School is Out!

At least for the kids...

I have been teaching English as a Second Language since I returned to Italy last October. This is at a private language school in Potenza, about a 25 minute drive from our house. The owner of this British language school is Italian, I’m an American, there is another American teacher and a girl from Ireland. A British language school and I find it amusing that none of us are mother-tongue from Britain. I am not trained as teacher, my qualifications are my degree and madre-lingua.

As any expat in Italy doing this will confirm, teaching English will not make you wealthy; it barely pays to put food on the table. My position is part-time but helps to stretch our funds while we look for other opportunities. Fortunately living expenses here in Basilicata are low compared to other parts of Italy so we can stretch our euros even farther.

The majority of my students had been between the ages of 10 and 15 so their lessons corresponded with the school year. When their school was finished for the summer their lessons with me concluded. This included a final week of exams for our courses as well as several exams for different English certification programs.

It has been interesting to talk to these kids about their public school experiences. All of them have more than one language class during the week including Italian and English at the grade school level. Once in high school they usually add Latin and Greek and perhaps French. By the time they get to my class in the evening their brains have worked around two or three languages that day.

I will continue to have a few business people with one-on-one lessons through the summer, except for August when Italy shuts down for holiday. Our group classes for the school kids will gear-up again in the fall after they return to school.

Bachelor Party...Italian Style

Grigliata

Since moving to Trivigno we have experienced several new experiences in Italian life that we were not exposed to in our two plus years in Ascoli Piceno. We’ve participated in our first vendammia, wine making and pig kill. Saturday night I experienced another first.

Our friends, Elisa and Giuseppe, are getting married next week-end I was invited to the bachelor party, I had no idea what to expect. I have been to several of these over the years in the US and they are many times not memories the groom would want to share with his bride.

This was different…

The festa took place at Giuseppe’s uncle’s house in the country a few kilometers away. We all arrived before 9 PM and that was when the eating started…a grilling feast. First there was the spiedini (shish-kabob). Then we had agnello (lamp chops). Excitement built as it was announced the porchetta would be arriving soon and when this stuffed and cooked pig arrived several of the men skillfully sliced it up for all to enjoy.

Once we finished the porchetta there was a short break of singing before salsiccia was put on the grille.  We then had more agnelo. After three hours the meal was finished off with grilled pancetta (think bacon). All of this was accompanied of course by bread, wine and beer. No verdura to be found…a grigliata.

When I departed signing folk songs was in full swing and I heard the next day that this and an assortment of drinking games was carried on by at least some in attendance until just before sunrise.

Forty men eating well and singing the night away…Italian Style!

House Hunters International in Trivigno

We just finished-up almost a week of shooting here in Trivigno and Ascoli Piceno for an upcoming episode of the popular American show called House Hunter's International (HHI) that airs on HGTV. They will focus as much on our lifestyle here in Basilicata and how we have been welcomed in Trivigno, as on the house purchase process itself.

A year ago when we were in Northern Virginia the program emailed me and we corresponded some but I didn't see the benefit of pursuing the project at that time. HHI contacted Valerie just over a month ago (they found us via our blogs) and she corresponded via email and talked to them by phone. We had not watched much of this show previously but we viewed a few segments on YouTube to get a better idea of what it is about. We put together a short video so they could see and hear us and emailed that off. They liked our unique story of finding Valerie’s family roots in this area and locating a house without a real estate agent.

Steve, Bryan, Paul, Bill, Valerie

The film crew, based in London, arrived last Tuesday and we spent three days together doing scenes in Trivigno, Anzi and Matera. Saturday we drove to Ascoli Piceno for a day of shooting. The story line will follow our house search from Ascoli since we were already living in Italy when we started looking for a house. Bill the director, Paul the cameraman and Steve the sound tech were all great to work with. They made the process easy and fun and also appreciated the Southern Italy hospitality that we find so endearing.

We hope this will be a boost for some of our friends here who have an agriturismo, our friend Tonino who is an engineer that has helped us so much in the process and for Trivigno itself. When others see why we find it so inviting they will also be interested. With the new web-site, My Bella Basilicata, and our desire to help the town that has been so inviting to us, we decided this is a good project for us to pursue. The actual episode will air in a few months; I will share the date when we are notified.

Besides, the film crew of Bill, Steve and Paul made it fun!

Trivigno is the Name

I had written back in November that we were trying to keep our town a secret…we didn’t want to give away our little gem. Friends here have mentioned to us how glad they are that we have found this town and they hope that others would too. The more we became a part of Trivigno the more we felt we should share it with others, it would just be good for the town.

This week we are busy with a project that we hope will make our town, Trivigno, better known to others in the United States. We will be busy and I will soon post details on how this will help others to see why we find Trivigno to be a little gem in southern Italy.

Trivigno it is!

Dish Rack 102

Why can’t you find these in the US?!

I wrote about kitchen dish drying cabinets back in September 2006 and it has been a popular search item on this blog over the years. We have always found these to be very practical and had them in both of our apartments in Ascoli Piceno.

Our house here in Trivigno does not have cabinets as our plans for the kitchen we eventually want is a work in progress. When we arrived we installed a functional kitchen to use the space we have within our budget. With our limited counter space we were longing for somewhere to dry dishes and IKEA came to the rescue. We found a rack that hangs on the wall that I have placed above the sink. The best part is that it folds up and is out of the way when not in use.

When we lived in Northern Virginia we never saw anything like this in the IKEA stores in that area. Why?!

We try to make most of our purchases at smaller local stores in and around Potenza but sometimes it can be difficult to locate what we need. I’m not a big-box store fan but I must admit that here IKEA has always been a good source for useful products at reasonable prices. However, IKEA for us means about an hour and a half drive to one of their newest stores in Salerno. Another incentive to buy local!

All Together

Recently during la passeggiata I was talking to a friend who asked me if people in the US meet out in the piazze and streets to talk everyday. My first response was “Obviously you’ve never been to America”…piazze are hard to find. America has not been a land of meeting in the square or on the street for many years, it is becoming a land of suburbs and malls.

Every Italian city has a daily flow of people through the piazza going to work, out to buy the day’s groceries or just to meet some friends and have a caffé. This flow has high and low points based on the time of day when i cittadini are at home for a meal. Trivigno is no different from any other Italian town in this regard.

I do think it is different in that everyone knows everyone else. Either they are related in some way or they have known each other since they were kids. One contrast I have noticed to larger Italian cities is that here everyone greets everyone else, usually with the informal “Ciao”, even if you just saw them five minutes ago. I now notice the contrast with the cities where not everyone will look at you and greet you.

It did not take long after we settled in when we started being greeted by everyone. Young, old and every age in between. It sure makes it feel familiar.

When people gather for a caffé, to share a beer or for a social event there is always a mix of ages, there is minimal separation by generation. We might have a caffé in the morning with the local Carabinieri captain, an afternoon caffé with the supermercato owner and a beer in the evening to watch some calcio with a mix of people from pensioners to members of the youngest generation. There is little noticeable separation between ages or “classes” of people; we are all in the mix together.

Tutti insieme!

Essentials

Just before our return to Italy last October I had a birthday and my sister-in-law, Cara, gave me a pair of heavy work gloves. At the time I thought these were a bit unnecessary as I already had some cotton gloves. I had always used lighter cotton or leather gloves around our house in Corrales and only used heavy ones in my constant battle against tumbleweeds.

After starting to do some projects around our place I soon learned that Cara’s gift was very insightful. Working on a house that is three hundred years old with three-foot-thick stone and concrete walls requires two essential tools: heavy work gloves and eye protection.

Whether I am chipping away at some stone work, pulling debris from our stalla, hauling firewood for our heating or grinding rust off a piece of steel, then one or both of these are a basic safety requirement. Usually both.

So if you happen to be in the market for a unique house in an Italian hill town, be sure to put these two essentials on your shopping list.