 |
| I had a great deal of trouble with this target because I hadn't shot at a far target in a long time. |
 |
| Mr. Lucaroni managed to hit one arrow in both the 5 and 8 point areas |
 |
| It is really easy to break arrows on targets like these |
Ciao, Florence
Sunday, September 20, 2015
My most recent archery event
Yesterday, or Sunday the 13 of September, depending on how long it took me to publish this, I had another archery competition. This was my first one in a while, so I was a bit nervous about it at first, but it was no big deal once I got started. I was in piazzola 20 with Mr. Lucaroni and Alessio. There were 20 targets, so we started at the last one and wound our way around to the 19th one. It was a lot of fun. There was one target where a sword was held up by a mechanism involving a tile, and when you broke the tile and the sword fell, you got points (depending on how many arrows it took). The second target we shot at, I managed to hit the very edge of the target, (it was supposed to swing backwards and fall) catching on a couple of threads, and pinning the block up. Surprisingly they decided that counted as 15 points (it was a special target); even the judge declared it fair. I would have pulled the arrow out so that the target was free and then shot my second arrow, but hey, who am I to complain? I'll explain some of the targets with pictures (taken off Facebook); it's a lot easier.
Friday, September 11, 2015
Catechism Day Camp
From the 31st through the 3rd, James and I had a day camp with the catechism group. We would meet the rest of the group at Consolazione at roughly 8:45. We wouldn't be back till seven and we'd be TIRED.
Monday the 31st:
We left on a bus (omnibus that is- it had nothing to do with computers) at 8:00. We went to Assisi to do the basics (you know, saint Francis's basilica and the like). We also saw Saints Francis's and Claire's death places. We got back at seven.
Tuesday the 1st:
Today we left at 8:45 to walk to Spagliagrano which is about a 2 km walk from Consolazione. It's a medium sized two-story building with a chapel, a general purpose meeting room, and a dining hall on the lower story and (I think) living quarters above. We listened to a long talk before lunch, followed by another one after lunch. After each talk, we split up into groups to talk about what had hit us during the talk for about 15 minutes. After the afternoon talk we played some games with water balloons:
1) Like steal the bacon except each team has their own "bacon" that they had to pop with their teeth with their hands behind their back. The "bacon" in this case was a water balloon dangling from a counselors hand. The first person to pop their balloon won their team a point. Sometimes the counselor would throw the unpopped balloon at the loser walking away. It was surprisingly hard even BEFORE two other counselors got out water guns (super soakers for those of you who were around then) and started shooting us with them.
2) Same as the above except two numbers were called. The lighter person rode piggy back on the heavier person and popped the balloon. At this point, Don Riccardo got out a hose and sprayed us with it off and on. In addition, the counselors with the water balloons occasionally threw said balloons at us just for fun.
3) Similar premise, the counselor would throw one balloon high in the air and the victims had to try to catch it in their shirt WITHOUT popping it. If you succeeded, you were allowed to use it as you wished (e.g. throw it at a member of the other team at point-blank range). The first person to catch a balloon (Veronica Antonelli) decided to throw it at her own teammates.
4) This time everyone was free to run around as they wished. The counselors then threw ALL the remaining water balloons in the air. Whichever team caught the most won. Out of twenty or so balloons, each team got a grand total of...one. The two people who caught the balloons had a duel (based on traditional gun duels) at four paces. The other team's balloon burst as it was thrown, and our team's representative missed. The official report was that both teams won, but I think that, since neither succeeded in hitting the other, neither team won.
5) This was probably the most clever of all the games. We were given two minutes for everyone to scramble around putting balloon scraps into their team's bucket. At the end of the two minutes whichever team had the most scraps (as judged by sight) won. Clever, huh?
After this, we had some free time in which to play with the ball or whatever, then the parents arrived, we said the evening prayers, and went home.
Wednesday the 2nd: Today we went to the local catacombs and a church that dates back to the second century. The latter was originally built in the post-Constantine Roman style and therefore was wider than it was long. Then in the (I think) 1600's an earthquake destroyed the entire building so they rebuilt it in the "modern" style- you know, the design with three main aisles. Apparently some people from an American college recently came to excavate some more of the Via Flaminia (because, as one of the priests says, we don't have much man-made stuff (other than Native American arrowheads) to dig up, make plans, charts, and pictures of, and photograph). Most of it is gone, the blocks having been dug up and used for buildings, but they DID find a fair-sized church! We didn't get to see it though, because they re-buried it to preserve it.
Thursday the 3rd: On Thursday, we walked back to Spagliagrano, had a talk, then returned (on foot this time!) to Consolazione for confessions.
That's it for now!
Monday the 31st:
We left on a bus (omnibus that is- it had nothing to do with computers) at 8:00. We went to Assisi to do the basics (you know, saint Francis's basilica and the like). We also saw Saints Francis's and Claire's death places. We got back at seven.
Tuesday the 1st:
Today we left at 8:45 to walk to Spagliagrano which is about a 2 km walk from Consolazione. It's a medium sized two-story building with a chapel, a general purpose meeting room, and a dining hall on the lower story and (I think) living quarters above. We listened to a long talk before lunch, followed by another one after lunch. After each talk, we split up into groups to talk about what had hit us during the talk for about 15 minutes. After the afternoon talk we played some games with water balloons:
1) Like steal the bacon except each team has their own "bacon" that they had to pop with their teeth with their hands behind their back. The "bacon" in this case was a water balloon dangling from a counselors hand. The first person to pop their balloon won their team a point. Sometimes the counselor would throw the unpopped balloon at the loser walking away. It was surprisingly hard even BEFORE two other counselors got out water guns (super soakers for those of you who were around then) and started shooting us with them.
2) Same as the above except two numbers were called. The lighter person rode piggy back on the heavier person and popped the balloon. At this point, Don Riccardo got out a hose and sprayed us with it off and on. In addition, the counselors with the water balloons occasionally threw said balloons at us just for fun.
3) Similar premise, the counselor would throw one balloon high in the air and the victims had to try to catch it in their shirt WITHOUT popping it. If you succeeded, you were allowed to use it as you wished (e.g. throw it at a member of the other team at point-blank range). The first person to catch a balloon (Veronica Antonelli) decided to throw it at her own teammates.
4) This time everyone was free to run around as they wished. The counselors then threw ALL the remaining water balloons in the air. Whichever team caught the most won. Out of twenty or so balloons, each team got a grand total of...one. The two people who caught the balloons had a duel (based on traditional gun duels) at four paces. The other team's balloon burst as it was thrown, and our team's representative missed. The official report was that both teams won, but I think that, since neither succeeded in hitting the other, neither team won.
5) This was probably the most clever of all the games. We were given two minutes for everyone to scramble around putting balloon scraps into their team's bucket. At the end of the two minutes whichever team had the most scraps (as judged by sight) won. Clever, huh?
After this, we had some free time in which to play with the ball or whatever, then the parents arrived, we said the evening prayers, and went home.
Wednesday the 2nd: Today we went to the local catacombs and a church that dates back to the second century. The latter was originally built in the post-Constantine Roman style and therefore was wider than it was long. Then in the (I think) 1600's an earthquake destroyed the entire building so they rebuilt it in the "modern" style- you know, the design with three main aisles. Apparently some people from an American college recently came to excavate some more of the Via Flaminia (because, as one of the priests says, we don't have much man-made stuff (other than Native American arrowheads) to dig up, make plans, charts, and pictures of, and photograph). Most of it is gone, the blocks having been dug up and used for buildings, but they DID find a fair-sized church! We didn't get to see it though, because they re-buried it to preserve it.
Thursday the 3rd: On Thursday, we walked back to Spagliagrano, had a talk, then returned (on foot this time!) to Consolazione for confessions.
That's it for now!
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
A Passage to India!
The Hook family Christmas is going to be rather different this year, as we are preparing to spend a week in Delhi! Michael and I had a very interesting time purchasing the tickets today, using a variety of search engines to optimize the price and layover times.
We ended up on Etihad, codeshared with Alitalia. Contrary to normal practice, where you choose the honorific from a short list (Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms) or longer for British airlines (they include Master), we had the following choices:
Mr
Mrs
Ms
Miss
Doctor
Professor
HE
HH
HRH
Sheikh
Sheikha
Another point of interest was the menu selection. I was prepared for the vegetarian, low-sodium, low-fat options that you usually get. Etihad offers SEVEN DIFFERENT vegetarian meals! Plus, of course, the usual offerings of diabetic/low-sodium/low-fat/and so on. Oh, and in case you care, all the meals are halal.
This is DEFINITELY going to be an interesting experience.
Love,
Alexandra
We ended up on Etihad, codeshared with Alitalia. Contrary to normal practice, where you choose the honorific from a short list (Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms) or longer for British airlines (they include Master), we had the following choices:
Mr
Mrs
Ms
Miss
Doctor
Professor
HE
HH
HRH
Sheikh
Sheikha
Another point of interest was the menu selection. I was prepared for the vegetarian, low-sodium, low-fat options that you usually get. Etihad offers SEVEN DIFFERENT vegetarian meals! Plus, of course, the usual offerings of diabetic/low-sodium/low-fat/and so on. Oh, and in case you care, all the meals are halal.
This is DEFINITELY going to be an interesting experience.
Love,
Alexandra
Friday, September 4, 2015
Swim Camp
After a very long, but fortunately uneventful, trip, I arrived in Abbeville. I was picked up from the station by two camp staff, and from there we went to a school cafeteria. Then from there, the older kids (there were thirteen of us) went to see our rooms, which were in a building behind the pool.
Then we went to the pool, which was absolutely beautiful, and well laid out. It had a main reception area and a small workout room on the ground level, and to get to the pool you had to go downstairs.
Once you were downstairs, you had to take off your shoes almost straight away and go through the hallways to get to the six changing rooms. The changing rooms aren't done by gender, but by number; the boys would go into six and the girls would go into seven. Then to get to the pool, you would go past the showers and through a wide shallow foot pool. Then they had several different basins: one was like a small artificial beach, for the very little kids; one was a twenty-five-meter pool; one was a fifty-meter pool; and one was a diving pool, which was about twelve meters across and quite deep.
We had our first practice, which was really about getting to see how good different people were, and went to dinner: pizza. Then we all went up to a room in the school with a painfully green floor and we introduced ourselves. It was funny to see how the adults were far more interested in how I had gotten there and what it was like back home than the kids were. Then after some icebreaker games, we went to bed.
The next day, we had our first real practice in the morning. Then we studied theory of swimming, particularly focusing on Michael Phelps's butterfly. It's actually rather grotesque in slow motion. In the afternoon, we had a three hour long practice, after which we went to the gym. Some people played basketball, and everyone else curled up on workout mats and went to sleep. Tuesday followed, and we did more or less the same things, but the afternoon practice wasn't nearly as long.
Wednesday, we had quite the outing! In the morning, we had our usual practice; but in the afternoon, instead of a second practice, we went out. First, we went to do some archery; one of our instructors was a two-time world champion archer. We spent a couple of hours there, and then we went bowling. Evidently I'm terrible at bowling, because I only knocked down thirty pins; despite this, I wasn't the worst person there, because one girl only got twelve! On our way back from bowling, we met up with Sebastian Rouault, a French ex-Olympian swimmer. That evening, he spent well over an hour doing Q&A, only not aswering one question (whether or not he had a girlfriend). If I understood correctly, he now is a consultant, and plays water polo; he had trouble practicing swimming without a lot of questions on whether or not he was going back to swim competitively.
Thursday, we got to meet the man who organizes all of the coaches for the Olympics. He was rather old, and very hard to understand, but everybody immediately perked up when he said, "If you want to go to the Olympics…" and I understood much better when everyone was listening and there were no whispers in the background. During the afternoon practice, Jeremy Someone dropped by to say hello to Sebastian, and I felt very sorry for him. You see, he's a current competitive swimmer and rather good (I had never heard of him, but what do I know), so of course everybody wanted to take selfies with him and get his signature. In the meantime, all he had wanted to do was drop by and say hello to a friend.
After dinner, we went out to the nine o'clock viewing of "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation," and I even understood the drift of it. I'm sure I missed a lot of the jokes, but that's okay. We finally got to bed at about eleven thirty, completely worn out.
Friday morning, we had our usual practice, and then time to pack up. The older kids went to the gym and practiced a dance that one of the counsellors had suggested as a form of thanks for our coaches. In the afternoon, we had another practice, and in the evening, we had a party. The party was rather sad for me, because I saw some of the dirtiest dance moves I've ever seen coming from eleven and twelve year olds. And for those of you who don't know, seeing big, tall, muscular guys do a dance intended for girls is one of the funniest things you can see. Especially if they are leading said dance.
The last day, we had a swim meet. I was part of a relay, in which I did 50 m freestyle; I did 50 m fly and something else, either 100 m freestyle or 100 m IM. I don't remember. I had to leave right after the fly to get changed. After I got changed, they organised another relay, this time including the coaches and Sebastian; unfortunately, I had to leave for the train station about 30 seconds before I got to see Sebastian swim, which I would have liked to see. I guess you can't have everything.
I managed to get to Marseilles uneventfully, despite having to change stations in Paris.
Anyway, that was my fun for the end of the summer.
Ciao,
Florence
Then we went to the pool, which was absolutely beautiful, and well laid out. It had a main reception area and a small workout room on the ground level, and to get to the pool you had to go downstairs.
Once you were downstairs, you had to take off your shoes almost straight away and go through the hallways to get to the six changing rooms. The changing rooms aren't done by gender, but by number; the boys would go into six and the girls would go into seven. Then to get to the pool, you would go past the showers and through a wide shallow foot pool. Then they had several different basins: one was like a small artificial beach, for the very little kids; one was a twenty-five-meter pool; one was a fifty-meter pool; and one was a diving pool, which was about twelve meters across and quite deep.
We had our first practice, which was really about getting to see how good different people were, and went to dinner: pizza. Then we all went up to a room in the school with a painfully green floor and we introduced ourselves. It was funny to see how the adults were far more interested in how I had gotten there and what it was like back home than the kids were. Then after some icebreaker games, we went to bed.
The next day, we had our first real practice in the morning. Then we studied theory of swimming, particularly focusing on Michael Phelps's butterfly. It's actually rather grotesque in slow motion. In the afternoon, we had a three hour long practice, after which we went to the gym. Some people played basketball, and everyone else curled up on workout mats and went to sleep. Tuesday followed, and we did more or less the same things, but the afternoon practice wasn't nearly as long.
Wednesday, we had quite the outing! In the morning, we had our usual practice; but in the afternoon, instead of a second practice, we went out. First, we went to do some archery; one of our instructors was a two-time world champion archer. We spent a couple of hours there, and then we went bowling. Evidently I'm terrible at bowling, because I only knocked down thirty pins; despite this, I wasn't the worst person there, because one girl only got twelve! On our way back from bowling, we met up with Sebastian Rouault, a French ex-Olympian swimmer. That evening, he spent well over an hour doing Q&A, only not aswering one question (whether or not he had a girlfriend). If I understood correctly, he now is a consultant, and plays water polo; he had trouble practicing swimming without a lot of questions on whether or not he was going back to swim competitively.
Thursday, we got to meet the man who organizes all of the coaches for the Olympics. He was rather old, and very hard to understand, but everybody immediately perked up when he said, "If you want to go to the Olympics…" and I understood much better when everyone was listening and there were no whispers in the background. During the afternoon practice, Jeremy Someone dropped by to say hello to Sebastian, and I felt very sorry for him. You see, he's a current competitive swimmer and rather good (I had never heard of him, but what do I know), so of course everybody wanted to take selfies with him and get his signature. In the meantime, all he had wanted to do was drop by and say hello to a friend.
After dinner, we went out to the nine o'clock viewing of "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation," and I even understood the drift of it. I'm sure I missed a lot of the jokes, but that's okay. We finally got to bed at about eleven thirty, completely worn out.
Friday morning, we had our usual practice, and then time to pack up. The older kids went to the gym and practiced a dance that one of the counsellors had suggested as a form of thanks for our coaches. In the afternoon, we had another practice, and in the evening, we had a party. The party was rather sad for me, because I saw some of the dirtiest dance moves I've ever seen coming from eleven and twelve year olds. And for those of you who don't know, seeing big, tall, muscular guys do a dance intended for girls is one of the funniest things you can see. Especially if they are leading said dance.
The last day, we had a swim meet. I was part of a relay, in which I did 50 m freestyle; I did 50 m fly and something else, either 100 m freestyle or 100 m IM. I don't remember. I had to leave right after the fly to get changed. After I got changed, they organised another relay, this time including the coaches and Sebastian; unfortunately, I had to leave for the train station about 30 seconds before I got to see Sebastian swim, which I would have liked to see. I guess you can't have everything.
I managed to get to Marseilles uneventfully, despite having to change stations in Paris.
Anyway, that was my fun for the end of the summer.
Ciao,
Florence
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Sightseaing with Florence
Yesterday, Florence and I went to Cassis (a nearby town), and today we went to the beach! In both cases, the sea was just lovely.
Cassis is a small touristy town. It had been billed as a really "artistic" community by an acquaintance of mine, but it was a bit disappointing in that all of the shops sold mass-produced items or alternatively were high-end designer franchises.
Nonetheless, we had fun wandering around, and the views during the bus ride were stupendous!!!
We had intended to walk up to the chateau (ruins situated on the top of the cliff overlooking the harbor) but were told that because of how the walls were, etc., there was no view and it was really not worth the effort...that we were better off just taking photos from below.
 |
| View of the chateau's ruins on the edge of the cliff |
 |
| The water became much brighter once the sun was out! |
 |
| The beach "services" area...includes bathroom, changing rooms, restaurant |
 |
| Florence trying to coax me deeper |
 |
| The light changed minute by minute |
 |
| The shimmer of the water was really lovely |
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| View of the buildings perched above the beach |
 |
| Sorry about the crooked horizon!!! |
 |
| The boulders were a wee bit to jagged to climb on |
And we get to go back tomorrow with Ashley to do it again!!
Love,
Alexandra
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