Day #7 in Orvieto

March 1, 2013

After three hours of dinner and conversation in an Italian family’s home, I now know that laughter, lots of hand gestures, and torta chocolate (chocolate lava cake) can transcend any language barrier. I went into the family dinner tonight (along with Sara, Tyler, and Genevieve) and I really only know a few phrases in Italian: “I like cats.” “Do you have a cat?” “I’m sorry” “This is delicious” and a few ways to say hello and goodbye. So I was a little nervous as the four of us walked up the steps to Alessandro’s sister’s house (Alessandro is one of Gordon in Orvieto’s directors and he is our Italian instructor).  We awkwardly hung around the door, waiting for it to open and then walked up a few stairs, where we looked up to see three small children hanging over the landing above us: “Ciao! Ciao! Ciao!” Alessandro’s sister, Alissa, kissed us hello and her husband, Lucca, greeted us as well. We were told that Alissa could speak a good amount of English, but might pretend not to know much. Alessandro also told us that Lucca didn’t know much English. It was a little awkward at first, because we had already used up all of the phrases we knew after the first five minutes (good evening, my name is __________, nice to meet you, etc). The kids showed us their room, all babbling in Italian at once. They didn’t seem to realize that we couldn’t understand a word they said! We then entered the dining room where the kids then began to run around, wrestle, and show us different movies that they had (Cinderalla, Anastatia, and Spirit – my personal favorite). Dinner began and we had carbonara pasta, spinach, chicken, cauliflower, different types of bread, and wine. We then finished the meal with the torta chocolate and Alissa’s homemade limoncello. It was a little difficult to talk at first; we just talked about siblings, what we were studying, and different places to travel. Thankfully, Alissa knew a ton of English and were ending up talking about everything about life in Orvieto and differences from America. We arrived around 7:30pm and left at 11pm! During the first part of the meal, the oldest daughter, Chiarra, began to show me some of her English workbook – she studies English for 2 hours a week. It was so nice to be around some children again, even if they happened to be yelling in Italian and running around the dinner table. While Chiarra read her book to me, Francesco (5) and Maria (3) were chasing each other around the table and wrestled. They were so cute!

Anyways, there’s a lot more I could write about because we were there for over three hours and we learned so much Italian and about Italy in general, but this is a brief summary of the evening. :) One of the best things about Orvieto is that it’s a very small town, so we will see Lucca, Alissa, Chiarra, Francesco, and Maria again – and see them often!