I am now meant to be creating my unit of work on Multicultural Maths. However, I can't be bothered to do that yet. Please understand, I really am very excited about this unit of work, but what with the bloody foxes screeching all night, the crazy man next door holding long distance phone calls at 1am in his back garden (annoyingly close to my bedroom window), and the builders starting their relentless drilling (and singing!) at 8am, well, I am pretty tired today. Except when it comes to using bold in my writing.
Ok, ranting over. Before I bring you part I of the Venice trip, some points of note. In list form for Bertie.
- Jade, p244 of Captain Corelli's Mandolin: "I am the breve, Carlo here is the semibreve, he is the crotchet". A mere 6 pages later: "he could sit with unnerving patience watching Pelagia's hands doing the formal dance of the crochet." So that's how you spell them. Really, what are the chances?
- RIP the Facebook man. Those of you who have met my littlest brother know that he is almost the splitting image of the facebook man, so this is a sad day for us indeed. Initially I was annoyed by the FB changes, but now I am starting to appreciate their true potential stalker powers.
Venice Part I
So we went here, the Veneto region in the northeast of Italy:
Map's not great, but Bertie lives in that place just south of the 5 - Castelfranco. Very exciting place - it seems Berts has found himself an Aylesbury in Italy. Some people would have thought this was impossible, but where there's a will there's a way.
Our holiday began with a little trip on the train. Both transport and drama were to feature strongly in the week (alongside ice cream, strong coffee, and spritz - more on this delight later). Bertie met us at Treviso station and we got on the train to Castelfranco. Strangely none of the stations had any signs on them, and despite purporting to know his way around, we completely missed our stop and ended up in Venice proper (aka Venezia aka the old swampy bit with the canals etc.) Our tickets weren't valid for this journey but luckily some random Australian Italians in our carriage were having a huge long kick-off with the ticket conductors about their tickets, so they didn't catch us. Excellent.
Anyway, to cut a loooong story short, eventually we made it to Castelfranco (learning lots of useful Italian along the way, particularly colours, mmmm gello treno.) Lots of people stared at us, I'd like to think it was because we were stunning rather than because were brown-skinned. Important note: there are about 4 brown people in the whole of Italy, 2 of whom were Dina (Sparrow) and I (I guess Jade counts as half ethnic, congrats Jade!).
Once in Castelfranco we spent a delightful two days wandering around and eating things. Highlights here include (once again in list form):
- Bertie's lovely flatmate Francesca, who gave up her room for us, and spent many a happy evening chortling away in front of her computer (much like me, heehee)
- Pushing two beds together and then sleeping sideways on them with Sparrow and Jade, and then slowly falling into the growing gap between the beds during the night
- The electricity cutting out just in our apartment after a crazy loud storm with thunder and lightening and everything. We all hid in the bed and had a lovely nap and then chatted away.
- Being trialled in an informal court by "Grandma Pink" and "Carmela" held in front of Bertie's building - this was particularly dramatastic because people kept popping their heads out of their windows and chucking their two pence in. Basically "Grandma Pink" bumped into us leaving Bertie's place on Tuesday morning and told him it was against the rules to have guests in Castelfranco unless they were registered with the carabinieri (aka Italian military police aka the Sardinies). Castelfranco apparently is a hot bed for illegal immigrants (where were they all, I didn't see any!) and so they were worried Bertie was setting up some kinda immigration racket (obviously, duh, I mean why else would he know any brown people?). "Carmela" joined in the fun and thus it was decided we couldn't stay there any more. However, later they softened and touched our faces and chatted with us etc. and then decided we could stay after all. Very strange procedures indeed.
- Drinking numerous spritzes while wandering around Castelfranco for hours (strange it took us this long, it's not actually that big). I think this was Bertie's elaborate plan to stop us getting on trains all over Italy - sabotage, *sigh*. Anyway from Wiki: Spritz, an alcoholic beverage has its origins in the Veneto Region, Italy. Spritz is a bitter, summery pre-dinner aperitif made of either Aperol or Campari and mixed with White Wine or Prosecco and Sparkling Mineral Water. It is usually served in a lowball glass with ice, a slice of orange, and sometimes an olive. Particularly like the bit where they say it's a pre-dinner aperitif - one day we started drinking it at about 11am in Beppe's bar, and there was already a bloke in there drinking before us! Sure the Italians don't binge drink - they just drink all day instead.
- Sparrow getting proposed to by the Internet cafe owner (ok, this didn't really happen, but it could have).
- Teaching them to play 304 - an old school Jaffna card game, quite complicated, made more so by having to play with a local Trentine card deck, which is rather different to our standard Americo-French deck.
