10 August 2009

Serle: Lock up your husbands. . .

I'm goin' home, gonna load my shotgun, wait by the door and light a cigarette. He wants a fight, well now he's got one, and he ain't seen me crazy yet. Slapped my face and he shook me like a rag doll- don't that sound like a real man? I'm gonna show him what little girls are made of- gunpowder and lead.

I was expecting to be sent far away from Prevalle next, but in the end, they sent Sinead and I just up the mountain to a town called Serle. It was the smallest town I stayed in all summer, with only 3000 residents, but the people were extremely welcoming- maybe too welcoming. . .

The first night, our camp director, Alvaro, took us to a local pizzeria to meet everyone. That went well. There was good food, and they poured us a little wine, and everyone was super nice. Afterwards, they asked us if we'd like to stay for dinner. Neither Sinead nor I was particularly hungry, so we said we'd go home since our host mum, Francesca, wanted to eat there. However, a group of our students' fathers (and a couple of mothers) insisted that was stay. This was around 9 o'clock.
They poured us glass after glass of wine. There was dancing, there was saxophone-playing, there were not-so-discreet references to our chests, there were creepy statues- it's sort of a blur. At 12:30, however, Antonio, the owner of the restaurant, asked us if we would like to go out dancing at a club. Yep, we went with him, to a club on the shore of Lake Garda. His friend Damiano drove, and on the way back, he played country music, including the song at the top of this post, 'Gunpowder and Lead' by Miranda Lambert. That's one thing I never thought I'd hear while I was in this country. Oh, PS, two Italian men told me that they loved me that night. Be jealous.
The next day they had offered to take us out on a boat, but none of us were up for that in the end.
Camp began on Monday. It was just two classes, and we were in one big meeting room sort of place. Kind of crimped my style, I'm not gonna lie. We had some great kids, though.
By Wednesday, they were obsessed with the word bottom. I get it. It's a funny word. Every time we would sing a song, they would insert the word bottom. One of the boys, Floyd, was really, really clever about it. I think he was some sort of genius with languages, actually, because his ability to put together sentences in English really amazed me, and he was only 10. When Sinead would sing, "I am the music man, I come from far away," Floyd would sing, "I am the bottom man, I come from far a-bottom." Actually really funny. I have a video.

So yeah, everything went well until the show. . . and that went really well too. Probably my best show of the summer. I had some really good students in Serle.

After the show, we went to a different restaurant where Antonio cooked for us once again. We got there around 10 and left at 5 or so, and most of that is a blur. The dads were at it again, pouring us wine, grappa, and limoncello, and we sang 'Take Me Home Country Road,' 'Yesterday,' and 'Hotel California' karaoke-style. Sinead said Floyd's dad groped us but I do not recall that at all. Actually, there's sort of a window from around 2 to 4 where I think I was asleep, so that's nice. It was a wild night.

1 comment:

Uncle Dave said...

Glass after glass of wine. Groping. Need I say it again? Men are pigs!