SUNDAY AUGUST 26TH
This place is so quiet right now. It's 3 p.m. and I just came upstairs from my room and I
don't know who is here. I smell sauce (suco) cooking in Dora's kitchen. Christain's car is
gone so I think they all went out. The grandmother left to fly home with her son (Miriam's dad) but could Miriam, her mom, sister, 2 kids and Roberto all fit in the one car? Josie, his wife (Ida), their 2 kids Gulia(Julia) who's 8 and Luca who is 6 left to go back home today too. They live in Rome. Ida works for the Italian Senate. Josie, not sure. Ida said something funny the other day. It sounded funny to me. She said she and the 2 kids stayed here last week while Josie had to go back to Rome to work. And said that it was better here for her kids because "there's nothing to do in Rome"! For me , a tourist, I loved being in Rome but I know if you live there it's no big deal. Josie is the son of the son of the Baron (deceased). He and his family usually only spend one week a year here in his apartment. This year they spent 2.
I realized the other day when I got locked out of the castle and had to ring a door bell that there is a door bell for each of the apartments here. I also got the correct spelling of all the names. Here it goes:
MARIA
CARLA
GIUSEPPE
PROSPERINA
MARIO
GIOSUE (Josie)
And of course Roberto has his own. I don't know why. His 2 sisters don't have one.
So Mario has an apartment here in the castle and one across the street that no one lives in. That's where I stayed for 2 nights during while the wedding guests were all here.
I think I'll have to ask Mario to show me his home on the mountainside outside Tortorella.
Roberto had to photograph it for some magazine because it was so beautiful.
CATIA
This morning I went to church down the hill. After church Catia caught me and said she wanted me to come back to her apartment in town. She speaks no English. She is 50, lives with her mom in an apartment on the hill on the way down from the castle. But we've kind of learned to communicate a little. She wanted me to give her some recipes. So after going back home to the castle to tell Miriam Catia wanted me, I returned. What an experience it was being with this 90 lb. very exuberant, way too much energy, in your face Italian woman! She knows I don't understand when she goes on and on about something. I can only understand what she's saying if she goes slow and uses a lot of hand gestures. And then her mother comes over, in my face too and goes on and on in Italian and I'm just about in tears. It took some time but I was able to give her the recipe to the lemon curd that I'd made for the wedding that people still talk to me about and the sponge cake that I made as the wedding cake too. The conversion from cups to grams was the easiest part. It was the instructions that took a lot of patience. But we got through it. Then I had to stay for lunch. Her mom cooked. First I had gnocchi with sauce, then eggplant 2 ways and then potatoes cooked in olive oil and some kind of beef that was so tender and delicious I wanted to ask what it was but by this time I was exhausted with the translation problem. Before we ate, Catia and I made Nutella muffins together. She gave me 3 to take back home. To drink with dinner, Catia put about 10 drops of white wine in her glass then filled it with water. Her mom put about a quarter of a glass of red wine and the rest filled with water. I had a full glass of white wine. When they were dishing out the gnocchi they were in each others' face about exactly how much to give me and how much each of them were going to have. Very funny. Her mom took bread to wipe her plate clean at the end. And then we had to have fruit. Out comes the bowl of fresh fruit-grapes, figs, banana, pear and plums. I had 1 fig. I was stuffed. Had to go home to lay down I was so full.
Their apartment is exactly what I would have imagined. Many, many figurines and little statues everywhere. The kitchen was kept very dark. It was hard for me to see in there while her mom cooked. The dining table and chair set had many types of wood inlayed-very beautiful and it did not have one single scratch in it. Looked like it had never been used even though we were all sitting at it. The hutch that matched (it was huge) was jammed packed full of little nicknacks and figurines. Everything in their apartment is covered with tile. Not stone like the castle.
Before Catia sat down to eat, she went and kissed her fathers' picture.
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