Deacon's World: Welcome to Italy!

Alright, so I've finally got this thing up and running. I figured it might be easier to send one big update on a blog rather than sending a million emails. So here you go...enjoy! Where to begin...

In March I left Chicago to come and live with my amazingly generous big brother (Carl) and sister-in-law (Sarah) and their three kids near Vicenza, Italy in a town called Villaganzerla. Here they are:

This was last fall when I came to visit for the first time. Sarah (sis-in-law) said, "Why don't you come over here for a little longer next time? See what's over here for you." And my first reaction was, "Ha...yeah, you're crazy, I'm just going to up and leave?" But she got the bug in my head, and I kept thinking about it, and thinking about it...and then I decided to jump! I figure opportunities like this don't come along very often. Thankfully she wasn't kidding, and the whole family welcomed me with open arms. How cool are my siblings??

Villaganzerla is a small town outside of a pretty small town outside of Venice. So I moved from downtown Chicago to this:

Needless to say it's a little different! But so beautiful. These were taken off of the third story balcony of Carl and Sarah's place. We are at the base of hills that lead up to the Italian Alps. These things look like mountains to me, but hey, I came from Illinois so I can't really talk.

First few days

I arrived on a Wednesday night completely exhausted, but already halfway to defeating jet lag because I spent about 9 hours, from 7 am to 4 pm, in the Dublin, Ireland airport on my trip over and had to stay awake the entire time. On St. Patty's Day. As I boarded the plane for Venice I wanted to throw a middle finger back at the green, the fiddles, the shamrocks....St. Patty's is not nearly as fun when you're tired and sober.

I guess I didn't defeat jet lag like I had hoped, though, because I ended up sleeping well into Thursday morning. The next few days were spent preparing for the arrival of my parents and little brother. I was totally psyched about the visit because I couldn't wait to see what they thought of their first Italian experience.

On Friday, Sarah and I went shopping at Emisfero, a large Italian grocery store similar to a Super Wal-Mart but SO much cooler. Emily Phillips, I thought of you as soon as I hit the produce section. This would have been your cooking nirvana. I wanted to take pictures but I thought the Italians would look at me funny, although I was already walking around with my mouth wide open. It was the biggest supermarket I had ever seen, with rows and rows of vegetables I couldn't even pronounce and a HUGE section just devoted to meats and cheeses. You could actually stand there and watch them carve the meat and assemble the cheese displays. They even had these elaborate pizzas pre-made. Definitely not your regular pepperoni and cheese.

I tailed Sarah and the shopping cart around like a little kid and kept saying, "Hey look at this! Whoa, they don't have this at Jewel for sure!" Sarah, probably on her 100th trip here, tried to humor me. Who knew I'd enjoy a grocery store so much.

Then I went home and did my first trial run with Wingo, their car...that's a stick. I don't know how to drive a stick, and I definitely don't know how to drive a stick on Italian roads. But I was going to have to learn if I ever wanted to leave the house by myself. This is an entirely different story for another day, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

A few more things about where I'm living

This is the front of their place:

The houses in this neighborhood are built like fortresses; you should see their front door. It's like walking into a bank vault. No gypsy visits for us! They were lucky b/c this place is brand new. I'm definitely getting heated floors in my house someday because the ones here are faaaantastic. Oh yeah, and behind their house is a car shop, so throughout the day you'll hear this VROOOOM of a car zooming down the little side street they have. But they're very nice. Carl and Sarah have made friends and their little boy, Allessandro, comes over to play every now and then. I let VP, Carl and Sarah's 5-yr-old, translate, as he knows more Italian than any of us. He attends preschool where the primary language is Italian, so he's learning very quickly how to speak it. Although he's very shy about it, so we haven't heard much.

This is where his azilo, or Italian preschool, is located:

Beautiful, right? It's actually in the next town over called Lumignano. It's right across from the church tower you see in the middle. It's one of my favorite places so far because you are right up against the hills and they all have vineyards sprawled vertically up and down the sides of them.

I've started to help take VP to school in the morning. This actually gives me a newfound appreciation for the handful of foreign kids I've gone to school with since I was a kid. It's weird to be on the other side of that, where you have absolutely no idea what people are saying but they're all very nicely trying to speak slowly and use hand gestures. I've even had the guy who speaks very loudly as if I'm deaf. No, I'm just American sir, a dumb American! All the while VP's all blaberblahber to his preschool friends. I just stick with smiling and nodding and the occasional Ciao! and Grazie!

And finally, these are just some pics I took of VP on one of the nicer days outside, sitting on his bike, eating some yogurt: