on the go...

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Come state tutti? i'm EXHAUSTED! so much has happened in the past few weeks. of course we have class every day, which is in and of itself exausting. there's not too much work, but i'm having the worst time remembering vocabulary. grammar is usually pretty easy with a little review, but vocab is the pits. we've had one test so far, which i did fairly well on, except that i couldn't remember the name of anything. i've been placed in the intermediate class, which i think i mentioned earlier, and our teacher Milena is a real kick in the pants. she's got so much energy!

the biggest thing that's happened is our trip to Napoli (a.k.a. Naples). it was a weeklong trip, and we left early in the morning to get there. we stayed at a hostel, which was pretty cool. the first full day we were there we went to Amalfi and Positano, which was a lot like Cinque Terre. very small touristy seaside towns. the entire area is famous for lemon production, so there were shops all around selling lemon products. i bought a lemon sachet (on that same note, i aplologize to those who figured out from my last letter that i don't speak a lick of French: the real name for those shin-high sinks is banet, not bignet, which my mother reminded me is really close to the name of a French pastry) and was going to buy some incense, but it was too expensive. but now my entire closet smells like lemons. it's wonderful.

the day after that, we had time to wander around Napoli on our own. a large group of us was going to find a pizzeria, because everyone raves about how wonderful the pizza in Napoli is. so we're on our way, and suddenly there's this little girl, can't be more than 4 or 5 years old, and she starts running around to everyone in our group grabbing them by the knees and crying, "Soldi? Soldi?" (money? money?). instinctively, my hands fly to my pockets to protect
anything i was carrying, and it took us a good five minutes to get away. Erica says that it's mostly the Gypsies that do stuff like that, and that they train their children to pickpocket using tactics like that. the girl grabbed the only french girl in our group, Clara, by the ankles, and Jenny grabbed the girl away, but even so, we told Clara, "Check your pockets!" she hadn't been carying anything in her pockets, but still...

so we had walked maybe a block, and we had realized that two of the girls who have made enemies with almost the entire group (all around making life difficult for all of us) are hardly looking for a pizzeria and are leading everyone who-knows-where, so Courtney, Jenny and i decide, this is getting us nowhere, and we ducked down a back alley. we walked maybe 100 meters or so, and there's this little pizzeria which is clean and charming, and we stop inside. it was inexpensive, and the pizza was not like, "Ohmigosh, this is the best pizza i've ever tasted," but it was exceptional. just as we're finishing our meal, the lunch crowd comes in, and along with them, this little old man with a small plate. so at first, i thought it was maybe just a peddler, but he whips out this mandolin, and plays the cutest little song! it was classic, completely set the tone of the entire place. this is the kind of stuff you see in movies.
then he started around the room with his plate, which Jenny and i contributed to, and without haggling anyone just made a little round, and left when he was done. no hassle, nothing annoying. it was so sweet.

so we paid our bill and decided to follow him and see if he could play again, but by the time we made it out, he was gone. at that point we found the little internet point that i wrote the last little blurb from. we kept walking down back alleys and ended up at this little bar that sold something called gelato caldo (warm gelato), and never having heard of it, i insisted that we try it. nobody else joined me, but it ended up being like a mousse, and this had to be the best gelato i had ever tried. it wasn't really "warm," but it was a little bit colder than room temperature, and creamy and fluffy. it was WONDERFUL.

we ended up wandering down the streets of Napoli until we ended up at the Maschio. the Maschio is a fort built by the Angiò family in the 1200's, and was rebuilt later by the 1400's by Alfonzo I. it was pretty big, with really detailed sculptures all around the enterance. Jenny didn't have the money to go in, and she wouldn't accept our hand-outs, so we ended up hiding from the rain in the front entrance. about an hour later, we made it to the bus stop to
take us to the church, but we ended up getting off at the wrong stop and getting lost in one of the not-so-pretty looking parts of Napoli (that's a little tongue-in-cheek; all of Napoli reminded me of the not-so-nice parts of east Los Angeles, not the prettiest city i've ever seen). so i finally get frustrated with looking at the map, and i walk up to a police officer and ask (yes, Ms. Rasi, in Italian) "Can you tell me how to get to the Adventist church?" he
gave me the funniest look and goes, "Adventist?" and i'm like, "Yes, the Adventist church." at that point i realize how naïve i must have looked asking in a Catholic country about an Adventist church. so i pulled out the map and said, "It's here on the map, but we need to know how to get there." so that helped him enough to give me directions, which ended up being way far in the opposite direction. we made it there in time, but it was a pain.

the next day, we went to Capri, once again a honeymoon destination. on the way there, one of the men working on the boat let us in to look at all the instruments, and i got to practice my italian, but he spoke with a very strong Napoletano accent, so i had a kind of
hard time understanding. i had to keep stopping him and asking him to slow down! but it was really cool because he told us about Capri and asked us where we were from, and he wished us a good trip. when we got to the island, we took a tram up the hill and ended up at the most touristy area with shops and hotels, but the view was incredibe. we wandered all around the cliffs. it was rainy and the water was choppy with a lot of whitecaps, but it was still gorgeous. mom and dad, this is a place we have to come back to at the end of the year. i wish we could have gone down into the grotto's, but it was way on the other side of the island, and we only had a few hours. Capri is known for perfume production, so we
stopped in a perfume shop, and i bought one that smells like lemons as a gift (for somebody else, not myself). we wandered around all the back streets looking at all the homes (i would not mind setting up my home there either!) and then made our way back down to catch
the boat to Napoli. that night we had pizza and got to try the absolute BEST mozzerella i've ever had in my life. i'm never going to be able to eat regular mozzerella again without comparing.

the next day we went to Pompei, which is another place i want to go back to when my family comes over at the end of the year. whenever i would read about Pompei in a book, it seemed really small, and that the biggest thing to see were the preserved bodies. but Pompei
is HUGE! we must have walked for about 3 hours and only saw a small fraction of everything there is. the bodies, as it turned out (if you already knew this, don't laugh, because i didn't know this before) are not real bodies, but plaster casts. since the body is organic, after it was buried by all the ash and pumice and what not, it would decompose and leave a cavity in the ground. then an anthropologist comes along, realizes there's a cavity, and he opens
a hole just big enough to pour plaster into, and lets the plaster dry for a week or two, and when it's dry and uncovered, it's a replica of what the person looked like when they died. it was really interesting. before finding out, i just thought that the bodies had been petrified like that.

i could go on forever about that, but i'm going to have to let you read my journal when i get back to get all the details. anyway, on the way back to Florence, we stopped for a bathroom break, and we hear this meowing coming from under the van. so i got down on the ground and stuck my head under the car, and there was a kitten sticking it's head out from the engine compartment!!! not only one, but two kittens! we think that since it was rainy and stuff in Napoli, and the engines had been running and were warm, the mama cat had put the kittens there to keep them warm. so we pulled them out, and Jose Luiz said that there was a place in Florence that takes cats, so we brought them back with us. they were SO CUTE!!! so the next day we had classes, and then we were leaving for the spiritual retreat at Poppi, and a few of the american students who weren't coming said they would take it Saturday morning.

Poppi reminded me a lot of the Napa Valley, but greener. it was absolutely gorgeous. there was a river running nearby, and there were trails and lush green hills every way you looked. we stayed in cabins, ate in the lodge, and a big group of us crashed in one of the side rooms playing guitar all Sabbath afternoon. i think everyone here is just really impressed with this blond, white american girl who knows the slightest bit of Italian, because they had me translating for the others, helping with song service, etc… i think the idea they have of my speaking skills is a little over-inflated.

at the end of the weekend, we came back to the Villa to find that the kittens were still around. apparently the place they had called only took dogs. we ended up having them until last thursday. we all took turns keeping them and taking care of them, but it made things hard for some of us. i guess that's what we get.

tuesday night the boy that i had said i had my first conversation with offered to take a big group of us out for gelato, and pretty much everyone but me ended up flaking out! so not wanting to feel awkward, i grabbed Courtney and said, "Come on, your coming out for
gelato whether you like it or not!" it was nice talking to him, and translating between him and Courtney. that seems to be how i'm learning most of the language is translating for people. it's really good practice.

we also just started voice lessons, which is really fun. yesterday i stayed for three hours, one for my own voice lessons, and then two hours to translate for the other two students. Daniela, the voice teacher, made a joke that they should give me a portion of the payment for staying so long to do that! wouldn't that be nice?

this weekend i will be going to Genoa with my roommate, Liz. i praise God that i have a roommate that i am getting along with so well. i don't know what to expect, but we'll go with one of her friends to church on Sabbath, and then we have all of Sunday to goof off in the city. we'll be staying with one of Liz's friends. i've been trying to talk with Liz more in Italian, even if it means her speaking to me in Spanish and me just responding in Italian. sometimes it's a little jumbled, and sometimes i have to say what i mean in Spanish and have her translate, but hopefully we'll be able to switch entirely to Italian soon. i've found that there are a few people who it's easy to speak to, and others who i have to think a little harder for. All the teachers in the language department i can speak to, and then Besi, Alan, Vikki, Tony, and Clara, and a few other people, but for example, yesterday i was speaking to one of
the pastors and i was having the worst time saying what i wanted to. today while i was writing, one of the girlfriends of one of the guys i've met came up to me and wanted me to correct her english homework, because she's studying elsewhere for foreign relations.
she's learning spanish, english and chinese. once i was done with that she started talking to me in italian, and it was easy to talk to her. i wish it flowed that easily all of the time! i had a
horrible dream last night that it was the end of the year and i still didn't speak the language!!!

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