Have you heard about the Battle of Oranges?

Tomorrow, I will have been in Ivrea for a week. Almost everyone I have spoken to has asked me "Have you heard about the Battle of Oranges?" Why yes I have you Ivrean person you. When you Google Ivrea and look at the pictures, almost all of the pictures of these battles that apparently shut the city down for a week. My understanding is that, there are 8 different teams that you can join starting at any age you want to start paying. Two teams are at one Piazza, 2 at another and 4 at the large piazza. It is a time honored tradition during Carnivale. Apparently it lasts about 3 to 4 days during Carnivale with a princess and other days of celebrations for the week. Then my kids in class asked me if we had any thing for Carnivale and I said "nope, it's pretty much an international holiday and my fellow tutor said came up with the reason because we don't have a lot of Catholics in the United States since we have the right to all kinds of religion. And too bad that February and March are hard to take time off of work because I would love to experience any sort of Carnivale celebration. Us Americans are missing out apparently.

Also the castle here has 3 towers which I thought was kind of cool. Apparently the fourth tower fell during World War II due to ammunition inside the tower exploding. But this castle is the biggest one I've seen so far. They said because Ivrea is close to the mountains, if people on their horses were going north and weren't going to make it before the winter came, they would stay in the castle until they could pass. How nice!

So it was Friday once again. And we had our final show. Only this week because I had the cool kids who did not want to act. So we made a video based on some Italian parody of Lord of the Rings. And when I say the parody is long, it is about the same length of the original Lord of the Ring movies because it is dubbed over the actual film. My kids found the clips they wanted, transcribed them, translated them and then with giant white pieces of paper, plastic bags and nature, a film was born. I have it on Youtube and can show it to you when I get back or email you the link if you can't wait. But I filmed it and edited it all on my iPad. Thank you Apple. So during the show, when the younger kids were doing their show of Grease, and the kids were singing, my class gets my attention and tells me that our video is better than the Grease show. And I said, I know, I'm good huh? And they were like yeah, you are good. I gave them my email and said if they wanted the link to email me so I could email them the link of the film since its on private now. And you know what? I had 4 add me on Facebook. Cute huh?

I also forgot to mention updates on my Chris Pine twin. He was very sweet. When I asked him to find the parody so I could see what they meant, he found it, stopped it for a second to tell me there were "bad words and sometimes we use bad words to be funny" and I laughed. Being from the US has desensitized me enough I think where I was ok. But then I thought about it and on tv here, there are very scantily clad women, I don't think language is a big issue and I look around at the ads and commercials and I don't think there children are overly sexualities like in the US. For example, at the pools here the little girls don't wear tops. And to be fair they don't need to because other than a couple of things little girls and boys look the same. However, being from the US, this culturally bothers me. However, no one around thinks anything about it. And you don't get the feeling of perverts lurking in every corner. It is just a little vibe of looking out for each other and enjoying the outing without worrying about anything.

I hope a couple at least email me to practice their English and I can practice my Italian! I may create a blog sheet of all the Italian words and phrases I have learned so I can practice. We'll see.

The elusive blackbook

Let me give you some background. So the program I work for divides the students English levels based on their year in school and proficiency (but mostly their year in school) and divides the classes by color. So the last 2 camps, I had the blue book which were the 10, 11 and 12 year olds. We have manuals that include notes and ideas for all of the books except for one: the black book. The black book is not included because they are high schoolers and during orientation they told us that very few people would work with that age group. It would be based on if you were a returner and your age, and since I am older than the average person, I had a shot.

Well, it turns out they remembered me and I am working with high schoolers. The problem is that, I was never trained and have no manual to fall back on. My fellow tutor this week is this 21 year old from Georgia named Edward. I was hoping he was a returner but he was not. So yesterday, (Sunday) we met and decided that we both would just wing it and try our best and forget the fact that we were nervous. Walking into that school today, was nerve racking. High schoolers, in school during the summer when they don't need to be there...are you joking? Despite my worry, my winning personality won them over.

I gave Edward the chance to pick if he wanted the 13, 14 and 15 year olds or the 16, 17 and 18 year olds. He chose the younger group so I got 3 girls and 9 boys to work with. At first, some only knew a few and so on. My materials for my planned icebreaker had not arrived so I just went in with the introducing myself. I also asked them some questions to get to know them. What is your favorite food, music, movie? What do you do for fun, where do you go with your friends etc? I then asked them, what do you want to be? What do you want to do when you grow up? And after the 4th, I don't know, I started to get frustrated. And then I remembered where I was. I asked them, "does no one ask you these questions?" And one of them told me "no, we don't have a lot of options, so no one asks." And I got so sad. I started to tell them about the " American Dream" and how in the United States, you can be anything you want to be. And the reason that the Italian education system is pushing the youth to speak English is to make them more viable, more apt to getting a job outside of Italy. And I said "maybe because I'm American, I think this way, but if you want to do something bad enough, you'll make it happen." And I think that was the turning point that connected us. They started asking me more questions, and I think let their guard down.

After the break, we decided to start talking about our final show. We are going to do a parody of Lord of the Rings. Apparently there is an Italian version and we are going to translate it and I am going to work on trying to film it because they are all apprehensive on acting in front of their parents. We also played charades this week with the group "Pizza Mafia Mandolino" winning today. We also kind of made a schedule for the week and decided that we will translate English songs to Italian and then interpret them so they all know what they are singing. I have a list of 16 songs so we are going to do 4 a day in groups. Tomorrow's songs will be Payphone, Party Rock Anthem, Yellow and Sweet Home Alabama. They chose the songs, all I am is the teacher. But to prep for tomorrow, I went ahead and looked at them and did some research. Payphone and Party Rock Anthem are pretty self-explanatory. But Sweet Home Alabama is good for some American history which I am excited about and Yellow by Coldplay is just depressing based on all the interpretations of it: scared to share his feelings, being devoted to them not necessarily romantically, suicide, the death of someone you love, or anorexia. Can we say depressing?

The day ended with us doing Olympics where the groups have to come up with a name, a chant and then create a flag. It took a while for them to get into it, but by the end of the day they all left with a smile and the guys that look to be "too cool for school" were the ones that were the most engaged which left me feeling good. OH and let me mention that one of them looks like Chris Pine from Star Trek the movie. He looks so much like Chris Pine, I found pictures online and showed the class, they ALL agreed and said they could be twins. The guy was like, yeah, we for sure look alike. I just want to stare at him and pretend he is Chris Pine but an Italian version. Even better maybe?

Anyway, tomorrow is my birthday. I can't believe I'll be spending it in Italy. I look forward to tomorrow. Peace and love.