PASQUETTA

Monday:
Today is "Pasquetta," also known as Easter Monday, or the day of Julia's date with Pietro. Well, let's call it a non-date because I think that's what it was. Or maybe I just like to take my roommates to everything because we are all attached at the hip. Who knows. Unlike in America, in Italy you will receive a pre-date text message asking "how many r u?" Hmm, if I count me, myself, and I, and you, we're 4. But I counted me, Stefania and Brie, and Pietro. Pietro also counted his brother, Roberto.
For those who haven't been updated: I have had email/sms correspondence with Pietro, who is Marina's son, Marina who I met at the Convo's w/ Italians thing that Marcello organized. So anyways, the sons are home for the Easter week and will be our drivers for the week. Like for tomorrow's grocery shopping at Lidl. I just finished another box of Grape Juice. I drink hat stuff like there is no tomorrow. Tehehe. They offered.
They picked us up at the Temple of Apollo and we drove two feet (no lie) to a bakery where we got bread. The next stop was the salumeria, the meat place. The boys got Salame, Prosciutto (cotto e crudo), formaggio e mortadella. We took the goodies to the outskirts of Siracusa, where a friend of Pietro has a summer home at the ocean. Those nice ocean-close streets are the place to be. I'd live there year-round. Anyways, the friends were not there yet, so we took our picnic to the rocks at the beach ans ate until the friends made it to the house. They only needed another half an hour and soon we headed to the one-room house to get the party started. Italians our age like medium sized get-togethers (~20 people or so), cakes board-and cardgames, charades (try playing it english and italian= good times). Everyone was friendly to us, with very limited English skills they matched our limited Italian skills. We the played some volleyball in the backyard and established that pretty much everyone knows Salsa. We'll see ya at 'Amo' on thursdays then. We had a pretty good time and left when the party died down, at around 6ish when it started to rain.
I'm home now with my warm water bottle (no more bombola heating for us) and as soon as Ashley and Stefania come back from Maia's with some dishsoap, I'm going to clean up and make some chicken with tomatoes, olives and capers. And some couscous.
One more thing: Pietro is really angry w/ the government (for those who don't know- the govt has semi-collapsed as Prodi was asked to leave because he is pretty much incompetent) because I guess once you elect someone, they can appoint whoever they want for whatever position (big time nepotism!) and there are too many little parties which makes it harder to actually win.... sounds like democracy is going down the drain in Italy.
Chill time!