Hike Mt. Etna, Dance, SCUBA Dive

Fri. June 16 - I had off work today so I spent all day shopping for a dress and shoes for the Corpsman Ball. The hospital also had the entire day off for a 72 hour Liberty (no alcohol related incidents in a month) so a bunch of people were running around doing arrunds. For the morning, I went down to Catania with Erica and Joe to do some shopping. She still needed some shoes and I was excited for her help of finding a dress for me. Joe wanted a new dress shirt, so he came along too for a little bit before he had to go teach an EMT Class for a few hours. While he took Erica's car back to base, we did a few more hours of shopping. Neither of us found anything we liked, so we just walked around the open-air market and into some cute little boutiques until Joe came back with the car. It was fun, I've never really hung out with Erica, but we have a lot more in common than I would have imagined. After gettting back to base, Joe and I ran up to the Navy Exchange to see if they had a bright blue dress shirt. He got one in Catania, but it wasn't as vivid as he would have liked it to be. Picky I tell ya. Anyways, I did some grocery shopping and ate some lunch cuz I was starving. All we ate in Catania was just a typical Sicilian breakfast (cappucino and a pastry) really early this morning. I took a little nap and relaxed my feet for awhile until Erica and I headed back out to town. This time, we were gonna give it one more chance and we both decided on going to Etnapolis (the mall). I ended up finding a dress and some shoes, I wasn't fully satisfied, but I was in a hurry and at a dead end. I had to escort a trip tomorrow afternoon, so I knew I wouldnt have any more time to look. The shoes are hot though, definitely Italian. They are like 3 1/2" stilletos. My feet are going to be hurting for sure.

Sat. June 17 - This morning started out early with an ITT trip that I planned about 2 months ago. It is a family hike up to Mt. Etna. Since it was suppose to be planned for families with small children, I picked a hike around Monti Sartorius that was only a 1.9 mile hike with an easy terrain. 43 people signed up for the hike, so I knew it was going to be a crowded bus. I was happy to see so many sign-ups though, because we had originally only planned to use a 15 passenger van for the trip. We left NAS I at 8:30am and headed up to the North Side of the mountain. I have only ever been to the South Side (for snowboarding) and haven't been up there yet with all the snow gone. The drive through Zafferana (the entrance city to the North Side) was 2 hours long, but we stoppped along the way for coffees, pastries, and a bathroom break. It was fun, we had trivia on the way up and some information about this particular mountain (crater). We got up there and unloaded the bus to begin the hike. It was a connecting path, so everyone just went at their own pace and we just set a time limit of an hour and a half. The hike up to the top of the mountain ended up being pretty strenuous, but very rewarding to see everyone get up it. We all took some amazing pictures of the top of Etna and it just had alittle bit of snow on it. The hike was great. Joe and I got into a volcanic ash fight and kept kicking it into each other's shoes. At some spots, the ash was so thick that it made a nice exercise for your legs. When everyone got back to the bus, we were ready to get to the agriturismo and eat some tasty lunch. We drove to the spot where they had to come shuttle us to the restuarant. Our bus was way too big to fit down the street to get to the farm that the agriturismo was on. It was called San Marco and was run by a small family and some extra workers. It was so cute. All 50 of us were in one room with beautifully set tables and surrounded by authentic Sicilian dishes. The lunch ended up lasting over 2 hours and had 5 courses. It was so good. All of the good was so good and it was really cool because I sat with Rosario and Nino (our bus driver) so they explained all the ingredients and history of the food to me. It was really fun to talk with them during the entire lunch and everyone had a really good time. By the time lunch was over, everyone had to roll themselves out of the restaurant and back into the vans to bring us back to our bus. Joe and I had originally thought we would get home around 4 so we'd have plenty of time to get ready, but we didn't end up getting back to base until 5:30pm. Oh well, it was so worth it. Everyone was saying great things about the trip, no one got hurt, and they were all excited about next month's hike. As soon as the van was empty, we were on our way to get ready for the Corpsman Ball. The only thing I was really worried about was my hair. I have no sense of style when it comes to doing my hair on my own, so I knew it'd end up being really simple. We both went to our rooms to get ready and meet each other at Gust's car (we had to borrow his car since everyone else left earlier). I tried to just wear my hair done, but even that wasn't cooperating with me. I ended up putting it into a French roll, which surprisingly looked pretty good. I didn't feel very comfortable with the dress I got, but hey its Italy and that's what they wear. I totally felt like a skank but I had already asked a bunch of people what they thought about it and they all said it looked hot. Tonight was the World Cup Game between Italy and the USA so everyone was staying updated on that all night. Joe and I were finally ready to leave the barracks and we got to the restaurant in no time. It wasn't very far away, but by the time we finally got there, dinner had already been served. Luckily, we were still extremely full from the agriturismo so we were fine. The wine was flowing, everyone was there taking pictures and having an awesome time, and the dancing started shortly after dinner ended. Most of our friends were there and we hung out with the people from the Flight Line Clinic (where Joe works) and we all had so much fun. The game was on during the night so we'd send people back into the kitchen to get the scores from the Italians. There's been a lot of talk around here lately about this game so we knew whoever would lose, would be getting a lot of crap for it the next day. As many of you know though, we tied! I thought that was a pretty cool outcome though and we'd be able to avoid a lot of trash talk for the next week. I danced almost the entire night and my feet were hurting soo bad in these crazy high high heels. Joe was hurting pretty bad, so I danced a bunch with Flink, Andre (the other intern), and random other people. After the dance, we all headed back to base to go to Strike's and Days Inn for some more drinks and to hang out with our friends that didn't come to the dance (Travis & Pirate). Joe was DD so we dropped off the car at the barracks and then walked over to the bar. It was so fun to see everyone still dressed up and just having a really fun time. We stayed out pretty late, but both of us knew that we had to be up by 8am to go SCUBA Diving.

Sun. June 18 - We got picked up at 8:30am (yes she was running late) by Kat, Juli, and Chris and were on our way out to Aci Trezza for our last open water dive for our certification. They were running late from a long night last night and I wasn't feeling as chipper as usual. We got there and it was packed with people diving today. We were pretty late so as soon as we got there, we loaded our stuff and headed to the boat. We went out to Aci Castello again and dove the deepest depth for open-water divers, 18 m for 44 minutes. It was cool. Kat, Juli, Joe, and I dove with Guiseppe, who is the dive master. It was an extremely clear and calm day. Everything looked so beautiful today. When we got back on the boat, Giuseppe told Joe and I that we were now officially SCUBA certified. It felt so good to accomplish this. After the dive, we went over to Sylvie and Giuseppe's house for another BBQ. We couldn't stay too long because I had to be at work by 5pm. I wasn't scheduled to work, but I took Donna's shift since her parents just flew in to Sicily to visit her for 2 weeks. I called Dad for Father's Day and spoke to Amy and the Boys for awhile making last minute plans about my visit up to Maine. We spoke for almost an hour, it was nice to catch up with all of them. The boys sounded like they were having a really good time.