Our time here is filled and almost overflowing! Usually I teach 3 classes in the fall semester, 2 of which require Zoom meetings. But then I was asked to teach an additional class that requires 2 Zoom meetings a week. That means not only preparing a new class, but also teaching 4 classes on Zoom per week. And because of the time difference to California, which is 9 hours, I teach 4 times at night. That sucks!

The good busy is that we really enjoy our company here and, despite the rainy weather, we do lots of fun things together.

Our first week here in Muslone we shared with Jürgen & Anja, my brother & sister-in-law. We ate a lot, drank a lot…..

….. and we were busy house hunting!

Some of the “houses” were loaded with projects …..

….. and others had top notch gorgeous views!

It was a very interesting week, I can tell you!

One time we waited for a real estate agent in front of the church, when an old woman came out of the church and said “casa casa casa”. My basic minimal Italian language skills told me: this woman is here to show us a house. She grabbed my hand and pulled me to a house, but it was not the house we had scheduled to see. Well, since our realtor didn’t show up, we thought we might as well look at her “casa casa casa” and see what she has to offer. That house we actually really liked and had a closer look at few days later with the official listing agent. We also brought in Filippo, a local contractor, who only speaks Italian. And Donatella, a local interpreter, who only speaks Italian and German, then it was me, who only speaks German and English and Ted, who speaks English. Can you imagine Ted asking a question to Filippo? And Filippo answering? And Donatella and the agent exchanging the latest gossip in town and me having creative ideas that I gestured to Filippo while Ted and the agent try to talk about cost? And everything simultaneously in the typical high volume Italian language with an abundance of hand gestures and laughter?!?! It was a blast! With conversations like that you don’t need a hearing aid, you need ear plugs!