When I finally went to bed last night I had been up for over 50 hours (with those catnaps on the plane). I went out last night with a couple counselors and got to bed around midnight. Somehow I am alive and well this morning. I feel a little tired, but I think that’s due to the humidity more than anything. But let’s bring you up to speed.
I arrived at the Lugano train station around 2PM I think it was. My Friend Meghan and Dan, the head CDE counselor (CDE is my program, 6-10 year olds) picked me up and took me to campus. All I wanted to do was get my clothes off that I’d been wearing for two days and take a shower, shave, and put my contacts in. Dan and Meghan informed me as we arrived that we were late for a meeting. Great, just how I wanted to meet the people I’d be working with. I managed to get through about an hour or so and then we took a break—and I took a shower.
There are 16 CDE counselors that I have met so far. We are still missing one or two from what I’m told. I told Meghan last night that I feel like I’ve been here for a week already. I am not nearly as disoriented as I thought I would be. The other counselors are very nice and we are all getting along very well (so far). There’s a lot of humor in the group, which I think you have to have for this type of thing. The counselors represent the U.S., Canada, England, and a couple other countries. Most of them have traveled around a lot. We’ll point out more of that when we get some pictures and stories of individuals.
The weather here is icky right now. It’s about 95 with about 90% humidity. It was supposed to thunderstorm yesterday but didn’t…although it felt like it had all day. You know that weather where you take a shower and 45 minutes later you want another one. Hopefully it won’t be as bad as yesterday all the time, but I’m told it is humid here over the summer (too many lakes I guess).
As Meghan reported, we do overlook Lake Lugano and the campus is very Italian. In fact this whole damn city is Italian—nobody told me that’s what they speak. Let me just say it was an interesting experience trying to buy a water bottle yesterday at the train station. It’s a good thing Italian is close to Spanish.
I still need to take some pictures of the campus, but I’ve uploaded some pictures of my room and the train ride. The kids arrive Friday so we have one more day to prepare. Tonight we are going to visit the campsite we will be taking the kids to in two weeks and then we’re all going out to dinner. Tomorrow we have another meeting in the morning and then I need to finish preparing for my classes. I will find out what level my kids are English wise in a little while. Twice a day for an hour they are all mine. Yikes! Hopefully I will get a more advanced group.
That’s all for now, KIT!