We're going to be millionaires!

We've finally received job offers from EF Surabaya. We are still double checking the paperwork and everything, but we think we're going to say yes.

Our pay will be millions and millions of Indonesian rupiah a month.We begin orientation on October 13, with school beginning on October 20.

Unfortunately, the 13th is the birthday of Rowan's host dad, Gianfranco, and we will miss it. But we promised to send him many gifts from Indonesia, since we will be millionaires and can afford such things.

Millin' around in the city

We took a trip into Milan, or, as they call it here, Milano (not to be confused with the cookie; believe it or not, the city streets are not paved with deliciousness, as we would find out).

We took the train into the city. Despite being in a small town, we are just around the corner from the rail station, which has been an excellent gateway into the broader Italian countryside.

After exiting the train station, we almost immediately bought some graniti. I got mint again; this one was a slightly less radioactive shade of green. I must say that I'm sort of becoming addicted.I immediately enacted a one granite a day rule to prevent myself from slurping down several as the day progressed.

Beverages in hand, we entered the Castello Sforzesco. The castle was controlled for several years by Napoleon after he captured Milano in 1796. The castle was used as barracks and for other purposes, and Napoleon ordered the outer walls torn down.

We strolled around the castle for awhile before heading to the Duomo. (The pictures on the website look surprisingly similar to some that I took. I'm not always creative with the camera, I guess.)
The Duomo is a large cathedral in the Gothic style dedicated to the worship of this guy named Jesus. Perhaps you've heard of him; he now has a website.The church also featured the crypt of a deceased cardinal. His casket is glass, so you can see his decayed body.We exited the church and went in search of food. We wanted pizza. Rowan balked a little bit at the price of pizza at the nice restaurants in the area, and everything is generally more expensive in Milano.

So we ended up eating at a place that is a sister restaurant of the Italian fast-food pizza joint Spizzico. We were both very disappointed by the food, and spent the rest of the day lamenting how disappointed we were.

We wandered around town before ending up at a large and amazing semi-indoor shopping plaza.Amidst the fancy restaurants and the stores selling Louis Vuitton bags and Armani suits was the fanciest McDonald's I have ever seen.
We considered continuing our day of substandard eating by ordering McFlurries. We actually entered the restaurant, but we didn't buy anything.

We should have.

We left the plaza and plunked ourselves down at a very nice looking restaurant that had dishes of very nice looking gelato. But we didn't order gelato. Rowan ordered a frappe, basically a milkshake. But it seemed a little heavy on the milk, a little light on the shake. I ordered a frulatte, basically a smoothie, but this one was also a little heavy on the latte, a little light on the fru.

Now completely discombobulated by our inability to search out good food, we started imagining things, such as the streets being filled by giant letters of the alphabet.Seeking some respite from big-city life and the heat and humidity that had hung over the day, we walked to the train station and then headed home.

There, the food is always good. We were soon greeted by a big steamy bowl of delicious risotto. Buonissimo!

***

To see more photos from the day, visit this webpage: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=52867&l=2f8d6&id=547792060

Some notes on language, with random animal pictures

Rowan speaks Italian, but I entered the country knowing little more than pizza, lasagna, and grazie. I still don't know much, but I'm learning a few things.

First of all, some things here are easier than in Barcelona. For example, I don't have to turn on my ordnador and type in my contraseña to access my correo eloctronico. Here, I turn on my computer and type in my password to access my email.But other things are very difficult. The pronunciations and spellings are very different from what I'm used to. For example, ch produces a hard "k" sound, and c produces the "ch" sound. They spell Jamaica as "Giamaica."

Because of the different spellings, words I would recognize in speech because they are similar to Spanish are hard to catch while reading. For example, the verb to teach, which is enseñar in Spanish, is spelled insegniore in Italian.
Also, pluralization is very different. In America, we might order an Italian-style grilled sandwich, a panini. But here, panini is plural. The singular is panino; the plural is formed by changing the last letter, not by adding -s. As another example, dog is cane; dogs are cani.I've already mentioned the Italian's love of food, but I've realized how much they love it by not knowing a lot of the language. When we visited one of the grandparents and a great aunt, I kept hearing forms of the verb mangiare. It came up so much that I thought it must be a word of great importance. And it is; Rowan informed me it is the word meaning to eat. I wonder if a foreigner listening to English who only knew the word eat would have a similar experience in the U.S.
My last note is not limited only to Italian. I am always fascinated by the way that titles of books and movies are translated into foreign languages.Above, The Catcher in the Rye is translated as The Young Holden. The central metaphor of the title is completely lost, and I don't know why they felt it wouldn't translate.

In Spain, The Dark Knight was translated as El Caballero Obscuro, roughly "The Obscure Gentleman/Knight." Perhaps not a bad translation, but it lacks the perfect pun of the original, though, obviously, that would be nearly impossible to do, like when people translate poems that rhyme into another language and still have them rhyme.
Unfortunately, I think I will leave Italy before I am no longer lost in translation, but the experience is an interesting one.

After all the sun and walking, we are Como-tose

Today we went to Como, a town built on a large lake.
Our first activity after getting off the bus was to buy tickets for a boat ride. The weather was fantastic and the ride was quite nice, except that I was treated to about two hours of Rowan saying, "Do you think that's George Clooney's house?"

After the boat ride, we ate lunch at a restaurant right on the lake, where the pigeons kept us close company.
Rowan ordered a "Canadian" sandwich (it had smoked salmon), and I ordered a cheeseburger. Apparently, we were feeling very North American.

Then we walked toward this thing.I don't really know what it is.

Then we went into town to look at a large church.Outside, this guy was working on a giant painting.Before we entered the church, we were greeted by this sign.The pictures seem to translate as "no Scottish terriers," "no ice cream cones," "no cigarettes," "no radio-controlled graphing calculators," "no large-breasted women," "no skinny white guys in wife-beater-style tank-tops," "no mini-skirts," and "no short-shorts."

Before we got on the bus for the trip home, we got some graniti, which is Italian for "slushie drink." Rowan got some mix of strawberry and kiwi, and I got mint. It was tasty, but mine was a radioactive green in color. It dyed my tongue green. You can't really tell here, but that's why I'm sticking out my tongue.Then we got on the bus and went home. And ate pasta. One can only avoid Italian food for a little while here.

Cat, Caterpillar, Clooney

It appears that the WWOOFing is going to happen. We heard back from a farm, and it looks absolutely wonderful. If everything works out, we leave next Monday for two-and-a-half weeks.

This morning we did a load of laundry and Rowan managed to dye some of our clothes pink. While we were out visiting Sacro Monte, karma punished her by having the puppies eat one of her shirts.

Sacro Monte is a town at the top of a hill with a large church as one of the focal points. Partway up the hill begins a path that has various buildings along the way, each one representing a station of the cross.
The view from the top is quite breathtaking, so breathtaking that I had to look at the camera for fear of losing all of my breath and therefore having none left.At the top, we sat and drank caffe shakerati and checked out the view. My drink had alcohol in it, and was more delicious than Rowan's. This is a picture of the view, not of the drink. The walk down the hill was much easier than the walk up.

***

Rowan's mother (Hi, Marion!) has commented that we have pictures of the dogs and of one of the cats, but not of the other cat. This is Cipi (pronounced CHEE-pee).
She drools a lot when she is being petted.Rowan also wanted me to put in this picture of a caterpillar. I have no idea why.
Tomorrow we are going to check out Lake Como. Rowan says that George Clooney has a house there. I may try to find him and run some movie ideas past him.

Words, palabras, parole

Right now, we are watching The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe dubbed in Italian on one of the TV stations. A little weird, though the dubbing seems to work better for the animated characters, obviously.

Here is Rowan curled up on the couch actually understanding the words that are being said.Rowan and I just got done cooking a big Mexican meal for the family. It turned out quite good, and due to the lack of canned enchilada sauce, we got to make it homemade for the first time. Unfortunately, we did not speak in Spanish throughout the meal, so I had less of a clue about what was being said than while watching the dubbed movie.

Since we are in such a small town and there isn't a whole lot to do, we've had quite a bit of down time, which has been relaxing. I've actually had a chance to read for the first time in awhile.I'm currently re-reading In Patagonia. Rowan's host mom asked if it was in Italian, because "in Patagonia" translates to "in Patagonia" in Italian.

I have been reading the Italian-English dictionary, and sometimes I try to read the Italian TV guide. I am still quite clueless when people try to talk to me, though. The other day, the neighbor kid tried to talk to me, and I could only respond, "Non parlo Italiana": "I don't speak Italian."

To conclude, Rowan insisted on one more puppy picture. They are piled up on the welcome mat at the front door.Now, I'm off to grab a Poretti, a brand of Italian beer, to enjoy while watching the foreign film (foreign to here, that is).

Pet-rified in Italy, and The Fattening begins

We are currently in Vedano Olona, Italy, a sleepy little town of about 1,000 people approximately forty kilometers outside of Milan. We are staying with Rowan’s former host family.

We arrived here after a fifteen-hour bus ride. I had to store my backpack beneath the bus because it is a backpack; other guys carried on much larger European man purses.

This is Rowan's host brother.

None of the men in Italy wear shirts. This is a completely true yet little known fact.

Here in Vedano Olona, everyone has been very helpful and friendly, though they may be trying to fatten us up for the slaughter.

The grandma cooked for us right away when we arrived in town. We had a pasta salad with olives, tomatoes, basil, tuna, egg, prosciutto, and sausage. It was good, so I had seconds. Then I was informed that we had the meat course next, despite all of the meat in the pasta. I ate carpaccio for the first time. I was full, but then they brought out fruit. That was also good, so I ate quite a bit. Then I was informed that there was also tiramisu. After all of this, the grandma informed me that I don’t eat enough.

We then went to a soccer game. One of the players was Rowan's host sister's boyfriend. And yes, that is a cornfield beyond the fence. Just like Wisconsin, sort of.

That evening for dinner, we went out for some real Italian pizza. Buonissimo!

I’ve been trying to learn some Italian so that I appear less like an ignorant oafish foreigner. Someone at the house has an introduction-to-Spanish book that came with a magazine. The book teaches Italians to speak Spanish, so I’ve been trying to reverse-engineer some knowledge of Italian from the Spanish book. This process would probably be more effective if my Spanish was better.

The family has a litter of seven five-week-old Labrador puppies.

They are melt-your-heart cute, especially the one they call Bianchina, Italian for “little white one.” She's somewhere in this pile.

They also have two cats. One is named Chipi, and the other Palina, Italian for “little ball.” Apparently she was fatter when she was younger. She likes sleeping in front of the computer monitor for some reason.

The animals are filling the pet void we were feeling in Barcelona.

The weather is cooler than in Spain, which is nice because I’ve had to start wearing long pants. In the evenings, the air is filled with tiny little bugs that bite like giant bugs. My legs are covered with painful wounds.

They don’t bite our arms, and for some reason only seem to like my left leg. Rowan has been bitten less, though her bites are just as painful.

We went to check out the local church the other day. It is where Rowan’s host parents got married, and it has been recently renovated. They have replaced sections of the floor with glass panels so that visitors can look down into the crypts beneath the church.

We will stay here in Italy until we wear out our welcome or we get deported, and will then figure out the next part of our plan. It appears that Indonesia is still a month away.

I will leave you with one last puppy pic (puppy in Italian is "canelina"). Arrivederci!