Florence!

The holidays start soon, and my family is going to Florence! I am very excited about this, as, though not a major city economically, Florence is the birthplace of the current Italian language, and the renaissance, it is a major city culturally speaking. I'm not sure about computor access while I'm there, so it might be January before I can post more about it.
I've done a bit more baking while here, making some pear and apple cakes. However, it seems like I left my ability to tell when cakes are done in Canada, so I've been having some troubles. I could list a million reasons, such as using Celsius, different flour, different fats, etc, but in reality it's because I just can't figure it out anymore. Tonight I'm making a very Canadian dish for my host family... fajitas! I went to three different grocery stores and still couldn't find all of the ingredients, but I'm not super worried. I was a bit sad when I bought a packaged taco seasoning mix because I couldn't find cumin, but it had the right ingredients, so I got it.

I haven't been super busy lately, just normal school and protesting and the like. I did go to a concert at Teatro Politeama, which was super neat. Teatro Politeama was originally built as a multi purpose theatre to house all sorts of shows, from equestrian to acrobatics to plays, and was originally open-aired. We sat on the floor of the theatre, but there was two levels of boxes, and a level of more seating above us. I thought the acoustics were excellent there, from what I could tell, and I really enjoyed the performance.

Also, there's snow on the mountains around Palermo! It makes for a nice change of scenery, and reminds me of Canada, but I'm not a super huge fan of the cold when I don't get to go skiing, or at least have my mitts or boots!

Here's some photos:

Protesters. You can tell these guys are from an art school as their signs are a lot nicer than the normal spray paint and old bedsheet. I like the scissors demonstrating the cutting of funds to education, and woman painted on one is labelled "Saint of Ignorance".

More signs

The two levels of box seating.

The stage.

Happy Santa Lucia Day!

Today was the day of Santa Lucia, and so we don't eat grain. My friend told me something about ships, and grain, and something else, but when I looked up Santa Lucia on wikipedia, it told me something completely different, so I'm not exactly sure. I was feeling pretty down, as I was sure that I was going to die if I didn't get my daily pasta fix, until my family said we were having arancina, the typical food of this day. Arancina are balls of rice, stuffed with cheese, meat, or spinach, or a combination, and then fried. Well, if that isn't a good way to celebrate not eating wheat, I don't know what is. I ate two. Now considering running a good four hours.

Since I forgot to take photos (too busy eating), I pulled some from the internet:

Update everyone!! I just asked my host mom for clarification and apparently the not-eating-grain thing is a Palermo thing. Each region might have a different way of celebrating. I guess there was a great famine and then a ship came with grain, but the people had no yeast so they could only boil it. So people of Palermo celebrate by not eating grain and eating deep fried rice. (Hopefully I didn't butcher that story too much)

Learning Italian, part 2

So, the other day when I wrote the first part on this subject, I had been feeling really great. I felt like I could actually talk to people, understand what they were saying. Finally, I thought, this is what it's like to know what's going on! However, the following days, I didn't get enough sleep, and subsequently, could not understand anything. All the words sound mashed up and out of order. It's like someone took an essay or article, ripped it into many pieces, then put it back together out of order with gum and frosting, and told you to read it.
Also, when I went to write this last week, I had been formulating ideas for it for a while, and forgot at least half of what I was going to write, so hopefully I can complete it today.
I make up a lot of words. "Tion" endings become "zione", add an e to the end of most words, and a few extra syllables. I also like to just add "are" to the end of most verbs. The other thing I am guilty of is mashing French and Italian words together (though not as much lately, as even the tiny amount of French I knew has fallen out of my brain entirely), such as calling apples pela, instead of mela (pomme+mela=pela), and snow, nege, instead of neve (neige+neve=nege).
I hardly ever make anything agree. I hear it's what the cool kids do. Normally I just forget, being so focussed on saying the write word, or conjugating to the right tense, that making adjectives agree isn't a high priority. Also, a lot of the time I just don't know the gender. Sometimes this doesn't matter, but also, a lot of people don't know what I'm saying when I get mixed up. Or words can be very similar, but different genders, such as the words for dog and meat, so I get looks of concern and confusion when I say "Il carne è buono", when it should be "La carne..."
Many people will ask me if I understand everything, and normally when I reply that I don't, they ask if I understand even a little. When I say that I do, they usually say something like "good for you", or "keep trying". However, a few times, when I replied that I didn't understand everything, the person I was talking to turned to everyone else and said "She understands nothing!! Nothing!!". When this happens, I feel angry and misrepresented, I would love to shout or scream at that person. But more strongly, I feel discouraged, and disappointed. I'm not sure if the other person really understands how it feels to be publicly displayed as a slow learner, as a bit of an idiot.

In other news, I got a math test back! I got one of the better marks of the class, too! It was a 6/7, out of ten. Certainly nothing fantastic, if I had recieved this grade at home I would be incredibly disappointed. Oh well, something to improve on.

Learning Italian and School

So, my Italian has actually been getting better lately, strangely. For a while there I thought I'd never understand it. I understand voices I am more familiar with the best, such as those of my host family, but am starting to actually understand what the teachers are saying, if I pay attention. Listening and understanding is no longer passive, like it was in Canada. I need to listen very carefully, paying attention to verb endings, and adjectives, but I am understanding a lot more. Nearly everyone has been incredibly patient with me, for which I am very thankful, however, when I ask you to repeat something, I mean just that, for you to repeat it. Not change the words, not translate into broken English, not to turn to your friend and say "how do I say...". I appreciate what you are doing to help me, however, most of the time I simply didn't hear you.
Some other difficulties:
There are approximately 1,000,000 tenses I need to learn. And each tense has six forms that I frequently forget.
The majority of common verbs are irregular.
I don't know very many words, so sometimes it's difficult for me to add to conversations.
I hate feeling like a burden to conversations.
I don't understand the jokes.


I'm realizing just how little expectations my teachers have for me. I actually have to ask if I can write some other test, and frequently what I write isn't graded at all. Probably according to administration I don't exist as a student. Today I took a test in Physics 5, as it's at the same time as Math 5. The professor read out the questions, but I didn't catch them, so I borrowed his little handwritten note, that I understood only slightly more than when he read it. Since students sit in tables of two, there are two tests. I think the test had six or eight questions per side. I'm not exactlty sure because I just picked a few that I could write about/understood the handwriting enough to read the question. I wouldn't be surprised if I got a two on that one. If he marks it.

If you are interested in what it's like learning another language without getting a visa, check out my friend Petra's blog (katima-petra.blogspot.com). She just moved to Quebec after being in Ontario for three months, with Katimavik, a youth volunteer organization in Canada. Everyone here seems to expect me to know French since I'm Canadian, but I'm pathetically unilingual, so I am very jealous of Petra's opportunity to learn French. I am also very jealous of her being in Katimavik. 'Cause it seems like the coolest thing ever.

Breakfast and Morning Snack

So, no school again today, so that means more posts!

As you've probably noticed, I mention food in many of my posts, so I think it's time for a post solely about food. There will be more to follow, as I'm only covering breakfast in this one and there is a lot of food here to talk about! Warning: I love food. I love thinking about food, looking at food, watching food being prepared, smelling food, going to grocery stores, preparing food myself, reading recipes, and eating food.

I've never considered myself a big breakfast person. Weekend breakfasts for me usually consist of many cups of coffee until 12:30, then making lunch. Seemingly, I should fit in here, as it seems that breakfast is not a large meal, but instead I have become a breakfast person without changing how much I eat.

Weekday breakfasts for me here are usually cereal, such as corn flakes, or chocolate rice krispies. Unless you are my mom reading this. In that case I eat high-fiber, high-protien, low-sugar cereal with skim milk, never biscotti or corn flakes, and I never ever ever take snack cakes to school. Only low-fat, unsweetened yogurt or fruit. Because I am a healthy eater, and my mom says fiber is healthy and too much sugar isn't.

Breakfasts are much sweeter, and smaller than in Canada. I'm pretty sure you would be looked upon as crazy if you tried to order eggs, sausage and bacon for breakfast. At home we eat biscotti - drier, medium sweetness cookies - with coffee or warm milk for breakfast. Other breakfasts I've seen include cakes, pastries, toast with honey, Nutella, or jam, sweeter breads (such as brioche), yogurt, and fruit. As I've mentioned, I don't usually eat large breakfasts, but sometimes when my family eats together, I look at the small plate of cookies and think, "So what are you guys eating?". It's also normal to eat leftover desserts from the night before (actually, come to think of it when I made my pumpkin pie, my host sister had a very very small piece after dinner, but more the following morning).

Based on what I've seen in grocery stores, cookies are where it's at for breakfasts. There are many choices, from high fiber, to extra chocolate, from light pastry, to dense cookies. And the funny thing is, they don't suck. I hate most packaged food in Canada. Store bought muffins and pastries have a gummy texture, cookies leave you with a terrible aftertaste. But here, pastries are light and flaky, and cookies don't leave you wondering if you got some sort of chemical poisoning. North American packaged food producers, take note!

At school we have a "recreational" break at 11. This is when the "little garden" fills up with smokers for twenty minutes, the bar at school gets overwhelmed, and I can get out of my stupid, too-small, uncomfortable desk and have a snack. Sometimes I try to fit in with the others and take a snack cake, or a package of crackers, or a piece of fruit for when I'm feeling healthy (my classmates also love my orange peeler). I've also taken cereal and milk, which earned me a few stares and quizzical looks, and once leftover risotto, which confused everyone a lot. The bar at school sells different breads and pastries (many with chocolate or Nutella), sandwhiches (filled with french fries), and hot dogs (which smell so amazing until I remember that hot dogs are really only good for the first few bites, and then I don't want to eat one for a year).

Alright here are some photos! Unfortunately (or possibly luckily) we didn't have any snack cakes. Lucky because I know they aren't healthy and I would devour three right now if we did.

So here we have some chocolate cookies (there were other, more chocolately ones, but I'm not sure where they disappeared to...), some lemony cookies, and a pastry cookie. Just one left, don't know where the others got to.

Cookies, chocolate milk powder, corn flakes, honey made by my host mom's nephew, high(ish) fiber cookies, premade toast, package of crackers that many people take to school as a snack, some peach juice (another popular school snack), cookies from the bakery that have an excellent flavour but are very hard and dry and definitely need tea to dunk in, and yogurt. The yogurt flavour is banana, and it is one of my favourites next to pineapple, which is strange because I hated those flavours in Canada. I seriously ate this right after taking the photo, and am staring at the empty container wishing it to refil itself.

Thanksgiving!

Saturday night all the exchange families in town got together for Thanksgiving dinner, all made by one of the host mothers. Yes I know that Thanksgiving is in October. This confuses many people here. Mostly the American exchange students. Kidding kidding. Anyhow Katelyn (exchange student) and I headed over to Kaley's (another exchange student) to help with pie, and setting up. Good thing most of that stuff was already done, as I am not terribly good at table setting, and, as Kaley's host mom found out, making things look pretty on plates. We made pumpkin and apple pies, and cut out some maple leaves out of pastry to put on top of the apple pie. Since I'm Canadian my maple leaf was obviously the most accurate. The first course was all Italian food - various salads, cheeses, meats, mushrooms, and, of course, breads. Second was the Thanksgiving food. We had turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, potatoes with pies and carrots, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and salad. Third course was fruit. And fourth was pumpkin pie (which we accidentally overbaked a touch), apple pie, and a cheesecake with berries. Midway through the second course we remembered to say grace, which turned into the exchange students just saying what they are thankful for. Which was humiliating. As soon as the eight words I plan run out I sit there and say "e... ummm, e..." and look like an idiot while my host dad films.

It was delicious. It tasted absolutely nothing like what my family makes at home. But it was still Thanksgiving dinner. It couldn't not be. There were the classic family dinner problems - not enough room on the table, or on plates for food, dishes going in both directions while people say, "what? I thought we were going clockwise!", being way too full afterward - but with an Italian twist. We changed between English and Italian depending on who we were talking to, having to explain how food is the same or different in Canada/America. I had a ton of fun. I felt like I was with my family. Plus I liked being consulted regarding pumpkin pie.

Cheeses, mushrooms, fichi d'india, pumpkin, salad stuff

Turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, gravy

Kaley

Pies

Mosaics

A few weeks ago, my family took me to the cathedral of Monreale, for a concert. The cathedral has a feature called "Sacred Music of Monreale", and while I was there they had an orchestra, a choir, and some solo singers. The music was really nice, and it reminded me of my band geek days, but what I really want to talk about is the cathedral. It was built by the Normans in the 12th century, and is absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately it was too late for a full tour, so I saw the inside of the main cathedral and one part of the outside, so that's all I can comment on. The best way to describe this, I feel, would be as a conversation between one of the designers and Igor, the main contractor, in Restaurant Makeover:

Designer: Here's what I'm thinking: a really grand church. Like, really really grand.

Igor: Sounds good, it'll be a challenge, but still doable.

Designer: And I want it to be nice on the inside.

Igor: Sure, that's a great idea. We could do some columns, perhaps a bit of nice stone.

Designer: Yes, yes, all that, but also, how 'bout some scenes from the bible?

Igor: Well, it'll put us on a tight schedule, but we can probably get some extra painters in, and do some scenes that way.

Designer: Paint is so.... average. I said grand!! Grand, people! Not some boring paint. I'm thinking... mosaics

Igor: I guess we could do a few small ones...

Designer: No! These will cover the entirety of the inside walls. And I want gold. And some stone. And columns.

Igor: No. It can't be done. You will be way over budget. There isn't enough time. Or enough people. It can't be done. Think of something else.

Designer: Please! Please please please!

Igor: Fine! But the outside gets nothing! It will be left plain!!

OK, maybe that wasn't as funny as it sounded in my head, but here's some pics, just so you get some sense of just how many tiny pieces of glass went into this.

The outside, where I saw it. As you can see, not a lot of decoration here, though apparently in another area there are some incredibly detailed columns.

Then, BAM, you get this.

And this.

Here's the choir and orchestra.

Photos do not do it justice.

On Monday, the three exchange students in Palermo went to the palace, for a tour. I got the feeling that we got special treatment, because we knew someone there, so it was just six of in our tour, while I saw other tours with twenty or more. It was all in Italian, but my host sister translated it for me, as I simply don't know enough words to get much out of it. I would understand things like "This was built by the ... in the ... century", but not understand why, or the meaning, so it was good to have some help. The history of Sicily is somewhat confusing, and that is reflected in the art and architecture. It's called "Palazzo dei Normanni", and was originally built by Normans, but was altered, and added to by the Spanish. It also has Byzantine and Arab influences. For these reasons, buildings can have a mismatched appearance, and the architectural style can differ between the wings of the building. Some of the rooms we saw had once been covered in mosaics, but had been torn down by the next conquerors, as they didn't have any religious significance. The palace also has a church within it, one our guide said was far more beautiful than Monreale. I could kind of see this. It had a very similar style to Monreale, but was smaller, finer and more detailed. The mosaic work was so fine that it didn't look like pieces of something, it looked like smooth painting. The detail made me dizzy.

The outside. You can see the two different styles side by side.

Sorry it's so dark. This is a hunting scene, made out of (wait for it...) tiny pieces of glass.

Not sure why I'm posting this picture. I think this might have been one of the areas that had all of the mosaic torn off because it wasn't religious enough.

This is painted to look like it's not paint. The shadows are painted on.

Mosaic. As in tiny pieces of glass painstakingly attached to the walls.

The ceiling of the church.

One of the walls. As you can see there are quite a few very very small pieces of glass that have been attached to the wall here.

The stonework up close. Makes me dizzy.

These photos really do not show the art well, sorry.

The Schools are Occupied

Since last week, none of the schools have been in session, as the students have been occupying the school. I missed the day that it all started, Saturday the 20th, as I was in the country. We had one hour of classes on Monday and Tuesday last week, followed by student meetings. On Wednesday the school was officially occupied. I didn't want to take part because I wasn't sure how legal it was, and I didn't want to get involved if things got ugly. This was sort of a difficult decision for me. The students were protesting against something I would also protest, school funding cuts, and I could picture myself occupying the school in Canada if I thought it got my point across. But I feel like this isn't my fight, and I don't know enough about the issues to occupy the school. So, instead I've been studying a bit more, and have actually been fairly busy.

I spent some time with the two other exchange students of Palermo, shopping and just hanging out, as well as seeing the Palace, and having Thanksgiving dinner (more about those in further posts). I also watched La Papessa, went to a Rotary meeting, and slept in. I feel pretty good after this mini vacation.

It's currently 20°C outside, and has been super windy lately, so I'm having a hard time convincing myself it's December! So I guess I'll have to pump up the Charlie Brown Christmas music, and do some Christmas baking to feel a little more wintery.

Shopping here is... a challenge... I'm tall, and so a lot of stores don't carry my size. Finding shoes is difficult/my size doesn't exist here. Haven't even tried pants as they come in handy sizes of "small", "medium" and "large".

Sorry, this is sort of a pointless post. The next will be better, I promise.

Assembly at school.

The next three photos are from three separate days. These guys are persistant.

Circling the Statua Della Liberta, blocking traffic.