Vivere per Mangiare

The Alpi Alpuane in the distance, where we ran the sky race

Sarah gave a great description of the sky race and hopefully you were able to feel like you were right there with us.  What an adventure! It's already quite a blur, as I think my brain went into pure survival mode for much of it. One wrong step, and we would be goners.  I hadn't realized just how dangerous it would be, but now that we are on the other side of it, we're quite glad we participated.  On the way back, Sarah said to me, "if we had to do that again tomorrow, I probably wouldn't"...my response: "TOMORROW? If we had to do that again EVER, I probably wouldn't!" But I'm glad we did it the once, as much as I still hurt from it.   Never before have I realized just how many leg muscles it takes to go down stairs.  Every single one of those muscles has been screaming the last few days. But, as they say in Italy, "va bene." I still can't get over how fortunate we were with people helping us out, from Isabella being willing to drive us there early Sunday morning, to Luca, Marco, and Francesco bringing us home after the race.  We had't realized that ALL the trains had been cancelled for the day, so if it weren't for them, we would have been stranded up in the mountains.



As Sarah mentioned, we walked away with some prizes for placing in the top 15 for women.  They gave us bags with several different shirts from various sponsors and bracelets.  The top three finishers were presented with bigger prizes on top of the bags. We were highly amused to see the second place finisher earn a gelato maker, and the winner was given a high quality toaster oven.  Clearly these Italians are my kind of people - the kind who live to eat!

 Monday morning began week 2 of our courses in Lucca.  New students start at Koine each Monday, and with 14 new students this week, the teachers re-arranged the classes a bit and much to our dismay, Maddalena was no longer our teacher.  With Sabine having left over the weekend, our cherished group of the four of us and Maddalena (and sometimes Warren) was no longer to be. However, we have had enjoyable times with the new group.  Sarah, Eilidh, and I are still together, along with Warren who attends on a part time basis, and we joined our great Norwegian pal Erling! In addition are Anna, also from Norway, Pieternel from the Netherlands, and fellow American, Jan, a retiree from Texas who is living in Lucca with her husband for a couple of years.  It's hard to imagine italian being spoken with a thick southern accent, but Jan pulls it off quite nicely!

A great quote from our "Pausa" (break) this morning: Jan was asking Warren how long he was in Lucca for. So in return, Warren, not knowing she lives in Lucca, asked Jan, "how long are you studying at Koine for?" Jan's reply (imagine a thick drawl in her no-nonsense tone): "oh I dunno, I live here, and I suck at italian, so who knows..."

Jan and Erling have especially made a funny pair.  We do a lot of partner work in class and whenever they are matched up, it's absolutely hysterical.  We learned about telling time the other day and then had to work in teams to act out the hands of a clock (one person being the hour hand, the other being the minute) and the third teammate had to guess what time it was, in italian. Although Jan and Erling are both of the non-digital generation, so you'd think this activity would be easier for them than the younger folks, Erling actually asked Jan with his arm pointed straight up toward the ceiling, "is this the 12?" Then he tried to show 10 after, and he was correct, but Jan insisted he had was pointing to the wrong side of the 12, when in fact she had it backward.  So he switched it and they got it wrong.  Watching the two of them, the rest of us were in hysterics.

We also had a pretty entertaining activity where we were split into two groups and were given photos of a bunch of random people.  Using words of "la famiglia," we had to create a family with ages, names, and roles of the people.  My group had a picture of one older lady, so she became the 83 year old nonna, and had three figli (sons): Nicola, a chef, with his wife Maria and their moody 15 year old daughter; Allesandro, a tax collector who was married to Isabella, a casalinga (housewife), but Allessandro also had una amante (mistress); and Giorgio, a lawyer, who was married to his husband Armando, also a lawyer, with the approval of Nonna (she is pretty open-minded). The two men are trying to adopt a baby but it is difficile in Italia.

 

We've had a few storms over the past week, none lasting too long though

Our cooking and wine course Monday night was "Piacere di vino"... The pleasures of wine. Stefano invited us to his home in Lucca where we sampled three Italian wines, trying them alone and then with different types of antipasti (prosciutto, bread, cheese, etc), and it was pretty neat to see how the taste of the wines were altered by the food we ate.  Also pretty cool: wine is such a major part of Italian life that they have the verb avinare, which means "to wash with wine." (Such as when rinsing a wine glass with wine before sampling).

The view in Monte Carlo

Heading to the vineyards

On Tuesday Stefano took us to Monte Carlo, where we had a great time at the "Fattoria il Poggio." We walked among the vineyards and olive trees and sampled a total of 7 of their wines: three whites, three reds, and a dessert wine, alongside a bunch of great antipasti.  On the way there, Sarah was using the camera function of her phone to check her reflection and Erling, also in the back seat of the car with us, looked over and asked what she was doing.  I handed him Sarah's phone so he could see it was serving as a mirror.  He took it, looked at it, and in his unassuming Norwegian accent said,  "oh bene, molto molto bene" while looking at himself.  He is hysterical!




He continued to make us laugh later on when we were sampling the wine and three men came and sat at the other end of the table.  Erling greeted them with "Buona sera, come stai?" (Good evening, how are you?) And the men just glanced at him and gave a brief nod.  Erling, highly miffed, turned to me and muttered, "well, the correct response by the book would have been 'va bene, e tu?'" (Good, and you?) then Erling quickly corrected himself, saying, "no, actually, "Va bene, e LEI?" (the very polite way of asking, 'and you?'). Sorry Erling, but I guess they didn't read that book!

Stefano makes a new friend at il Poggio winery

Yesterday afternoon we took a break from wine and food (probably a good thing) to go on una passegiatta (walk) in the Tuscan countryside with the rest of the students and the advanced Italian teacher, Elena. We really didn't know anything about it other than we were taking a bus to get there and should bring water with us.  Well, it turned out we were taking the bus to the last stop and then walking back! It was a pretty hot afternoon, but we took our time and stopped quite a bit to learn about history, etc, while walking along. It ended up being 3 hours but the company and scenery were bellisimo.

Today after pranzo (lunch), Sarah and I met up with classmate Pieternel to do our first real cultural activity in Lucca that didn't have anything to do with food.  Jan had raved about a WWII photography exhibit at the Lucca museum, so the three of us went to check it out.  Photographer Robert Capa captured a lot of incredible images during the 30s and 40s and it really makes you realize that while America certainly had a challenges during that time, with the Great Depression and so many casualties in the war, we didn't experience anything compared to the devastation of Europe.  Pieternel, born in 1952, is one of the youngest among 10 siblings and described to us how her parents and many siblings really suffered in the city of Amsterdam during the war, which was destroyed by the Germans and taken over for over 5 years.

We are about to head to our final cooking lesson (this time with our beloved Maddalena!) and tomorrow is our final day of class in Lucca! We are both very sad to leave this wonderful, charming place.  Is it possible to miss something that you haven't even left yet?


Some more interesting facts I've noted:

-my whole life people have struggled pronouncing my last name. Here, no one has had any difficulty!! It's amazing! (Note: I will accept "dan-yellow," "don-yellow" (with the italian accent) or "dee-an-ello" all as being correct)

-the standard here is a two-holed paper punch, not three

-here pepperoni= peppers, not the meat we think of

-they have pizza with French fries on it! (Dad, of course I thought of you with that one)

-while garlic is typically thought to be an herb synonymous with italian cooking, so far we've only seen it used whole, not minced

-they use the same word to say "cheers" as they do "bless you" - "Salute!"(Pronounced sal-u-tay) However, they don't seem big on saying anything after people sneeze. Sarah and I have gotten a kick out of the dual meaning and have started saying "cheers!" when the other sneezes and "bless you!" when we have a drink.

-the finish line at races is called "l'arrivo" which I found to be an interesting interpretation of getting to the end of a race!

FP: 109 (clearly you're in the wrong country, Mom)

SoG: 59