What Chocolate Sounds Like

This afternoon, I had a lovely conversation with Valeria on Facebook. We were long overdue for a chat and so we set aside some time today to visit. We ended up chatting for two hours. I can't say it enough of how wonderful I think it is to have made such a great friend who lives on the other side of the world.

Today, we Google Earthed each other's homes and spent time directing one another to which house was exactly ours. I got to see the street and car park that lead up to Valeria's home and the little courtyard that her kitchen window overlooks. We have shared pictures of our homes through e-mail so that we can see where one another is sitting while we are talking.

As I type, I am listening to Radio Verona (Valeria sent me the link this afternoon)...some beautiful, lilting Italian song is playing. As I listen to the words, it makes me think that this is what chocolate sounds like...smooth, velvet-y, warm and it just rolls off your tongue. Italian is such a sensual, romantic language I told Valeria that the radio announcer could be advertising a carpet cleaning service and it still sounds wonderful to me! As we chatted, I directed Valeria to the Power 99 website and she listened in for a little while..."Mony Mony" began to play and you can't get much more typical P.A. music than that!!

We talk about so many wonderful things...we've shared recipes, described our jobs and our families, talked about books we've read, described our lives and what we do in a day and everything in between. I've described life in -45C weather, how we dress and what our routines are like to deal with the cold. Valeria has described for me the walks into Verona's old city center to go for coffee with friends. It is basically your typical pen pal, but with 2009 technology!

So, Valeria, to go along with our Google Earthing this afternoon, here is a picture taken out of my kitchen window shortly after we finished chatting. We look out on to the park that is behind our house. The other picture is taken from our backyard just to show the view of the northern Canadian sunset that we get (you can just barely see Shandi behind the big pile of snow at the bottom of the picture). I'm sure Elena would have a blast playing in the tons of snow out there! The next time you and Filippo are ready for a major holiday, you are more than welcome to come to our house. I've already started bugging Mike that I want a trip to Italy for my birthday :)


Click on the pictures to see them full size.