Parents: Lost & Found

Hello everyone!

Good news! My parents were found this morning. I called Baba at about 9:50am, and he picked me up at about 10:25am at the BP station right next to Girasole. I went up to the hotel with him and had breakfast with him and Angi (although I had just eaten breakfast, so I just watched, but that was all right). There hotel was hilariously hideous, quite frankly. You see, the Swiss people, being as sneaky as they are, had split the hotel into two buildings. One passably modern and relatively attractive one with a spectacular view of the lake, the other that looks like a cheap brothel. They were put into the latter of the two options. Baba said he felt like he was in a copycat version of Caesar's palace in Las Vegas. All the walls were horribly painted classic fresco/mural type things with lots of naked people in fig leaves and gated gardens. Not to mention all of the marble and plaster busts that adorned the hallways. The place was amazing. I can't wait until you can see pictures. We took lots. Oh and there was this really great head-of-a-horse sculpture that sort of looked like something a cat might cough up--I felt sorry for the thing. It was enormous. It just seemed very silly that anyone would want a hotel to look like that...

So after they had breakfast and straightened out their room situation, we drove down to Girasole (my place!). And I showed them around. Unfortunately the common room wasn't at its best this morning. There were a lot of rather inebriated students in the common room last night who made a mess and happened to break the big, main door (which is a push door) and cracked the window. It was a pretty sad sight. And then someone was burning something in the oven--for the most part, college students don't know how to cook, I've come to find out. But they quite enjoyed my room, I think. You'll have to ask them yourselves. They took a few pictures of my room, too.

After that we walked up to the school, so they could experience the walk up the hill. Took pictures of that too. Then we went walking in downtown Lugano, and had gelato (biscotti and stracciatella for me today, and pistachio and some sort of fruity one for Angi). We spent a whole lot of time walking the waterfront, we went all the way down to the park--sound of like walking around part of the lake. We eventually walked back up to Girasole, where I stayed to work on some homework and then we met up again around 6:30pm. We had dinner on the waterfront--some good pizza. I haven't actually had pizza since I've been here, shockingly enough. Then we walked the waterfront for a bit more. Angi tried out her Italian on our very sketchy looking waiter (pencil-thin chops AND chinstrap with very black, thick, long, greasy, wavy hair). He was not so enthused. Mostly he wanted to pretend we didn't exist... which was okay... Angi capped off the evening by asking for the "check-o." I'm not sure what else to say about that.

We ran into a British guy looking for an ATM and a campground, and I did what I could to help him. As did Angi... she swears she saw a campsite by the Lugano Golf Club today. She's only been here a day, and she's already giving directions. We warned him about that. He was from Cardiff. He was part of some 1500 mile journey from the UK to Croatia--one of 150 other cars. They've been all over the place--they left last Sunday and they've been in a different country every night. He has his ferry ticket for Thursday. Crazy, huh? So that was sort of cool and out-of-the-norm. Then I jumped out of the car at the intersection on the way back to Girasole, so they could just go straight up the hill back to their beloved hotel. I brought some leftover pizza to Keely and Deniz, who had a very disappointing pasta-cooking experience this evening. And now back into my cozy little cubicle. I'm going to call Soraya hopefully, then finish my English essay, and go to sleep!

I miss you guys!