Have you heard about The Key to The Castle workshops for writers? The next one is taking place in Torre di Cetara, Italy from October 19th to 26th this year.
Kathy Curto, Patricia Dunn, William Papaleo and Angela Derecas Taylor are behind this. It’s their signature workshop on the Amalfi Coast but they offer workshops for writers, artists and yoga enthusiasts both online, locally in the NY area and in other cool places abroad.
I found about this when ran into Angela at a writer’s event. I’d known her from her days working in the mayor’s office in my city. When she retired 2 years ago – she started this cool company.
So who is the ideal participant for a writers trip to Italy?
Someone who is open to adventure and discovery as a community of artists.
One benefit of working as an artist in community with others is the gaining of new insight, particularly when it comes to ways of seeing and valuing their own work. This applies on the page, the mat, out in the natural world and on the canvas.
An ideal student also recognizes the importance of getting away from their own day to day life to experience the illuminating effects of travel and the sharing of culture—in all ways.
Many students attend their workshops to collect fresh understandings of their own promise as artists and to gain the variety of perspectives that come from being in a new place.
Kathy and Patricia joined me in the radio studio to tell us all about it.
Kathy says, “The Key To the Castle is sort of our signature program and that is in October for writers really of all levels. We do writing and painting primarily and some meditation and yoga and lots of eating and sort of collaborating with one another. It’s really community driven.
“We’ve been doing it for several years now in Cetara. We have a great relationship with the community, with the merchants there, with the people who help us actually organize the housing and the trips.”
“You actually stay in this beautiful fishing town right the Amalfi coast and everybody gets apartments like the person that arranges you it’s like condos. Everybody gets their condos and then we actually do the writing right in the castle.”
Seems many great writers just don’t really ‘get it’ until they’re with other people who bring it out in them and see it.
Pat said, “You can write alone, and you might get to certain things in your work, but until you share it with people you trust, in a safe environment, you’re not going to get the kind of feedback that you need to move on to the next step unless you want to wait 25, 30 years.”
Wow. Who the heck has that kind of time to waste? LOL
If this sounds like something you’d like to know more about check out KeysToTheCastleWorkshop.com.
Meanwhile enjoy this podcast of our live conversation on the Debbie Nigro Show. If you’d rather read than listen the audio transcript is below.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
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And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show.
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You know sometimes things look bad because you’re not seeing them from the right lens. Sometimes you need to change your perspective and sometimes you got to get out of Dodge to do that. Hey everybody I’m Debbie Niro. Today we’re not only getting you out of Dodge, we’re going to get you out of Dodge and over to Italy because some girls are here today with the keys to the castle.
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What are they talking about?
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What castle?
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The Keys to Castle workshop for writers which is taking place in Torre di Cetara, Italy. It’s October 19th to 26th this year. Kathy Curto, Patricia Dunn, William Papaleo and Angela Derricus Taylor are behind this. It’s their signature workshop on the Amalfi Coast and we are here in the studio today with two of those lovely people, Kathy and Patricia, who are going to tell us a lot about it and how to get to that trip with them.
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Hello girls.
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Hello.
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Thanks for having us.
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Yeah, who wants to talk first? Kathy, who’s going to start? I’ll start.
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All right.
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Pat, hi.
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Hi. How are you doing? Good to meet you.
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It’s great.
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Well, I know of you.
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It’s an honor to be here.
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You don’t?
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Yeah, a lot. You’re funny. I know, yeah. I know. I talk enough. You’re like, I think I know her from somewhere.
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I know you from the media and you’re a celebrity, but yes, that’s great. I’m happy I’m a celebrity. Can we say that on the radio?
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Too late. Anyway, good to have you. You’re a writer? I’m an author, a teacher for over two decades now. I don’t want to say exactly how many years. And yeah, so what I do is I try to struggle with my own writing.
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I work with Key to the Castle Workshop and we bring people out who think they’re writers, never wrote before. We started off with Italy and now we’re doing programs, we’re going to Quebec, the Catskills. We do all these wonderful courses on Zoom.
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Wonderful. I’m going to have to join you for something because I’m a writer and I need to collaborate more. Sometimes I get stuck in my own stuckness. Cathy Curto, tell me a little bit about you.
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I am also an author, a writer, a teacher and many other things. My bio says it depends on the moment. So yeah, we do. As Pat said, we have a lot of cool stuff planned for the future. But in terms of Italy, because I love the intro about Italy and your excitement about Italy. We are excited about Italy.
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We have Cetara is planned, that’s in October.
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I did say it wrong, Cetara.
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Cetara, yes. I still say it wrong. And that’s sort of our signature program and that is in October for, as Pat said, writers really of all levels. We do writing and painting primarily and some meditation and yoga and lots of eating and sort of collaborating with one another. It’s really community driven.
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We’ve been doing it for several years now in Cetara. We have a great relationship with the community, with the merchants there, with the people who help us actually organize the housing
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and the trips. Yeah, where do people stay when you go to Chittada? You actually stay in this beautiful fishing town right in the On the Amalfi coast and everybody gets apartments like the person that arranges you it’s like condos Everybody gets their condos and then we actually do right in the castle
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The castle is our classroom. Yes. Yeah, I was reading about who the ideal participant for this trip would be and that the ideal participant is open to adventure and Discovery and wanting to change the life as a community of artists, right? And they were talking about, when I was reading the story behind this, one of the benefits of working as an artist in a community with others is gaining new insight, particularly when it comes to ways of seeing
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and valuing their own work, both process and product. How many writers just are so great and don’t really get it until they are with other people who bring it out in them and see it?
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I don’t think I know one writer that hasn’t done it that way. Really? Yeah, because you can write alone and writers don’t write alone and you might get to certain things in your work, but until you share it with people you trust, it’s got to be a safe environment. You’re not going to get the kind of feedback that you need to move on to the next step unless you want to wait 25, 30 years. Yeah, like me. But I find that, and I’m a creative
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person, like once I’ve done something, I really don’t want to go back and read it again.
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Yeah.
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Well, I have to say, I know you’re a creative person for lots of reasons, but one is that I love what you said earlier about drinking the air. I thought that was such a beautiful, beautiful…
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Oh, somebody write that down.
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That was a beautiful way of describing what you were talking about. I think I agree with Pat. I think that, and one of the things that we want to do with this whole program, whether we’re in Italy or on Zoom, is to really remind people that we are building a community, we are cultivating and nourishing a community because support is essential.
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And I have to say that right now, this has been many, there’s always that saying of like it’s a life changing experience, but I have one student in my class now who went to Cetara, and she’s working on a book that she’s almost done, it’s a 10 month class, we write your book, it’s part of the workshop as well and she just said the other day the only reason why she went to Cetara was because she thought it would be fun to go to Italy and her friend asked her to go but she didn’t think of herself as a writer
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never wanted a writer never wanted a really writer so she was a sneak a
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sneakeroo and we’ve had a few of them. We’ve had a few for sure we’ve had people who are very clear I am NOT a writer but they’re drawn to the program for other reasons
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yoga and art and painting.
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It’s important also to mention, Cetara is our signature program, but I do want to give a shout out to our Vietri program, which is in September. We have one or I think there’s one maybe, maybe two, definitely one spot left in that program. Angela and Bill Papaleo, our painter, are involved with that program. And then in October, we do the writing and the painting. So our website gives all the information, KetoTheCastle.com, KetoTheCastleWorkshop.com.
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Why do people need to get out of their usual space to be able to write or paint? I mean, there’s getting out of your space, going to another room in your house. You’re lucky enough to have that. And then there’s leaving the country to get creative.
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Well, you’re inspired by… The great thing when you go with this group is that everybody, Everybody, no matter what their age, feels uncomfortable together. So there’s a trust and a bond that happens in that space. And people, we really navigate or I guess you could say help people to write their stories.
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What are the ages of people who do that? It’s a range, actually. I mean, we’ve had people in their mid-20s. That’s not as common as people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s.
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And 80s, yeah.
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Yeah.
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And men, women, right?
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Men, women?
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Yeah, men and women.
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Mostly women.
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Mostly women, but yeah.
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Mostly women.
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Why is it, because women just have more words than guys. They’re born with more words.
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But you know, I also do want to say it’s interesting.
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Bob Shakin is at my engineer. Trust me, we have more. We use more words to say the same thing. Is that a fair assessment?
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Yeah, yeah, I guess, yeah.
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Sometimes, yeah.
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I guess it depends on the person, but it’s interesting your question about leaving a space to write, you know, and going to another country. And I agree with that. We’ve seen it like being in a foreign place together does have an influence. But what’s interesting is some people write about that place, the beautiful seaside, the landscape, and some people write about the stuff they’ve been writing about all their lives. Or couldn’t write about.
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Yeah, yeah. So, Key to the Castle worked up for writers in Cetara, Italy. Who picked Città in the beginning? Why was that the spot?
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Well, Kathy… So it started off when I was working at the college and Kathy and Bill came to me and said, Hey, the person that does our foreign travel program can’t do Italy right now because they just canceled a program in Italy. And she’s like, So we can’t touch it, but go see Pat. And I was directing the Writing Institute,
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and I got the reputation of when people didn’t want to say no to people, they said, go see Pat. So I was-
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You’re fun to know.
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Yeah, yeah. So I was really exhausted, and I was not taking on anything else, but I like Kathy very much. I just met Bill. So we’re sitting in the living room of the space,
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and they’re talking and talking, and I said, all right, I’ll think about it. This sounds great. And as I’m walking out, thinking, there’s no way I can take this for some reason on right now I stopped and turned and I said what part of Italy is this?
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and when they said that it was in Cetara it’s in the region of Sarleno which I used to go with my best friend who lives there now. So the best friend’s still there? She’s still there and I fell in love in that place. My first kiss, my first everything. Shut up. But the bigger thing around all that was I knew how to navigate the people, the area. I knew like you can’t, the way you have to deal with cultural things, you ask for a question, you might get an answer two days later. But you know, there were all
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these things that people, and people are really lovely and supportive. And so, and then besides Kathy and Bill being wonderful, and we just took it all from there.
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You never know, right? You just never know when somebody who usually says no is going to say yes, based on something you throw out.
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Pat was really…
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I hate saying no. I hate saying no.
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That was the time. We have a beautiful sort of interesting origin story, us meeting. We met in an Italian classroom, Pat and I, but the other interesting thing is that Bill Papaleo, our painting faculty and instructor and the person who’s… we have his work on display right now in Larchmont.
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Larchmont, New York, if anybody’s listening. People all over the country can hear this.
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Larchmont, New York, Westchester County. He is the son of the writing professor I had as an undergrad, and we reconnected very sort of spontaneously through social media, through LinkedIn actually, and just, you know, I mean, I was doing some writing about his dad’s work and its influence on my life as a writer. And then he was telling me he does workshops, he works at, he teaches at Universities of Salerno, like it all sort of came together.
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So you guys both speak Italian.
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I took it in second grade and I don’t speak Italian.
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I can get by in restaurants, in, you know, in train stations. I understand more than I speak but I love being around Italian my mother spoke it fluently and never spoke a little bit of it if you
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need somebody to come like as a wing person just to curse everybody out I’m your girl I know is Italian you know you can take me along yeah all right Debbie do it yeah yeah no those no I know those words now a little jealous and the reason I can’t come to this trip with you right away as I actually said this to my boyfriend last night who I’ve been with for a long time. You bring guests. You have to understand. I have never been to Italy because I’m the only
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Italian, I think, American, Italian on the planet who hasn’t been to Italy, it seems. So if I got to go the first time, I wanted to be a little romantic with the guy. Oh, but it can be romantic. But then I can dump him after and come on the next trip. Or you can come in the beginning, bring him as a guest. It’s very romantic. Oh, he can meet me then. Yes. There’s lots of options and opportunities. Actually, we help people work out all that stuff.
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There’s lots of options and opportunities.
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We’ve had people get sexy gays. Kathy, Kurt, Patricia, Dom, this is sounding like a lot of fun.
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It is a lot of fun.
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It is a lot of fun. So let’s just get the word out again, because people are listening like, what are these people talking about? The key to the castle workshop dot com. I’d like you to go there. It’s a writer’s workshop.
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It’s not the only one they’re doing, but the one they want to promote today that’s happening October 19th to 26th of this coming year, and you have to get ahead of this stuff. What is the deadline for this one?
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Well, we have a couple, our deadline actually has passed, but we do have a couple of spots, a few spots left, and we are starting our process now. We’re going to be meeting with people on Zoom, getting our cohort together, but we would welcome any of your listeners who are interested in reaching out to us as soon as possible so we can share more of the details.
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Okay.
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And I’ve got to say, we got a lot of applications this year. You did. Yeah, so the spots we’re holding is because we’re trying to find people that are going to be like, right for it.
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Enjoy it and right match.
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Yeah, and be right for it.
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Yeah. It’s their signature workshop on the Amalfi Coast, right? And your home for the week, as I understand it, is one of several modest apartment dwellings, although in Italy, who cares, right? Scattered through the quiet fishing village.
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Everything’s walkable.
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With the views of the Amalfi Coast.
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With the views of the Amalfi Coast. Yeah. And your studio is the historic Torre di Cetara where you convene for writing and painting workshops and then you have the Visariali Tower dating back to the 16th century which is a veritable sentinel as I’m reading on their website and look out for pirate raids in the days of yore and the home of the Civic Museum, local artist gallery, the castle on the Tyrrhenian Sea,
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boasts an array of indoor spaces and outdoor terraces sure to inspire.
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Wow.
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I want to go.
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I know. Now where do you eat? Because that’s important. Oh, yeah. When is the eating? Can you eat while you’re writing? Because that’s important. Can you eat while you’re painting? Can you drink while you’re painting?
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You can eat all the time. We can eat at any point in time. The food is amazing. Lots of fish. We have great contacts. Now, we’ve been going there for several years, so we know a lot of the local merchants and restaurateurs.
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And we take people on trips to wine country and to taste them.
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0:13:42
What airline are you flying?
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We don’t include the airline part. We give recommendations.
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Some people fly together.
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Some people fly together. I know I’ve done it with a few times.
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How expensive is the air back and forth to Italy these days?
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Actually, I just looked for a student who reached out to me and was asking about the program. I just looked New York to Naples, which is typically the airport that people fly into anywhere from like 800 to 1200 which is decent. Round trip. Yeah right now I mean that may change and that was on one of those you know like discount flight sites. Yeah that’s what it
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costs to go to Fort Lauderdale from New York in February. Yeah. You know. Yeah exactly. It’s ridiculous. And do you want to get out what the cost this cost for somebody to understand what the tuition is for this because again you have to be accepted but there’s a whole week and it includes what three meals no that includes I’m sorry housing every dinner every dinner or yeah or lunch or lunch okay housing breakfast breakfast instructions grips we take them to
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different parts of the Malafia Coast and into the mountain regions you have to
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promote the book afterwards when there’s all said and done oh we have we made
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that was part of what the idea here is that we don’t go to Italy and then never talk to you again.
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Oh good.
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Oh no, that would be bad. The whole idea is that we continue, we have alumni programs.
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I got a text from everyone. I got a text from everybody.
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These girls are hot and happening, they’re going to Italy. Definitely check out the website for all the, like, all the information. V to the castle workshop dot com. Thank you girls.
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0:15:10
Thank you.
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I’m sorry we’re coming to the end.
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I’m wrapping it up.
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Thank you.
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0:15:14
This is so great.
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Come with us. Thank you again for having us. Always a pleasure.
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And your boyfriend will love it. And your boyfriend will love it.
