Dottore, dottore! And fish with lights inside them
Awright everyone! Everyone who is reading this anyway… Come andate? Va bene?! let’s resume the adventures. Spaniard of Serampore, I am glad to see you are being as conscientious and regular with your blog as we were in India and Africa haha… hey is Fluff with you now?!
I am in Italy now! Padua to be exact in the Veneto region in the north-east, Venice is close by on the train and lots of other towns like Verona and Treviso and Vicenza. There’s some little mountains nearby and the countryside I’ve seen from the train is green-ish and flat and foresty with a few vineyards and cottages but it seems pretty industrial. But the towns are full of peeling yellow and pink sumptuous old buildings and piazzas and churches all gorgeous and decorated and ancient.
Padua or Padova as they call it is almost too romantic in spots, we are living in an apartment facing on to the river crossed by iron bridges and lined with autumn trees and golden leaves scattered along the banks. It’s close to 3 huge piazze, ‘dei Signori’, ‘della Frutta’ and ‘dell’ Erbe’, I have bought a 2nd-hand bicycle and ride to work along knobbly cobbly streets and past enormous markets of fruit and clothes, and old columns and painted arches and balconies and men standing around smoky hot chestnut braziers (sorry, it just isn’t cold enough for that yet though. They are getting far too excited). Everyone has old clanking bicycles with huge handlebars like in a story.
Since we got here it has been real warm and lovely and we spent lots of gorgeous afternoons in the ‘Parc dell Arena’ lounging on grass and eating in the sunshine and also at this MASSIVE square, well it’s more like an oval, the Prato della Valle which is apparently the second largest square in Europe. I don’t know what the biggest is. But it’s amazing for riding your bike round, it’s so smooth and wide. And it’s got a little canal going round the centre. Everyone was hanging out there in the sunshine last week. Today it got grey and rainy at last.
On Wednesday evenings everyone (that is, the 12 million students there seem to be in Padova) gather in our Piazza dell Erbe (a huge square with an old palace on one side with posh meat and cheese shops underneath it, I think I saw a horsemeat stall there the other day). They set up a little soundsystem and there’s drumming and all the people bring their wine and sit on the cobbles or at a bar and drink ‘spritz’ which is this weird aperitif the colour of Irn-Bru with campari and gin and wine and something awful bitter in it, it’s a bit wrong but they all like it… so we bin drinking it too. It seems like you have to, there isn’t anything else…
The first 2 weeks I was going to ‘Eurotraining’, the organisation who organised everything, there are 11 of us on the programme who came to Padova. We went to their language school to learn Italian in the mornings, which was great fun and very helpful and I think we needed more, on Monday we all started our work placements in various locations, including a maskmaking workshop in Venice and one girl making handbags… Rebecca who I’m living with is working for a fashion-type design company who make knitted things… I am in the English International School of Padova, a huge place of 700 students where I’m in the classroom helping teachers with Reception (4 years old) and Year 2 (7) children. They are bananas. Lovable though. But very strange. They ask really good questions like, but Miss Gillian but but why does the fish have a light inside it? And how can the sun be the biggest star when it is so small (holding thumb and forefinger up close together and squinting with one eye). Yesterday I made a puppet theatre with the reception ones and today they were going to do a puppet show but they just ended up bashing each other’s puppets to death and then knocking the theatre over. Hurrah!
Also I have seen more types of pasta in the supermarket than I ever thought was possible. I specially like the ones that are like little ears. The ice cream really is damn good too (and I don’t even have a sweet tooth)… and the conkers are HUGE.
Lizzy and Hannah, would you mind sending some of those orange German teabags of Carolin’s to me? Address is
Riviera San Benedetto 60
35139 Padova
Regular ones too if you can spare any… pleeese…?!?!?! dying for tea.
I hope everyone is well, lots of love from me. And how’s the new Broadway?!?!?!
Xxx
