Soup Kitchens and Stray Puppies

So far this week has been tiring but good! Let's see, Monday I went to the Liceo (highschool) with a few other Americans and went to the classes to help out with English. Basically what that means is that we get into groups with the kids and speak English with them so that they can practice speaking. They seem to be pretty good at it but some are better than others, of course, and some are shy. It's fun though, and I do get to speak a little Italian when we have to translate. This week they gave us a list of American/Italian stereotypes and we talked about which were true. There were things like "Italy=Mafia" and "Americans eat hamburgers all the time". When we were talking about the mafia, which is mostly in the south but they said there is some everywhere, just not as intense as the movies make it seem. I told them about the bloods and the crips, and told them not to wear red or blue if they went to LA. They think I'm super cool since I'm from California, too. I think part of the point is to make them think more realistically about America, but man, they think I'm totally living the life. I told them about Melissa Armstrong's house with the pool and the movie theater, and I told them I lived near Robin Williams and George Lucas. The girls were also super jealous of high school proms, since I guess they don't have them here. They're nice kids, and some of them invited us to go out to a discotech with them sometime, which would be funny but fun, so we might go in a week or two.
After that I had Italian class, which I was late for but also had to leave early to go to teach the bambini.
I wasn't totally prepared for my first real day of teaching but the teacher was really nice, and it was not problem at all. She had asked me to bring in a day of the week song, so I taught them a simple one that was just the days of the week to the tune of "oh my darling clementine" but I also taught them the happy days song just for fun. I asked which they liked better and they said tutti i due!
I wasn't totally sure what to do for the next part because I thought that the teacher wanted me to teach out of the workbook they had, but it's a very odd workbook. It had words like "robot" and "hamburger" and "wave." Why 1st graders need to know these is beyond me, I told the teacher that "penso che questo libro e un po' strano" and it turns out she doesn't like it either but because it's a public school she had to stick with that one. We flipped through the book together and I figured out what she wanted me to accomplish and I said I'd bring in different activities. I get to do shapes, animals, colors, and things like that, which should be fun.
Tuesday was busy with  class, but my Cultural Anthropology class took us "trekking" around Siena and into the Palazza pubblico again, which I liked. We sat on some steps that our teacher said that Dante probably sat on, so that's pretty cool.  And afterward Simon and I got pizza...mmmmmm.
Today was also a very long day. On Wednesdays I don't actually have class until 4:30, so I decided to fill my time by working at the local soup kitchen. I actually took this on because last week I approached Mike about participating in something where I would have to speak more Italian, since sometimes I have frustratingly few opportunities in a day to really practice. Mike recommended the soup kitechen because it's laid back and the people are nice but it's really all in Italian. So today I went, da solo. It was overwhelming for the first day because I had to figure out how everything worked, and I wasn't given many instructions, and of course, being overwhelmed I forgot a lot of Italian. It was pretty awkward at time since I wasn't sure what to do, but everyone was very nice. The soup kitchens here aren't caferteria style, it's restaurant style, where people sit down and are served (two courses, of course). Since it was my first day I handed out bread. I got really good at asking, "pane? uno o due?". I'm going back again next week, and I think it will be a lot easier now that I understand better how it works. A couple of the people I served were very friendly, one came up to me and kept telling me "Fai modella, per favore! Sei bella!" which was very nice, but she also was talking about Serbia and bombs and the politics of the world for a while, and I was definitely faking my way through that conversation. Also, they gave me lunch there after, again nice but will be much better next time when I actually remember how to speak Italian.
Then in the afternoon before class I had coffee with Simon and Karen Gross, our LC trip leader, who's super sweet and interesting. We talked about rhetoric and my comm major some and hopefully we'll have more of a chance to elaborate on that.
Finally, after class we met our assigned "language partners." I think it's supposed to be both for us to practice Italian and for them to practice English. Mine is nice, his name is Gennaro (which my host mom tells me is a name very common in Napoli, where his parents are from), he's very tall and just got a degree in Biochem, and is now pursuing a phd. I was surprised at how easy it was to speak Italian to him. Granted, the subjects were not super deep but it was a good conversation. I think his English is probably close to or a little better than my Italian level, so hopefully we can help each other out. He said that it's best to get a groups of all us partners together and go out, which sounds fun. From here on out it's up to us to meet up, the school only organizes the intial meeting, so we exchanged numbers and hopefully we'll all hang out soon.
When I came home for dinner what did I find, but a puppy! My host mom had taken a stray dog from her friend's farm, and I think they're trying to get Edoardo's girlfriend's family to take it. It was so cute, but it needed a bath!

Edoardo, his girlfriend Chiarra and the Canelino (little dog)

Anyways, my next task is to plan my spring break trip and then the summer. For spring break I want to go south, to Napoli, Sicily, Amoffi Coast and Sardegna, so I'll have to coordinate with various people. Then for the summer, Krissy and I are talking about going to Greece, the Czech Republic, and maybe Croatia right after school gets out, and Julia Black is coming, at the end of May, so we'll do Portugal, Spain, France, Germany and Ireland together. I bought my eurorail pass today so I should be good to go! I might be on my own for a bit once Julia leaves, so if that's the case I might try to organize a coupld weeks of WWOOFing back in Italy, but we'll see how it all pans out. I'm excited, but I'm not to crazy about the planning!