Taormina!

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Ciao Tutti!

Sooo my time spent in Taormina was awesome. Phoebe and I were picked up in the airport in Catania by a nice italian guy that gave us lots of recommendations for places to go and eat and things to do. We got to our apartment and were so surprised! It was so nice. Very spacious.

Taormina is a beautiful more resorty slash touristy town on the coast of Sicily. It is situated high up on a cliff, so we have beautiful panoramas of the ocean and of mt. etna as well. My apartment also has a great view and I watched many sunsets from there.

so here I am doing an italian language course, just for two hours a day. i am only doing it for two weeks, so just a short time, but I just wanted to practice my italian a bit more and have a refresher course. the school is really cool though because its not an american school, its more of an international school! so i am meeting lots of people from all over, from switzerland, holland, hungary, russia and even japan! and whats fun is that not everyone speaks english...so most of the time we do have to speak italian together. its hard trying to understand italian though with all different kinds of accents. haha its quite an adventure trying to communicate with eachother. everyone is so cultured though so its fun to talk to them.

its great though, there are many beaches nearby, a LOT of stairs included though! those will be part of my workouts though. the water is sooo clear, its awesome. the beaches are beautiful, however they are all pebbles, no sand. its kinda nice not to have to deal with the sand, but for laying out it sacrifices some of the comfort! its hilarious watching italians on the beach though. everything is such a show. everyone walks up and down the beaches and just checks eachother out. and often groups of boys will bring a ball or ping pong ball and paddles and play right in front of a group of girls. its quite a hilarious sight.

one of the beaches right near us is called isola bella and there is a small island that is now a nature preserve that is connected to the mainland by a strip of sand. its beautiful and has lots of great rocks for jumping off of. there are lots of jellyfish in the area though. haha funny though the word for them in italian is MEDUSA! It was hard not to go to the beach everyday.

there was also an international film festival going on while we were there. It brings a lot of people to the town, and its nice because as a student at the school we get into all the movies for free. ive seen a bunch of really good movies so far, here are some that i reccommend: effi briest (german film), sin nombre (spanish obvi), and crossing over (american). Some of the films at night were played outside in Taormina's greek theatre. It was so cool because you were outside and could see the stars and such!

I found a great place in Taormina for granita, a slushy ice thing. Lemon is good but also Pistacchio and Mandorla are bomb. Speaking of pistacchio.....there is pesto di pistacchio which I am LOVING. It is SO GOOD. Just the right amount of salt I think. But I am bringing a jar home fo sho! So I've been eating a lot of that. The school put on a few social activities for us, like a movie night where we watched a sicilian film on immigration.....very interesting, boring, and slow. Haha but it was good to see. They also did a lecture on sicilian immigration, which was interesting to hear about and see the numbers.

One weekend I went to la gola dell'alcantara, which is a gorge near taormina with a river flowing through it. I went there by myself and went on a little hike there and then went down to the river and layed out and did some swimming. water was really cold but really refreshing! It was nice to spend some time by myself in nature. I went exploring along the river as well. The rock formations in the gorge were so cool, definitely unlike anything i'd ever seen!

The next week was also really fun. Went to the beach a bunch more, but more and more jellyfish kept coming in! The wind picked up a bit I think is why. It also rained a bit the beg of the second week. But it was okay that it rained a little because one day you could see clouds all around mt. etna and then the next day we woke up to a very clear day, but one could tell that there was more snow on the mountain! I went to a dinner on the terrace at the school, which had very nice views as well and one of the kids there, from iceland, sang opera! It was interesting to hear about iceland from him.... he is basically living off of a student loan, but he's not really a student, he's beginning work as an opera singer...but it kind of helps to explain iceland's financial issues.

I also went to a lecture on the mafia....it was SO BORING. SO BORING. who knew a lecture on the mafia could be so boring? But i think it was because of the guy doing it, who was my teacher the first week. The second week of school i had a MUCH better teacher, who was funny and kept the kids more engaged.

One afternoon we went up to castelmola, which is a town thats even further up on a cliff than taormina! we saw the sunset from there and strolled the town a bit. Went to a castle, or whats left of one and took some gorgeous photos. Then went to dinner there at this bar, which some waiter at another restaurant convinced us to eat at. We originally went for pizza but the place was closed. It was funny cause this waiter worked at three restaurants i guess. He took care of us though and really helped me and phoebe out with vegan food, and he even took a meal for our roommate celine from another restaurant and brought it over!

We also had a roommate from northern northern italy, near the border with Austria. it was interesting cause one could tell that he was from a very small town. he couldnt speak much italian, mostly just german. it was so strange! he also didnt really know english. he was very nice though.

Sooo one day phoebe and I also did a tour of the house that is on Isola Bella. The woman who owned it was exiled from england or something, and she was cousins with queen victoria. She built this beautiful house on the island after she bought it for 5000 lira, which is nothing. The house isn't completely connected like most houses, but has different rooms and different levels that are separate and one has to walk outside onto the island to get to it. The rooms were great, pale yellow walls with orange trim, and then lots of blue and turquoise tile in the bathrooms!!!! i am sooo inspired for my house. hahah also a lot of the outside of the house was done in stone and coral and stones from the sea. it was beautiful.

one day my roommate, celine, from switzerland, and I decided to try to walk up to castelmola because apparently there are a few ways where you can take stairs............FAIL. complete FAIL! hahah we tried like four different sets of stiars and got nowhere. and everyeone we asked told us a different set of stairs to take....oh well!

Okay time for a new entry this one was sooo long!

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