a frustration not just for Sicily

We planned to go to Malta this week but never got around to getting tickets. Must have been fate because our part of the world has not seen the sun for the past five days. Not even a little bit in this our (supposed) tropical paradise. In addition, for about three days both Bob and I have each been down with our own type of bug. Bob has a head cold and I have a strange case of a fever with the "ache all overs".

Winter seems to be the time when everyone everywhere picks up viruses and has bouts of feeling puny, but no matter where you live it's not fun.

The bright spot though, is that we have a nice warm house with fireplace, lots of books to read, movies to watch and, when we feel up to it, Wii games to play. Yep, us old folks got a Wii for Christmas. Bob has several games but I've only tried a couple of the sports games. Bowling is the only one I can play with any feeling of success.

Tonight is New Year's Eve and tomorrow is the beginning of the year when we will be coming home to the States. Though we've both loved Sicily (and still do) and will be sad to leave, it's time to be with family and friends once more. (So if anyone hears of any jobs for me.....)

So from my semi-vegetative state here in my bed in Sicily, Happy New Year. May you prosper in these most important areas of life; spiritual, emotional and physical. AND may you not catch this or any other flu. See you next year.

What a wonderful season

Merry Christmas!!!

Here's wishing you a happy Christmas season with all the blessings Christ bestows. We are not posting pictures of us at Christmas because we look the same as usual, just different jammies.

However, here are a few pictures of our impressions of Christmas in Sicily. Disclaimer: This is the viewpoint of us as we spend our third Christmas season in Sicily, not as tourism advocates.

The Saturday night before Christmas we went to Catania with Giusseppe and Mimma. The sidewalks were so crowded that people were walking all through the center of the street. (You'll have to double click on the picture to see it as we did.) Occasionally a car would come through and people parted just enough to let it pass then moved back together. There was a carnival atmosphere in the air. Street vendors hawking toys, scarves, hats, belts, watches and anything else that might be considered a Christmas gift. On the left in the photo above you can see the back of Giusseppe. The Sicilians were in heavy coats, scarves, hats while Bob and I, thinking the weather comfortable, had on light jackets.

On Sunday we went to Caltegirone to see the prescepe (nativity) displays. They were more magnificent than any I've ever seen. Whole rooms with scenes from the Sicilian countryside all leading to the stable with the Christ child. The scenes were very intricate and made of materials from terra cotta, to ceramic, to flannel (the scene on the right was actually a whole room-sized nativity display made of sewn flannel, and I think it was my favorite---please excuse the glare, it was behind glass and , though other phots of the scene didn't have the glare, this was the one I wanted you to see)

In addition to the large nativity scenes, every year there is a contest for the best nativity------displayed in a car. There is a type of car here in Sicily that is about the size of a Smartcar and the piazza was filled with these little cars, each with a nativity built right into the car, mostly inside the car, a few built into the trunk. They, also were made from a variety of materials and all were amazing. As intricate as they all were, I wonder what they do with the cars the rest of the year. It must take a month to create such a display.

Finally, here is my Christmas wish for you:

In this holiday season, may all the love you see everywhere around the world remind you of the One who loved us so much He gave His most precious gift---Christ Jesus, Our Lord. And may you understand more clearly every day how precious that gift was and give Him all the honor and praise in your mind and heart.

Merry Christmas and best wishes for a blessed new year.

Marianne

We went for a walk

It's amazing what you can find when you go for a walk near your house. I'm not sure whether it matters whether you're in Italy or in the States.

There's an old, empty house in an open field near our home. It's about a quarter mile away sitting by itself on a hill. Every day for two and a half years we drove by the house. We noticed it and often mentioned we'd like to walk over there to see it. On this particular day it seemed to beckon us in a way we couldn't resist so we put Bullet on his leash and set out through the field to explore.

As we walked through the grasses and weeds the first thing to catch my attention was the plants. Things I had never noticed before, bright yellow seed pods tucked into the middle of the plant, wild fennel beginning to come up, and a few stinging nettles which we managed to keep away from (mostly). I think we even saw a "Jack in the pulpit". I've never seen one before but this is what I imagined one would look like.

When we got near the house Bob wanted to go up near it to take pictures. I would have loved to go with him but I was sure I heard a big dog bark from inside the ruins so I took Bullet a different way in order to not have to break up a territorial fight. Bullet and I went up a nearby hill to see what was on the other side. At the crest of the hill I was surprised to see we were near the road we travel on the Saturdays we go to market. In fact, from that vantage point, I could, within a 360 degree turn, see Misterbianco, Motta, Catania, the mountain and the sea. What a wonderful view. I stopped for a moment to take a picture of the town of Misterbianco (our market town) while Bullet waited not so patiently, ready to continue expoloring.

So, we continued our walk (I want to know how Bullet avoided the stinging nettles while I hopped here and there trying to prevent any contact) Just on the other side of the hill was a wonderland. Another old house but in less of a form, only a few posts and shapes of stone, but you could tell it had once been loved by a family. There were flowers in a small area that must have once been a garden. They were small, like most things Sicilian, and had gone native; many daisies, iris and others I didn't recognize. There were pomegranite trees providing a treat for the insects and birds, an olive tree that must have been several hundred years old, and old, old apple trees no longer able to bear fruit.

After exploring cisterns, and walls and rocks and trees, we headed back home. Being assured there was no dog in the first old house, I ventured in for a look. There were archways, basement rooms for coolness in the summer, porches, and several rooms. A nice, old, farmhouse of a place.

There are many of these homes sitting in the countryside rotting (if you can say that about stone houses) in Sicily and people seem to be crowded into apartments in every city and town. It is said that children of the home owners found it more expensive to modernize the house than to just move into an apartment closer to their work.

And interesting sidenote: I'm told that to fix up an old house wherever it is, you have to pay graft to the Mafia for materials, for permissions, for laborers. While it may be true, I find that those things that frustrate the Sicilians (and me, too) are blamed on the Mafia (like getting, or not getting, a telephone in one's home or having to stand in hour-long lines to pay all utility bills at the post office). Maybe I'm just naive.

bits and pieces

It's 4:00 a.m. here in Sicily. Having gone to bed extremely early last night, I'm up for the day. As I step out onto the porch this chilly December night, I am struck by the beauty. The moon is so bright it casts distinct shadows across the lawn. The stars are numerous and I think of the words "The stars at night, are big and bright....." Of course that song is about Texas but it truly applies here.

It has been raining this week. Two days of rain and you see how ill-prepared the Italians are for rain. Our brand new building is flooding. Every door has water seeping into the room, the hallway, the office. On Thursday I literally had to wade to my classroom to get my purse after a meeting. Teachers whose classrooms have doors to the outside were making sure there was nothing on that half of the room to get ruined by water.

Upper walkways between buildings are open and water was draining off them through the drainspout directly onto the courtyard below (where people walk). And as Bob and I were walking from the building to the Navy Exchange (store) we went up some stairs that were flowing like a river because the contractor had chosen to empty the drainspout directly onto the steps.

The roads tell the same story. Ditches are almost unheard of here in Sicily. The land is higher than the roads and when there is a heavy rain the water has nowhere to go except onto the street. One has to drive very carefully to keep from sliding off.

I have to say, though, that the hard rains only come two months of the year, December and January. With 300 days of sun in Sicily, it might be easy to skip the expense of preparing for rain.

my third and final post on our trip to Rome

The art of Rome, the beauty of Rome....they are fine but not nearly as interesting as the people of Rome.

When we first got there we were proud to have easily found the way from the airport to the center of town by way of the train. Then a short walk across the street to the bus station to pick up Bus 16 which would drop us off in front of our hotel. We asked at the information counter and were sent to a particular bus stop to wait for bus 16. And wait we did...................for 20 minutes. Several busses stopped to let passengers off and on but not that important bus 16. Wait....wait.....wait.....Oh, good, here it is....bus 16. We got on, settled in and watched the streets go by. But not in the right direction.

After a couple of stops we asked the driver if this bus would take us to via XX Setembre (20 September street). No, he said, that would be bus number sixteen going the other way. So......off the bus, walk back to the station and wait again......wait.....wait....wait....total wait time one hour. Finally we gave up saying, "it's only 10 euro to our hotel by taxi." (according to the hotel brochure) and walked over to the taxi stand (which lay between the train and bus stations)

Rick Steves' book on Rome said to make sure we took an official taxi with a taxi sign on top and a meter. Rick had never steered us wrong before so we were careful to take the white taxi with the meter. I asked the price to the hotel and was told, "It will be on the meter."

In the cab, I felt uncomfortable when the driver seemed to go further than the distance I had imagined it would be to the hotel. "This doesn't seem right," I said to myself. Sure enough the meter kept going up and up until, right in front of our hotel it was at 30 Euros. If that weren't enough the driver told us we owed him 40 euro because we had "packages". (we each had one carry on and no luggage). When Bob opened his wallet to take out some money we found out how quick that taxi driver's hands were. He had a fifty out of Bob's wallet and into his pocket before we even saw it. He said he had given Bob back a ten. Hah!!!!

We should have taken him into the hotel and called the police but..........
(it's really hard when you don't speak the language)

Oh, by the way, later we were walking and found the bus station three blocks from our hotel.



But....to make up for that, we met a man "in Rome for the fashion show" who drove up beside us in a semi-fancy rental car and had a nice conversation about Kansas City (long story short, here). Because we were from the Kansas City area and because we were such nice people (wink, wink) he gave us two leather jackets for only 20 euro each (because he had only credit cards and needed some cash for gasoline), yea, right. Were the jackets hot? I don't know, but I have to say they're nice jackets if not our style. To be honest, I didn't even think about the jackets being stolen until I was telling the story later. Am I a hick from Missouri?

Every day we were in Rome it rained. And there were umbrella vendors everywhere.

On the day we went to the Vatican we were sharing an umbrella and one of the many vendors offered us an umbrella for five euro. We said no thanks and kept walking. With each few steps the price went down until we agreed to buy for 3 euros---not a bad price for an umbrella (that will undoubtedly fall apart in a day or two).

Just as we got our money out and were ready to hand it to him, he looked out toward the street and started running away, dodging behind cars and carts. We looked around and there was a police car. Yep-----illegal vendor---probably illegally in the country too. Too bad....we could have used that umbrella. However, a few paces further on, we hear, "Lady...Lady, your umbrella." There he was, chasing us down to sell an umbrella for 3 Euro.

An all-around interesting trip.

Art is a part.........of Rome

From cathedrals and museums to doorways and heating grates, art is definitely a big part of the essence of Rome. There are four National Museums each with a different theme for the art within. Walking the streets you see fountains and doorposts with statues and figurines hundreds of years old. As I mentioned before, the basilichi and cathedrals have millions of dollars worth of frescoes, statues and artworks. And, yes, in St. Peter's Basilica there is even a heating grate worthy to be called art.

One of my favorite surprises walking through Rome was the day we saw a poster in a doorway inviting us into an exhibition of 17th century Flemish and Dutch painters. It was only to be in Rome from November until February and lucky for us, we were there at the right time. To some people seeing an art exhibit wouldn’t be very special but to a girl whose only childhood exposure to great art was the pictures in school textbooks this was an invitation to explore the works of masters.

We paid a minimal fee thanks to an earlier purchase of the “Roma Pass” and spent an hour or more examining the beauty created by a great number of artists including Rubens, van Dyke, Steen, Vermeer, and Rembrandt. These are copies of the photos on the flyer and would never do justice to the awesomeness (is that a word?) of those paintings. The depth and color and stories within each painting was worth staring at…..and we did. We kept saying, “Oh, look at that part.” or “Look how he…..” They were beautiful. I can truly see why they were the masters.

And…..they were painted four hundred years ago.

Amazing.

The historic city of Rome

(The Coliseum really does look like all the pictures.)









Bob and I finally made it to Rome and it was quite a trip.


Thanksgiving is no fun without friends and family to share it with so we took off to Rome for a four day weekend.




Rome is..........old.


We saw a lot of "this is where the ......used to be." In fact, they even sell a book with see-through pages of what the tourist places used to look like and what they look like now. In America we would have had all those old places torn down long ago to make room for Walmart, Meijer or Home Depot. (Can you see my tongue in my cheek?)


I can't say Rome is beautiful but it is interesting. You have to do a lot of imagining to "see" the gladiators in the Coliseum, the speeches in the Pantheon, the races in the forum. But they are there. And awesome. I could have been more impressed if we weren't trying to see everything in two and a half days. It would have taken a week or more to truly see and appreciate all the places and their history. The last day we took a tour bus----you know, the kind with the open upper deck and a recording telling you the history of each site. It was well worth the money but still couldn't get to all the history of Rome.




And....there were fountains everywhere, even built into the sides of buildings in unexpected places. We were walking down a road looking for a street called "Quatro Fontana" wondering how we would know when we got there (street signs are almost non-existent) when I noticed a building with a large, beautiful stone fountain carved right into the corner of the building. Bob was ahead of me and I pointed out the fountain. He lifted his camera to take a photo but.....he was looking in the wrong direction. "No, that other way." He looked up at me and said, "no, There's the fountain." By this time I had caught up with him and could see that each building had an intricate fountain sculpture carved into the corner. What an amazing site. And....we had found our street.






The most beautiful sites were the churches.

Basilichi (plural, I think, for Basilica) and cathedrals have what has to be millions of dollars of statues, artwork and just plain gold. The most beautiful church in the world has to be St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. There is no picture that can adequately represent the beauty there. Even the windows are put in for the best effect in shining light on the beauty. I'm going to have to put a lot of the photos on Flickr because Bob and I took around 250 photos. After filtering down the duplicates and just plain bad photos there will still be a lot.








One place I just had to see was Trevi Fountain. Every movie with Rome as a background mentions or shows Trevi Fountain. It took us all three days but we finally did find it. And it is just as beautiful as they say.

Really big, too.

So big in fact that there is room around it for about ninety-five souvenir and gelato shops. This is our first view of the area of the fountain.

And this is what we all came to see.

Last note: In order not to make this blog too big, (though it's already huge) I'm dividing it into three parts. This is really part one. Another day I'll add part two and then later part three. For a teaser, part two is named (for now) Amazing Art Part three is .....and how we were ripped off by a taxi driver and bought what was probably stolen..............no more or I'll give it away.