We Love Sperlonga

The first weekend in June was an Italian holiday weekend. The actual holiday was Thursday, but everyone takes the 'bridge' day, Friday, off too. Last year I had no idea about this holiday, so we didn't plan anything to take advantage of the four day weekend. So this year, I booked a VRBO in January, to make sure that we could go to Sperlonga  for this holiday weekend.
Lucky for us, our friends - the Merx family- decided to rent a house in Sperlonga too, so we spent the whole weekend together.
We left Rome Wednesday afternoon and made the hour and half drive to Sperlonga. We checked into our house, did some grocery shopping, made dinner and settled in for the night. Thursday morning we woke up to rain! It downpour rained until noon. The Merx's drove up Thursday morning and hung out at our house until the rain cleared up. We went down to the beach about 1pm and spent the afternoon at the beach. It was still a bit chilly- but kids do not have thermometers and played in the water anyways.
Fortunately, the rest of the weekend was sunny and beautiful! We were able to enjoy 3 days of sand, sun and friends!

Clark and Owen were very serious about their hole digging and walls of protection.

Ryan did come out of his hiding space a few times to pull the kids on the boogie boards

Charly, Ellika, Kate, Owen, Clark and JR

Pizza is better with friends!

One night we went up in to the 'Old Town" and I tried to get a picture looking out over the beach, but the sun wi

Kate and Ellika were besties all weekend!

This was our home base. You rent the cabana for the day, so you dont have to bring your own chairs and such. Its so worth it! Plus, this is where Ryan hangs out under the shade all day!

We bought some sluhies from a traveling salesman on the beach

Kate, Ellika, Owen and Clark. We are so lucky to have such good friends who live in Rome!

It only took 10 minutes on the road for everyone to fall asleep! Vacation success!

Paestum

I admit it. I am really bad at documenting the cool things we've been able to see while living it Italy. I feel like the last 3 months have been a turning point for me. I think its a combination of learning Italian and being here long enough that Italy is my new normal. Its not scary or overwhelming anymore. So, naturally, we are getting out there to explore a little bit more. I would like to travel more than we do, but life has its way of taking over. We have church activities, soccer tournaments, birthday parties and sometimes we just want a Saturday at home.  But we are finding our middle ground and slowly, we are getting out there.
Now, if I was a good blogger, I'd go back and blog about all the things we've done, but that's too overwhelming. So I'm starting with this field trip we went on May 18-20th.
 Kate and Clark have been studying ancient Greece all year,  and the third grade took a 3 day trip to an old Grecian city, Paestum , about 3 hours south of Rome. Lucky for me, they opened up the field trip for parents too. In all honesty, I wasn't thrilled about sending my 9 year old twins on a 3 day field trip without either Ryan or I with them.  We don't even do spend the nights with friends, so spending the night in a hotel room with 2 other kids their age, had me worried. Ryan and I wanted them to have the opportunity to go, so we decided that I would go with them.  ( Ryan even agreed to take time off work to be with Charly and JR)
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the trip! The teachers were amazing. They had the kids on task and entertained the whole time. The social studies teacher had been taking 3rd graders on this trip for over 25 years, so she had everything down to a science. So I was able to just tag along and see all cool things there.


Day 1:
4 hours on a bus. But then we got to step off the bus and see these amazing Greek temples.

Clark with some of his friends (Carl, Giacamo, Guilian, Clark, Alon, Francesco)

Me trying to be artistic with my camera. PS poppy's grow wild everywhere in Italy

This olive tree is enormous. It is said to be thousands of years old. 

All of the kids in 3rd Grade

Token Instagram picture

Day 2: We went to another ancient Grecian city, Veila.  The ruins in this city date back to 500 BC.

Clark and his best friend Alon

This archway is famous because of its 'double archway" construction.  Greeks were the leaders in engineering and building

All the kids had journals and we would stop and the kids would sketch the ancient ruins

Kate and one of her besties - Gabrielle

Amphitheater

Beautiful view of the coast from behind the ancient temples

Every evening before dinner the kids got to go play at the beach by our hotel. The teachers were genius and didn't let them touch the water, but no matter- they loved it all the same.

The second night we went back to the temples to see them lit up and get a late night gelato

Day 3: We visited the Paestum museum to see all the artifacts that have been found in the ancient city. 

I was amazed at how well preserved all the artifacts were

 More sketching....

 Similar to the Egyptians, the Greeks believed in the afterlife and decorated the inside of the tombs. These pictures are the insides of their box like tombs. Many of the well preserved artifacts were found inside the tombs.                                      

Alon, Clark and Lucca

Last but not least we visited a buffalo farm. In Italy, the famous mozzarella cheese is made from the milk of these buffalos.  And yes, it is that good.

Kate with Gabrielle and Keun

Fresh mozzarella. Yes, I bought some. Yes, it was amazing. 

This was the cheese counter with all the different kinds of cheese the farm sold. Cheese is kinda a big deal in Italy. 

Piano, Piano

Literal Translation : level by level

Meaning: little by little, slowly

I love this phrase, and I hate it at the same time. I hear it frequently in my conversations with Italians. Especially when I get frustrated because I cannot say what I want to say.   Most days I feel like I'm speaking Italian like a caveman. But, it is their way of giving encouragement, "don't worry, you will learn Italian, it will come -  little by little". If I had a euro for every time someone said "piano, piano" to me- I'd be rich.

When the new year rolled around and Ryan and I talked about our goals for the year, speaking Italian fluently was on the top of both of our lists. I had been looking for a tutor off and on for a month, but nothing seemed to fit. I met with one tutor, and she was great, I just had to meet her in downtown Rome. Which may not seem like much, but it is. 30 minutes driving to a parking garage, 5 minute walk to the meeting place, 1 hour lesson, back to the car, pick up JR from a babysitter and back home. It took all day for a one hour lesson.
One night I was talking to Ryan about some other tutors I had been referred to, and he says to me, "why don't we just use Giuseppe?" Giuseppe works on the temple job site as a translator and also teaches english at a university in Rome.
I, of course, said 'heck yeah!" (and why didn't you mention this earlier? - but thats besides the point). The next week Giuseppe started coming to our house on Tuesday and Thursday nights from 7-9pm.
You might think- isn't 7-9pm a little bit busy with four young kids? Well, I'm glad you noticed, because yes- somedays it's a real struggle. It took us a few weeks to figure out our groove, but we've pretty much got it figured out.
I make a very simple dinner and we eat around 6:30pm (yes that is early for Italian standard time) If Ryan gets home at a decent time, he gives Charly and JR a bath before dinner. If he doesn't get home early, then they get a quick wash down and underwear change from me.

We eat and when Giuseppe shows up at 7, Ryan puts the littles to bed, Kate and Clark clean up dinner and do the dishes (they're pretty awesome) and I practice talking like a caveman with Giuseppe.
I do have to give a little shout out to Ryan right here. He knows that I get very little practice speaking Italian during the day - and he speaks it all day long - so he willingly gives me that first 30-45 minutes with Giuseppe to practice.

Now for my own sake of remembrance, I want to talk about our very first lesson.  I was deathly terrified of having to speak Italian for 2 hours straight. I had been studying Rosetta Stone off and on, and using some books to help with vocabulary, but most of my interactions in Italian were mostly one word answers to questions. Giuseppe was very kind and spoke very slowly in Italian and some English too. We did VERY basic stuff, I can't even remember what it was, but I had already learned it ages ago. But when Giuseppe asked me a question and I had to give a complete sentence as an answer I almost cried. In fact, as soon as Giuseppe left that night I broke down and cried like a baby. It was overwhelming. It was terrifying. It was hard. It was uncomfortable. I know I am not a stupid person, but man, I felt like the stupidest person in the world. And I'm a woman, and that is how we process change - we cry. But after I cried it all out, I was ready to pick myself up and try again.

So here we are three months later. In three short months, I have experienced, what Ryan and I call, the rise and fall of the learning curve. One day I will understand most everything in Italian, the next, I can't even respond to the cashier at the grocery store when she asks me a basic question. One day I feel confident in my ability to speak and understand, the next I feel like a complete idiot and like we are wasting our money on me, because I will never figure it out.

One way I gauge my progress is at church. At the beginning of the year when we made our goal to become fluent, we decided it was time to quit using translation at church.  For the first few weeks I got just about nothing out of church. I picked up words here and there, but not meaning, not context. Then I started to figure out the Gospel vocabulary. Once I learned those words, church became a lot easier to understand. I already know the principles of the Gospel, so once I knew the topic they were talking about, it became really easy to pick up on the rest. Now I understand about 90% of church, I have started making comments in classes and have even bore my testimony in Italian. (very basic, 2 minute testimony)

I also accepted the call to be the 2nd counselor in the Relief Society presidency. ( Relief Society is our churchs' organization for the women) Which I believe is Gods way of providing me an opportunity to learn Italian.  I mean, if I have to learn this language to serve Him better, then He's going to help me, right?  This has given me the opportunity to get to know the women in my ward, and has forced me to speak in Italian. Just last week the president asked me to take a woman (I didn't really know) with me to visit an elderly woman in the hospital. All in Italian. I was terrified, but I did it.

Everyday I try to spend at least 30 minutes, ideally an hour, studying Italian. Giuseppe leaves me with homework assignments, and I have one to complete every day. He also gave me the assignment to read "The Little Prince" in Italian.  So really, it's like I've gone back to school. I applaud you women who go back to school after having kids. It's hard. And I'm not worrying about passing a class or getting a good grade. If I don't have time for my homework, no problem, I can just do it the next day. I just know that the more time I put into it, the faster I will learn.

I have also learned a life lesson through this whole experience. That there is a real difference between knowing and doing. I can read Italian on a paper and understand perfectly, or listen to someone speak and understand what they are saying, but speaking it myself is something totally different. We can know something, but the real learning and understanding comes when we actually do what we know. When I use a word or phrase in a conversation, that is the time when I actually learn it, no matter how many times I've reviewed it on a flash card or written it down on a homework assignment. Knowing comes from doing.

As I look back over the last few months, I can see how far I've come, but I also see how much further I have to go. It's fun to think that a year ago I didn't know a word of Italian and now I can understand and do basic communication in Italian. And at the same time I want to learn so much more. I really want to speak fluently by the end of this year. I guess the only way I'll get there is a little at a time.

Giuseppe has become a part of our family- a few weeks ago was his birthday and we celebrated when he came over for our lesson. 

I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty proud of myself for getting an 'A' on my test!