Back in the Habit

As I write this post from a train station in the south, I am waiting to be rescued. I took a train for 5+ hours to get down here only to have the short local train cancelled because of work on the tracks. But my new director’s brother is driving over to pick me up. The ride and my adventure at this station will probably be the subject of my next post, because I have so much to tell about my brief time in Rome.

I’ll start where I left off, on my first night (Thursday).
Camps are all over this country, from the Austrian border, to Sardinia, to Sicily. There are over 400 tutors this summer. Yet, one of my closest friends from last summer is working at a camp TWO BLOCKS from my director’s apartment in the periphery of Rome. I was lucky enough to meet up with her on Thursday (and again on Friday).

Oh and a funny exchange happened during Thursday dinner at Angela’s.  I told her that my brother works in politics and she asked if he's a Republican.  I told her that he's a Democrat, and she told me that she knows about Republicans because of Rob Lowe's character on Brothers & Sisters.  I explained that Obama is a Democrat and that I like him, and Nino then asked me if Hillary Clinton was a Republican.  He was confused when I told him that she's also a Dem, and that John McCain is a Republican (he'd forgotten about him).

Nino also greeted me on Friday by saying 'Good Morning, Vietnam.' He learned pretty much all of his English from movies and tv.

Friday was a pretty miraculous day. Mostly because it’s rare for a tutor to return to a camp he or she has previously worked at, especially when that tutor is not even in the country for the entire duration of the camp. But, because I was staying with Angela, I got to go back to the convent camp for a day. Of course it was weird being there and seeing six different tutors working with those kids in the same location, but it was so, so nice to see the kids again. Almost all of them were back, and there were 30ish new campers, too.

It was also wonderful to see Sister Gabriella again, who is even more amazing than I remembered. Last year I communicated with her in Spanish (she’s from Guatemala), but this year I’m proud to say that each of my sentences was a mix of Spanish and Italian, I just said each word in whichever came to mind first.

We spent the morning at a pool behind the convent which I didn't know about last year.  It was beautiful, but a little chilly.

A few weeks ago I bought an Italian learning and activity book, and I brought it to camp with me for the afternoon when kids were with their tutors.  But every time a camper passed me, he or she stopped to help me for a little bit.  They LOVED hearing and seeing me mess up and correcting me.  As soon as camp ended, a circle of kids gathered around me as I read the articles of clothing aloud and they judged my pronounciation.  The group grew to 15 campers, and they kept telling me to repeat the list until their parents made them leave.  It was too much fun.

Although by now I am in Calabria, and I will write about it soon, I want to share some quotes from my Lonely Planet book about the region...

Tell a non-Calabrese Italian that you're going to Calabria, and you will probably elicit some surprise, inevitably followed by stories of the Calabrian Mafia, notorious for smugglign and kidnapping wealthy northerners and keeping them hidden in the mountains.

Its towns, destroyed by repeated earthquakes, are often surrounded by brutal breeze-block suburbs.

So... an interesting place.  Oh and Nino made bruschetta on Friday, he gave me 3 huge pieces to start and I couldn't eat more because of all the other food.  Fresh tomatoes, homemade olive oil, and basil from their balcony.