Going Hunting!

My parents left this morning, a beautiful sunny spring day.  We had a delightful breakfast courtesy of Pianegiani, sitting in the piazza enjoying the sound and sight of the birds overhead.

After kissing them goodbye, we went upstairs, and my phone started ringing.  And ringing. And ringing.  I called the person back, and it turned out to be Edvina, the seamstress!  She said that her husband was going to hunt wild asparagus, and would we like to go with him? I'd previously said that I was dying to learn about asparagus hunting, so she knew that this would likely be welcomed.

I convinced Michael that it would be much more fun to be out in the fresh air than cooped up in front of the computer (but he did take some convincing, really)...and off we went!

They've talked about going in the "bosco" (meaning "wood" or "forest"), but it turns out that wild asparagus is found in partially shady thickets.  That means tree and lots and lots of underbrush.  Thorny underbrush.  Which camouflages the darling little wild asparagi. And grabs hair.  And clothing.

Isn't it obvious where the asparagus is?

Here it is!

Glorious day!

A "mother" plant with an asparagus waving in the breeze.

After an hour and a half, Michael and I had accumulated a fistful.  He says he's not giving up his day job. On the other hand, we'll have a scrumptious lunch!

Love,

Alexandra

We're on TV!

This morning was part of a procession to celebrate the 750th anniversary of a miracle that occurred in Bolsena.  This miracle was the one which led to the cathedral of Orvieto's construction (documented elsewhere here, so I'm not going to repeat myself), and for whatever reason they brought the relic to Todi -- at a Mass held at Consolazione.

Florence and I sang, Jeremy served, and the rest of the family took up space on the pew...

The fun (and slightly irritating) part was that it was actually televised on Rete 4! I tried to find a link for you to see if you could stream it, but didn't have any luck coming up with it.  The annoying part was that we couldn't sing some of my favorites because we were running long...sigh...and the cameramen directed us not to.  The pain of being celebrities!

After Mass, we drove to Orvieto (it's a GORGEOUS) day here, and my parents treated us to another amazing lunch at Zeppelin!  Unsurprisingly, a nap's sounding pretty good at the moment (picture a lion 30 minutes after the kill, and you'll get the idea), but the weather's too pretty not to enjoy.

And no pictures -- sorry -- my camera was (for a rarity) on the coffee table instead of my purse.  I'll try to get some photos in the next day or two so you can enjoy the scenery, too.

Love,

Alexandra

Schlepping children around...

This is what my drive to meet Florence's carpool was like this morning (all 30 minutes total of it):

Todi in the distance

It's a tough job, but someone has to do it...

Love,

Alexandra

Happy Birthday Jeremy!

Meet Francesco, if you haven't already! 

It's Jeremy's 13th birthday!  Hard to believe he's that old!

We had a wonderful cake with his friend (hard to beat the bakery cakes here, I'm either happy or sad to say -- not sure which) Francesco, played games, and tried out the newly re-opened gelateria down by the Porta Romana (thumbs up, by the way).

Looks like frosting, but it's whipped cream.
Real cream.  And the flowers are sugar paste.

Love,

Alexandra

The Mechanics of Italy

I'm sure that the more astute of you have figured out that my having purchased a 46-year-old car means that I also need to purchase "technical support." Enter...Daniele and Claudio, our nephew-uncle team:

Who wouldn't love seeing their smiling faces?

These lovely men are in my speed dial.  We are on "tu" basis (informal, not uncommon here, but still).

Most recently, I parked my car on a hill.  A Tuderte hill, meaning more than a gentle incline.  As Jeremy says, "The less steep hills have a defined slope, unlike this one." I digress.  When I got in the car, I sniffed.  It smelled suspiciously like gasoline in the car.  Hmm.

Crank 1.  Niente.
Crank 2.  Niente.
Crank 3.  Niente.
Crank 4.  Niente.

And, of course, we were pointing uphill, which is not as conducive to a nice roll start.

I think most of you know me well enough to have noticed that I'm, um, determined.  Luckily, my equally determined daughter was with me.  So between the two of us, we pushed, prodded, and poked my baby in such a way that it was pointing downhill on the (at this point of the road) gentle slope.

Roll start?  By now, I'm an expert.  Roll, roll, roll, pop-the-clutch, and...nuttin', honey.

I finally ditched the car in a completely illegal spot (side note: I started to tell the cops about it and explain why it was there so they wouldn't ticket me -- I wanted to explain which car was mine, but they forestalled me with the equivalent of, "Yeah, yeah, the old 500.").

Have I told you yet this was the morning of Easter Sunday?  And of course Monday's a big holiday as well.

Tuesday morning, I called Daniele.  He volunteered to come up the hill right away, but I wanted to have breakfast first.  He patted my head over the phone, telling me that I'd probably just flooded the engine (even though I had smelled gas before I had tried to start it). We set a time, and there he & Claudio were (shortly after the appointed time, but still).

Crank 1:  vroom vroom.
Alexandra: sigh

But I explained very Italianly (arms and gestures and vocal emphasis -- call it coloratura?) that there was really SOMETHING WRONG with the car.

In the meantime, Daniele had tried cranking it twice more to prove what a silly thing I am.  It didn't crank! I've never been so happy to have a car not start.  They cheerfully roll started it (gah!) and took it down to the shop.

Next morning?  Well, it's not good when your mechanic tells you he'll discuss how much it cost (note the past tense on the work, with future tense on the payment?) when you arrive to pick up the car.

I got down to the shop, and he broke the news gently that I had needed a new fuel pump.  The other had died (consistent with my observations, and he did show me the old one).  And they had done an oil change.  And of course new air filter, etc.

Heart sinking, I went upstairs to Claudio's brother (Daniele's dad) to pay at his scooter store (yes, you got that right: they have a good cop (Claudio) bad cop (Paolo) routine with the payment strategy).  I saw several invoices, any of which could be mine, for 300-500 euros each.  I've had a new fuel pump in the States, and it wasn't cheap.

Doing my best imitation of poor and pitiful, I asked how much it was.  "Umm," said Paolo, checking on the fuel pump price, "there's no invoice here, but a fuel pump?  That'll be 50 euros."

Are you kidding me?  I wanted to do a quiet jig, pay quickly, and get out even more quickly before they changed their minds.  But my conscience got the better of me.  I reminded him of the oil change, air filter, gas treatment, etc.  In the end, Paolo was talked up to 100 euros.

New story: this morning, the car wouldn't start (I know it seems like a pattern, but I SWEAR, most of the time it really does start!).  So I called Claudio.  He wasn't there.  I called his wife (who works in Paolo's section of the business, upstairs).  She said that he & Daniele were having their breakfast break, but that they'd call me back. I'll bet you can figure how well that message got through, but I'm savvy enough to know that I'd need to call back.

I reached Daniele eventually, and he gave us a ride back to the parking lot (we'd worked on errands in the meantime).  Started the car right up, no problem! He explained cheerfully that, being a classic Italian car, you normally start the car with no gas & lots of air (the little handle I pull up that's next to the starter).  However, if it plays these games with me, I'm to do the opposite: no air and lots of gas.  (This is the same man who accused me of flooding the engine not two days before, you understand.) He then regaled me with great Fiat 500 stories which are too long to tell now -- my fingers are getting tired!

How much for the "house" call?  Niente.

I love my mechanics.

Love,

Alexandra

James's Field Trip!

A huge pile of wool for weaving

On the way to Bevagna

Today, my class and the grade below me went to Bevagna to look at the city. We started off at a weaving place and there was a weaver there who showed us this really big two-person loom. The loom had many gears and when you sat down, you had to move your feet to move backwards.  When you moved backwards, you wound the silk thread that was in a cocoon onto wooden pole. They didn't take it off, but we went upstairs to another place where they made bracelets out of thread, and the person there showed us how she was making a towel.  So we got to watch her do that, and she told us we could feel the thread on the loom. At the end of being there, we bought some stuff, and I bought a red and black bracelet.

The wooden pole and the tray of silk cocoons

Part of the loom

Candlemaking

Then we left and went to a place where they made candles. We ate there before we started the tour.  The guide got out one of his ladles and spooned out some melted wax to show us what it looked like.  Some of the students asked why the wax was dark, and he said, "It's dark because it's not near the light, so it looks dark." And then he put on his apron and he started adding wax onto these thin candles.  There were wicks with some wax on them and he ladled out some of the wax and poured it onto the wicks to make the candles bigger. He let them cool; the frame that the candles were on was circular, and had a bunch of teeth on it, so they put the candles onto the teeth.  The worker had to complete the circle ten times for the candles to be ready. After cooling slightly, he pulled off two of the candles and twisted them together. Above us was a wood candle rack.  There were candles hung together in groups of three, meaning the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I bought a candle and two heart-shaped pieces of beeswax.  The guy there was giving us a discount I think, because the candle was 3 euros and the heart-shaped thing were 1 each, but he gave them to me for 4 euros instead of 5.

Next, my group met up with the other group (they had been at the weaving while we were at the candlemaking) and then we went to a place where they had metalworking.  And toward the end of it, I figured out what the person there was doing: he was showing us how old coins were made! He had a stand on the table, placed a metal circle on the stand, and then he put another piece on top, and then used a HUGE hammer to whack the stand on top.  That stand has engravings and marks of the coin, and when he hammered it, the bottom stand had one mark and the top had another mark -- so it made the marks on the coin! The guide soaked the coin in lemon juice. When he was about to hit the coin once, he almost hit a student!

We walked to a paper-making place. There was a guide there who took us in and showed us a small cutter for cutting cloth into small pieces.  We went to the next station adn in the meantime, I saw this bag of cotton and that cotton was put into water and mixed. We saw this huge machine, and at first I didn't know what it was for.  Then the guide told us that when he pulled a rope, it turned on the water and the water came town over this water mill, and that made the mill turn.  This made some cool hammers go up and down, which made a HUGE racket.  When the guide let the rope go up a little bit, the machines slowed down until they stopped.

The paper was made in some water from cotton pulp; the pulp went onto this tray-type thing that had lines and holes...the worker pulled up the tray from the water, and that made a fairly thick layer of wet paper. The guide got two students to move the paper onto another piece of paper, so he put the tray next to the vat of pulp.

Then the guide took us upstairs.  Upstairs, we got to see the already dry pieces of paper hanging up. He told us about this picture which was of a festival where they made this glue and then he took us to a desk where they had a bunch of finished paper, a few quills, and a few envelopes made of the same paper.  We were about to leave, and then I decided to get some paper and an envelope.

We left and we went to this area where we waited for the other group, and then we went to the main piazza and then we left, went over a bridge onto a bus and then we came home!

 Love,

James

Stress Test

Somewhere along the line I think I mentioned that to officially participate in Italian sporting events you have to have medical authorization. Today my friend Massimo and I went to Perugia to get that authorization from a clinic that performs cardio stress tests.

We had a reasonable wait in the reception area, and then I was taken off to have my paperwork filled out. My Italian still has a long way to go, and the medical staff's English was just as rudimentary, but between the two, a little Google Translate, and Greek/Latin medical terms it wasn't too difficult. Just don't ask me to give my weight and height in metric off the top of my head.

First came the spirometer. That's a silly tube you blow through to measure your lung capacity. If you have never used one before, they are a little disconcerting because they provide no resistance. Take a deep breath. Open your mouth wide and breath out as hard as you can. Did you empty your lungs in about 1 second? Good. Now keep blowing out as hard as you can for the next 15 seconds to get the rest of the air out, the air you didn't know you had. Note: do not attempt this without medical supervision if you smoke.

Next a tech applied EKG leads. I didn't know I had enough chest hair to shave, but apparently the leads weren't going to stay properly without their shaving little patches. The prices we pay for our sports. At least it wasn't my legs like in swimming and biking.

Psych! They weren't ready for me to have leads! Someone poked a head in and I was led down the hall to a room with a sonogram machine. All the little sticky patches had to come off.

I've had an echocardiogram before so I knew what to expect. Little videos of heart valves fluttering, with blood flow color-coded to show the velocity and direction.

Then it was back to have all the sticky patches applied again. One resting EKG, onto the bike for a short workout, and the doctor gave me a passing grade plus the advice that I need to lose weight and check my blood pressure weekly. Ouch! I'm in my best cardio shape in at least the last 5 years!

So far you have been able to picture this as a typical medical visit anywhere. Now let's add some unreality.

As I said, I have had an echocardiogram before. I recall that the insurance company was billed an appalling amount like $5000. That memory could be wrong, but a quick glance online shows costs in the $1000-3000 range. I also had a stress test today. Another glance online shows that those are priced at $3000-5000 in the US.

My cost today? 40€. Discounted from the normal 70€ because of an offer to the running club. Don't ask me: I don't understand it, either. But it starts with a tremendous difference in medical salaries and continues through a legal system that is so slow it isn't worth suing your doctor or the maker of his medical equipment.

The doctor? Tall, thin, older but of indeterminate age, energetic without being in a hurry. He wore his grey hair back in a ponytail. It was a little unclear that he was the doctor until it became clear that he was in charge. Blue jeans. Massimo tells me he normally wears cowboy boots. He only wore a smock while he (personally) performed the echocardiogram. Just like in the US, right?



Indeterminate age? We talked lifestyles, food (he is vegetarian), staying active, the usual. Then Massimo challenged me to guess the doctor's age. Seventy! Staying active? He was a national league goalie in the 1970's, and STILL PLAYS.

He is also the Italian record holder for the high jump in the over 45, over 55, and over 65 categories and in triple-jump for over 65. Think again if you are picturing your grandfather jumping over the garden hose and calling it an athletic event: in 2008 he set the world record in the long jump for over 60 with a 5.47 meter jump. Can you jump 18 feet?

Just in case you think I am kidding: Lamberto Boranga's Wikipedia Page

Michael