Saturday was our trip to il mare (the sea). Italy’s Adriatic coast is beautiful, and incredibly comforting to a girl who grew up with Lake Michigan in her veins. If it wasn’t for the saltiness and the bathwater temperatures, I almost wouldn’t know the difference. I laughed out loud at a couple class mates who said the water was a bit chilly…. I didn’t notice at all, it was certainly warmer than Lake Charlevoix in June.
On Saturdays, Civitanova has a huge open air market, and we wandered around there for a while between getting off the train and hitting the beach. I bought a very cute dress for just 5 Euro, and then was showing it to a friend and discovered she bought the same one. We plan to have a twin day at some point soon…
We then took a brief walking tour through the fishing harbor, which was full of boats, because there is a seasonal ban on commercial fishing until October.
After the walking tour we split up, and a few of us grabbed lunch at a beachside restaurant. The beach is very rocky…but not rocks like in Charlevoix, these are thousands of perfectly smooth flat rocks, and more amazing skipping stones than you could dream of. Also, there was a TON of beach glass. I picked up lots of it with my friend Myranda, another Michigan girl who loves beach combing, but had never seen beach glass before.
When we headed for home, Myranda and I sat across from a sweet, older Italian woman on the train, and had a very broken, but semi functional conversation with her (and the aid of my pocket dictionary/phrase book) But then when we got to Macerata, we had to figure out how to get back to our apartments (which are technically within walking distance but it was not an appealing option) The group of us there saw a bus, and ran to grab it, because it was a line number we recognized as one that headed the right direction… And it did, eventually. We took bus 7, which goes all the way out to the mall before coming back toward the old city and the walls. So about 45 minutes later we were able to get off and walk the rest of the way home…
Saturday night I went out for gelato, and then bumped into a few classmates, we went to my friend Lisa’s apartment and chatted about life for a few hours, and then I went home to go to bed, after a very long, but very good day.
In other news: A pigeon has successfully entered our apartment through the large, alluring, unscreened windows, but did also successfully exit without any damaging physical injury to any parties involved (to the best of my knowledge)
I was in the kitchen when I heard intensely flapping wings and a scream from Erin and Carlye’s room. I ran in to see that the pigeon, quite frightened by his situation, was trying to crawl behind the dresser. We coaxed him out of there, but he flew around the room looking for somewhere to land, and even grabbed onto the valance of the curtain before rediscovering the window. It was intense.
The rest of the week has been fairly normal. We have our Italian language class at 8:30 each morning….and it goes until 11:30. We still have one more week of language intensive before our other classes start. I feel like we are making TONS of progress in our beginning Italian class, but doing it for three hours a day probably helps.
I have also been learning all kinds of fascinating etymologies, like the origins of the telling someone that something is bologna. The Italian city of Bologna was famous for its fake gold…Oro di Bologna…things that seemed farfetched or false would also be referred to this way. And TADAH! Its bologna. I have also learned the origins of the bourgeois. In the feudal system, a lord would be given a piece of land, and would build his castle at the highest point of the area. There would be one road that lead out of the castle, known as the burg. Initially, all the skilled craftsmen the he hired would live within the walls of the castle, but eventually their population would grow to the point where they needed to live just outside. They would build homes near the castle gate, along the burg. As the population continued to expand, they continued to build around the castle, eventually forming hill towns, but those who lived nearest the castle were not the poor class, they were middle class skilled workers, who became known as the bourgois.
And for all my Grand Rapids people…ever wonder what Mangiamo means? It always sounded so regal and magnificent to me, well… it means “We Eat!” Just thought you would like to know, I almost burst out laughing when we conjugated that verb in class.
Also... If you want to see pictures, use this link :) Its easier than putting them up here.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150790346585705.726518.703125704&l=f91e3c5417&type=1
Happy Weekend!
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