The Good Earth

I was reminded of one of my favorite books this week, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. The book chronicles the life of a Chinese peasant pre-Mao era. The author has written other books as well but in my opinion she doesn't caputre the attention of the reader or the spirit of her characteres as well as she does in The Good Earth. In one part of the book the main character wakes up and thinks to himself "there is a luxury in living". The rest of the book goes on to describe how he and his family depend on the earth for their livlihood. The book is excellent. This past week I felt exactly like that! Every single day has been fantastic.
I arrived in Venice last Saturday and Alex was able to meet me at the airport. We took a train back to Paderno del Grappa where he lives. I stayed in a very nice hotel, incidentally the only one in the surrounding area. I got to meet all of Alex's friends and everyone was very friendly and easy to get along with.
Paderno is very small probably less than 1,000 people live there. Alex is studying there with a program called CIMBA and there are 140 students there. I probably saw less than 20 Italians, even so the local Pizzeria was deliscious and Paderno is in a valley surrounding by beautiful mountains. I had a very relaxing time there.