italia in miniatura

yesterday Maddy Gus and I went to Italia in Miniatura with three other families from school. It's a theme park by the sea with a football field-sized Italy. This model you can walk through has representations of many of the features of Italy from the Alps to the islands of Sicily and Sardegna, to churches and other famous buildings and monuments from all the regions of Italy. Besides Mini-Italy, there are other rides and attractions, including a gondola ride through a (slightly less) mini Venice.

photos:
1. the kids take pictures of a mini version of Rimini, the city where the park is located, hmmm...
2. Maddy and Gus finally made it to Rome! Here they are in front of the Vatican.
3. a skyscraper in Milan being terrorized by an enormous lizard-eating cat
4. the boot of Italy as seen from the monorail
5. Giulia, Maria-Giulia, and Maddy on a gondola in mini-Venice
6. Luana, Lucia, and Sabina on the same gondola
7. Gus and Giorgia listen to the wind in sound pipes

la nonna e la sorella

Katy and Becky spent a relaxing week here. We visited Bologna all together, then Katy Becky Maddy Gus and Gibbs enjoyed an train adventure to Venice and the island of Murano. Now Katy and Becky are off for a week with rail passes to explore more of Italy on their own.

che bello!

Gibbs refuses to blog about motor vehicles he wants to purchase until they are purchased.

So, as a place holder I am offering this photo of Gibbs with a boyish expression of pure delight on his face from an afternoon at Lucia and Luciano's where he tested Luciano's new collection of 3 vintage Italian motorcycles. Lucia wonders if she shouldn't blame Gibbs for this recent addition to the garage...

vero italiano emailiano-romagnolo

10 useful Italian words and phrases you won’t learn in a textbook*

We started putting this list together in February...

So much of the words and phrases we hear around us every day were not things we learned from Italian class before we came. It was hard to make heads or tails of what people around us were saying at first, but really once you know a little basic Italian plus some of the most commonly used idioms, you’ve got a pretty good head start.

dai! (die!) I imagine Elaine from Seinfeld hitting Jerry in the chest, this word literally means 'give,' but is used to mean 'come ON!' and 'No way!'

(una) roba (row-bah) means 'stuff' and is used similarly, unless you close your eyes and lick your lips while you say it, in which case you are clearly talking about food and mean to say that it was really, really good.

(un) casino (cah-zee-noh) literally means 'brothel,' but is used to mean mess, any kind of mess. It is not uncommon to hear people say that their home is a 'casino.'

mah! literally 'but!' used to express indignation about the course of events (someone cuts you off while driving, the mechanical cow is out of milk, your bus is not coming because there is a strike, the museum is unexpectedly closed due to lack of personnel...).

cioè… (cho-eh) literally 'which is...' used as a verbal pause such as 'like' in English, it's hard to hear a sentence spoken without a few supplementary 'cioè's thrown in, which often get shortened to sound like 'ch-ay'

bambino/a, bimbo/a, ragazzo/a, maschio, femina tricky, because in most languages I've studied, there are basic words for boy and girl. Here the word ragazzo or ragazza not only means boy or girl, but also could refer to anyone as old as 55. In fact, I would say the use of this list of words illustrates an interesting trend in Italy to emphasize youthfulness: bambino/a could refer to a baby as old as 5 or 6, bimbo/bimba (also literaly 'baby') works fine for children as old as 15, ragazzo/ragazza, as I mentionned before, though it means boy/girl could be someone as old as 55 or so, and when used with the posessive pronouns mio/mia or tuo/tua means one's significant other (about 50% of ragazzi our age who have children are not married), which becomes confusing in conversation- are you asking me about Gus or Gibbs? Thankfully there are at least generic terms to refer to males and females, to help alleviate at least some of the confusion or offer opportunities for clarification- mascio and femina are not just technical terms in italian, they might say there were 10 ragazzi at the party, 5 masci, and 5 femine.

quindi, comunque, dunque, insomma, allora, invece, anzi, però, infatti these are all important verbal pauses, the words themselves hold very little meaning (most mean 'so'). It was in starting to use these in Italian and then trying to speak English later that I realized we don't really have these the same way the Italians do. My personal favorite is 'invece,' which literally means 'rather,' but also insinuates 'it's not like you think it is, in fact, it's quite different and let me tell you how now...' I have a friend who noticed you might hear an Italian use a string of any 5 of these to introduce any given sentence, her husband said this is culturally critical- you have to say SOMETHING, but you also need time to think of what you'll say, these work nicely for both purposes.

ce la faccio, literally, as clearly as I can tell, this means: 'I've got the can-do.' Something like- "ce la fai?" "sì, ce la faccio," 'Have you got it?' 'Yes, I've got it.' My favoite example of this incredibly common expression came from early in our trip, Gus' best friend Nico was riding a bike down a steep grassy hill, at the bottom he yelled, "ce l'ho fatta!" 'I did it!'

cavalo/col cavalo, literally 'cabbage,' or 'with cabbage.' It can be used to mean 'that's his/her business,' as in the expression 'cavoli suoi' (literally, his cabbage), or by itself it usually means 'heck!' or 'wow!' I recall one mamma at school complaining about something that the kids were supposed to do, to which she replied, 'Col cavalo!' (With cabbage we will be doing that!)

proprio is proprio the most used word proprio ever proprio after the proprio most commonly used 'cioè' (see above). It literally means 'properly,' but we would say 'really' 'actually' 'exactly' and/or 'totally.'

Now you, too, can say what I said to the kids today:

Insomma, la vostra camera è proprio un casino! Mah! Cioè... con tutta questa roba, ce la fate? Dai bimbi, cavalo!

In short, your room is a really a brothel! Ugh! Like... with all this stuff, can you handle it? Come on kids, heck!

*Disclaimer- Gibbs reminds me that he DID learn most of these words in class before we arrived, but it's their idiomatic use that is surprising. I, in fact, hadn't learned these before arriving, but that probably has more to do with my lack of studies than anything...

il blog di gus: parmigiano-reggiano

One day we went to Parma, where they make parmiggiano-reggiano, it's a cheese that is really tasty and it's called parmiggiano-reggiano because it's only made in the area around Parma and Reggio Emilia.

here are some photos of our trip to see how real parmigiano-reggiano is made:
in the first two pictures there are people mixing up heated milk for making the cheese. In the next two pictures you can see new parmiggiano-reggiano cheese soaking in salt water (you can taste this when you eat it) and there's a picture of me showing how stinky making the cheese can be. The next two pictures show the wheels of cheese sitting on a shelf. They usually need to sit there for one or two years... So that's why they invented a machine to turn and dust the wheels and where it was sitting (pictured next) The cheese can stay there a very long time (even three years). The last few pictures show that the milk makes a ginormous ball that weighs way too much, so they cut the cheese to make two smaller 'twins.'

gli zii

Annie & John and their friends Ally and Jeff just spent two weeks with us here in Monterenzio. With 8, sometimes 9 of us (Ally's nephew David, who is studying opera in Salzburg, visited for a few days) in our house, in the bed & breakfast apartment next door, and on our patios, it felt like a little vacation colony. Taking advantage of all the aspects this location has to offer and over two weeks, there was a little something for everyone: bird-watching, finding new favorite wines, cooking, getting in the Uffizi in Florence, enjoying the Italian shopping experience at the local butcher and green grocer, seeing how Parmigiano-Reggiano is made, and eating outside (I'm sure I'm missing some here, in fact I notice there's little connection between this list and the pictures posted...). I understand everyone made it back safely, including the carefully hidden contraband pork-sausage.
pics:
1. the piazza in Siena, full of people and men in tights
2. look! annie's in italy!
3. maddy & gus, not making faces (rare!)
4. our pick for prettiest church in Italy- the duomo of siena
5. maddy, gus & uncle john on the steps of the siena duomo
6. waiting in line to get into siena duomo
7. inside the duomo of siena- amazing and somewhat suessian
8. john, annie, ally & jeff in siena- saint catherine's head and thumb (not in view) in church in background
9. eating dinner outside for first time in 6 months
10. gibbs laughs about high-dive baptistry in Parma
11. look, annie's still in Italy!
12. look, annie's in Italy again!
13. excellent pancetta con aceto balsamico and lovely potato swans at idice 95
14. the 8 of us at idice 95

giardino bellissimo

The same day as the horse birthday party featured in the previous blog entry, I was invited by our landlords to visit a local garden in a nearby valley. Gabriella, Dino, and our friends Claudia and Philippa and I enjoyed a gorgeous spring day surrounded by all kinds of plants and flowers, local and exotic. A documentary film on this garden was recently released that I understand is on a par with the French insect documentary Microcosmos- so who knows, maybe it will be coming to an indy theater near you soon! You'll know it's this garden if it features an anglophile Italian gardener named Gabriella and her famous Italian comic author husband. Gabriella's gardening philosophy revolves around working with what comes her way (on the wind, gifts from friends). She uses weeds to keep balance between insects and plants, and so doesn't use chemicals.
pics:
1. gabriella, the gardener in english garden dress
2. brunera grows here, too
3. can't recall, but pretty
4. my favorite shrub roses
5. claudia revels
6. rare cigarette flower ;)
7. very common, lovely local wild flower (don't know name)
8. cuore di maria, senza sangue
9. stink bug lays eggs
10. claudia, dino, our gabriella, philippa