Hey! Look at this neat place.

We were invited to our friends' house (the ones with the pizza oven) last Saturday evening. Joyce said, "Come about 3:30, and we can show you a great deli that we love."

So, we went, arriving at about 4:30 .... now remember the Italian 'repose' .. close at 1 .. re-open, sometime later -- usually about 4. Oops, they were closed but a nearby fruit stand was open -- so using our Best Italian, we asked when the deli would open .... and using Their best Italian, we were given the standard Sicilian answer "They are open, when they are open" ... that is a good expression to remember because it sums up the Sicilian attitude.

Anyway, it was a great deli and we spent quite awhile just looking then bought way too much. It's not a typical deli for Sicily but you can find them here and there. We're definitely going to have to go back.

In another vein, Bob and I are finding that we can understand more and more of what people are saying (if they speak VERY slowly and repeat several times).

No, really, this morning the truck was supposed to come to deliver our household gas. He called to say he couldn't find our place and I understood enough to know he couldn't find our place. I tried to explain it but my Italian doesn't include "Go up highway 192 from Sigonella toward Catania" let alone the rest of the directions. So we ran over to our neighbor yelling, "direzione per favore" and handed her the phone.

Good thing I didn't try to explain to him because it took her a full ten minutes in full steam Italian. Interestingly I had put the phone on speaker phone and we could hear both sides of the conversations. We understood enough to know he was thoroughly lost on the highway that doesn't even have an exit near our house. Mima enthusiastically (All Italians talk enthusiastically) explained several times to him how to get to our place. We were excited to understand destra (right) and sinestra (left) scattered in the conversation. Apparently she got the message across to him because he got there soon afterward.