Buona Pasqua 2008!

What a difference a year makes. Last year we had just moved into our apartment and were just getting to know our neighborhood and the center of Roma as well. This year we know our neighborhood like the back of our hand. We've got a friendly relationship with our fishmonger, butcher and our fruit and veggie vendors, whom we routinely visit every Saturday morning. They've come to know that we suck at the language but we are trying our best. For example, at the fruit and veggie stand I asked for "basilicA" which means "large church" when I meant to ask for "basilicO" which means "basil". Of course she knew what I meant but we all had a nice laugh at my expense after I corrected myself. At least I didn't say any curse words on accident!

Last year on Easter we had a couple friends over and we had an all-day drinking and eating binge in which we went through quite a respectable number of bottles of wine and nearly an entire lamb. This year we were invited to Easter lunch by a friend I met at the pub. Brian happens to be American from California but more interestingly he is a priest (not really uncommon in Roma!). So we accepted the invite to have lunch at his house (more like a very large dorm with a chapel) with about 12 other priests from all over the world. Not being Catholic, or religious and having basically never entered a church in my life except for a few weddings and as a tourist in Roma it was a bit strange but how often does one get offered such a chance? We put on our Easter best and met him and the other priests and had a very nice typical Italian Easter lunch ie. antipasti, primi of pasta, secondi of lamb followed by a piece of cake which is then followed by a piece of fruit.

After lunch we headed toward the center of town to have a beer but the skies opened up and dumped rain on us before we could even make it to some sort of shelter. Even with umbrellas we were completely soaked up to our waists because of the pouring sideways rain. Also Rome doesn't exactly have great drainage systems so if it rains for more the 10 minutes you end up walking through giant puddles. At this point we were verging on miserable so we thanked Brian and decided to part ways because we knew there were a number of buses near where we were that could take us home, yet another example of a what a difference a year makes! Happy Easter.

A Night Out

Friday night we went out with some friends for a little dinner in the center of Rome. There really aren't any stories to tell, but we thought we were looking cute and should snap a photo for the blog!

The purpose of this dinner was to celebrate our friend Andrea's birthday, which we missed while we were in Loreto last month. It was a rainy night, and the buses were re-routed due to an Easter celebration where people walk with crosses from the Coliseum to the Vatican. So, needless to say, we spent a lot of time waiting for a bus that would never come, and finally had to walk to another bus stop about ten minutes away in order to get to where we were going!! That's Rome for ya.

St. Patty's Day 2008

Well, lately things have returned back to "normal" for us. Of course, there have been a few occasions to celebrate. Somehow St. Patty's Day has turned into an entire weekend so Allie had the opportunity to visit Charles at the Abbey on the Saturday night before the actual day of St Patty's. The strange thing was the bar was full of Scottish guys wearing kilts, I'm not sure where the Irish people were, I suppose they were waiting for the real thing. I poured a lot of Guinness and put up with a lot of drunks (one even puked into their beer glass then almost drank the puke! I love my job!) but overall it was a pretty fun night.

Allie and Allison Rocking Traditional Irish Hats

More from Berlin!

Here are a few more shots from our trip to Berlin in January. Like we mentioned before, it was freezing! But lots of fun anyway!
Here's Allie in front of some remnants of the Berlin Wall. There is actually a section of the wall that had to be protected by a fence in order to save it from being completely destroyed by Germans who wanted to rid the city of all bad memories related to this time period. So, in effect, the wall has it's very own wall!
One rainy afternoon we decided to indulge Julianna's rugby obsession and spend the day in a dingy Irish pub watching the matches. It was actually a lot of fun, and a nice moment to rest our tourist feet.
Allie isn't laughing. Allie isn't scared, or nervous either. She is freezing f-ing cold!
Here we are at the pub again...being weird and stupid.

More Family Pics

Here are some more pictures from the Brezina Family visit. We were so excited to have Chuck's family in Rome, finally, and it was an awesome surprise to see Michael get off the plane with his parents! They came just a few days after Christmas, so we were able to spend New Year's with everyone as well, which was really great.

Here's Michael and Allie taking a walk in the center of Rome while doing some sight-seeing.
Here's a shot of Michael and Nancy on the same day enjoying the gorgeous December sun you can only find in Roma.

Here's Chuck and Nancy strolling out of one of the church's of Siena on our little tour of Tuscany.
After two years in Italy, we finally got a cappuccino with a design in the foam!! This was in Volterra, I guess the Roman's just don't care about pretty coffee, they just want it fast and hot!
Here we are New Year's Eve...we just kicked it at Abbey because we enjoy the familiar.
The brothers! Together again! It really was great to see Michael again after all this time! Even if he didn't have any of his luggage for all but one day of his holiday. Love that Alitalia!

Isaac's Visit

Here's what we've been up to for the past five months! We finally bit the bullet and purchased internet service so now we have no excuse for not posting the haps and/or mishaps. We should start at the beginning I suppose. Isaac visited us in October so here we go...So here is Isaac doing some sightseeing with Big Sis. Of course, they are at the infamous Abbey Theatre. Surely this night ended is a good way!

Here is a little video of Isaac the night of Halloween. He went as Allie and Allie as him. Let me tell you, when they walked into the Abbey I was completely shocked and a little frightened. Please note the extreme concentration. The boy's got skills, no doubt.

Loreto Class Pic

Here is the silly picture that our students made for us. As you can see, they cleverly took all of our head shots and pasted them onto the bodies of children in an old school photo. Hopefully it's big enough for you to see the details, if not send me a message and I'll enlarge it!

Loreto and Beyond

You’ve probably been wondering what we’ve been up to over the last month. Well, just before we left for Berlin we were offered a job teaching a one-month intensive course for the Italian Air Force in a town on the Adriatic Sea called Loreto. This is the location of the Air Force’s language school, and since it’s basically in the middle of nowhere there aren’t many permanent teachers over there. Washington School said they’d pay for our hotel and give us a really good salary for this one month of work. We jumped on the opportunity knowing that during the weekends we’d have great chances to visit some cities in the area that we haven’t seen yet.

As we said, Loreto is in the middle of nowhere though it is a very popular destination for Catholics and Christians alike. Why you ask? Well because the local church holds the house/manger that Jesus Christ himself was born in. The next question you ask yourself is how did His house get to a mountain top in the middle of nowhere? Well, obviously angels flew the house from Bethlehem to Loreto. Duh! So for the Italian Air Force it’s an important place because the saint of this town is the Patron Saint of Aviators, Madonna Nera. Being as the house was flown to Loreto it only makes sense that she watches over aviators. Anyway, you can still go inside the cathedral and walk into the house and get your pray on.

By Saturday we had already taken the necessary 25 minutes to completely view everything in Loreto. On Sunday of the first weekend, one of Charles’ students, Davide, offered to take us on a little tour of the area along the Adriatica. He had never been in the area either so it was a good opportunity for all of us. We were recommended a couple places in the area. We visited Numana, Sirillo and Monte Conero, basically these are tiny seaside towns that offer some beautiful views and great weather. Unfortunately for us, it was not summer so it was really, really cold and windy while we were wandering around. But that didn’t deter us from getting some beautiful pictures and having a good time with Davide.

With Davide overlooking the Adriatic

The following weekend we had an offer from two of Allie’s students, Massimo and Ivan, to go to The Republic of San Marino. This a tiny, tiny country in the region of Emilia-Romagna. It’s one of the smallest countries in the world but it’s kind of fun to “get out” of Italy for a day so we thought why not? Basically, Italians go to get tax-free cigarettes and for some odd reason, medieval weapons and air guns. It seemed as if every shop was selling one of those three. We hiked up the hill to get what should have been one of the most spectacular views in “Italy” from the top of San Marino you should be able to see all the way to the Adriatic Sea. As luck would have it, there was heavy fog all day! The weather was great on top of the hill but the surrounding low lands were foggy as could be. Anyway, we had a nice lunch and did some more exploring. There are some truly cool sights to see. The castles seem to be something right out of a movie. Hopefully the pictures will do them some justice.

Massimo, Allie and Ivan in San Marino

A view of one of the castles on the hill in San Marino

We were also very fortunate to be invited to Verona for the weekend to stay with one of Charles’ students and his family. Verona is about a three and a half hour drive from Loreto, but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see this city with a real local! Giancarlo and his family were so accommodating and sweet, we had a wonderful time! We played about six hundred games of chess with his daughter Denise, and his son Mattia had a soccer match that weekend so we went out to support him (he scored 4 goals!!). His wife Gabriella cooked us some delicious meals even with two pre-teens and a five-month-old to care for!

Giancarlo, Gabriella, Denise, baby Federico, Mattia and Allie

Verona is a beautiful city, and we had excellent weather. In the center we went to the balcony of Romeo and Juliet (Charles is groping her because it’s tradition and it brings good luck). The balcony is surprisingly underwhelming. It's just a small and very normal seeming balcony. We also had the chance to visit some characteristic villages in the area and have a taste of Veronese cooking (Charles tried donkey!).

Charles molesting Juliet

Every weekend was something new and we were treated so well by our students and we will never forget them. As a parting gift, they created a hilarious picture of all of us and then they had it framed. As soon as they send us the email we will put it up. It was a stressful time from the start but also so rewarding (not just in terms of money!). All of our students have the big test this week and we’re pulling for them to make it through with flying colors.

Allie and her class

Charles and his class

Berlin

Hanging at the pub!

If you remember, about a year ago my old friend Christoph came to visit us here in Rome. At that time we made a promise to come to Berlin and visit him on his home turf. We had been putting this off, not necessarily for any reason except that other cities held bigger draws for us. Then we found out a few months ago that my other high school friend Bryan (remember the shroom guy from Amsterdam?) sold all of his belongings and made the big move to Berlin. Why would he do this, you ask? Well, in my opinion it was a combination of a really good drug trip and love. He met a young Swedish girl on the train during his travels in Europe, and had such a good time that he decided to put school on hold and hop on another plane back to his girl.

Christoph, Allie, Bryan and Maria

With the news that Bryan was also in Berlin, we knew it would be a good time to finally get our butts out there and see Christoph. Turns out that one of our favorite bands (Jimmy Eat World) would also be in Berlin in January, so we decided to book our trip around their concert. Jules came along with us since she hadn’t been there yet either, and she also loves Jimmy.

For January the weather was surprisingly sunny, but still cold with an awful biting wind. We were staying with Bryan and his girlfriend Maria. They were so kind to put us up for the whole time for free, which saved us a ton of money! Unfortunately, the second day we were there the boiler broke and the whole apartment was without hot water for the rest of our stay!! We were basically washing down with cold washcloths and washing our (well, Allie‘s) hair only when it was absolutely necessary! Luckily with the cold weather all of our stink was hidden under layers of clothing! It wasn’t the most ideal situation, but hey, we stayed at their place for free, how can we complain??

Berlin Skyscrapers

Our first day in Berlin we did a walking tour of the city which was really cool because we had a good overview of what there is to see (Berlin is huge!) and we got a lot of cool history thrown in there. It was weird to be in such a modern city, and in a lot of ways it just reminded us of America, but with a different language. We enjoyed such treats as Dunkin’ Donuts and Subway while we were there. Oh yeah, we also tasted our first ever Starbucks espressos. Sorry guys, the café down the street is way better and a third of the price!!

Blown-out church left damaged as a memorial to WWII

Christoph was so kind to show us around his neighborhood, Kreuzberg, which is located in what used to be East Berlin (although he was born and grew up in West Berlin). He took us to have some traditional German food and we even saw an original Trabant (the old East-Berlin Communist car)!