Sparking Gold & Shades of Blue

I stayed pretty close to home this weekend. On Saturday all 4 tutors from this camp spent the day in Palermo.  I was hesitant to do this because I already spent three days there this month, but I managed to see new things.

Upon arrival in the city, we walked over to the bus station to catch a ride to Monreale, but first we stopped at Ballaro market, the biggest one in the city, to have a quick look around.  I often see people who at first glance look like people I know, but of course are not, because I'm way down in Sicily and very few people I know are in Europe this summer.  But in the mass of this extremely long market, in a city far away from the Italian mainland, I walked right into a guy from my high school, who had also just graduated (Jonathan Morag to be precise, Rotem I think you're going to be the only one that knows him).  Describing it as surreal would be an understatement.  In my seven months abroad last year, I never ran into someone from high school, and so many people were abroad.  Oh, and here's a giant swordfish we more predictably saw at the market.

We made our way to Monreale, a small town in the hills above Palermo with an absolutely incredible church, quite possibly my favorite in Europe.  We explored the chiostro, which must translate to something like courtyard, thanks to my co-tutor's lie that all of us were from England to get EU discounts.  There are double columns bordering the courtyard, and each set has a different pattern.  I took waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many pictures, but that happens in these places.

Inside the church, the walls are almost entirely covered with gold mosaics.  The church is Norman/Arab/maybe Byzantine, too (?), and is one of those only-in-Sicily things.  It's super old - 1100s - and just mindbogglingly beautiful. There are three or four levels of images in the mosaics, telling biblical stories.  And the ceiling is gold as well, with gold beams crossing it.

We returned to Palermo, and I got to re-visit some of my favorite spots (with company this time), and I saw some new places, too.  I realized how lucky I was to have visited during festival time, because all of the lights above the major streets were gone.  We were also able to stay out late (a rare ACLE night out) thanks to one of the other host fathers who works late at a Palermo restaurant and gave us a ride back to Casteldaccia.

On Sunday I took it easy, and the highlight of my day was driving around the local coast with my host dad and brother, finding the best locations for taking pictures.

It was a windy day, which apparently creates colorful chaos in the sea.  Near the beach, the water was a pretty gross, sandy brown.  But a little ways out, it turned into a gorgeous light blue, and then a perfect, deep blue that stretched as far as I could see.  One minute there would be more of one color, and a few minutes later there would be more of another color.  I'm guessing this happens a lot of places but I'd never really noticed it before.

We kept driving around the coast, and ended up on this rocky beach facing Palermo, where huge birds circled high above (my host mom told me they're albatross, but I'm not totally sure if she was right because google translate disagreed).  The water was a totally different color there, but also beautiful.

Camp is still going really well, although 2 of my 5 kids have been out so far this week, and my show is pretty underdeveloped.  We're doing a dating game featuring Beyonce, Lady Gaga, and Shakira, because a dating game is one of the few shows you can actually do with 5 kids (host, person searching, 3 contestants).

Next week I'll be off, meaning this is my last camp.  I wanted to work but all camps are in the far north, and it costs too much to get me there.  I'm creating my plan now.  I will spend this weekend with my host fam here seeing Erice and Agrigento, two places I really want to go in Sicily that I haven't seen yet.  Then, I will probably fly on Monday to Milan, hopefully see a friend from Prague there, stay with a past host family for a couple nights, head to Florence to meet up with a friend from last year, and then head to Cinque Terre to see another friend from last year (this last part is definite).  Most of it is up in the air, but if it all works out, or even if most of it works out, it'll be a pretty incredible week.

Cristiano Ronaldo is better than The Pope

It's only halfway through, but I'm pretty sure this is the best camp I've ever done.  Usually I have a favorite or two in a class of 10-12 kids.  It's hard not to.  But in this group of 5, I do not have a favorite, because they are all a pleasure to teach.  As previously mentioned, the director is great, and the snacks are unbelievable.  Fresh bread every morning and granitas every afternoon.  And there's always fruit around.  One of the campers already brought all the tutors presents (we still have another week here!) and we have multiple dinner offers from other campers' families for next week.  Oh, and we spent all of Thursday at the beach.


There are pictures throughout the post from this past week that are not connected to the stories they're adjacent to (except for the last one). So quickly here are brief descriptions of them:

1. The view from my host family's house
2. Lunch at the beach
3. How many campers can fit on a surfboard? (This was their favorite game that day) And one of my campers waving.
4. Morning snack one day.  The breads had ham and cheese inside so the director ordered two small pizzas for me and the vegetarian tutor.
5. My favorite anti-mafia poster in the school.  There are dozens.
6. This is actually connected to the story, it's my group's city.  Hopefully if you click on it you'll be able to see the pretty buildings when it's zoomed in.


And now on to the best part... Stories from the last couple days at camp:

1. One of my favorite games to use is this one where everyone stands in a circle.  Everyone has one action they act out, and describes the action in English.  For example, when teaching the present continuous, a kid says "I am swimming" and acts it out.  But you have to say your action and another person's action.  So it goes like...

"I am swimming (acts out swimming), and I am running (acts out running)"
The person whose action is running says "I am running (acts out running) and I am jumping (while jumping)"
And so on, until somebody messes up.

So yesterday my co-tutor Lynne and I were teaching the past simple.  So they acted out their verbs while saying them in past simple, and then acted out another person's verb and said it in the past simple.  It was all going fine until somebody unknowingly used a combination that caused Lynne and I to laugh pretty hard for a while.  It went something like this:

"I swam and I ran"
"I ran and I played"
"I played and I drank"
"I drank and I drove"

2. Another game that our classes played together was a simplified version of Taboo.  One of the words was... I'm gonna let you guess.

Describer: "It is a drink.  Red or white."
12-year old girl in my class: " Rum? Vodka? Bacardi?"

It actually took them about 8 guesses to get to wine.  They're Italian.

3.  Also during Taboo, a girl had to get the group to guess "supermarket."

Describer: "A place where you go to find pasta and bread."
Girl in Lynne's class: "Italy!"

4. Italian kids say funny things when they don't know what you're talking about.  One is "Bo," also pronounced "Buh."  Another is "COSA?!" or sometimes "CHE COSA?!"  Which mean "What" or "What is it?" And there's always "EH?!"

But for the first time, I have a girl (the same one who guessed several varieties of hard alcohol) who, when I say something she doesn't understand, scrunches up her face and exclaims, "WHAT?!"  I think it's the most shocking thing I've had a camper say this year.

She's the youngest in my class, but she just has these instinctive English sayings.  "What" is one of them, but when I say something that is apparently unbelievable, she says "Oh my god!"  Ok, so she might be my favorite.

5. To teach comparatives, Lynne and I assigned celebrities to each camper, and in groups of 3 they had to make sentences like: "Brad Pitt is stronger than Jennifer Lopez, but Michael Jordan is stronger than Brad Pitt." I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but Lynne and I combine our classes for the second lesson because we total 11 campers and they all use the same color book.

One group had Silvio Berlusconi (the rather interesting Italian President), Cristiano Ronaldo (soccer player) and The Pope.  They decided to compare them using good, better, and the best.  Their sentence was as follows:

"The Pope is better than Silvio Berlusconi.  But Cristiano Ronaldo is better than The Pope."

6. Friday's activity involved brainstorming a list of things that are in cities (supermarket, post office, bank etc.) and then drawing a city.  A few funny things happened. 

I tried to make the activity more interesting by providing anecdotes about the US.  So one boy suggested "toy shop," and I thought I would tell him that in the US, the most popular toy shop is called "Toys 'r Us."  They all nodded in recognition.  "We have in Palermo," one said.  Thanks, globalization.

Another one suggested "pizzeria." I was ambivalent because it's an Italian word but it is one we use back home.  So I allowed it, but only if the used an American "r" when saying it.  So for the next minute they were all laughing and saying "Pizzerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrria."

I can't remember if I suggested it or they did, but somehow the subject of a thrift\second-hand shop came up.  I explained what it was, and used "second-hand," but then decided that hearing Italian children try to say "thrift" was an opportunity not to be missed. They really struggle with "th" and "r," and "ft" never happens in Italian.  I got a lot of "trif" and "thrist" before anyone got it right.  None of them got it in the first 5 tries, and it took one girl 5 minutes, but she finally got it. 


All these stories are from the last two mornings, and they're such funny story machines, because they really want to learn.  I never really thought about measuring how much kids wanted to learn last summer, but one of my campers at Food Camp really made me think about it. When I asked him a question, he would respond, and then sometimes tell me something else that I hadn't directly asked him about.  And, for example, when I pretended to swing a baseball bad using a paintbrush, he said "Baseball!" and then asked me how to say "glove," which he described by just pointing to his hand and closing it.

When I was little I didn't really understand what other kids meant when they said that they "wanted to learn." I thought of it as something geeky, and that you had to be someone who wanted to learn meant that you had to really intentionally always inquire about things. And I thought of myself as someone who did what he was told, and if that meant learning, I did it.  But now I'm picking up on the little things that indicate that a child wants to learn-  Who knows why they want to learn, if it's an innate thing, or if they just want to satisfy someone.

In this group, they've never once chatted with each other while I'm explaining something (unless it's to help another camper understand). Part of that is because there are only 5 kids in the class, but part is because they really want to understand.  Today one of them wrote a period after a word on the city map, and I asked how to say it in Italian.  I've found that inquiring about Italian words for things often makes them more curious about the English words for things.  After she said the word in Italian, she asked me how to say comma... and then question mark... and then exclamation point.  And she was repeating all of them for a couple minutes after. 

I can't say how much of a pleasure it is to teach this group.  If it was at all possible, I would definitely do 3 weeks of camp here, and if I had a whole summer teaching them, I'm pretty sure I could get them like 5 years ahead.  But right now I'm just glad that I know I'll be working with this bunch next week.

On Sicily/The South

I've been here for 2.5 weeks now.  When I was at food camp in Calabria, I thought of writing on "The South."  I'm not sure if this post will be more about Sicily, or just the south in general, but we shall see.

Most tutors want to go south.  The vast majority of camps are in the north, so it's tough to get down here.  I did request to go to Sicily or Sardinia (the island to the west of the country), but those requests aren't often honored.  Yet here I am.

Why do we want to come down here?

1. The food
2. The hospitality
3. The sights
4. The beaches
5. The difference from the rest of Western Europe

1. The food has definitely been amazing all summer, and in general much better than last year, with the exception of my convent camp near Rome (which some would consider the south anyway). 

2. I've been in families all three camps, whereas I was only with families half my time last summer.  And they've all been great as host families.

3. Pompei, Napoli, the Amalfi Coast, Syracuse, Taormina, Palermo... the sights have been pretty good.

4. The beaches are beautiful, and the water where I am now is really warm.

5. But number five leads me into the next list, which is problems with the south that could be attractions or deterrents, depending on how you see them.

A) The mafia
B) The pollution (see A)
C) The heat
D) The distance from the more populated areas of the country
E) The disorganization/relaxedness

A) I have had no personal encounters with the mafia (yet).  But all my host fams have talked about them.  My last camp as 10 minutes from a town notorious for police raids on mafia houses (and within 30 miles of the town of Corleone).  At my current camp, murals and little student-made posters decorating the school walls ask for a world "senza mafia," without mafia (I will post pictures of these later).  Tourist shops sell so much mafia-related merchandise, which must be awkward for legit mafiosos strolling by.

Oh and in case you missed it, Italy just arrested 300 members of 'Ndrangheta, the mafia group based in Calabria, the region where I spent my first two weeks this summer. So yes, it's all still VERY real.

B) The area where I am now is the most polluted I have ever seen.  My host family and director have all apologized for this repeatedly.  Every morning on the way to camp, my host mom pulls over on the side of the road where a trash collection vehicle waits, and hands off a bag of trash to three or four guys who otherwise just sit there.  They have no house-to-house collection, and the sides of most roads are covered in litter.  Some of the beaches are especially dirty.  The mafia often takes funds away from local governments that would otherwise go toward these basic services...

C) Food camp was surprisingly cool, about mid-70s during mid-day.  But a few days ago it was hovering in the mid-100s here in Sicily, although it's been 10 or 15 degrees cooler lately.

D) I am really, really far from most things.  I am way closer to Tunisia than I am to Rome.  I may even be closer to Algeria than I am to Rome.  Ordinarily, this would be fine, but I'm meeting a friend up north in a couple weeks and flying out of Milan, so it could be very problematic.

E) Food camp was super organized, completely defying this stereotype.  But my Sicilian camps have been incredibly laid back. I'd heard that the south was like "a third-world country," and when I saw chickens in the street and donkeys in garages in Palermo, I believed it.  But for the most part, it's fine.  There are some problems, like how this is my first camp of the summer with fully operational bathrooms (toilets, toilet paper, and soap).  This was never a problem at the northern camps last year.


This weekend I'm trying to figure out day trips with the other tutors, probably staying in the Palermo area but possibly going down to Agrigento on the southern coast. 

Thanks for reading and I promise pictures in my next post!

A Seinfeld Post

I don't really have much event-wise to talk about, but I figured I'd share more general experiences from my summer so far. 

Language is interesting.  Sometimes it matters that I've never studied Italian, sometimes it doesn't at all.  And this really has nothing to do with whether or not my host fam speaks any English.  So I've been thinking about what makes it matter.

In my new family, I find that it matters.  I can find ways to get across pretty much anything using basic words and gestures, but that doesn't seem to be enough.  Yesterday was one of my worst days at camp so far this summer, perhaps my worst.  My new kids were great, and too quiet if anything, and my tutor group works well together.  Even the director is amazing.  But the heat kept me awake, as did the fact that I forgot to shut the mosquito screen after shutting the blinds before I went to sleep. I woke up sneezing before my alarm went off and, frankly, I never recovered energy-wise during the day. 

So when my host mom came to pick me up she told me I looked so tired I was dead, and that's actually about how I felt. But then on the car ride home she did not stop talking, continuing to tell me things she'd already told me about how I should say if there are places I want to go after camp or if I want to spend more time with the other tutors.  And she kept reminding me of how tired I looked.  I was pretty aware of how tired I looked, and all I wanted was some silence in the car, but I have nowhere near the vocab necessary to get that across politely.  So I listened and continued to process the Italian, which is an excercise requiring much energy in its own right.  Needless to say I was even more unhappy by the time I got home.

My last family also spoke no/very very little English, so all the dialogue was in Italian.  But, although a bit tiring, that was fine.  They seemed to understand that there wasn't always something I needed.  I didn't need the gentle vocab that I would find useful here.

Aside from the language bit, everything else about this host family is really nice, and I had probably the best tomato pasta sauce I've ever had last night.  They have a beautiful garden in the backyard, which is where the tomatoes came from.

My camp group here is super small... only 5 kids for the two weeks.  They're 12-15, which is a fun age if they're well-behaved, and these kids are.  My challenge is to get them to be loud, much like my last group in Mussomeli.  I think they'll get a bit noisier every day, which is nice.  Four of them are about the same English level, but one of them is way beyond, and she's awesome.  We played a game today (one of my favorites with older groups) involving one person in the middle of a circle calling out to one person in the circle that goes like this:

Hey (name)!
Hey what?!
Hey (name)!
Hey what?!
Show me the way to get down!
No way!
Show me the way to get down!
Ok!
(While dancing) D-O-W-N That's the way to get down! (clap clap)
(Entire circle repeats the dance while singing ) D-O-W-N That's the way to get down! (clap clap)

And this one girl got reeeeeeally into it, sass and all, because she actually understood that one is meant to display attitude.  It was great.

And now I'm realizing, I don't think I've ever talked about camp songs on the blog?  My favorite one is about a penguin drinking tea, involving a whole range of body motions designed to make everyone look like penguins.  My specialty is called "The Jellyfish" and it goes something like this...

Arms up!
Wrists together!
And........ The Jellyfish! The Jellyfish! The Jellyfish!
(During the jellyfish part, you wiggle your fingers to look like a jellyfish - or medusa as they say here)

The song goes on so that at the end you've added a bunch of body parts to make it absolutely ridiculous.  Usually I'll have a few kids who run up to me around camp screaming "The Jellyfish! The Jellyfish!" and doing the hand gestures, or sometimes "The Jollyfish! The Jollyfish!"

But anyways.  There's a little taste of camp and language issues.  In case it went over a head or two, the title is because this was really a post about nothing, which is nice every now and then.

Syracuse, Taormina & Palermo Solo

Strangely enough, after spending 16+ hours on trains over the last week, I'm writing from the same computer I used for my last post.  I'm back in Mussomeli to catch my breath at my last host family's house.

I could write a good 10 posts or so about the last week, but I'm going to try and condense it into 1 because if I fall behind, it's gonna be really hard to catch up. So I'll begin with my journey to Siracusa (Syracuse) with a stop in Catania, the island's 2nd largest city.

Catania

I had a 3-hour layover in Catania, so I thought I'd hop on a bus into the center. I got on a bus that would make two stops near the duomo (cathedral), and I assumed it would be fairly obvious when I hit the center.  30 minutes later, I was back at the train station. The next time I asked my fellow passengers, and I got off in the right place. 

After walking into the main square, I looked around and was not too impressed.  I quickly found myself going into any store that was open and looking around to pass the time.  But then, a protest broke out.  I still don't know what it was about, but there was a group burining flares and chanting in front of the university.  I would have rather been entertained by something more pleasant, but it was something.  I wished it could be another pride parade instead, but that was a ridiculous though, since it's July. But in Siracusa 2 guys at the hostel had seen the same protest and then asked me: "Did you see the gay pride parade after?" That was frustrating.  If only my layover had been a couple hours later.

Syracuse

I really liked Syracuse.  When I first checked in, the hostel guy told me to hurry to the supermarket before it closed to buy food for dinner.  I realized that I hadn't been to a European supermarket yet this year, and that I had nevr actually made dinner for myself in Italy.  So I grabbed a bunch of ingredients for pasta (and forgot to weigh my fruit), assuming that whatever I put in would be delicious because hey, this is Italy.  It was the worst pasta I've ever made.  But it was cheap.

On Sunday morning I went to the archaelogical park, where there's a Roman amphitheatre and a Greek theater.  I was worried I wouldn't actually be able to see Sicily's mixed history, but it really is everywhere.  The theatre was massive. But my favorite thing in the park was the Ear of Dionysus, an incredibly tall cave in a quarry.  The acoustics are amazing. 

Ortigia is an island that is part of Siracusa, and it was a blast getting lost and wandering there.  There's a beautiful piazza, definitely one of my favorites in Italy, and the main cathedral is actually a converted greek temple.  But you can still see the 2500 year old Greek columns. 

There's a Jewish quarter on the island, and I went to see an ancient mikve (spelling?) 20 meters below a hotel.  But aside from that there's nothing Jewish besides a couple street names (Giudecca, etc.). Palermo also has a Jewsh quarter, with nothing Jewish at all except for Hebrew on street signs (along with Italian and Arabic).

I watched the World Cup Final in Siracusa with a Canadian and a Colombian from my hostel.  We sat in a row of outdoor restaurants with big screens.  There were strong Dutch and Spanish contingents, which made it more exciting.  I was amused to see the Dutch dressed in all orange in a city called Syracuse (also one of the had a vuvuzela).  There were a few other people I met at the hostel, Brits, Australians, Poles. The two Brits were watching Glenn Beck on the hostel tv because they'd only seen Jon Stewart's impersonations and were curious about the real thing.  It was an episode slamming progressives for having supported eugenics 100 years ago in an effort to wipe out black people.  They changed the channel pretty quickly.

Taormina

I had walking directions from the center of the town to my hotel (my hostel cancelled on me so I had to book a real hotel). After getting off the bus from the train station, I begin my ascent.  It took about 40 minutes, entirely uphill, with all my stuff, often along narrow roads with no other pedestrians in sight.  I have never been so sweaty.  But then I arrived, and this is what I saw.  View of the sea, view of the city, view of Mt. Etna.

Taormina is extraodrinarily beautiful, extraordinarily expensive, and extraordinarily Amreican.  I actually felt like my country had come to visit me, and I wanted to escape into an Italian home. In Siracusa, aside from my hostelmates, I had heard absolutely no North American English.  In Taormina, about a third of the people are American. I saw the beautiful Greek theater... for free!! The cost of admission is 8 euro, 4 euro for EU students. I shoed my Czech university ID, which says "Foreign Student." She asked where I was from and I replied: "I studied in Praga."  She asked what I studied and I said "historia." She smiled and handed me a ticket that read 0.00 euro.  I had also gotten a big discount at the Syracuse archaelogical park using my Czech ID, but I'd still had to pay.

Walking around the town was nice, especially the staircases, but I started to realize all the things I couldn't do, or that just weren't as fun,  because I was traveling alone. I went to the beach/es, which were beautiful, but I couln't go into the water because who was going to watch my stuff?  I could go out to eat (but I had to go out to eat, there is no takeaway or supermarket in Taormina), but who would I talk to?  I didn't see anyone else in the town walking around alone, and because I was at a hotel and not a hostel, I couldn't really meet people there.

Palermo

Things turned around on my birthday.  In fact, things turned around because of my birthday.  I arrived at about 5pm that day, went to my hostel, and set off on a random walk around the city.  I immediately liked Palermo. In the same way that I can't put my finger on why I don't like Rome, I can't explain why I like Palermo. But I do.  It's the largest city on the island, and it really does feel like a city.  It's dirty and beautiful. I walked by multiple donkeys in garages, and a couple chickens, too. I didn't notice til just now, but "Palermo" is written on the wall of the garage. 

I found a new favorite church exterior, and it's the main cathedral in the city.  It's a mix between Arab and Norman styles, which is essentially what Sicily is (with a few more thrown in).  The interior is pretty disappointing, but I could circle it and be amazed for hours.

After my bday walk, I returned the hostel, kinda bummed that no one knew it was my birthday.  I struck up a conversation with the guy working in the lobby, a nice Brit who likes The Wire.  After an hour, an American girl joined the convo (the 2nd Hope from Louisiana I've met here), and an hour later a girl from Michigan joined in.  When the girl from Michigan heard it was my bday, she said, "We have to go get drinks!" So we did.  It didn't matter that it was already 2 am.  It was alot of fun.

I changed hostels the next day because there was a cheaper one, but I still identify with that first hostel.  On Wednesday I wandered again.  The most exciting thing that happend was when I went for lunch.  I saw a nice, busy cafe so I went in.  The guy behind the counter was serving everyone the same pasta, so I asked if it had meat.  He said it had chicken, so I said ok, I'll have that.  I sat down, and 15 minutes later, he brought me a big plate with an even bigger piece of chicken (actually the biggest I've ever seen), veggie, and toast.  I got really nervous because meat is much more expensive, and there were a lot of people in suit surrounding me.  But I ate it all because it was delicious.  I cautiously walked to the register, and the guy said "6 euro." I don't think I've mentioned it yet: Palermo is cheap.

The reason I went to Palermo when I did was for their festival honoring St. Rosalia, the city's patron saint.  I met up with my crew from the first hostel, and we went to the center to watch a procession of horses with giant colorful feathers towing carriages with colorful paintings. I was so happy to have a group to go with (Brits, Americans, a hilarious Austrian).

The hostel guy knew people who had an apartmet overlooking the route, so we went up to watch from there as the rose-covered statue of St. Rosalia passed below. I was excited about the balcony but realized the next day that my hostel had a balcony... and that it was literally directly across the street from this one. Anyway, there were a bunch of erasmus students at the apt (European study abroad), and I met a Czech girl who was also at the Beyonce concert in Prague last spring.

After the parade passed, we walked down to the coast for a loooooong fireworks show.  This is a picture of most of the crew that I went with that night.  I also met up with my last host aunt, who's studying in Palermo, and her friends for drinks last night, which was great.

I could write so much more, especially about thought as opposed to events, but it's1:30 am and this is already a ridiculously long post.  In Taormina, and even at the end fo Siracusa, I was SO ready to jump back into the ACLE lifestyle where time is structured, food is prepared, and I don't have to pay for anything.  Which made me realize how spoiled I am working here.  Spending a week in the hostel lifestyle gave me an immense appreciation for ACLE life that I will bring with me to my next camp in Casteldaccia, a beach town just east of Palermo. 

My experience in Palermo was important not just because I had people to do things with, but beause it was, in a way, my first post-college life test.  In a new city... don't know anyone... have to meet people to do things with.  And it as a blast.  I didn't talk at all about my day trip to Cefalu yesterday, but on my way to the station, I ran into the girl from Michigan.  In Cefalu (a beach town an hour from Palermo), I ran into the new Hope.  And when I got back to Palermo, Hope and I ran into two Brits from the hostel.  Not really sure what that all means but it seems like a fitting way to end the post.

Goodbye Pool Camp, Hello The Rest of Sicily

This week was easy.  Afternoons at the pool, kids who cleaned up after themselves without being told to, a director who did not micromanage even a little bit. It was only tough at times because kids at the camp spoke so little English (I had a 13 year-old who couldn't count past 10 in English, but she was the extreme).  During our pool day (Wed), this 8 year-old who owns both a nice robe and a cell phone showed off both during a break.

Even the show went smoothly.  My group did a newscast including a clip from a fashion show, a sports report, and a few other things.  The kids painted several beautiful posters which you can see in this picture.  There was also a "commercial," which was actually just them singing 45 seconds of the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling," but it doesn't matter. 

My spunkiest camper, who entertained me and my assistant the whole week, jumped out from behind the rest of the group to do a solo when the song picks up beginning with "Tonight the night!"  He then changed roles from hooded rapper with shades, to Inter Milan's star player, for an interview during the sports report.

Julia, my co-tutor, and I went on a walk around the historical center of Mussomeli on Thursday after camp.  It was an absolute hike, but beautiful.  I wanted to take a picture of every street and every alley, but I resisted.  This is one of my favorite pictures though.

I'll be sad to be leaving my host family, as I've been lucky enough to have two great ones in a row.  I've only seen half of The Sound of Music once, but the kids remind me of Sound of Music/Mary Poppins kids, if that makes any sense at all.  Maybe it has something to do with the ages and the mix of genders?  I dunno.  Their house is so nice, and today they took me to their family's property in the historical center,.which includes several houses and a garden.  I really like the aunt/uncles/cousins/grandparents/family friends that I've met, too, and I may be seeing some of them again in Palermo next week.  This is a picture of my host siblings, mom, aunt, baby cousin, and grandparents at the aunt/uncle's house in the center.

So.  Next week.  I'm on hold, meaning they have too many tutors and I'm too far south to transfer to a northern camp anyway.  Since I'm already in Sicily, I'm heading to the east coast for a few days alone.  Syracuse and Taormina are my destinations, with a brief stop in Catania.  I've heard great things about both places from many people.  Traveling alone was something I regretted not doing last year, so I'm excited to try it.  But, I am nervous about loneliness.  It'll be fine since on Tuesday I'll be in Palermo and probably staying with friends/relatives of my current host family, but I think I'd get pretty lonely if I do end up with a full week by myself.  I'm still excited though.

I'm circling back to Palermo mid-week (and on July 13) because their annual festival celebrating the city's saint peaks on Wed and Thurs, and aparently the city goes nuts.  Should be a good time.  And then I'll head up north and stay near Napoli before heading to my next comp somewhere in the north that next week.

I'm seeing now how this summer will play out, and it's so strange to think that half of my work time this summer will be spent in the north, because I've become so accustomed to the south.  I'm hoping to post at some point about my experience in the south in general, because Italy's north and south have distinct identities, or at least distinct reputations.  But I think when it's all over it will feel like two separate experiences, with this next week off being the dividing line.

Famiglia

One of the most significant differences between my experience last summer and my experience this time around is that last year I only spent 1 of my first 5 weeks with a family, and this year at least my first 3 weeks are with families. 

I left Catanzaro Lido after a solid Pirates of the Caribbean show.  But it was also the first time I'd left a host father that I'd gotten to know.  Luigi spoke no English, but his wife translated and I understood about half of what he was saying anyway.  I recorded him demanding that I eat, which he really enjoyed.  When I left, he gave me a pen holder that is an old-fashioned carabinieri hat, to remind me of him and his family.  I can't wait to have it in my room in Chicago.  And this picture is from the night he cooked entire fish.  I'd never had a whole fish on my plate, and it was a bit challenging to eat.  I just copied everyone else at the table.

But now I'm in Sicily.  The loooooong journey was hot and somewhat eventful.  I successfully served as a translater between a British couple and an Italian woman.  I was in a train on a boat for the first time.  I used a toilet whose hole emptied straight onto the tracks (you could watch the ground below the train through the toilet...).  And the Sicilian waterfront is beautiful. 

Then we went into the island.  I am in the middle of nowhere, and it is glorious.  There are sweeping hills everywhere, and I am living in an ancient town on the top of a "mountain."  The center of the town, Mussomeli, looks unchanged since medieval times. It's nuts.

Julia, my co-tutor, and I, are staying with families who are friends.  When we got in, we sent to a family friend's 8th birthday party.  It's my second straight camp beginning with a family friend's 8th birthday party.  It was at my host grandfather's house, which he built after retiring from running a super successful bar in town that's been around 40 years.  It has a pool and overlooks the castle here.

Sunday brought lunch with the whole family.  But before that we lounged around in the pool and Julia and I had an epic water gun fight with a couple of the kids.  They made me sit at the head of the table (capo) at lunch and as always, there was waaaaay too much food. And the baby in the family likes to eat to music, so they were blasting Bad Romance.

After lunch we went to the castle.  It was a bit creepy because we were the only people there.  Apparently back in the day a king went off to fight a war and locked his 3 daughters in a room there.  He thought he'd be gone for 3 months, so they had a 3 month supply of food.  But he was gone over a year.  So they all died. One jumped out a window, one was found eating a shoe, and the other tried to eat her sister.  This story was our welcome to Mussomeli. Oh and we exited the castle to "Californication" blasting from a garage band across the street. 

This is the least English I've ever had in a host family, and Julia's family is no better.  So we've had some quiet meals.  Last night we went to dinner with the 13-year old daughters from our families, who are both in my class.  The bar we went to had 30+ paninis named after famous actors, so I had the "Jonny Deep."  But the meal was absolutely silent.  I tried to start conversations but we ended up just watching music videos on the screen above the table (btw the Alejandro video plays on tv here).

Today was a great first day of camp.  It's super relaxed, and my kids are quiet and clean up after themselves.without being asked to, which I've never seen before.  Today's funny moment came during 2 truths and a lie.  One girl said she a) lived in Mussomeli b) had 1 brother and c) had 2 daughters.  I asked which was a lie and she said "1 brother."  The assistant and I were like uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, you have 2 daughters?  She confirmed this assertion and then mimicked a turtle.  Turns out she has 2 turtles... and 0 daugthers.

After camp our director took us for gelato and then it was back to the pool.  I also starred as goalie in a 2-on-2 soccer game with 8-year old boys.  The field was about 20 ft x 10 ft, and was in fact the tile adjacent to the pool (pool chairs = goal posts).  But they play soccer ANYWHERE and EVERYWHERE here. 

But back to the famiglia thing.  Both my host mom and Julia's are super super motherly.  I went to Julia's for dinner tonight and her mom would not let me leave the house until I had given her my camp shirt to wash.  It does not matter to her that my host mom also offers to do my laundry. She gave me one of her husband's shirts to wear for the rest of the night.

Our families trade us back and forth, and it's wonderful.  Tomorrow is dinner at my house.  And on Wednesday the whole camp is going to my host grandpa's pool for a few hours.  It's gonna be a great week.

 

Sicily!

Super quick post... I'm off to my next camp in Sicily!  It's one week and super small (18 kids), and in the middle of the island, probably in mountains.

The train ride today will be over 8 hours.  Two transfers and a ferry included.  But I'm still really excited.

The final show at this camp went well yesterday and I'm going to miss my host family here (and Luigi's cooking) quite a bit.  Although I hear Sicilian cooking is pretty good, too...