Melted german dark chocolate and milk, frothed like a capucchino using the espresso machine's milk steamer! There is nothing better than cradling heated ceramic on a cold night... the warmth exponentially suffuses to every little frozen recess of my body, and I've ventured away from the steam heater for a while.
I know I'm being a baby--the house is only 20 degrees Celsius, and outdoors it never drops below the 8s and 9s. But I lived in Southern California for 4 months before coming here, so I'm claiming a sliver of an excuse.
I finally washed clothes today! First time since arriving in Italy almost two weeks ago, although I did do laundry the day before I left England. By doing a little sign language dance-off with Nona Maria, my live-in grandma, I managed to indicate that I wanted to use her washing machine. She cheerfully gestured that she wanted to take care of it for me, and began stuffing my clothes into her hamster wheel-sized washing machine. So sweet of her to do, and mutually beneficial I think. Feeling needed is poignantly imperative. It's hard to be house-bound with very little to do, particularly when the person you live with is only proficient at basic italian greetings. (Sidenote: when buying unmentionables, consider what your italian grandmother would think. She insisted on hanging my clothes as well...)
My family believes that the only colors I wear are black and red, because all my long sleeved, extra fuzzy/warm/snuggly clothing are some amalgamation of those colors! Unwilling to believe that the word COLD was miscible with the word ITALY, I foolishly packed all my tank tops and just three of my long sleeved shirts for my European foray. I'm going to use this as an excuse to enjoy some italian shopping sooner or later.
Yesterday, I became possessed with a desire to introduce my family to fajitas. I found a great marinade recipe for the meat, but a trip to the grocery market yielded about 2/3's of the ingredients, (they've never heard of cilantro here!), so I just improvised and carried on. Additionally, we couldn't find tortillas, so I attempted to recreate those from distant Honduran memories. After sacrificing 4 hours on the Altar of Cooking, I was able to reestablish how TV dinners had achieved their wild popularity! Fortunately the end results were pretty tasty, and I enjoyed the process.
Today, I made a wall chart for Bruno and Chiara out of posterboard. I'm trying to make learning English fun, so I decided to bring in the big guns and offer stickers in exchange for words learned. We will see how effective I am... so far the English words I've repeatedly taught them have settled on their little Teflon helmets and effortlessly rolled away unlearned. At least that's how it feels. Perhaps a few droplets of English have drizzled into some unprotected inner ear chamber and will spontaneously spawn someday. It's what I'm holding out for!
Well, it's past midnight for me, so I'm off to bed! Gotta be fresh in the morning to prepare a hearty breakfast of cookies and milk for the picolinos before they head off to school, hal!
I love hearing from you, so drop me an email if you get the chance... reichsiempre(at)gmail(dot)com.
Godere la vostra settimana!
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