Angels, Festivals, Prison Camp & Bologna

Angels
There are these absolutely wonderful people who can make camps so much better. At my first camp, it was Sister Gabriella, who is one of those people that even when you speak different languages, you can tell is just a really good person. But here, at a place in dire need of angels, there are 3.

One is Anita. She pretty much runs the camp. She keeps the kids in order, helps out when we're organizing games, comes around to check up on us, prints out notifications about shows and water games for kids to give their parents, and asks how we're doing in general. She is not a director, she is a helper – a volunteer who is at camp because she can speak English and probably has nothing else to do for the summer. She is sixteen.

The others are Marco and Enza. They are the groundskeepers at the school who live on our hall. We learned a few days ago that Marco's other job is designing concentrated juice factories, and he travels all around the world with three other guys building them. When we first arrived, he was very stern with us and told us the ground rules and was not too friendly. But as days went by, he talked to us more and more (especially to those who speak Italian). However, a couple days ago, he got angry.

Usually, for dinner, we eat the leftover lunch cafeteria food, frozen food, and smelly canned vegetables. When Marco found out about this, he and his wife, Enza, were extremely disgusted. On Sunday, they cooked us an amazing dinner with pasta, vegetables, cake, and wine. Then, last night, they improved upon that. Marco's boss recently went into the mountains looking for porcini mushrooms, and brought back about 600 euros worth of them, and gave some to Marco. He put them into a creamy pasta and served them to us. I cannot describe how delicious they were. But that was only the first course. He also cooked us kebabs with four kinds of meat, and vegetables.

We feel guilty because they are paying for these dinners, but if the directors found out what he was doing, they would freak out. Apparently they did not even say "Hi" to Marco until a few months ago (he's been here a few years), and they assumed that he and Enza would not even allow us to use their kitchen to cook our own food. They've told us that the dinners make them really happy because it feels like home (they have a teenage daughter in Sardinia). So these are our "host parents," and definitely the most hospitable people we've met here.

Also, they feed their dog, Camilla, pasta. And I just found out... they both LOVE Ricky Martin. And, Enza's ringtone is Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music." Marco's is Beyonce's "To The Left."

Oh and one more thing about angels. Today my campers were working on a page about opposites. One fill-in-the-blank was: "The opposite of far is _____." So I walked around, checking everyone's work, and the best student in my class wrote: "The opposite of far is angel." I was completely confused and made a halo with my hands above my head and she nodded. I told her... "San Francisco is far, Parma is near. I don't know what angel is." So the next question was: "_____ is the opposite of high." She wrote, "Angel is the opposite of high." I have no idea what wires in her head could be crossed, so if you have any ideas, please let me know.

Festivals
I think I mentioned before how I went to a small village festival at my last camp, where they had a fireworks show afterward. On Friday night we went to another one in this town. The town is small, but the festival was huge. Literally the whole town was transformed into a market, and I think every resident was there. It was a much needed fun end to the week. We went there with Marco and Enza, and when we ran into them by the food tents, they insisted on buying us fried bread and Parma ham. Of course I didn't have the ham, but it was really nice to be offered. And the fried bread was delicious.

Prison Camp
A little update... For the most part, things haven't improved much. I don't want to go into detail because I've complained so much to a lot of people. We sent a letter to ACLE, and they sent one of their top people immediately and he stayed with us for a couple days. But really, we all just need to get out of here. We're fenced off from the world with hardly any way out, and the food is hardly edible.

But my kids, for the most part, are one thing that's going right. Last week I did a Pirates of the Caribbean show with most of the kids who were only staying for the first week, so it was a large cast. I was worried about arranging costumes for 16 kids, but their costumes were amazing! I needed 14 swords (for everyone but Elizabeth and the monkey), and my kids actually brought 14 plastic or wooden swords from home. I needed 7 or 8 eye patches, and 5 or 6 of them brought eye patches. I needed white sheets for the ghost pirates, and they brought them. I needed a monkey tail and a girl brought one. In the end, I had to make one eye patch. That's it. They brought every single other thing.

This week we're doing a show in which Harry Potter and Ron Weasley visit Fred and George's joke shop. They play with the trick wands, one of which causes all of the witches in the store to start dancing to "Mamma Mia." You gotta find a way to please everyone.

Bologna is my favorite city in Italy... Bologna is not my favorite city in Italy
We went on an overnight trip to Bologna last weekend, which is about an hour train ride from Parma. The city is beautiful. It's definitely my favorite city in Italy to walk around, maybe because of the colorful buildings, maybe because all of the sidewalks are covered by the buildings. We spent most of our time there walking in massive circles around the city.

One of the more memorable things about the city was the gelato. One place we ate at is "internationally recognized," according to my Lonely Planet, and they had a letter from some organization in New Jersey naming it the best ice cream store in the world for 2009. It was really, really good. I had one of their creations that combined caffe espresso, chocolate, stracciatella (chocolate chip), and mascarpone. It was really, really good. On Sunday we tried another gelato place that's known for serving gelato in focaccia. I was the only one bold/gross enough to try it, and I thought it was pretty good. The crema (vanilla-ish) worked really well, but the caffe... not so much. Also, the bread was too huge.

But there were problems with Bologna. We went to the main park, and its sketchiness is only comparable to some areas of Golden Gate Park. We couldn't believe how bad it was after walking around such a beautiful city, but we decided to sit down anyway. Bad call. About 10 minutes after we sat down, two guys about 20 feet in front of us started pushing each other. One lifted up his shirt and pulled a knife from his waist. We left.

It was also really difficult to find anything to do at night, which was especially disappointing since my co-tutor Julia and I were trying to celebrate our birthdays. But I'd gladly go back to Bologna when school is in session (they have the oldest university in Europe) and students are everywhere.


Well, I only have a couple more days at this camp, and then I'm going to a small town between Verona and Padua. It's northeast of here, about an hour west of Venice. I'll be at the camp for two weeks, and I'm going with one of my co-tutors from here. I'm really excited that I'll be with a host family, because I could use some hospitality after these two weeks. But... this camp has TEN campers. In the whole camp. And those 10 campers are at SIX different English levels. I will have 5 in my group and Sara will have five. We will each be teaching three different levels in class. The second week of camp... there will be 16 campers. It's going to be crazy. But I'm actually pretty excited about it.

This post seems to be waaaaaaaaaay too long, so I congratulate you for reading it all! Thanks!