Surprise visit and Farewells

Monday marked the beginning of Cecilia's vacation. She will be gone for about a week or so and that means that Matt and I will have to run the shop during the afternoons. Today we started off with another lesson with Anna-Lisa. This lesson was a little different from the others because we actually started to listen to some Italian music while reading the lyrics. Remember how I put in my journal entry the other day that I was feeling more confident and getting better with Italian? Well after this lesson I felt like I had made zero progress. We had homework that we had to have done today and I of course did it. The only problem was that almost everything I wrote down was incorrect. Since there are so many pronouns for the Italian language, its hard to get it right the first time. I was so frustrated with how poorly I performed during the lesson  that I just felt like I would never get the hang of it. I can only dust myself off from this defeat and get back to work. It seems like overtime I think I am starting to get the hang of it, there's some other wall I face that knocks me down.

My difficult day did not end with the lesson. Lunch was another challenge that I had to overcome. Since Pinnucia left with Don Luigi to take Don Heriberto to the doctor in Roma, there was little time for her to prepare lunch. The first course was simply pasta with cheese; a decent start so far. But when I saw the main course, I knew that I would have a difficult time swallowing it. On the cart were fried eggs and this dish that almost looks like lasagna, but is stuffed with I think are zucchini. The eggs were simply fried with nothing else done to them. I really only like my eggs one way, scrambled. I told Don Luigi that I would try one, but already knew that I would not like it. I only managed to get half of it down before I called it quits. Today was just full of obstacles that I had to break through.

The afternoon was more promising. Since the weather here was not the best, there weren't a lot of people visiting today. Actually I think there no Italians who came to Sacro Speco; only foreigners. I got bored and decided that I would take some more photos of the church, since there weren't too many people. 

Once I was done taking my photos Don Luigi showed up in the shop and told us that we could close early today. My afternoon seemed like it would turn out much better than the morning. Matt and I decided to try some of the liquor that they sell in the shop so we could get a better sense of what were actually selling. Since we can take basically anything we want from the shop to try, we took two small bottles to try out. I found both of them to be very good drinks and will not mind finishing them off over the next week or so. 

At dinner I was surprised with a bunch of pizzas. I was expecting something completely different for dinner, but pizza works for me. We usually have soup, and I was crushed to see that there were no soup bowls put out, but once I heard the word pizza, everything else didn't matter anymore. We were also given some beer from Sardegna, where Don Luigi is from, to try. The beer and pizza were of course both delicious. I had to have eaten at least six large slices. This dinner makes me nostalgic for the college years all over again. Pizza and beer was what we lived on during the weekends. 

Tuesday was looking like another slow day for us in the shop, so Clara had us help her do some inventory. She said that Santa Claus had stopped by and delivered some gifts. By this she meant that we had gotten some nativity scenes for the shop. While we were going through what we had room for, an unexpected guest showed up. It was Brian Walsh, another volunteer who was stationed in Israel. Matt came running up the stairs telling me that Brian had just shown up in the shop. I didn't believe him and had to take a look for myself. Sure enough, he was standing right in front of me. We asked Clara if we could take some time to show him around and she of course agreed. 

We took him everywhere we had discovered during our time here. We also of course took him to places that were closed off to the public. We asked him how he got up to Sacro Speco and he told us that he walked. Now I don't know if I made this clear last time, but it took us about 45 minutes to walk from the waterfall which is a little past halfway between Sacro Speco and Subiaco. He did all of this with a backpack strapped  to his back as well. I must say that I was really impressed. We asked him where he was staying for the night and he hadn't made any plans yet, so we suggested that he just crash here. We knew we had an extra room and Don Luigi wouldn't mind. The only one who might have a problem with it was Don Carlo, and he was in Roma for the day, so everything worked out perfectly. 

Later that night we had dinner outside of the monastery where we ate my first night here. We were saying farewell to Pinnucia'sItalia brought here son and daughter for dinner along with their spouses. Don Ignacio was actually impressed by how Brian was able to finish the huge pizza. Even I couldn't fit it all down like the last time I came, but I wasn't the only one. I think the only people who actually finished their pizzas were Don Luigi, Brian, and Italia's son-in-law. After we got back to the monastery, Matt, Brian, and I had some celebratory drinks that we had taken from the shop the day before. Afterwards we all decided to call it a night and head to mass in the morning.

Wednesday morning started off a little different than usual. First of all we did not have morning prayer. For whatever reason Don Luigi said that we would have it and to do either a reading or prayer in our rooms. This was the first time that this has ever happened here during my time. We took Brian to the mass in the morning and then showed him where to get breakfast. Once we were done with the meal, it was time for Matt and I's lesson with Anna-Lisa. Now the bad thing was that neither Matt or I had actually completed the homework because of the surprise guest. You could imagine that Anna-Lisa was not too thrilled about that one.

We introduced Brian to Anna-Lisa, who once again speaks both German and Italian. Brian happens to speak German pretty well, mainly since his monastery's language is German, so we asked him to distract her while we attempted to finish the homework. I am sad to say that our plan did not work. For our homework, I received an F and Matt received and F minus minus. She also threatened to bring in a ruler next time and slap our hands whenever we didn't do the homework. 

Our lesson today was similar to our lesson on Monday. We listened to music again while trying to figure out what the lyrics were saying. We listened again to the same song on Monday, but this time she wanted us to translate what he was saying into English. Now of course she had no idea what we were saying in English, since she doesn't know much, but she did keep checking what we were translating. Brian actually did sit on in our lesson and saw what we go through on. He even said that this was a lot more strict than what he experienced when trying to learn Hebrew. Whoever said English was the hardest language to learn obviously didn't take Italian. They would probably be pulling their hair out trying to make sense of all this stuff. 

After the lesson was done, I walked to the shop. Clara was there and she said that she would get me some tea. The machine in the store had been broken for a few weeks and I couldn't have my tea to warm me up, but it got fixed over the weekend. I was just about to enjoy my nice steaming hot cup of tea when a German man walked into the store looking for a tour guide in either German or English. Clara looked at me and I had no other choice but to accept. I had to force down my hot tea in seconds and head outside to give the tour. The weird thing about this tour was that only one person could actually speak English. It was a family of 4 and the son would translate what I said. He told me before I got started that his English was not all that great either and that I should stick the basics, so I had to continuously rephrase what I said. This was probably one of the most difficult torus to give, since I never had to wait for someone to translate what I said who didn't speak very much English. Clara told me before I went out to give a short tour. That is kind of what I did, since I could not go into too much detail about each fresco without confusing their son. When I returned to the shop I told Clara that it was a difficult tour due to the whole translating thing. If Anna-Lisa hadn't left 5 minutes before they arrived, I would have asked her to give the tour.

Today at lunch the Abbot ate with us. Matt had given his seat to Brian and since Don Heriberto was still in Roma, there were enough seats for everyone. I noticed Don Luigi staring at me with a look of confusion. Little did I know that he was trying to figure out who I reminded him of. He said he finally figured it out. I reminded him of Eddy Murphy. Yeah that's right, Eddy Murphy the comedian/actor. Everyone burst out into laughter and Matt brought up that I was called Usher back in Roma. Don Luigi asked if I liked Eddy Murphy because I look a lot like him, with my facial expression and all. He then even said that Italians love Eddy Murphy. like that would make me feel better. I guess no matter where I got I will be compared to some famous black person, because we apparently all look alike.

When we opened the shore in the afternoon, Don Ignacio came in telling us what he did and didn't like in the shop. Basically everything that had something to do with Benedict could stay and everything else had to go, which is most of the shop. He just would pick up an item and say, "Orribile". I agree with Don Ignacio about some of the things, but the store would be pretty bare if we got rid of half of that stuff. The store is Clara's baby, so I dare not change a thing, because I would never hear the end of it.

We said our good-byes to both Brian and Pinnucia's daughter and remained in the shop for the rest of the day playing with Miciotto. Yeah that cat is starting to become less and less of a nuisance. 

Oh yeah, apparently today Matt got serenaded by Mattia outside of the shop. Matt made the mistake of trying to save Brian from Mattia talking him to death and Mattia the opportunity to grab onto Matt and sing to him. I wasn't there for this one, but Matt did manage to bring it up at dinner tonight. Also Don Carlo once again had something to say to Mattia. Tonight Mattia was talking about sending letters or something to all the monasteries. Don Carlo was trying to figure out where this conversation was going and finally said to Mattia "all you do is talk without saying anything". Another classic Mattia habit.

Thursday was going to be a very busy day for us in the shop. Matt and I had planned to clean the scala santa (the holy stairs) in the morning before groups showed up. It was on the "gift" Cecilia left us when she went on her week vacation. Matt started while I went to the shop to let Clara know where we would be. Apparently we are only supposed to clean the stairs either before we open or after we close. Don Luigi had us assigned for another task today, cleaning the cemetery. I was kind of hoping that they forgot about this, because Matt and I both agreed that it was pointless to clean up leaves that were only going to be back in a few days. It would make more sense to clean the once all the leaves on the trees had fallen. I went to tell Matt what Don Luigi said and he had already finished cleaning the stairs. Looks like one of our small tasks was already done. While cleaning the stairs, Matt actually broke the broom. The reason why I mention this is because today was not a good day for brooms. I also broke one when cleaning the cemetery. It's more accurate to say that it fell apart on my after sweeping a little bit of the leaves.

We made our way out to the cemetery and walked all the way down to the first gate. Cecilia said in her note that we had to clean from gate to gate, which is a pretty long way to sweep leaves. We first started off by sweeping most of the stuff back into the woods. We learned this from Cecilia herself. She said it's all nature anyway so it might as well be with the rest of nature. We did hit a little bit of a snag while we were cleaning. At one point it would double our work if we swept the leaves over the edge, so we got creative and used a dust pan to toss the leaves over. At one point that was all we used to pick up the leaves since they had piled enough to be scooped up. Right when we were finishing, some strange woman and her son drove up in their car. Now this driveway is a private driveway only for those who are visiting the graves of their loved ones or someone who works at the monastery. These two people were neither. I wouldn't have mind their presence, but they took it upon themselves to start picking flowers from the bushes in the cemetery. Matt and I were both surprised and had no clue what to do about this so we acted liked they weren't even there and continued with our work. As they were leaving, the lady started to talk to Matt from her car. I asked Matt what she had said and he told me that she was making no sense. She later attempted to talk to me, but I of course couldn't fair any better than Matt trying to understand her. I just noticed her son pulling flowers and branches from where we just cleaned making a mess all over again. We told Don Luigi what happened at lunch today and he said we should have gotten here license plate number. I guess she's banned from the cemetery now.

In the afternoon there were two English tours, one for me and one for Matt. The first grow arrived at 3 and requested to have a mass and a tour. When they talked to me, they said they would prefer to do the tour first and the mass second. Don Luigi insists on having groups doing mass first and then the tour, but Matt and I didn't really want to argue with the group. Matt started the tour and I waited in the shop for the other group. They showed up a little before 4 and were ready to do the mass. I went to look for Matt and saw that his group was still on tour, which meant they hadn't done their mass yet. Since my group was smaller, I suggested that I would take the smaller chapel while his group would take the other. I tried to get my group to do the tour first, but they insisted on having mass first. Today was just filled with groups who were unwilling to work with us. I took them down to the chapel and prepared the other mass for Matt. The only problem is that there is only one set of books for mass in English. Luckily my group came prepared, but they wanted to have the larger print for their priest, since his eyesight wasn't all that great. I apologized over and over again saying that we only have the one set and the other group also requested a mass. I went back to the shop and waited for them to done with mass so I could start the tour.

The lead woman of the group said they were on a tight schedule and wanted to see Santa Scholastica, so I had to cut my tour in half. I knew it would be impossible because in my group there were older people who had trouble walking up and down stairs. I tried as hard as I could to finish within thirty minutes, but what people forget is that there are a lot of frescoes and a story behind each one. I felt terrible skipping some frescoes or rushing through others. I think the tour lasts at least 45 minutes, so they only had time to go inside the shop and buy the book of the tour of Santa Scholastica. I once again felt terrible about this, but there's nothing I could possibly do with a group of older people who have trouble walking quickly.

Before we closed the store. I asked Don Luigi if it would be possible for us to drive outside tonight to get some photos of the monastery. He of course agreed and we would go right after dinner. So check out some of the awesome photos I managed to take.