A summary of the past few weeks

While I do have internet at home, it's incredibly slow. Dial-up slow. So adding images to blogs, or sometimes even trying to look at a blog, is like watching paint dry at Lascaux. I'll try later to add some photos - now you'll just have to use your imagination.

Anyway here are some highlights from the past few weeks:

My roommate, Teresa, has invited me three times to have lunch at her mom's apartment. We travel by vespa, and arrive around 1:30 for lunch at 2:00. Lunch in Sicily is like a big family dinner in the US - multiple courses (pasta, salad, meat, eggplant parmigiana, followed by fruit - usually watermelon - and gelato) over about 1.5-2 hours. The last two times her brother's family was visiting. His wife is French, they live in London, and have a 4 month old baby, Carla. She was super cute, and sometimes when you smiled at her she'd stop fidgeting and smile back.



A few times Teresa and I have gone to visit our other roommate, Angela, at the hostel, where she is more than she's at home. I might have mentioned before that the alley is full of kittens, but now I have photographic proof! We also watched the World Cup final there, among a very international crowd staying at the hostel.



I've decided to start using couchsurfing as a way to meet more people and practice my Italian. I've been having a pretty good track record meeting interesting people, and I've decided it's a bit like trying on shoes: some you figure out relatively quickly that they're not for you, others you never want to take off. I met up with one girl, Valentina, and we talked for several hours walking around Catania and going to the Internetteria (an internet point and cafe). She invited me to Ragusa and we went on Thursday. It was incredibly gorgeous Baroque town.







We walked around, had lunch with her friends (who were as kind as she is) and had fantastic gelato at a gelateria/enoteca (wine store) called DiVini (a play on words meaning "divine" and also "of wines"). They had gelato flavors like white wine, red wine, rosé, ricotta, pistacchio, carob, and many, many more. I got carob and ricotta, and I'm still dreaming about it.