Blues, French Fries, and Canals

Friday night the whole family went to a concert. At first I thought that it was going to be a classical music concert like the one we had gone to a week ago, but this was not the case. We approached the Teatro Astra in Vicenza and I could hear the loud heavy metal from outside the venue. The sign outside the door read, “Concerto per i bambini di Tibet”, or “Concert for the children of Tibet”, a fundraiser for the service organization of Vicentine doctors that help out an orphanage in Tibet, which my host mother is part of. A few minutes later, the event officially started with a teenage band called Plastic Smile. Their music was mediocre at best, and also not my preference of genre. Their main song, called “Hey, Daddy” was a cacophonous mix of the terrible sounds coming from a bad drummer, two long-haired guitarists, and a lead singer with a thick Italian accent singing in English. They also used way too much stage smoke than their musical skills entitled them to. This made me feel even sorrier for the Tibetan children whose orphanage had been destroyed in the recent earthquake. It was then followed up by a much better group of older men playing ‘70s “rock progressivo”, also in English. After that was a second teenage band, which I was hoping would be better than the first. Luckily, it was, as they played a lot of Queen covers and definitely did deserve their amount of stage smoke. To end the night, a fourth band came on stage, and was definitely not what I expected - a Louisiana-style blues band who played classic blues songs but in Italian. For example, instead of playing “Sweet Home Chicago” they played “Dolce Casa Asiago”.

The Italian blues band.

Yesterday, had school, but that night, I went out with a bunch of friends for a pizza to celebrate the birthdays of two of them. I ordered a “margherita”, or the classic cheese with basil and it was very good. But to my surprise, many people there ordered a different kind, called “patatina”, which is a regular pizza crust with tomato sauce, but French fries on top. It was not exactly how I expected the Italians to eat their pizza. While eating, I had a nice conversation with my friends in which they explained to me in great detail the Italian government.

My friends were amazed that we did not eat this in America.

After dinner, we walked around Vicenza for a few hours, which was very pleasant. Vicenza is a great town by day, but by night it is amazing, especially when with some friends. At almost midnight, we all said our goodbyes and headed home.

This morning, I woke up at about nine, which was nice considering that I had been waking up before six for six days straight. I went downstairs, where Cristina asked me what I wanted to do today, to which I replied the easy, “I don’t know, whatever you are doing.” She then looked outside and told me to go search the weather forecast for Venice for today. I went and found that, unlike what she thought, it was going to be a beautiful day. She then told Oscar, my host father, that we were going to Venice for the day. I was extremely excited and ran upstairs for my camera. We then went to pick up Osvaldo at his soccer game in a nearby town, and drove the remaining part of highway to Venice. When we were in the car, I was talking with my host siblings and not looking outside, but then I took a glance and saw something totally unexpected – a ferry. I then looked further and saw Venice further off. We were on the highway over the Venetian lagoon. We then parked and walked around Venice for a good four or five hours. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then below is a 100,000 word essay on today. I would rather let you see what I saw today as opposed to just tell you about it.

Piazza San Marco, flooded due to a high water level.

Me in front of one of Venice's hundreds of canals. Of course, the gondola in the back.

I could not help but take the classic postcard picture. Here you can see what a beautiful day it was.

And another postcard picture. This was later in the day when the sun was beautifully reflected on the canals.

From left to right: Giuditta, me, Osvaldo, Maria, and Oscar. Cristina is taking this picture on us at Piazza San Marco.

A traffic jam, Venetian style.

A young girl having some fun in flooded Piazza San Marco.

One of Venice's many shops selling masks for Carnival, which I hope to be able to attend this spring.

Always have to have your vegetables - these funghi where outside of a Venetian restaurant.

The stilted walkways in Piazza San Marco.

Fish, Peaches, and an all-around Update

Sorry I have not written in so long, I just have been very busy this past week. Other than school, which is going very well, I have done a few nice things this past week. Yesterday we all went as a family to a nearby lake for a fairly short walk around it. While we were there we did come across an unexpected visitor, though. After than that Oscar and I went to the Rotary meeting. I am actually a bit confused about this restaurant, since last week every course included mushrooms, while this week we had none. I think every week they change their theme; this last week’s being seafood. We started off with a very good plate of penne pasta with shrimp and scallops, followed by a large chunk of fish, whose Italian name I could not translate. Even for dessert, which is very hard difficult to make out of fish, they came about as close as possible. The Italian word for fish, pesce, is very similar to the word for peach, pesca, which is what was served for dessert. I need to start drinking caffeine on Thursdays when I am going to Rotary meetings, as spending a whole day speaking Italian is very tiring, and towards the end of the meetings around 10:30, my eyelids start feeling like they are made out of lead.

An unexpected critter I would expect to find in a Louisiana bayou rather than in the Veneto region of Italy.

I was also quite busy writing an article for the Summit High School newspaper, Tiger Tracks. Once that goes into publication in Colorado, I will post it on here, as it would be wrong for me to publish it first. Also, I have walked around Vicenza a lot and I would be comfortable saying that I know my way around pretty well now. I have also decided that by the end of my stay, I would like to have visited every gelateria in Vicenza, judging both their stracciatella and fragola flavors (vanilla with chocolate, strawberry). Maybe once I am done, I could write a book about it.

As for school, it is going very well. I have really gotten to like history and philosophy, partly because it is the only class where the teacher writes everything she says on the chalkboard, making it easier to understand. Reading Italian is a little bit harder than I would have expected, as I cannot quite skim the book and get the meaning – I must make an active effort to comprehend everything. And it is also a little bit harder when we are reading Dante’s Purgatorio, which is hard for all of the Italians also. I really enjoy the fact that my school is situated a block away from Vicenza’s main avenue, and on one of the city’s main downtown plazas. Here is a picture of the Church of San Lorenzo as seen from the window of my classroom.

Chiesa San Lorenzo as seen from my classroom. 

Tonight, after soccer practice, we will all go to Vicenza for a concert that is a fundraiser for a project Cristina (my host mother) is helping with. I do not know the details, but I do know that she goes to Tibet often with some other doctors to offer medical assistance and that the fundraiser will benefit the reconstruction of an orphanage/school that was devastated by the recent earthquakes.

Also here are some miscellaneous pictures that I was not able to post last week. We got a high-speed Wi-Fi modem just yesterday, so it will be easier for me to post more pictures more often.

Some odd-looking veggies from last week's Festa di Zucca.

And some more normal, yet less colorful ones.

From left to right: Cristina, Maria, Oscar, me, Osvaldo, and Giuditta on my birthday, last Sunday.

A picture of my room, or at least half of it. On the other half I have a desk, a bookshelf, and a dresser. Despite the bunk beds on the right, I have this room to myself and I sleep in the bed on the left.

Birthday Pumpkins

I definitely had a different birthday experience today than what I am accustomed to. Usually, I get woken up by my parents and siblings singing “Happy Birthday” at the top of their lungs and carrying some kind of present. After that I go to the kitchen and have a great meal of bacon and eggs with cream cheese and chives. I then take off to school, which is better than usual just because of people acknowledging you just a little bit more. After school I would usually go to football practice (considering my birthday is in the middle of the season) and have a better than usual practice. I would then probably go home and be enchanted by the delicious aroma of some homemade lasagna about to be served for me. Yum.


Today, though, was pretty different. It was a weekend, so that takes school out of the picture. But still, I had not set my alarm, so therefore I woke up to a silent house. I went to shower, downstairs to have some breakfast (more like two small sugar cookies and a glass of water), and then was happy to see some nice e-cards in my inbox. As far as I could see, I was essentially alone in the house. Oscar had been in Udine for a dentistry conference, Cristina was at Osvaldo’s soccer game, Ana (the resident household helper) had her day off and was probably out in Vicenza, and Giuditta and Maria were not to be found. They were probably upstairs in their room. Without much to do, and feeling a bit glum, I went to my room and started doing some homework. After being in there for over an hour, I decided to go downstairs and go outside. It was a beautiful, clear day and I could see the bell tower of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice way off on the horizon. Then Giuditta came out of the house saying, “Tanti auguri”. She said that Oscar had arrived and that Cristina and Osvaldo were on their way back home. She said that we were going to be visiting a nearby town to attend their “Festa di Zuccha”, or “Pumpkin Festival”. Actually, at the time, I thought that it was a carrot festival, because of a bit of prior confusion. A few days before, Ana had served me some orange soup and called it “zuppa di zuccha”. I asked her what zuccha was, and since she speaks zero English, she started to describe it. She said that it was orange and “largo cosi” (This long), putting her hands up in the air about a foot and a half. Her choice of the word “long” as opposed to “big” or “large” made me think she was talking about carrots, when really she meant pumpkin. I guess my palate is not good enough to distinguish the main ingredient in the meal which I have had at least six or seven times while I have been here.

Anyhow, once the whole family had arrived, they all said “Auguri” and we climbed into Oscar’s Fiat minivan and Maria came out of the house and handed me a large bag. “Wow,” I thought, “they got me a present, how nice.” I looked inside, and pulled out a very cool briefcase for my computer. When I was shopping for a computer, I made the bad decision of choosing the largest laptop I could find, making it near to impossible to find a briefcase to carry it in. This one was big enough though. Cristina then told me to open the outside pocket. I could not imagine that there was anything else in there, since the thing weighed about what I would expect it to. I opened the pocket anyhow and found a small slip of paper. I looked at it, and it was the confirmation page from a flight booking! It read, “Venice-Budapest: 11-Dec-2010; Budapest-Venice 14-Dec-2010.” I guess I will be spending some time in Hungary! Cristina said that we would go and see the Christmas lights there, which apparently are spectacular.

Five minutes later, we arrived at a nearby town and made our way to the church, which is always the in the center of town and the center for most social gatherings as well, including this one. There was a large tent set up in the parking lot, and we went inside and sat down with some people my host family knows and whose son plays soccer with Osvaldo. The waitress then came and set a plate in front of each of us. It was actually kind of smaller than what I expected for a full lunch, but I was not going to complain. On the plate there were two thin slices of a kind of salami-ish looking meat and pumpkin polenta. On the side was a slice of toasted bread that looked like garlic bread, yet was made out of pumpkin. I was finished with that and thought I would probably have to eat some more upon arriving home. But then to my surprises came the second course, a bowl of rice with a pumpkin sauce and pumpkins chunks. This was followed by a bowl of pumpkin soup like the one we had eaten at home. After that came the main plate: some turkey beside stewed pumpkins. After that they served us pumpkin bread for dessert. Outside they were selling pumpkins and zucchinis, some about eight feet long. I thought to myself, “I don’t need to eat anything anymore when I get home. Also, I’m done with pumpkins for a few weeks.”

I then started receiving some phone calls from parents and grandparents. This was nice, considering I had not spoken with my family since the night I had arrived here in Italy almost two weeks ago. It did take a long time though. By the time I was done, it was time to go to church, which was a lot shorter than last week, probably because there was not a priest leaving.

When we got back home just about two hours ago, we started to have a dinner of bread, cheese, and a chocolate cake Giuditta had made. Overall, it was a good day. It feels good to be seventeen.