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Published: June 20th 2011
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Confirmation Crew!
A group photo of the Priest and the 23 (or most of them. Too lazy to count) confirmation recipients Well, you know how I was saying earlier that my morning routine has grown to be the same ever since school ended and that there really wasn't much to talk about? Well, today, I stand corrected. Because this morning was no ordinary Sunday morning for the Sasso family. Why? you may ask. Well, the reason why gives the title for today's blog entry. It is Claudia's confirmation!
I de believe I mentioned something about a church deal going on today, but I didn't ever know exactly what it was. That's because whenever they referred to it, they used a name that I wasn't familiar with. "Cresima". Well, when I was getting ready and riding there and sitting through the ceremony, I still didn't know what the purpose of it was... until I decided to actually look up the meaning of "cresima" in my handy little Italian-English dictionary. Hmmm... well glory be, the English translation was in there, and it happened to mean "confirmation". Oh! Well, I think I know what's going on a little more now.
Now I really haven't ever been to a Catholic Church service that I remember. I remember going to a Catholic wedding that lasted
Claudia being confirmed
Very interesting to see happen to my host-sister :) forever (but that was when I was an impatient little imp-child, so it could have lasted only 15 minutes and I wouldn't have known the difference). And seeing as I am practically a part of the family now (I am living with them, eating with them, etc.) I really didn't have much of a choice but to go see my host-sister's confirmation. I'm not saying it was unfortunate that I had to, but that, even though I had to go it was an experience that I'm glad I didn't miss. I mean, how often do you get the chance to go see the confirmation of your host-sister in Italy?
Now, as I've said, I have never been to a Catholic service that I can remember, so I don't really know what is different ceremony wise between and American and an Italian service or confirmation. All I know is that it was very interesting to watch everything happen around me. The whole thing seemed to be well orchestrated--like everything was perfectly rehearsed (it might have been, I don't know. Or they could have just done it enough times). It was very enchanting listening to the priest speak over the congregation
The altar
An awesome view of the altar and the high cieling above it! and then everyone saying lines in perfect unison on cue. (Bringing me to another point-- you know that awkward feeling that you get when you're the only one not saying something that everyone else is? Well, I'm glad that I have the excuse of "no parlo italiano!" So even if I did now what it was in English, I still couldn't say it in Italian. So that was no problem 😊 )
I'm not going to go over the details of the whole event, because that would be a long and tedious blog entry. However, I am proud of Claudia and her accomplishment (and because she went up and spoke in front of everbody... I couldn't understand her, but I'm still proud!), and I can say that I had a good sitting and standing workout 😊.
(Oh! One thing I did notice about the "cresima" is that Claudia was wearing a white dress, and after we went to lunch, we had a little miniature party... reminding me of that catchy Billy Joel line in Only the Good Die Young: "You had a nice white dress and a party on your confirma-shuuuuun....")
Following the ceremony, Paolo and I
She had a nice white dress...
and a party on her confirmation! And Paolo had a nice tie too rode with Elena's uncle in his Porsche to where we ate lunch--some place that I can't remember the name, unfortunately. Well, this was one of those places that really liked to spread out the meal instead of the classic optional soup/salad course, entree, then optional dessert. This place decided, ok, well, we'll give you a bunch of bread items to munch on. Then we will bring you an antipasto (appetizer dish). Antipasto. Antipasto. Antipasto. Then finally an "entree" (which was not very big--they expect you to be full after the four appetizer dishes and bread...). Oh, and not to mention, two different dessert dishes. I think it was neat having somewhere close to a 7 or 8 course meal (I might have forgotten a course in there somewhere...), but when you're really hungry, the separations of the miniscule dishes aren't that appeasing.
But I did have some good conversation with Paolo's grandfather again... and (again) he showed me his phone, reminding me of all of the cool functions that it had, like Internet access, maps, weather, and e-mail. He almost had me send another picture to my dad of me at the confirmation ceremony... but we ended up not
Confirmation Cake and Claudia
Also included in the photo is her "madrina" and her cousins. Nice cake! doing so. (whew!).
Following lunch, we drove to the old farmhouse of the family's next to the pear orchards that Nico works. (For more info about this, refer back to a prior blog entry from around June 2nd that has to do with pears...) There, I spent most of my time playing a European version of billiards called "Caramba" or something like that. If you know the game by chance, it's the one that has five little pegs set up in the middle of the table, and you get points by hitting the opponents ball and indirectly knocking over these pegs. I played the game with Elena's brother-in-law (nice guy, and he explained the game well for not speaking that much English!) He has two little girls who were both, comically, rooting for me... getting all happy and dancing around me when I scored some points, and going "Awwww.... papa sta vincendo... 😞" (Dad is winning...). They were really adorable! (50%!b(MISSING)ecause I had a fan basis, 50%!b(MISSING)ecause they were, well, little kids having fun!)
We eventually returned to the house and after a while I had to go and help one of the confirmation guests, Claudia's
Italian Billiards
Thought you might be interested in this Italian Billiards set-up. Look at the pool-cue rack in the back! It's pretty amazing "madrina" (godmother, literally translated, but I'm not sure if that's what she really is. She walked her down the aisle at the confirmation ceremony), start her car because the battery was low. Well, I'm not too car savvy, but I've jump-started cars before. But this car WOULD NOT START! I think I did everything right...
Later in the afternoon, we had dinner (plain ole spaghetti) and a dessert of my JELL-O! (Well, only Elena, Claudia and I had some... Nico didn't feel like dessert and I don't know what was Paolo's deal...). But they both really really liked it, and that's an honor because Claudia is a very picky eater! I'm glad for this success, because they do not sell Jell-O in Europe like they do in USA.
After dinner, Nico took Paolo and I into downtown Rovigo and dropped us off, where we met up with some friends and walked to "Caffe Borsa". There, I had a hot chocolate (once again, American hot chocolate is LAME comparatively) and I talked to some of Paolo's friends about some random things. (One of which being relationships... Apparantly the Italian term for "dating" is something like "engaggiato," which they translated to English as "engaged". So when some girls asked me if I was "engaged", I said no, and they started saying "oh he's single!" By then I was really confused and had to ask what they meant by "engaged". Turns out that what they used for OUR idea of "engaged" is "fidanzato", which sounds like "fiance" or "fiancee" which actually makes sense)
We left Caffe Borsa and went to eat gelato, and continued to talk about random things and do random things (Federico stole a bite out of my gelato when I was posing for a photo, and then immediately regretted it because I had decided to have "caffee" flavored gelato this time. Karma...) until we had to leave.
So that's my day! I can't believe there's only 9 days left until I come back... where has the last 3 weeks gone?!?!
Buonanotte!
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sit down stand up......
do you know whats coming next? ;)