Buongiorno tutti!
At least, it's morning where I am when I
wrote this. Some fun stuff happened, some stuff that only happens when you are
on a mission happened as well and I'll cover all of those things in this
email.
Pizzas eaten: 41
Gelato: 34
Books of Mormon: 55
Christmas In Italy
Let me start by saying that christmas
decorations here in Italy are rather awesome and they have more than just one
holiday in the month of December. For example, last Friday it was Prenatel
Coception Day where they celebrate Mary being pregnant without the help of a
man. More or less. It's prettier then it sounds but it still sounds weird. They
use it as a sort of labor day where everyone gets a day off and they do
whatever they want, like what we do in the states. I'm in Sciacca right now as
I type this, so I will include some of the cool Christmas decorations that I
took pictures of at the end of this email.
Blitz in Sciacca
I haven't done much on my preparation
days since I've been in Agrigento but let me tell you what we decided to do
yesterday on Sunday. Anziano Tucker and I were sitting at our desks doing our
studies and such when the phone rings. We pick up and the Anziani on the other
line are blasting Pentatonic Christmas music. Promptly, we hung up. They called
back immediately and told us that we should come down to Sciacca so we could
blitz the city and then hangout with them for our preparation day. A blitz by
the way, is when one or two pairs of Anziani from another city all go to one
city and we hit the streets together, like how the TJ's do every Saturday. But
there are less of us and more of them. Still, it's fun and no one knows when
they will happen.
We managed to grab the only bus that was
running from Agrigento to Sciacca and it left half an hour after we got the
call. That meant we needed to get packed and b at the station in the next 15
because the bus left at 3. We got packed, and enjoyed the almost two hour ride
up to Sciacca where we got off the bus in a rush as well because Italians don't
mess around when it comes to their work. In my haste I forgot my toiletries on
the bus so I'm just thankful that the Anziani here had a spare toothbrush for
me.
After an awesome night of finding with a
member from the ward here, we went to the Pier they have here. It's not like what
you are thinking of, a wooden and dinky little thing. It took us ten minutes to
walk from one side to the other and the whole thing is made of concrete. It's
the kind of port where you can fit a whole fleet of tourist boats and still
have room for more. It's one of the biggest ports in Sicilia. There are
concrete blocks the size of four refrigerators all along the whole side to act
as wave breakers. It was fun to run down that at night, with some pictures to
follow.
Transfer week!
Transfer calls happen today, and the
members know it. They like Anziano Tucker a lot and every day for the past week
they have called asking if we know if he's leaving or if I'm leaving. Every
time they call we tell them that we won't know until Monday (today) and we'll
call them when we do but they always forget that part and call us the next
night between nine and nine thirty at night. We got our calls very early in the
morning and Anziano Tucker and I are not going anywhere, we stay in Agrigento
for another transfer. I think next transfer day he's going to be moved out and
I'm going to either receive a new companion who has been here for a while or
I'm going to start training, but we shall see.
Cool thing of the week
This week we also went to the mall that
we have in Agrigento and we bought some hamburgers from burger King because we
both wanted burgers that weren't half pork half beef and we needed light bulbs
for the house. While we were sitting down enjoying our burgers (or rather,
about to) an older, homeless man, ran up to me and put his hand in my face with
the few coins he had in it and started tapping my tag semi-aggressively and
gesturing to my food while breathing in my ear in his siciliano dialect, which
I couldn't understand at all. I didn't know what to do so I just started eating
and ignored him as best I could. After my third bite he backed away and looked
hurt. Said something along the lines of "what kind of priest are
you?" (rough translation, the real one is much coarser and not exactly
e-mail appropriate) and then shuffled off.
Not more than 20 seconds after that old
man left, he was replaced by another old man who was patting me on the shoulder
and congratulating me for holding my own. He said something along the lines of
"his mother didn't raise him right" and "good on you for holding
your own" before he pinched my cheek and then wished us good fortune.
Italians are fun.
Italian Culture
Aside from this, nothing extravagant
happened this week. It was just a bunch of fun and little things in the italian
culture that made me laugh a little bit when I noticed them. The traffic lights
for example, are timer based and not sensor. Their version of "knock on
wood" is "touch metal" and they won't shake hands over another
person shaking hands because they don't want to form a cross with their arms.
They will wait until the first people are done before they shake hands. They
also have a bunch of fun little phrases that don't make sense in English
without the context of why they say those things. One of them is "breaking
boxes" which is what you say after someone has been chewed out for
something they did. It's tantamount to the same.
1. I got a watch for Christmas!
2. One of the Sciacca Anziani wearing Christmas hat
3. Us at the end of the pier by the signal light
4. Sicilian Ladscape
5. A little video of the Christmas tree here in Sciacca
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