Among the Mountains and Stepping on Nuns

A couple of weeks ago (yeah, I’m slightly behind), I found myself back on an early train heading for Salerno. Now, why would he re-visit a place that he’s already visited before, you may ask. I say to you, a fine question! Well, friends, it just so happened that my good friend, Brighid, has family in San Gregorio—a small town placed among the mountains southeast of the Salerno Coast. As it turned out, the family we stayed with were distant cousins (though, I’m not sure how distant) of Brighid.

When we arrived in Salerno that morning, we were met on the platform by Giovanni . After happily being reunited with his family from America (Brighid), he drove us the hour or so to his home in San Gregorio. Once there, we met his wife and would later in the day meet his 18-year old daughter, Pamela. The feelings that I felt being able to stay with an Italian family, seeing how they live and interact, and being treated as one of the family, was nothing short of wonderful.

                I think Brighid would agree with me when I say that our first surprise and real good sense of being Italian came at lunch not long after we arrived. I thought Americans could eat! I nearly cried when the secondo and terzo piatti came along because when I was offered the seconds of the prima piatti I eagerly accepted. Lesson learned, but not helped (you’ll understand why in a moment).

After my delicious, but never-ending lunch, I rested a bit. Now, this may be punishment for finding ways to avoid eating my veggies when I was younger (and believe me, mom and dad, I did find ways), but after what seemed to be only about 30 minutes (ok, I’m definitely hyperbolating here, but just go with it), we were eating again! Three more courses anyone? Now, this may not seem so bad to most people (after all, a nice, large home-cooked meal is always welcome), BUT they would not stop feeding me! “Magra! Magra! You’re too skinny!” they would tell me as they put more food onto my plate. Despite my pleas of “Basta! Enough!” they would simply smile and add more. The sick thing is that I kept eating. I don’t know how I did it, but I did. After awhile, I was numb to the amount of food they gave me and could keep eating endlessly. That first night, as I rolled, quite literally, out of the kitchen, I eagerly looked forward to breakfast.

That weekend, we met a lot of Giovanni’s family, many of whom lived nearby. I tried homemade Limóncello and vowed never to again. AND, got to drive around in true Italian fashion—it’s much more fun to be in the car of an Italian, rather than outside around a moving one. One night, we went out to dinner with Pamela and her boyfriend, Nikola. They had observed her mother “strongly encouraging” me to eat more and thought it’d be funny to try to do the same to me. Good thing I don’t give into peer pressure (although, I did end up eating more than everyone anyway)! After the fun dinner of many smiles and plenty of laughter (on account of our lack of understanding each other), the four of us drove around for a bit rocking out to such Italian classics as Rhianna’s Disturbia, Brian Adams’ Everything I do, and my personal favorite, Beyonce’s If I were a boy, which was always accompanied by Nikola belting out the same line in a high-pitched voice, much to our amusement.  It was great!

When I arrived back in Rome that weekend, I attended the Papal Vespers at St. Paul Outside the Wall, thanks to a priest who I was put in touch with through a friend at MU. I’m still somewhat unclear on what exactly it was (a type of prayer service I think, only more important), but I do know it was a big deal because 1) the pope was there 2) you needed a ticket to get in 3) it was the feast day of the conversion of St. Paul (not a bad place to celebrate such an event). I don’t know how many nuns I had to step on or bite that day so that I wouldn’t lose my new friend in the crowd, but I figured there were plenty of priests around to confess my sins to…after I got safely inside, of course. This was such a thrilling event to attend on only my second week in the city and it was improved by being there with a Jesuit. For those of you who don’t know, Jesuits know A LOT. He pointed out so many things in or outside that basilica, details that I may have never noticed or details that I probably would never have even guessed the significance of. It was crazy! My favorite topic of conversation that evening involved my lack of attending mass since arriving in Rome. “Why haven’t you?” Fr. T asked me, curious. “Because I couldn’t find a church!” I replied. I don’t think he bought it.