Tea for Two...Thousand

We drink tea. Daily. More when we can't get our morning coffee in the piazza. And our afternoon coffee. Instead, we gravitate to our terrace, assuming we get up early enough that it's still cool.

I found out, though, that the tea bags we use contain microplastics, and I'm not a fan of that. Plus, all the paper and so on felt a bit wasteful. Loose tea is not an option in the shops here, and online you are confined to very "special" (read: expensive) teas or ordering from Twinings at a huge shipping expense.

Deciding to get a little creative, and remembering where tea is produced, I searched for shops online that would ship from India. And, boy, did I find a lot! Most of them wanted to sell me hundreds of kilos, though, and I figured that four kilos would be about a year's supply. 

I found a vendor who was really sweet, shipping from Kolkata. After a little back-and-forthing (she wanted to sell me the option of free shipping but individual tins, which still seemed like too much packaging, along with the fact that I couldn't get all the flavors I wanted), we settled on her sending me heat-sealed plastic bags of 500g and 1 kg of the different varieties I requested. All in all, I think I ended up with 4 kg of tea. 

The tea itself cost $40. The shipping? Another $60, at the cheapest possible rate. The customs duties were $3.60, and the post office charge for handling the customs duties came to an additional $9. That said, we figure that had we bought retail here, we would have ended up paying $420 minimum, plus had all the plastic and paper waste and microplastic ingestion.

And the tea? Truly delicious. 

Another cup? Don't mind if I do...

Alexandra

A Shot in the Arm

Three of us finally have had our first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, and we couldn't be happier. Here's how it came about: 

There is a site for the regional health system where we could sign up to get our appointments. Access to signing up was restricted based on age for a long time (Umbria has a huge number of elderly people, and they were focused on immunizing the 80+ group), but finally Jeremy and James were able to request an appointment. At this point, neither Michael or I had received our appointments but were in theory waiting to hear back on our dates.

However. As one would expect, there was another way. One of our friends called to say that the neighboring region, Lazio, was offering an "Open Day" (in English) to provide the Astrazeneca vaccine to all comers. We excitedly and hurriedly signed up, because the appointments were for last Saturday and Sunday. Since we had plans for all of Saturday, we elected for Sunday. We heard that the follow-up appointments would also have to be done in Lazio, and that our friends' dates for the second Since that sounded way better than waiting for late August, we decided that Michael and I would go for our local health service rather than using the Open Day.

The Lazio set-up was a very temporary-type location essentially set up in an old strip mall. The important thing, though, is that vaccines were being given. Unfortunately, James was not able to get his there due to an allergy to crab. They wanted to have his administered in a hospital setting just in case there was a problem, so they recommended that he call our family doctor to start that process.

Curiously enough, Michael and I had appointments in different towns altogether. Michael's was down in Ponte Rio (just down the hill) and mine was all the way in Marsciano, a town about 20 minutes away. As it happened, we both got appointment times that were perfect for us.

The Marsciano location is housed in the permanent structures associated with a local park. These were two concrete-block buildings. Along with our appointment, we were sent links to documents to fill out prior to arrival; this greatly reduced the amount of time we had to spend at the facility. I arrived 10 minutes before my appointment time, and made it through the intake (three separate processes, including bureaucratic and medical) well in time to have my shot at the original appointment time. They asked that I stay for 30 minutes after the injection since I have an allergy to penicillin instead of the usual 15. I was out of the facility within 45 minutes of having arrived.

We just can't wait to get out and see people again! We've been so diligent about staying in so as to protect our fellow citizens and ourselves, but the weather is so lovely and the piazza calls.

Love,

Alexandra