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The Pear orchard
It goes on forever, spaced one foot between each plant, with a nifty net lingering above. Sweet. Happy Festa Della Republica!
Today is the 2nd of June, which in Italy, signifies the anniversary of the birth of the Republic in Italy. So, basically, today was the Italian 4th of July. Except there weren't any fireworks. Nor peach ice cream (if you catch my drift). Oh well, it's still pretty cool I was here for it. Apparantly, according to Wikipedia (which I read in Italian 😊 ) after WWII, on June 2nd and 3rd, 1946 the people of Italy took a vote whether to have a monarchy form of government or a republic. When the majority voted Republic, the Savoia family ahead of the monarchy that would have been were exiled, and WWII fascism was gone forever! Take that Mussolini. But anyways, wherever you look around you can see Red, Green and White flags hanging, and in the main piazza they even had some wreaths out to celebrate it... but it doesn't seem to be much more exciting than that.
Because it was Festa Della Republica, there was no school today, and because I was up past midnight last night, I slept until... oh... noon. By the time I got out of my room it was time
I think their tractor's sexy...
Ha they're a lot older, but way more cool than the tractors in America. to eat lunch, which was some gnocchi pasta with shrimp. With creme brulee as the dessert. And some pastries. It's amazing how much dessert Italians eat and how so very few of them are hefty. Hmmm... something to ponder.
After I showered and whatnot, I came into the kitchen and read a chapter of my book and had a coffee while Claudia started looking for someone to play games with... so eventually I took her offer and we had a nice little game session. So first we played pick-up sticks, which is a game I haven't played in years. That's the one where you pick up sticks without moving any others, remember? Well to find out who is the winner, you count up the number of sticks you have, and whoever has the most, wins. Well, I counted my sticks in Italian, and since I'm new at it, it took me a while to count to 41. Well, Claudia counts in Italian a lot faster than me (duh) and she had fewer sticks, so I wasn't done counting when she was. The thought crossed my mind, "she probably thinks I'm a really bad counter" because I was counting in
The farmhouse
The awesome place by the pear orchard where they host parties. my head. She was probably thinking, "Mamma mia, egli conta lento!" (My goodness, he counts slow") but then I was thinking "Don't judge me" so it was all good. After two games of pick up sticks, she whipped out the Jenga and we played that until we left the house.
So we all crammed into the small Italian car and drove to Nico's pear orchard not too far away (Nico is the dad, and he is a pear farmer). Well, it was pretty crazy because there are just hundreds of endless rows of growing pears, which right now are only the size of a ping-pong ball. Elena told me that by the time they are full grown in September, they will be about the size of a Nerf football! Over all of the pear trees were huge nets (as you can see in the picture), which Elena said were supposed to catch hail (makes sense). It was just a jaw-dropping sight to see something grow in such a big portion other than corn. or onions.
The farmhouse and barn was also ancient (like the rest of Italy), but really awesome (see the pictures?). In the house, where the
Ancient Foosball
A picture of the foosball table in the farmhouse that Nico apparently had as a child. Sasso's host their parties, there was an old foosball table in there (in case you are Bobby Bouchet's mother, this is the foosball with the guys you can move, not football), as well as a really nice pool-table (but with very small pockets). Outside of the house there were some ancient-looking tractors as well, which would look puny compared to the ones we use in the fields in America.
Elena dropped Paolo and I off in downtown Rovigo and we walked to Federico's house where we watched some "How I Met Your Mother" (with Italian subtitles) and some videos on YouTube (I showed them Caleb Whittaker's new video called "Diary of a Creeper." Look it up 😊 ). We then just walked around for a while, taking in the beautiful sights of Rovigo and bashing Paolo for not giving Federico a birthday present on his birthday. Good times.
Later, Nico, Claudia and Elena picked Paolo and I up and we drove out to dinner at a place outside of Rovigo called "Trattoria Rossi" which specializes in meat dishes (like the Outback Steakhouse or Texas Roadhouse to us). We met up with some family friends who also ate with
View from Federico's place
I thought this was just a pretty cool view! us. We had antipasti (appetizers) of all sorts of pastas--I had ravioli, which, mind you, is not square-shaped in Italy. It also was not in a sauce, nor did it have hamburger meat inside of it. It was some type of cheese and spinach and was amazing. After eating it, I grew about four times stronger and started to beat up bad people. Wait. That's Popeye. Nevermind.
For the main meal there was a T-bone steak (they made me order it) which was ok, but not the best. I think I've said before that Italian meat quality is not as good as in America, so I was actually really happy to have it! Then (of course they got dessert), there was some sort of chocolate bread-type thing. Like... banana bread but with really rich chocolate. I wish I could remember the name. Sorry.
When we were leaving, they showed me the car that one of their friends had driven to dinner. Now Italian cars are normally very small because of the narrow roads. But this car took it to the extreme, with basically the clown-car concept. I got quite a kick out of it and I had to
The awesome clown car
I'd love to drive one of these. Since Paolo is 6'5", he had to bend his head to sit in it. Oh, and by the way, the license plate had "WY" in it :) take a picture to post on the blog. 😱
I rode back into Rovigo in their other friend Andrea's car (which was a porsche, may I add) and stopped to get more dessert--gelato. I didn't have any, and neither did anyone who had some other dessert at the restaurant, so I didn't feel like a fat person.
So that's pretty much all for the day. We got home, and now here I am typing up today's entry.
By the way, I told you I'd tell you about the castle in Rovigo that I posted a picture of yesterday. I did some translating after lunch today and read how the construction of the castle was authorized by Papa Giovanni X (Pope John X) to defend his church. There are two towers left from the castle-- torre Dona (the one in the picture), e torre Grimani
Oh! And tomorrow is the school's field trip to Venice, so I'll have a ton of pictures for you guys tomorrow!
Ora, questo e' tutti per oggi. Buonanotte!
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