Once Upon a Meatball.: Sesto Fiorentino

My next station was at Sesto Fiorentino (a town next to Florence/Firenze). I'm placed here for 3 weeks, and I have to say that I would not have picked a better city. Florence is by far the most beautiful city I have visited during my stay in Italy. I love how everything is relaxed, yet structured (mostly referring to my camps, but also the city).

I chose to work with the yellow book this week (the 6-7 year olds). This was quite a jump from working with the green book high schoolers from last week. It makes me feel like a big, bad 8th grader moving on to high school, only to start back at the bottom of the totem pole. But my

kids were so cute. None of them spoke any English before, so I was extremely excited when I got them to say "My name is ___." I was nearly jumping for joy. Sniffles - my little babies, all grown up and speaking English!

My family was great too. Pierre Francesco, Laura, two kids Giulia (8yrs) and Alessandro (5yrs), and a yellow lab Pluto. They were very kind, gave me a bike to ride to school (20 minutes uphill), and Pierre Francesco spoke excellent English because he had traveled to NY in the '80s. Their grandmother was also a very sweet woman. One time I came home with ripped pants (they had ripped previously in Covo because a girl had dared me to do a cartw

heel. My host mom had stitched them together, but the seams had come out. I had to put scotch tape on my leg that day since I felt like it was a little inappropriate to have my thigh showing.) Anyway, the grandmother basically ripped the pants right off of my body and had them fixed in less than 10 minutes. I love Italian mothers. :)

My camp directors (Elisabetta, Benedetta, and Valentina) took the tutors out into the city on Wednesday night for a beautifully delicious dinner. There was a concert going on in the city during that time, so we were basically VIPS and had to get past the "bouncers" to make it into the res

taurant. He had a list of names, and yes, ours was on there. So cool!

I ate a Mediterranean cuisine (cous cous, hummus, flaky bread with spinach, funky fried balls with green stuff in the middle, prosciutto, and chocolate cake for dessert). After dinner we walked outside and stayed for the concert. The men performing were 2 very famous Italian singers: Francesco de Gregori and Lucio Dalla. Most famous song. This was probably one of the most memorable nights in Italy. I was so wiped out from work all day that I actually fell asleep during the last 2 songs. Don't know how I managed that with all of the noise, but I consider it a great personal accomplishment to fall asleep while sitting up at such a loud concert.