Monday 19th May (Bella back)

It took some effort to arise out of bed, the day was dreary with an overcast sky and rain threatening. It seemed a good day to visit the convent again to check the internet. When we arrived the place was alive with children’s voices echoing through the great marble passageways, this was due to Christin’s sister visiting from Germany with her husband and four young children. Charlotte was soon introduced to the eldest girl Lidia who was the same age as her and needed no encouragement to go play ping pong, especially as she has been missing the company of children, even ones who can’t speak English.

After quite a while we had to drag Charlotte back home for lunch and Flavio was coming with the guys from Telecom Italia at 2:00pm. Right on time, a large Telecom truck drove up our drive and the house was soon filled with technicians and the now common visitor Flavio. I again watched the theatrics of guys running up and down the stairs all looking very official and the rapid three way discussions taking place between the Telecom guys explaining the problem to Flavio and then Flavio trying to translate for Leon…….Allora. At length we were explained the problem, which seems to be that the modem is e rotto (broken) and Flavio ensured us that he would pick a new one up at the Telecom office tomorrow and then bring it back and all would be Tutto bene! So with lots of Ciao’s and Arrivederci’s we were left hoping that we were finally getting closer to having a phone line and internet connection.

Charlotte was keen to return to the convent to play with Lidia and as the weather was still wet Leon drove her over and caught everyone just about leave for Ponte a Moriano. Charlotte was invited to go along and we could join them later for a gelato in Ponte. It was a pleasant break for us, as up until now we had no adult time to ourselves.

Later in the day we joined Christin and her family for gelato and had no luck in dragging Charlotte home with us, so Charlotte ended up going home with Christin and was invited to have dinner at the convent and we had further time to ourselves, Bellisimo! We were quite shocked when Charlotte turned up at the door by herself later in the evening, you see up to now, Charlie has hated going through the main gates of the convent, thinking the ancient angels on the gate posts were far to spooky. So we very proud that she had overcome her fear, but she said she just shut her eyes and ran full blast past the gates and kept running until she arrived home, poor wee darling, he he!