CET Siena: Chi va piano, va sano e lontano

After nearly two weeks in Siena and already a trip to Florence under our belts, our piccolo group of 9 decided that it was time to venture to the Tuscan beach. I was pushing very much for this weekend plan because: 1) my summer tan was fading and 2) the Siena heat with the lack of air conditioning was driving me crazy. Christina (who I considered our CET older sister) recommended that we should take the summer bus transit to Follonica. Clearly, I wasn’t the only beach enthusiast because by Thursday we all had our tickets bought and our beach bags nearly packed. Most of us arrived promptly at 7:30 am to take the bus to the beach. In true “American Student Abroad” fashion, we all started to freak out when the bus hadn’t gotten there at the time given in the ticket. The fluent Italian speakers asked everyone around if we were in the right place or if the bus had left already. Everyone told us to calm down and that the bus will arrive soon. This is obviously true Italian fashion; put an earlier time on the ticket so people actually show up for the real time.

Chi va piano, va sano e va lontano. That became the motto of that trip because our patience was definitely going to be tested many times after the late bus arrival. We seemed like excited school children on a field trip because we didn’t snooze for a second. The whole way there we talked and probably greatly annoyed the silent Italians. Even though I consider myself a veteran in the Tuscan bus system, its beautiful panorama never ceases to amaze me. The vineyards, mansions, sunflower fields, it gets even more gorgeous every time I see it. The new trip struggle came when none of us had any idea of what stop we should get off on. “Ughh it's Fiji something, that’s what Christina said” The boys were clearly such great help. Finally we figured out our stop, which was a very sketchy trailer park. I kind of cursed Christina’s advice for a moment, but after much exploring we arrived to the beach. (Note to self: Christina is always right) Once again, chi va piano, va sano e va lontano. I thought that I wasn’t going to be impressed by the beauty of the place, after all I am from the Caribbean, but the water was gorgeously clear and the sand was very white. In the distance we could see L’isola dell’Elba, and to our surprise, a huge boat regatta was taking place the same day. The view was so amazing that you could almost forget about the Italian old men in speedos. We pretty much spent the whole morning tanning, talking, and playing in the ocean. At 1 o’clock we decided to venture once again to find food, and the small desire of a taste of home led us to eat hamburgers and French fries. As much as I love Italian food, a little taste of obesity was amazing. However, another chi va piano, va sano e va lontano situation arose when our food took 45 minutes and Tim decided to play country music for the rest of the afternoon non stop. Even though my patience for country is very short, I could go lontano with this sunny day at the beach. Once the time to leave came, we pondered on the possibility of maybe staying the night, but the bus situation was unknown and we didn’t want to call Christina once again with a problem. There was a communal sense of happiness and the amount of talking that we did on the beach created a weird bond between us. “It doesn’t seem like we just met two weeks ago” We kept repeating that over and over again. We were piano in our moments of confusion, so we went sano and lontano the whole day at the beach. Now that we got a little taste of the beach, we want to continue that summer feeling. Next stop: