Life in a Convent

I just returned from a shoe shopping trip with a nun. I'm not sure how to begin to explain my last few days.

But here are some pictures from San Remo, where I had orientation last week. The first is from the Old Town, which I walked around with a couple of my roommates as soon as we arrived. The second is a view from the villa where we had orientation.

I am living in a convent about 20 minutes outside Rome. It is very rural, pretty hot, and extremely Catholic. I am a tutor/counselor for an amazing group of 9-11 year olds, all of whom go to school here. Their teachers are all nuns except for one, Angela, who is the camp director. Camp goes from 9-5 Monday-Friday, and this is a two-week session. This is the first year that ACLE (the organization I work for) has had a camp here, and this is the only session this summer, so it's pretty much a trial run. That means that the camp director is new, and no one here knows that to expect.

For the most part, camp has been great so far. I was really anxious because the orientation was unnerving at times and overwhelming at others, I've never been a camp counselor, and I've never taught a language. But as soon as the kids arrived, everything fell into place. I was worried about having a group of rowdy, uncontrollable kids like I had during the practice morning during orientation, but with the group I have now, I can leave them for minutes at a time and they will be completely responsible. I want to desribe all of them but that would take forever, so I'll just describe a few. Two of them are siblings and their mom is a former English teacher. One of them, Stefano, knows a ridiculous amount of English. Today he walked away from a group of kids, looked at me and said, "I disassociate myself!" I don't think American 10 year-olds would have any idea what that means. When someone is that far ahead, it can go either way: He can completely remove himself from the group, or he can participate and explain things to the other kids. And he is the latter, which is wonderful.

There's a boy named Francesco who is about a foot shorter than all the other boys, and he is unbelievably cute. And there's a girl named Federica who enjoys playing loud, fun games, and she comes up to me after them and says "That game is crazy!" But my favorite might be Giammi. We break up into teams with kids from every group in the afternoon for mini-olympic games. I am the leader of Team Redwolf. Giammi is also a part of Team Redwolf, and he cracks me up. He always makes silly faces, his shorts are way shorter than everyone else's and also tighter, he tried to choreograph our team cheer, and after people lie on the ground, he runs up to them and wipes their backs clean.

But more on living with nuns. None of them speak a word of English. They know that I don't eat pork (although they don't know why), and on Sunday they served a dish that looked like pork, so I walked into the back room, where I expected to find only Gabriella, the youngest nun who we communicate with mostly (2 of my co-tutors speak fluent Italian). But I walked into a room with about 10 nuns sitting and eating. Each was seated at their own personal table, and they were all facing each other. And as soon as I started talking, they all started speaking at me in Italian. This was one of those moments when I just kind of withdrew from myself and thought, "How did I get to this point?" I was standing in a room with 10 Italian nuns who were all talking to me at the same time in a language I didn't understand. Well anyway, it turned out that the meat was beef.

We're staying in a mini-apartment building on the property. Us 4 tutors each have our own rooms, with bathrooms included. And we have a terrace balcony (pictured). So it's nice. I was a bit bummed when I saw that I'd be living in a "flat," and not a homestay, but it's turned out really well. And I learned at dinner tonight that we have dinner plans for the next 5 nights. 5 campers' families have offered to have us over, which I am really looking forward to, although that's a lot of busy nights when are days are already packed.

There are statues of Jesus everywhere, and crucifixes in every room. And there's also this poster of their plan to Evangelize. Oh and tonight during dinner, we were served a peach that had a cross in it!