Update from Rome: 25 April

Hi All, In an effort to put our Italian to work, my school organized a treasure hunt. Each team, 4 in total, was tasked with drafting 10 actions that another team would have to undertake within the city center during a 1.5 hour time frame. We were asked to write each task out in Italian and the team that selected our actions would have to complete them by speaking Italian with the local vendors and people at the destinations. Since the teams were randomly selected, the spread of fluent and not so fluent Italian speakers was not perfect across the 4 teams...so thankfully each team had a set of teachers to advise us. Otherwise we would have ended up with some pretty lame and simple actions for another team to complete. Once the teams were done compiling the actions, each team then selected a set of actions, at random, that were created by another team. Among the actions my team was tasked to do, 2 proved a bit complicated. One involved the entire team gathering in the center of campo de' fiori and being videotaped as we danced the traditional dance, il ballo delle tarantate, which is popular in il salento, a part of puglia, in the southern region of italy. Convincing the introverted members of the team to dance the dance of being bitten by the tarantula to fictitious music proved a bit difficult. You would think that being able to move to Italy to study Italian would mean we were dealing with a courageous bunch of individuals who would do just about anything...but it took more than 10 minutes to convince the "shy" members that they would never see these people again. And while we accomplished the task, I was disappointed that no onlookers thought to toss a coin or two our way. The second difficult task involved us going to a local theater and physically picking up one of the staff members while capturing a photo. Unfortunately, the guys on my team are barely through puberty and the most they can lift is their school bag on a good day. So with the task at hand, I offered to do the heavy lifting. I guess my training with Henry and all those tire flips finally came in handy. See the attached photo of me lifting the manager of the theater. After I had picked up the guy, my team mate who was taking the photo had to back up to get a better shot. During the process, he knocked over a series of bicycles and has he fumbled to make them upright, there I stood holding the guy and thinking...."take the photo already, this guy is getting heavy." The look of "oh sh*t" on my teammate Juan's face behind me in priceless. My time here in Rome is coming to a close, I finish my classes at the end of next week...and then the real fun begins with time to travel and see other parts of the country. Love, Nadia