively. As an added bonus, the tourism website for Bardonecchia showed snow-tubing at the ski resort as an activity. Sign us up. Neither of us really knew what to expect from this small town, but we knew it had hosted a few Olympic events in the 2006 Torino games (photographic proof at bottom). Our hotel was inexpensive and overlooked a small parking lot which turned out to host a market during our snowy stay. This was perfect, because I needed boots and got them for cheap...after I wore them walking around the wet, snowy pavement, effectively buying them without realizing it because you're not supposed to wear shoes outside when you're testing them. The "city" has a bus system that stops in 2-3 places in the town and then goes to the bases of the main ski...

Welcome to your intro-to-Italian class, where in a few paragraphs I will tell you the worst word in the entire language. A lot of you probably don't know many words in Italian, and the ones you do are the super-simple ones like ciao, arrividerci, grazie, prego, or similar things. You might've even heard words like "capisce" in Italian movies (pronounced cah-peesh-ay, not cah-peesh, for the record), or "mamma mia" instead of "oh my god" or something like that. Well, all of those get used, and I'm going to tell you a little more. "Prego" means everything. It can mean any of the following things: you're welcome, can I help you? Sorry, please, go ahead, can you repeat that? and more. Mamma mia sounds like a joke the first time you hear it, but it's real. And of course, there are the hand-motions. These things are real, and they're used to a funny degree. When Italians almost get into car accidents (which is literally e...