Experiencing

Despite being an artist, Fiorella doesn't get a kick out of sight-seeing.  Thus, when Fio and family visited Britain, she wasn't that interested in looking at Big Ben or antique castles.  Instead, she wanted to experience the country. To stand on top of Hadrian's wall and call on the spirit of her old Latin teacher, Elor Osborn. To stop at a British Safeway and go through the aisles, then buy sliced ham at the deli, to walk through the doors of Harrod's and check out every department, to drive down a suburban street and see how people lived, to be walking through the tunnel under the Thames at the same time a herd of screaming school children were running through it, to eat fish and chips under the awning of a store in Greenwich and again, in the rain, in a little park in front of the Assembly Rooms in Bath.  To be kept awake until after midnight by a tenor singing out a window in Edinburgh.

These are her fondest memories of Britain.

Act Now!

When she goes to an opera or a musical, Fiorella wants to sing along.  She'd rather write books than read them.  And her favorite part of the trip the family took to England years ago was walking through Harrod's, turning her ankle at Castle Urquhart, eating fish and chips in the rain at Greenwich and again at Bath, and encountering a group of exuberant school children yelling for echo effect as they ran through the tunnel under the Thames.

For all her artistic eye, Fiorella is a doer rather than an observer.