Calcio Practice and Italian Bureaucracy

For today's blog post, I will do something highly unorthodox and describe my day in reverse order. Nothing so exciting happened today that it would require me to tell things in the order they happened because today's events were completely unrelated.
So about a few hours ago, I was out on the field playing defense. I went with Osvaldo to his team's calcio (soccer) practice. It surprised me to find out that in Italy, the name for this sport is not on par with that of the rest of the world. At first I wanted to call it futbol, like in Spanish, but I was quickly corrected and told that "football" is what the British play, while the Italians practice the art of calcio. Anyways, I accompanied my host brother to his soccer practice. While changing in the locker room, I asked him how long practices usually ran because I was surprised that they would start so late as 7:00 PM. He replied casually, "Una ora e meza, più o meno" (An hour and a half, more or less). "Wow," I thought, "I was expecting this to be at least something like Coach Hollingsworth's football practices!" I was accustomed to practices running at the very least over three and a half hours, sometimes even five. I then went on to ask him how many times a week they practices. I was expecting him to say that it was a daily or six-days-a-week ordeal. Again he replied casually, "Due per settimana, ma non compresa la partita" (Two a week, not including the game). This really surprised me. How can the Italians be so good at soccer if they only practice three hours a week? But then again, see how they did in this year's World Cup. He was astonished at the amount of practice time we had and said something along the lines that we Americans are too obsessed with nonsense, yet in a good joking manner.
So I am not really sure whether I should be proud of my first soccer practice or ashamed. Osvaldo and most of the team are 13 years old, with a couple aged 14 and an short, but quick 12 year-old. Here I am, almost 17 years old, struggling to keep the ball in the air during a juggling drill. But later, during the short scrimmage at the end, I was not the worst. By no means was I even close to being any good in comparison to the better three/fourths of the team, but I was not the worst man out on the pitch as I had expected to be. Just as I was starting to gain some pride from my perceived accomplishment, I looked over to the field next to where we were practicing and saw the team with players of my age and all the glory I had accumulated in the last five minutes was crushed. These guys were striking the ball from about midfield, curving it with just the right amount of spin, and right before going directly into the top left corner of the goal, being blocked by a leaping goalkeeper that had been more than fifteen feet away when the ball was first striked. Yup, I guess the Italians just have calcio in their blood.
Before taking us to soccer practice, Cristina had to stop at a house in the middle of a good-sized vineyard to buy some fruit. It looked like a scene taken right out of a romantic movie about Italy. Anyways, the lady in the room that was selling her fruits exclaimed right as we walked in, "Tutto e biologico" (Everything is biologic). I asked Cristina what that meant, thinking to myself, "Aren't all fruits biologic?" It turns out that "biologico" is the Italian word for "organic".

A pile of plums sitting on an equally blue tablecloth. 

Some colorful, fresh Italian veggies.

Before going to get the produce, though, we had to go to il Municipio, or Town Hall. Although my host sister Giuditta and I had gone earlier in the day, Cristina had to be there due to the Italian bureaucracy. So earlier in the morning we had shown up and seen a sign that told everyone that had to deal with paperwork to go to a certain office. We were there to get il permesso di soggiornio, or temporary residency permit. We went there and the lady wrote my name down on a piece of paper that she then signed. She handed us the slip of paper and directed us to the police headquarters, also in that same building. Upon arriving there, a large man asked us if we had all of the right paperwor, which we did. He grumbled and held up my passport and after mumbling for quite a while he finally picked up my paper and filled in the information he needed to provide. Then they sent us upstairs to get a different signature, then back down to the grumbling man, and finally back to the first lady again. At what should have been our final destination, the lady told Giuditta that even though she was legally an adult and had written permission to sign for her father, that the paperwork could not be completed then and there. Now, with Cristina present, the lady cheerfully signed and told us that tomorrow we have to go to downtown Vicenza to the Immigration Office for them to complete the process.
But this was not the only instance of bureaucracy we encountered today. As I had promised yesterday, I went to get a telephone today. When Giuditta and I entered the Vodafone store in the nearby shopping center, we had to deal with this before even talking to anybody. In the middle of the doorway there was a machine that asked a variety of questions and then gave you a ticket that said either A, B, or C, indicating which booth to go to. Our ticket told us to go to B, so we waited in line there and the man answered only a few of our questions regarding monthly plans or pay-as-you-go before sending us to the back of the line of booth A. There the man showed us to the phone we wanted and typed in our information. He handed us a ticket and but the box behind the counter at booth C, where we had to wait in line to pay. I guess it worked out fine because I ended up with a small, cheap, functional pay-as-you-go cell phone.
That pretty much sums up the happenings for today, except for a few things here and there. Before going to soccer practice, we drove through a town named Costozza, which is tiny and happens to be the site of quite a few immense villas which, according to Cristina, were the summer residences for the Venice nobility. Above the town is a huge quarry which supposedley is the source for all of the stone used to build the city of Venice. The river that passes through this town enters the sea in the Venice lagoon, making this a feasible endeavor. Also in that town is a tall tower that Galileo Galilei would use for his telescope when he was a scholar at the University of Padova. Only a short distance from the university, this remote location was perfect because during the day, he would be entertained by rich noblemen and at night there would be no lights to obstruct his observations.

A garden at one of Costozza's villas.

A plaque indicating that Galileo installed the world's first air conditioning system in this Costozza house. It was regulated by cool winds coming underground from nearby caves.

Also, here are some miscellaneous pictures that seem interesting (at least to me).

Wine on tap at la sagra.

A rooster and a hen running around in our back yard. My host family has these two, as well as five more hens.

The view from the office (the one from my bed is the same). Here the grate is covering the view of Padova's towers and on clear days I can see the towers of Venice, including St. Mark's Basilica's bell tower.