That's Why Italians Eat So Well!

It's because their school children are given a full three course meal for school lunch - complete with checked table cloth, real plates, knives for cutting their meat, and glass glasses and pitchers that they pour themselves. These children are 6 and 7 people.

This week has been a doozy.  We have been drop dead tired every night and after what I'm sure is a 1,000 calorie sausage laden feast I usually fall right to sleep.  Teaching has gone pretty well and these kids are really adorable.  Almost adorable enough not to want to lock them in a classroom...  But seriously, we have had a very enjoyable time so far and working with these kiddos has been a good thing.  I have 12 6-8 year olds and Max has 13 8-12 year olds for 8 hours a day.  Woa.

We both have lovely host families that I'll write more about later - but Max is with a great family, Cynthia (pronounced Chintzea) and Franco, and he shares a killer bunk bed with their 10 year old son Fabio.  He's just adorable.  My family, Rita and Gasper, have two little boys, Ricardo and Andrea and I'm in a palatial suite with my own bathroom.  Both families have been very generous and very understanding of our married-ness.  They have worked out a schedule were we take turns doing things together with one or the other families and sometimes all together. It's been quite nice actually.

We didn't know what to expect on all fronts, but so far we are very happy that we risked it.  We are actually in a little town of about 4,000 at the base of Camerino called Castelraimondo (Raymond's Castle graces the main square).  The views are breathtaking and we wouldn't have traded this experience for any other non-screaming job we could have been doing these two weeks.    

More later.  Must pass out.