(The strange encounter with that thing we call "culture")
Sylvia's little brother, Ricardo, of 12, ALMOST (as he admonantly pointed out) 13 years old. He has the HUGEST smile, and he seriously cracked me up :D 
Maria riding me on tour through her country town :)
Maria's dance class...CRAZY! (She is to the right of the -only- boy in the white shirt. If you can't tell from the picture, their legs are not resting on the bar: they are holding them up there!) 
Left to right: Sylvia, me, Maria (ragazze tanto belle e simpatiche- beautiful, kind, and friendly girls)! The sleepover was great, because these girls are SO nice! Maria was the only one who could really speak English well enough to carry on a conversation with me. Sylvia had to leave in the morning to attend to her duties as the wife of a dwarf- :D they have a youth retreat with the Movement in a week or so, and for the games they have teams similar to the ones we do for The Weekend, each with a different team. The four teams are each of a different group of creatures from the Lord of the Rings, and Sylvia's group is dwarves, and her "husband" is the head\lead dwarf! hahaha fun! - so Maria and I spent the day together. Turns out that her English teacher is from Britain and she doesn't like the strict formalness of the English he teaches them; the LOVES American English and has learned it very well from watching movies. She said she has been waiting for the chance to talk with a "mother tongue speaker" for SO long, and she loved getting to hear and practice speaking it all day :) On my part, she was wonderful to talk to. She is 18 (Sylvia is a few months younger than me, the same age, 17) so it was really great to get to discuss school, politics, drugs, boyfriends, movies, her place as a young person in the Movement, and other issues that I have been curious to learn about Italian culture from someone my age.
Her (maria's) dad was absolutely HILARIOUS, a complete performer to say the least, always loudly making a show of speaking to me in English, all the while beaming, ear to ear! He knew every state in America, and started listing them off in a sing-song voice, as well as the Indian tribes who lived in each region, while his embarassed daughter, Maria, asked him (not rudely, and only adding to the hillarity of the situation), "And what does this knowledge gain you?" :'D He is nothing less than absolutely and utterly animated, and the faces that his grey-mustached-face made while looking at me and putting on a "show" in English had me laughing SO hard!
For dinner, Sylvia's, Maria's and "my" family (the Greselin's, except for Sara, who stayed home with Marco because he's had a fever) all got together at Maria's house. It was a lot of people and a lot of fun, though I was pretty tired. After dinner we had a lovely conversation (inspired by Sylvia's little brother, Ricardo, and Maria's dad, who didn't seem much different ;) ) about the various offensive hand motions and curse words from our two countries, to which I listened with immense ammusement, but respectfully chose not to take part in! Maria's dad proceeded to try to teach me how to do the ridiculous-looking arm-slap movement that apparently is equivalent (though it seemed much more of a joke, because this was done in the presence of many children and two mothers!) to our flipping someone off. I was laughing really, really hard, especially when Ricardo, with his eye-squinting smile and broken english, said for the third time: "Just one question..." and tried to get me to say a bad word for "going to poop" with everyone staring at me expectantly to see what I would do- (thankfully only the kids took part in this embarassing turn of the conversation- Maria and Sylvia smiled at me empathetically and used what they knew of English to answer his question for me). HA! Gosh, what a funny group. Yeah, I'm in a different country- oh, and Maria's mom got a real kick out of how I say "yeah"! "Why do you say..." and she said a strange bend of vowels trying to replicate the sound of the one-syllable response that I used without even thinking, "to say 'yes'?" she asked me with intrigue. Apparently, this family has hosted young people from around the world over the last few years, by some chance events that brought into their diningroom a boy from Puru, two from Germany, a girl from... ah I really can't even remember. But apparently the German boys (who, Maria informed me, left behind two pairs of boxers, which she said she doesn't dare to touch!) responded with a similar sounding, "YA" (most likely pernounced "yohh"), and hence: the perplexity over why an American would use "Yeah" became yet another hot topic for conversation.
Lots of fun :) ... (I had)
Well, we are just finnishing up packing (I am already done, which is why I am able to write this now) to head out in the car to drive to Switzerland! We will be there until Sunday, the 21st, hanging out in the mountains with friends from the Movement, and probably just enjoying the (cold!), incredible atmosphere! I probably won't be online for the rest of the week, but I'll take lots of pictures.
Lots of love <3 ... (to you)
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