Culture shock and settling in.

Sorry its been so long, what a busy week we have had! Last weekend we took a day trip to Catania (again) for the Fiera di Morti ( Day of the dead festival) which was essentially a big flea market with food and lots of shoes. We drove to town with another couple and parked near the center of town, thinking the market was a relatively close walk. 30 min uphill later, we were lost. While contemplating our next move we saw a city bus drive past us with a paper sign for "Fiera di Morti" in the window. We ran to catch the bus and were stopped by 2 old men sitting at the bus bench. Obviously looking like tourists, they insisted that we wait for the next bus, sit down, and fill up our water bottles. No was not an option. So we sat, filled up our water bottles and chatted up these men in Sicilian, which is 10x harder to understand than mother tongue Italian. Ay mama mia. Here are some cool pics of the ancient Greek theater in the center of Catania.









The past week was pretty stressful, dealing with all the ins and outs of setting up electricity, gas, cable etc. with people who don't speak english and have very limited working hours. But all in all we got everything done that we needed to, my car is here finally and we're al moved into our house! Right now we have a few of our own things that we sent over in our express shipment, but are using loaner furniture from the base until our packout arrives around the 25th or so.
We have found there is an Italian market on our block, and we are less than a 1/2 mile from the city center where there are butcher shops, bread stores, food, coffee shops etc. It's pretty awesome. Our first night our landlords insisted on escorting us to a restaurant so we would not get lost. They are so sweet. We went to an "Agirturismo" which is like a farmhouse, its a type of dining in Italy where most of the food comes directly from their own farm, its very rustic and cheap and the food is fabulous. It will be a must do for any visitors we have! Of course now we are realizing that the Italian restaurants we have been to so far were in the middle of Catania ( very touristy) or near the base ( very American) So this was our first experience with Sicilians with NO english whatsoever. A little bit of a challenge, but so worthwhile. We hope to get better and better at communicating!


Today our landlords invited us for lunch . Woah boy. They are determined to send us home fat. ....and happy. Lucia cooked tortellini with meatsauce, chicken cutlet, fennel salad ( yum- big deal here I guess), roasted eggplant, bread, fruit and desert. We had such a good time enjoying the food and trying to communicate. For italians it seems that they are happy to be understood, and don't really ask many questions. So we didn't say much at all, just listened and nodded or looked confused as they talked and talked. So fun.

I still have not got my clearance to work, tomorrow was supposed to be my first day, so hopefully before the end of the week, but we'll see- Italians aren't in much hurry to do anything. At all.