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.