Monselice

Saturday I arrived in Monselice which is about 20 minutes South from Limena in the Padua providence and the region of Veneto where Venice is. We were greeted warmly as we always are but the directors had us choose our host families which was a bit awkward. I picked the woman with the fashion sense I most related to. We have now come to find me living with Cristina, her husband Sabrino and their daughter Maddelena who is 13.

On Saturday we walked around the town of Monselice for a little bit. It is a Medieval town like many of the towns in this area are. It has a castle and a moat surrounding the town. That night luckily was Notte Bianco which means that the stores are closed during the day because it is so hot, and open at night for people to shop and just go to town. Because everything was closed, we went back later that night. When we returned there was music about every other block and we stumbled on a Michael Jackson Italian tribute of dancing and jams. It was pretty fun. We also walked by this church that was being excavated. Apparently, many of the old churches are built on the remains of two other churches: one that was built before Christ, another built after Christ and then one built during the Middle Ages. Because of money, many of these churches aren't important enough to excavate. However, in Monselice, they found something important enough to bring excavaters around. Inside you got to see the different layers of the church throughout the time and how they were excavating it. Kind of cool. Also, inside the church, there was a random phonograph museum of recording equipment on how records were made to phonographs that still worked and playing.

After that, I went to the castle. It was kind of cool, however only few things were the originals. A family bought the property and furnished it with items from all over Europe for the time period so you got a feel of what it was like, but nothing was really Italian in the castle. But they had a lot of armored suits and weaponery which was cool and unique. The fireplaces of the rooms though were my favorite part. They reached from the floor to the ceilings which were about 20 feet high and had the most fun designs and detail I have ever seen. Weird that fireplaces would be my favorite part? I agree.

I forgot to mention that between my trips into town, I was hanging out at the house and Cristina was showing me their land. She showed me her olive trees, her fig trees, tomato vines, and cherry trees. Oh and backstory, I was complaining that I don't like cherries because I'm lazy and I hate the seeds. However, straight from a tree and in nature, totally a different taste and energy about the cherries. I also ate figs straight off a tree, and never had figs before (because they looked weird) but these were really good. I think they look different from the figs in the US too.

Also, apparently having a mom from Ecuador is cool. Once I tell people that, they always want to know more and think it is so cool. Being from the US, and knowing first, second and third generations of people, I guess I take it for granted that having mixed blood is a cool thing. Sabrino, Cristina's husband, traveled to South America about 25 years ago and one of his stops was Quito, Ecuador and we bonded over that.

My kids this week are so quiet and tame compared to my kids from last week. I have 11, 11 year olds. They are warming up which is good. The turning point was when we decided to do Star Wars for our final show (completely their idea which I supported 100%!) Because we have 2 Princess Leia's one is asleep and the other is in a dream where Darth kidnaps Princess Leia and puts Lando under a spell and Luke and Lando fight and then Darth Vader fights Han Solo and Yoda. Uh....George Lucas, I have my screenplay if you want to see it.

The only thing I don't like about this camp is that there are so many adrogyneous kids that I have made a fool of myself more times than I would like to admit calling hims hers and hers hims. I'm happy that they don't have such strict gender roles here, but it threw me off! Oh tricky, tricky gender roles.