Iowa Girl on the Go

For those of you who followed my blog in April when I was traveling with a group of Iowa Staters in Italy, you may remember that I became very close to my fellow travelers and had a very hard time saying goodbye. At the farewell dinner, Connie Osborne suggested that we all get together in Ames this fall for a football game and everyone was enthusiastic.

Those kinds of ideas generally sound great while you’re in the midst of a group in a lovely city such as Venice…but rarely come about once you return to your daily lives. But this group was different. Yesterday, five couples (nearly half of the total group) converged in Ames. I hosted the group in my home, and it was like a joyous family reunion. We all crowded into the kitchen, and the sound was deafening! It made me remember how loud we were in Italy!

For some reason, this group just connected from the very beginning. So it was really fun to see them again. We drank wine; ate pasta and bruschetta, bread, salad, and tiramisu; listened to Italian opera music; and celebrated the “second retirement” of one of the group’s members, Don Feld. We sat at two tables — it was quickly determined that men would sit at one and women at the other for maximum conversation — and reminisced about such things as the lovely villa in which we stayed in Tuscany, the restaurant we loved in San Gimingano, and our wonderful guide, Mauro. We toasted to good memories and good friendships.