March 2 2017

This week had been full of festivities for carnival! Saturday night the scientific school organized a costumed dance. (Martina, Raffaele (Martina's boy friend), and me!)

My costume supply was very short but I thought the overalls and plaid was good enough. One of the things that gave me a really hard time the whole week was peoples costume choices. Sicily is behind on a lot of things, and I saw a lot of racist costumes including, Native American, Arab, Geisha and Mexican.

Sunday, I went with Zia Graziella, Zio Aldo and Anna to Zio Aldo's brothers house, to celebrate finding Charlie! The sweet dog had wandered off for two days and we were all really worried until Zio Aldo found him Ragusa Ibla.

The view of Ragusa from the house! You may remember some night time pictures I had put up.

Heading down to Ibla.

I spent the rest of Sunday baking, because monday morning there was a carnival party at school and they had asked for fundraising dessert.. These are ginger cookies with orange butter cream.

I also made an apple cake.

The carnival party turned out pretty small. The dessert table was almost non-existent and to my surprise my dessert made up almost half of those brought. 

The best part of the party was the costume contest.

Monday afternoon was a beautiful sunny day in Ragusa so I spent some time drinking tea on the balcony over looking Via Roma.

I also took a walk down to look over Ibla. The afternoons can get pretty lonely but I keep myself busy.

Last minute, monday night after dance class a friend invited me to go to the big carnival party Chiaramonte. It was a ton of fun and the city center was packed with people and music. Unfortunately all the tradition aspects of the festival had been displayed Sunday night.

Still the fun doesn't stop, Tuesday night I went to go practice my salsa dancing skills with my friends from class. I was a mess but I'm hoping by the time I get back to Minneapolis I'll have some minor skills.