September 13 2016

Being an exchange student in a very social and active family, I never know what is going to happen next. There are days where I have no idea when or where I am going to eat or sleep. This weekend was a prime example.

This friday I was invited over to my friend Matilde's house for a pool/dinner party. At the party I met her friends, some of which will be going to my school. We hung out in the pool, and then had a delicious dinner prepared by Matilde's mom and grilled by her 14 year old brother Luca! After dinner we hung out in the living room and sang karaoke and danced.

Matilde tried to claim that not all Italians are good at dancing, but her friends weren't helping her argument. 

Dinner outside. You can see Luca grilling in outdoor kitchenette

Eating with friends

Matilde's family then invited me to go to Catania with them the next day to see Matteo Renzi (who is the equivalent of Obama in Italy) speak. It was a long bus ride, but me and Matilde chatted the whole time. The speech was help in a beautiful garden in Catania, so we walked around the garden and the surrounding neighborhood  before the speech.

Matilde and I on the bus.

 

This Elephant statue is the symbol of Catania.

The park where the speech was held.

When walking around the neighborhood before the speech we stopped in a store dedicated to making merchandise with sicilian phrasing. In the store one of the employees who was close to me and Matilde's age was very excited to find out I was from America. She rushed us over to a rack of T-shirts and started to take every shirt of the rack and translate the Sicilian phrase to English. In Sicily everyone one is much more direct than in the Midwest, so Matilde quickly informed her we were not planning on buying anything. She complete understood and explained that for her it was fun to teach me Sicilian, so we stayed for 15 minutes all having fun learning from each other. 

I got a picture of my two Sicilian teachers! The shirt they are holding is the Sicilian phrase for "Don't worry about it" but much ruder. 

After exploring the neighborhood we headed back to the garden. The tent where Renzi was going to speak was relatively small, so Matilde's parents were able to get seats inside but we were not. Instead we stood outside. The problem as Renzi set up and started to speak it started to rain. So instead of standing the rain we found a dry tent to sit in and with a better view on the TV.



I got a quick picture before it started raining too hard.

After riding home on the bus. It was easier for me to spend another night at Matilde's house then to have Giovanella pick me up. I spent a wonderful weekend with a wonderful family and am sure I will be seeing much more of them!