voi siete qui

She smiled, nodding as if to make us understand. "Youra bags aheer, and then we goa to theea countrysieed. Yes?" We nodded, smiled, too. What else could we do? It had been an eight hour bus ride to Siena, where we were dumped unceremoniously at the station and left for adoption, mutt puppies in a cardboard box. When the famiglia Runfolo called our names, we could only swallow the butterflies and follow.

Our bags were left in the city, just as little Virginia had promised. A long pull up four flights of stairs and a whirlwind run through their frescoed apartment and we were back in the car, following Luiga out of the city. Virginia turned to us in the back, laughing now. "Mia mom, she runsa wid de car," she said. American songs played on the radio; the sun set over the Tuscan hills. We turned along a dirt road, down toward a country villa lit with warm light and candle glow. A dog met us at the iron gate; a small sign pointed to the pool. "Schizzo," Virginia pointed, introducing us to her cat; then "Angela, Giuliano" as she introduces old family friends. Angela won't tolerate a word of English, though she speaks it well. We ate at a long table under the stars, pasta and mozarella, prosciutto and figs. Virginia sat in the middle, the teenager ambassador of communication. "You can sleep this place anytime," she says as we return to the city. "Justa axsk. For weekends, swim? Thees isa okay?"

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Above Siena's Camollia Gate is written, "Cor magis tibi Sena pandi"--More than its doors, Siena opens its heart to you. In my three days here, nothing could be more true. We are a piece of this medieval city already, comfortable in its narrow streets and careful of the contrada rivalries. Today we started school, a frenzy of vocabulary and botched verbs. We have sketched in the Piazza del Campo and shopped the Euro store. I have given a tourist directions and found my own way to the English bookstore. Life, to say the very least, is so, so good.