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A copy of an article briefly summarizing this trip

 

This is an essay, or rather an article, that I wrote to send back to my school. It talks a bit about some of the more significant parts of this trip, but because it was written as a school assignment with an aim towards brevity, it does not mention many things I will state in other places.

 

Last April, when my parents confirmed that we were going away for a year, I wasn’t too happy. I didn’t want to leave my friends and activities, and everything I knew. I still, ten months into it, do miss all of that, but this trip has proved to be pretty cool. My family is touring Europe and the Mediterranean for a year, living on a sail boat. Our trip has consisted of three parts; during August, September and October of last year we cruised the coasts of Italy and France and their islands of Sardinia and Corsica. We then spent a six month winter living in, and traveling from, a port called Gaeta, just south of Rome. In mid April we sailed south, around the boot of Italy towards Greece, where we will cruise the islands and the coast of Turkey until early August (when we finally head home!!!).

            You might think that my least favorite part of the trip would be the winter season, when we stayed in one town and where the water was too cold for swimming; actually it was the opposite. Along with many other reasons, I liked Gaeta because it gave me the chance to finally make some friends. Not only were there two European boats with kids in our harbor, but there was also a small U.S. Navy base.  My siblings and I played in many of the Navy’s youth basketball league, a Monday-afternoon sports-camp, and a flag-football mini-camp. With the other kids in the harbor, we could freely roam the town, and had a great time playing soccer (or fútbol) and setting off small firecrackers on the huge sandy beach nearby (using our fastest form of transportation, bicycles, to get there). Meanwhile, we discovered the wonders of Italian pasta, pizza, gelato and our family favorite: Caprese Salad. This is an extremely tasty concoction of fresh Mozzarella di bufala with fresh basil, fresh local olive oil and fresh, juicy tomatoes (we ate this three dollar delicacy almost every day).

            We also spent our first month in Gaeta learning Italian, but immediately after our last lesson we started punctuating our time there with vacations to Paris and some great ski areas, Switzerland, Rome, Florence and Venice. The Italian language is very similar to Spanish (the language I was taking in school); enough so that it is easy to mix the two up, though Italian is much more difficult. So, my schooling in both Spanish and Italian, many trips to France, some German-speaking in Switzerland, and trying to get along in Greece, has got me pretty confused in the art of foreign lingo.

            Even with all the great places I’ve been, this trip has been largely about my family living a different kind of life. There are some parts of this new lifestyle that I think are great, and others that aren’t. We have more time (with each other), but less with other kids (and none with our friends from home); we are being home schooled, and therefore have much more flexibility in our learning; we have the ability to see many astonishing sites (such as erupting volcanoes, Roman ruins and Greek temples) and use them as part of our school; we have more responsibilities and chores that come with life on a boat (like hand-washing dishes, vacuuming and sweeping many times a day, and hanging up laundry to dry), and being on a boat also gives us the freedom to stay out in uninhabited anchorages for many days.

            Even though I still miss my friends, and the trip I’m on is not just the one year vacation that some people think it is, I am having a great time (but don’t tell my parents!). I’ve seen scores of interesting sites and learned a lot, and as people keep telling me, the significance of this year in my life will probably grow with time.

 

 

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