the great naval battle of 1668

In case I wasn't clear in my last post, Morgano is one of several tiny towns around Treviso, which is a fairly prominent city in the Veneto (the region of Venice). It was even smaller than my hometown. The primary entertainment for our host siblings was to attend the traveling carnival, which was in the area the entire time we were. Yep, we went almost every night.

The best night at the carnival, or sagra, was its last night in Quinto di Treviso, when there was a massive fireworks display. Tess (Liam's lovely lady) and I were there, trying to keep each other entertained while we were surrounded by Italian teenagers with bad hair and tee shirts bearing English slogans that didn't make sense.

The fireworks spectacle began with a strange array of bobbing lights on the lake we were facing. At first I thought they were in boats, but we realized that they were actually being held up by people walking towards us in the water. Being the imaginative, theatrical types that we are, Tess and I started improvising a story about this grand Venetian tradition, and it goes a little something like this:

Many, many years ago (nearly 500 years ago, in fact), a group of travelers were sailing in search of a new land. Their cargo included a great deal of explosives, and in hindsight, that was a really horrible idea. Suddenly, they were attacked by a pirate ship. The pirates fired upon the travelers, resulting in a fantastic fireworks display. Eventually, the travelers were completely disarmed (by this we mean their actual limbs were removed, not their weapons), and had to swim ashore, waving their burning arms (yes, their own limbs) above their heads to light the way. Once they made it to dry land, they walked until they could walk no more, and when the finally collapsed, they named the location 'Morgano' after the pirate who had attacked them--Captain Henry Morgan.

Now, the descendants of those first settlers commemorate their ancestors' struggles annually by first reenacting the abandonment of the original ship and the subsequent march to shore, and then the naval battle. No one knows why the order has been reversed, but it's tradition. They reenact the battle by shooting fireworks across the lake to the other side, rather than straight up in the air. It was a pretty one-sided battle from what I could tell. They even set the cattails in the lake on fire to show us what the ship would have looked like as it sank.

Tess and I also considered the possibility that the fireworks tipped over, and that's why the cattails caught on fire and why the rockets were a little bit crooked, but we think our story offers a more interesting explanation.

Maybe the whole thing was a little silly, but do you know what I noticed on the wall of the staircase to my bedroom when I got home? A framed, completed jigsaw puzzle of a painting depicting a great naval battle, complete with burning ships.

Yep. The Great Naval Battle of '68.

morgano

Did anyone else, after reading over the last post, think that the creepy biker might possibly have been the legendary Bruno, from my very first English camp two years ago? Anyone?

Anyway, I just thought of a couple things I forgot to mention about my time in Milan:

My coworker Kelly (a former competitive swimmer) and I (a former lifeguard and also an awesome swimmer) got into quite a little debate with our camp director last week over whether or not our students should be allowed to swim after lunch. She assumed that we would want to take the children to the pool in the morning, because an afternoon at the pool was out of the question, and when I said that swimming after eating wouldn't be an issue, she said that maybe in my country, we don't eat large enough lunches. Excuse me, have we met? I'm from America. Forget that there's been no documented case of anyone drowning due to a post-meal cramp. Forget that Michael Phelps somehow found time to eat, according to some reports, 12 THOUSAND calories while training for the Olympics, and miraculously managed to never drown. Seriously. It's 2011.

On a brighter note, I had the coolest host family last week. At least, one of the coolest. Ever. I just really connected with them. The mom was so funny and real, kind of like Lynette off of Desperate Housewives. She would always make weird faces at me when no one else was looking during dinner, or do random things like move her plate so that the waitress would get confused when she was clearing the table at a restaurant. Maybe other people would find those things strange, but I do that type of stuff too, so I got a kick out of it. The host dad was generous with compliments, but still managed to make them all sound totally genuine, which is a talent I wish I possessed. He complimented his wife and her cooking constantly, and I thought that was really beautiful. The two of them were treating me like a daughter after the first week.

Anyway, I made a successful escape from Milan (after hitting up the sale at H&M and spending way more than I should have), and am now chillaxing in Morgano, a little town outside of Treviso, which is near Venice. My house has a pool and a pretty sweet room just for me, with my own half bathroom (which is always nice). I've been reunited after two years with Liam, who has brought his lovely girlfriend with him this summer, and our group is rounded out by another American and a Canadian. I'm working with the little ones this week, and it's been a great camp so far.

This weekend should hopefully include a reunion with Josephine and a day trip to an exciting and as-yet-undetermined location. Stay tuned!

when it's hot, the crazies come out to play

So. . . sometimes things get worse before they get better. Or they get a little better, and then worse, and then better again. Either way, there was no obvious change in camp come Monday. I will say that I had a pretty good weekend, largely filled with procrastination of the 'let's plan to go to the swimming pool/park all day and then not actually leave until 5 in the afternoon' variety, and--here's the best part--I got to see part of an Italian baseball game when we finally made it to the park on Sunday afternoon! The pitching could not have been any faster than 60 or 70, and I could easily start in the outfield for the teams we watched, but it was still really cool.

But back to camp.

The children came back on Monday with just as much unharnessed energy. I pushed for no water games, worried that it would get out of hand, but in the end we decided to keep the pace of the games slow and make sure that the children had no access to the balloons. In the end, I think we were able to manage it well.

As it became more and more obvious that the kids weren't going to change their attitudes (even though we thought they needed to), we decided that we would have to change ours instead. I instituted a policy based on a philosophy of a friend of mine: we, the tutors, were only allowed to have good days or great days, and that choice was up to us.

A large part of our will to survive came from our after-work excursions to the brewery around the corner. It became something to look forward to, and it also encouraged team bonding and good communication. And the drinks were top notch (two words: free pour).

It was on our way to this brewery Thursday afternoon, sans Will, that Cat, Kelly, and I got a huge (not literally) and completely unwelcome surprise. We were walking down the sidewalk, discussing the day that had been. The graffiti around us was beautiful, we were in the shade, a man on a bike wearing blue spandex did a double take in our direction as he swerved off the street and onto the sidewalk, before vanishing into the distance--everything was as it should have been. We walked and talked and were off in our own world.

But Kelly's panicked voice brought us back. "Um, WHAT?! What was that man doing?" We had just passed the cyclist in blue spandex.

"Was he doing something weird?" I asked, as we stopped. I already had an idea of what she was going to say, even though I hadn't seen anything. And according to Kelly, the unfortunate eyewitness, I was correct.

By this time, we were about ten feet past him. I turned around, stared him down, and said, "What the [swear word here] do you think you're doing?" He looked back for a second, decided we were too much trouble, and rode off on his bike.

There was no one else on the block for us to shout to or get help from, so we just watched helplessly. We were kind of in shock. I felt all of this adrenaline inside of me as I grabbed Kelly's arm and asked her if she was all right. Then I insisted she let me buy her a strong drink when we got to the bar.

In hindsight, I'm really annoyed that I didn't act immediately. I've been looking for a valid reason to get in a real, live, prison rules fight for a long time, and I think I could have taken this guy. Or at least gotten a couple good swings in, or scared him off with my crazy lady vibes and lots of shouting. I'm pretty sure I can handle a 40-something in bike shorts (consider that your warning, Lance Armstrong).

A couple rounds of Long Island Iced Teas helped to numb the pain, but we decided that maybe some days can't be good, or even great, and Thursday just couldn't be salvaged. We didn't get a lot of support from the Italians around us, either. "It's very hot out; he was probably out of his head," was one excuse that we heard from multiple people. Someone else even asked us if it was just too urgent for him to wait and that's why he had to do that right there, in front of us, on the sidewalk. There is no excuse for this, but at least this article helped me feel like we're not alone in being victims of harrassment/sexism in this country.

Saw a rat on the way to school on Friday. Yum. The final show went off very well, however, besides the parents talking all through it and babies crawling across our stage. The kiddos gave us very sweet cards they'd made. (Mine said, 'You are the best!')

To sum up Milan: there are parts of this city I'll miss. I've had a great host family, with a host mother who's agreed to share the newly single George Clooney with me, and I've worked with some wonderful people. Overall, however, I'm so excited to head east to Treviso today.

Pictures soon.