Camp #1 ended today. I am pretty glad it's over. The final show went really well, and talking to the parents and eating their food was great, but the last few days were rough. My well-behaved group turned into a not-so-well-behaved group. But they nailed the show, they all memorized their lines perfectly, and they had some amazing costumes.
My favorite part of today though was the food after the show. Unfortunately I missed part of it because of a name mistake. For the kids' portfolios/diplomas/certificates, I used the names they wrote in their workbooks. Well, one girl wrote "Elisa Vitalina Benedetta." So I wrote everything as "Elisa Benedetta," but apparently her name is "Elisa Vitalina." Oops!
But after that, I started eating. Two parents came up to me and told me that they'd made dishes specifically for me. Everyone here knows that I don't eat pork. One cooked me a mushroom/cheese/bread dish and another made a tuna rice dish. But then I was standing next to the massive pork, and a woman I don't even know came up to me when she saw me looking at it and waved her finger in a very concerned way, saying "You can't eat it! Pork!" I still don't know who she is, but she knows who I am. I also came out as a Jew to a few people this week, although it was more the Italian-speaking tutors coming out for me. Everyone accepted it smoothly, one guy asked if I'd been to the synagogue in Rome, and Sister Gabriella (the cool, young nun), was happy to finally understand my dietary restrictions.
More about food... last night was an incredibly bizarre dinner. Every week night we've gone to a family's house for dinner, and the food is always amazing. But last night the four of us went to a fancy restaurant for weddings/other events owned by the family of one of my kids. It was us tutors, three of my kids, their mothers, and a bunch of teenagers and I don't really know if they were friends or siblings, because no one every told us. We got there at 8, and we didn't have a conversation with anyone until 11. We sat at one end of a double table, surrounded by kids who refused to talk to us in English or Italian, 20 feet from the mothers who did not say a word to us. They just served us food and watched as we ate it and pointed when we didn't eat certain things. The title of this post was part of the menu. The least Kosher dinner... ever. At least there was some fish, and as for the spaghetti with clams, I just picked out the clams. And the dessert was good.
Well tomorrow I head to my next camp. I'm going with my friend Mike (!) from school to a city of 5,000 about 40 minutes from Milan. I'll be transporting for 7 hours, but 4 of them are on the speedy train which I've never been able to afford but now that I'm not paying, it'll be wonderful.
I'll post some pictures from today soon.
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