SUMMER WITH KURT AND ME

During summer at my house I usually have Kurt over to play. We usually play Wii and DS, then we have lunch in the fort.

After lunch we do some more DS, then we go in the pool. We have a lot of fun.

Then after this, we go down to the park across from my house. Sometimes he ends up going places with me, like he was supposed to go to dye wars at my church. But he got in trouble and couldn't come. It was too bad, I had a lot of fun.

This is a picture of Kurt and me.


Kurt is coming over again today and he'll be here shortly, so I gotta go. Bye,Bye

A Typical Day at Fattoria Viticcio

Hi Everyone

I'm back from camp. The first day was rough but then it got better. If I come next year, I want to go again but it will be in a different place. The first day was rough because I just got there and was tired and didn't know anybody. It got better because I started to get to know people.

The usual day at Fattoria Viticcio is that we wake up, have breakfast and then we do homework or some sort of work. I'm doing homework in the middle of the summer because I am going into middle school and I need to be ready. Also, Camilla needs to do homework too so it gives me something to do also. I do math and I do reading comprehension and I do my blog entries. For a while I did my reading for People to People. Now I'm done and I did the test and I got 100%. Sometimes I read my book Seekers, a book I got for my birthday. Since I finished the last Harry Potter book I had no more to read so I started Seekers. It's about three bears who get separated from their families.

Me Reading Seekers

After homework Camilla usually comes knocking on the door and we play. Then we eat lunch together or separate and then we play some more. Then around 2:30 or 3:00 we go swimming. Then after we get out, dry off and we watch TV in the pool room. They redid it so they have a big TV like ours.

Drying Off

Then for merenda (snack) we go out and get gelato. Sometimes we walk around the piazza and we see friends or we don't. Then we go into the COOP. The COOP is the grocery store in Greve. For the ones who have been here you would know what the COOP is. In the piazza on Market Days and other days we go in and see Bruno, my good old buddy at the gastronomia.

Sometimes my friend Tommy comes over. Today he can't come over because he is going to Austria and comes back 4 days after we leave for home. I'd like someone to come over today because Camilla went to go to her grandfather's birthday and won't come home until this evening.

Tommy and Me

Sometimes other friends come over too. They're usually kids from school here.

Whose Feet Are These?

They belong to Tommy, Me, Francesca, and Camilla. We're upstairs in my apartment.

Yesterday Camilla had dinner with us and slept at our place in the top bunk. It's fun when we get to sleep together.

Well, I gotta go. We're off to Panzano--a village up the hill.

Tomorrow I get to go to La Cantinetta di Rignana

See you next time.

I'm at Camp

I haven't written in a while because I am having too much fun. Tomorrow I am going to a camp in the mountains at Ponte de Legno for 5 days with Camilla. It will be fun. I'll tell you all about it later.

Ciao--Bye

I'm back home

Hey everyone I'm back home to Fattoria Viticcio. The first day when we got here we saw my friend Tommaso's parents at the coop. Then I went and got to see Tommaso. Here is a picture of him and me.

Then after we went to my home at Fattoria Viticcio. When we passed the sign that said Greve in Chianti I started singing, "I'm home , I'm home." I was so excited and I'm happy to be home.

At first, I didn't even want to leave San Diego but now I'm not leaving here. Oh, that's just like when I lived here for a year.

I've had a lot of fun here. Like three days ago, Camilla's family and I went to Aqua Village, a water park not quite like Soak City but fun. All the slides are fun but one. All go super fast down but there is one that goes super slow cause kids aren't heavy enough, I guess.

Camilla's more grown up this year but we still play like we always used to except with the balloons. There was no balloons this time.

We play with Happy Mais which is fun to make things with. I can even make a bike--very small bike. Here's a picture of penguins on the bikes.


Camilla and I have had so much fun on a donut in the pool. The donut is a green inflatable device that can carry you throughout the pool. Acutally, not that complicated.

I got to see my old tutor that I really like--Valentina. She did a lot of nice things for us. She gave us things and I got a really cool Leonardo da Vinci calendar. I'm Leonardo da Vinci's greatest fan. Next Thursday we're going to go to dinner with her and Ricardo.


The first night at Fattoria Viticcio, Signora Franca fixed her delicious, wonderful, unbeatable lasagna. That's Camilla's grandma. We all ate together like a family.

Signora Franca

Yesterday was the most amazing thing. It was so hot and muggy. We went to Castellina to get gelato and we ended getting two it was so good.

Well, that's all I have to say peoples. See you later.

da Casey

Sant' Antonio

We're at Sant' Antonio right outside of Montepulciano in Italy, but, too bad we're leaving tomorrow. It's nice here. I've been coming here since I was 4. I love it here. Tomorrow we're going someplace else that also I love, Fattoria Viticcio.

I have two special friends here as you've known before--Sofia and Filippo.


Lately Filippo has been making me laugh, hard-hard-hard. I've been having a great time. Sofia and I get along very well and we laugh together. When I first came to Sant' Antonio we couldn't talk to each other. But, now, as you know, I speak Italian so we can talk with each other. And Sofia's doing a good job speaking her English. When Sofia and I are talking, she wants to talk in English and I want to talk in Italian--what, cosa, chi, who.

Two nights ago there was a big dinner here for all the guests that are staying here. It was really fun. The kids had pizza, pasta, meat and dessert. There's a lot of kids here from different countries but we all manage to communicate with sign language. Some speak English, some speak Danish.

We haven't been driving anyplace when we were here. We just stay here and relax and I get to play with Sofia and Filippo and other children. And everything you see is beautiful.

Yesterday I played with Sofia and Filippo all day. At lunch with them, Filippo made us all laugh. Then after lunch their cousin Olivia came. She's coming again today. We played hide and seek.

Then we went to Sofia's grandfather's palazzo--a really big house, a mansion basically, that's about 400 years old--in Sarteano. It seems about as big as a football field times two because of the upper deck. The ceilings have amazing frescos on them.

There were two boxer dogs and the female had puppies. They are so cute. There's one that looks like a baby Sofia's dog named Caio. I really want to take one home with me but we can't.

Then we all went to dinner and had fun and played. And then we came home and went to bed. It was almost midnight.

Here's a slide show of all that stuff I just wrote about.




See you in Greve.

A France Mountain Adventure

Last week in France we were in Moustiers and we went in the car for a ride in the mountains. There were several places to stop and each stop we saw something new.

The first stop we saw a beautiful view along with a little black bird. I took this picture of it.


The second stop we saw a rock climber. It was very interesting (but unfortunately we forgot to take a picture.) I was worried that the rock climber was going to fall but then my grandpa told me that the ropes that were tied on to her would keep her from falling. Then I stopped worrying. When she finally got back to the top after walking slowly down backwards, everyone that was watching cheered and clapped. Then finally we took off to our next destination.

The third stop we saw eagles. They were pretty. Through the binoculars you could see every detail of their feathers, their whole wings--just every part of their bodies. I thought they were amazing as they gracefully soared through the air. Then we spotted stairs to go down a spot on the mountain where you could see things better. My grandpa and I went down and I saw my second eagle. We tried to take some pictures of them, but all we got was this but it's still beautiful.


Here's a picture my grandpa took of my grandma and me. For some strange reason, my gramma doesn't like this picture.

On the way home we got really low on gas. I was scared half way to death--that's what I used to say when I was small. But what I say know is "I was scared half to death." If we ran out of gas on those mountains, there was no chance of getting back home. Good thing we made it to a gas station.

If you ever go to Moustiers, I hope you get to do and not do something of these things.

And now, I'm in Italy. I'll be posting soon.

Bye--Everyone

Eleven

I’m eleven now. This year I had my birthday in France. I can’t remember the last time I had my birthday at home in San Diego. One year I had it in Miami, Florida on our way home from Ecuador and the Amazon jungles. I had two BIG birthdays in Italy and now France.

I woke up really early because I was excited for my birthday. My lazy grandparents wouldn’t wake up so I got dressed, went into the room and poked gramma to wake her up. She made me go back to bed and then I waited some and got back up and poked gramma again. She woke up and said it was too early to be up and so I played my DS some.

Finally they got up—hallelujah—and when we were all out of bed, they had presents for me. The first one was a Harry Potter DVD, the second was a bird watching book about birds in the United States and the third a book called Seekers that I was really, really wanting. It’s about bears going on a quest. I also got a tech deck. It is perfect for Provence because it has flies and bugs on it and there are a lot of those in here.

Then we went down to one of Kevin and Elizabeth’s wonderful breakfasts. Before we ate, Kevin brought me a fax and from my good friend Shannon. It said happy birthday and it had a gift certificate for a restaurant in San Diego called the Vine for a pasta I really like and a lava cake dessert. Thanks once again Shannon for the gift. I’ve never gotten a fax before.

After that we had a normal breakfast. Then, Kevin came out with a raspberry torte with Joyeux Anniversaire, Casey written in chocolate and two candles, representing eleven. Then the other guests, my grandparents, Kevin and Elizabeth sang Happy Birthday. The torte was very delicious. It was very nice of them to do that.

This is Keven and Elizabeth

The day before when I went out to play tennis with Kevin and Thomas (Thomas is Kevin’s son), we stopped at the bakery for some strange reason. Now I know why.

At night we went out to a nice restaurant for my birthday dinner and I got another surprise. Kevin called the lady in charge of the restaurant and told her it was my birthday so when they brought dessert it said happy birthday on it and they said happy birthday to me.

A couple days earlier when we were in Nice, it was special to have an early birthday with my Uncle Benny and Aunt Joyce who are just like family and I love them. And I get to see them when I get back home because they’re going on vacation in San Diego.

I can’t wait to get to Italy. See you there.

Bye, Everyone.

4th of July in France

This blog entry is for People to People. It's the 4th of July and I'm in France.

I'm writing this because everyone who is part of People to People is supposed to write a blog entry or something about where they are on the 4th of July.

Everybody has a 4th of July but only the United States has 4th of July for our independence.

I'm part of People of People because my teacher nominated me for it. It is a leadership program where only student leaders who are nominated get to go. I'm going October 12, 2009 to Washington D.C. for a week. And this time I'm lucky, I'm going by myself. No grandparents taking care of me. I'm really looking forward to it. I can't wait.

Tomorrow's my birthday and I'm going to be eleven. Wow! That was fast. It seems like yesterday I was just in pre-school. Amazing.

Here is a picture of me in Arles, France.

It's Time

Guess what everybody--it's tomorrow. We're leaving for Italy tomorrow.

First we're going to fly to San Francisco. Then we fly to Frankfurt on a 747 like we did last time. I love the 745 because you lay completely flat when you want to sleep. And each seat a big TV screen that you can play video games on and watch TV. I'm going to be upstairs in business class. That's where I was last time. And also last time I was facing backwards. The plane was going forward but my back was facing that way. My papa has a lot of frequent flyer miles. That's why we get to go business class.

These is a picture of me sleeping and a picture of the TV screen.

I'll give pictures of this time, too.

From Frankfurt I fly to Nice, France. In France we're going to see our friends there for the first couple days. Then we're going to go to Arles and that's where I will be on my birthday. I'm going to be 13--psych--11.

And then, finally, we drive to Italy but we go to Bologna for two days. Then we go to Sant Antonio for a week. And then, FINALLY, we're going to Greve where all my friends are. I'm anxious to see my good friend and sister, Camilla

Well, gotta go.

Bye

Promotion day

Yesterday was the last day of school. It was also Promotion. I was being promoted to 6th grade. I made a slide show of pictures of promotion. When I got home from school there was a treasure hunt and at the end there was a big surprise. Wait till you see it.

Now, I'm a Middle Schooler.