Hello everyone back in the good ol' USA. Well it has been a few days since we talked and what a few days can make.
To start off, there is a crazy shoe sale here in Porto Sant' Elpidio every Thursday and the gals wanted to go check it out. It is in the center of town and spans probably 3-4 blocks. They close off the side streets where it is located and it continues through the night until midnight. The shoes are really nice and the deals can be very good. All though it is mostly women's shoes there are a few tents with men's shoes and even one that may be endorsed or even owned by Dustin Hoffman, which I found funny.
After all the shoeaholics got there fix we went and re-met up with our party at this little bar in the middle of all the shoe madness and had some drinks. Our group, of about a dozen or so folks, and another group of 8 or so native Italians sort of took over the patio. There was a women singing songs who had a great bluesy voice with one guitarist. Some how it turned into Karaoke and some of the tutors, not this one since they didn't have any Bon Jovi, started singing. Mayhem ensued and somehow I was dancing the jitterbug with this girl at the table next to ours. Her name was Christina and she was a pistol to say the least. Very funny and outgoing. Nice to see since Italian girls aren't always very outgoing, especially with new people. It is some culture thing that takes too long to explain and even longer to understand. After that, one of the camp coordinators took our group on a mission to have the "very best" gelato. It is pretty hard to mess up gelato in this country but we walked to the end of the beach board walk and finally had the best. It was very good! The next day, thankfully was Friday but we were all dragging a little.
After school that day, myself and two of my fellow tutors jumped onto a train and headed to Venice. That Indiana Jones was really onto something. "Ah, Venice!" It is an amazing city! A lot smaller then I ever knew or thought. It is about 4 kilometers x 6 kilometers. For those not familiar with the metric system, I could run from one end to the other and back and not even have gone 10 miles. They sure pack it in though. Not one single car in the whole place. I knew about the water ways and all that but it is still funny to never see a car, no matter how small a town is. We walked all over and saw some amazing stuff. We rode the water taxi through the Grand Canal, "main st.", and saw the Piazza San Marco, and a amazing church called the Biblioteca Cappuccini that was mind blowing. In churches in Italy they won't let you in if you are wearing clothes that expose your shoulders or shorts too much over the knee, as I talked about in my Loreto post, but this place was ok with it and was even free.
We also took a taxi out to Murano and saw the glass blowing factory. It was a short tour but did involve a really cool demo of how they make the glass from blowing a vase to using pliers and tweezers, big ones, to stretch and pull the glass into the shape of a horse. Very fun and a great city. Of course there was some great food, and we even had Chinese Food at a place right next to our hostel. I know, I know "Chinese Food" but eat one style of food everyday 2-3 times a day and no matter how great it is you still want something a little different every once in a while. It was really good which we couldn't decide if that was cause it was good or just different from our normal menu. Either way a very enjoyable weekend and now I am back in Porto. Just had the first day of a new week with my class, mostly same kids plus 4 new ones. One speaks English really well so she likes to be my helper but she busts my chops too. Eeehh! Pics to follow on the next entry and talk to everyone later.
Ciao
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