The Montecchio Vita

Addendum to the last post: Veronica, my older ex-camper who hates speaking English, at one point recited the opening of a song we did two years ago perfectly: “Have you ever seen a penguin drinking tea?/Take a look at me, a penguin you will see.”  AND, when I asked her if she remembered any of the California Time lessons, she drew the state in the air and went down the coast saying “San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego.”  I can’t believe she remembered the order!

I would have written about my new camp sooner but I’ve spent the last two nights bumming around Montecchio by bike with my host brother and his 14 and 15 year-old friends.

My family here is great.  The Mom, Alessandra, speaks decent English, and she is the one who really wanted me to stay with them.  It’s very rare for a host family not to have a camper, but that’s the case here.  She mostly wanted to host me so her 15 year-old son, Matteo, could (involuntarily) practice English.  Massimo, her husband, doesn’t speak any English, but I’ve never had a host dad who has.  He’s a biker and the first host dad I’ve had who does the laundry for the family.  I also have a little host sister, 5 or 6 year-old Chiara, who is still too shy to talk to me (but never stops talking to everyone else) and who giggles whenever I come near her but I’ve found a way to play with her.  Apparently she talks about me non-stop when I’m gone and then runs away when I walk in.

Within an hour of my arrival, I’d met Alessandra’s mother, sister, sister-in law, and a cousin.  That’s because her parents and sister (who is around my host brother’s age) live in the house behind this one, and her brother lives nearby.  Oh, and her aunt and uncle live in the other adjacent house.  The door here is always open, and people come and go.  Sometimes friends, sometimes family, but it seems like 3-4 people or groups of people come by a day, an my family never really needs to go anywhere, this is the spot. 

On Sunday they gave me a choice of activities:

1.     Visit Lake Garda, the largest of Italy’s Great Lakes.  I went to a small town on the lake’s northern tip a couple years ago.

2.     Go into the mountains to see the Little Dolomites, the foothills of Italy’s northeastern mountains and try cheese (this is the home of Asiago).

3.     Visit Venice or Verona

The pictures probably gave it away, but let me explain that it is 100° every day here now, and usually around 110° with humidity.  Garda is beautiful, but I didn’t want anything to do with sun, and Venice and Verona are amazing, but I would want to spend the whole time in the shade.  So mountains it was, where the temperature dropped about 25°.  Most of the pictures in this post are from the hike.  The cheese was very fresh but not some new level of cheese I was hoping for.

The heat has had a couple other unfortunate side effects.  First, it’s terrible for visibility and pictures.  There was a haze in the mountains which you might notice in the pictures.  Second, zanzare (mosquitoes), but zanzare sounds way cooler.  I think I have 15 bites alone on my right leg.  The temperature will fall…. on Saturday.

The mountains were beautiful.  Some looked like the Avatar world, and the ones in the distance looked more like the sharp rocks at the Dolomties are known for.  My host grandma came along for the adventure and was often out in front of the rest of us.  The cool air was miraculous, I wish we could have the camp up there.  Oh, and Sunday was my first day here without a gelato.

But back to the beginning, the teenage biking nights.  It started when Matteo’s friend came over after dinner and they asked if I wanted to come along to meet their friends.  I had nothing better to do and thought it could be interesting.  There were 6-7 of us (all 14-16 years old I think) including my host aunt, and we biked around town, Matteo pointing out things around town like “Bread” and “Ice Cream.”

Last night I went off with them again.  This time there were 12-15 kids.  They spent 20 minutes deciding which gelateria to go to, but when we got there there were some older kids one of these ones doesn’t like, so we went to the park instead.  I spent most of the hour and a half there surrounded by six or seven boys asking me all sorts of questions about music, movies, the NBA, musicals, and even Jersey Shore.

Well, I’m off to write a script about Michael Jackson and the Simpsons.  Kids came up with the plot, we’ll see how it goes.  This picture is the aftermath of Amnesia, the game where you tape a celeberity's name on a kid's head and they have to ask English questions to figure out who they are.  As always, they wanted to write one for me - I was Gaga.  More about camp the next post… stories are piling up already!