Last blog was really about my surroundings and the culture shock I was feeling. It might have seemed a little grim and yes I was feeling somewhat closed in and uncomfortable… I have always taught my children that if you don’t like something you have two choices, put up with it in misery or change your attitude to it…or wait a day cos it might just pass! So I took my own advice and decided to get out of my cave and go explore with an open mind…
Before I tell the story of my adventure yesterday though, I must just say that the family I am teaching english to, are lovely people. I have no complaints there. Antonio and Daniela have made me feel welcome and their two children Guilia and Gaetano are sweeties. Their expectation is that I join them for a few hours in the evening to help with homework and have some english conversation around the dinner table. Sometimes they want me up there for lunch as well. There is no set routine yet and we are playing it by ear, day to day at this stage. The kids both have a lot of commitments after school so they are a busy family. This leaves me with considerable time on my own, most of the day in fact. I’ll write more about my actual teaching experiences in a later blog but for now I wish to share my little adventure from yesterday.
So, after a sooky morning in the dark depths of my cave, I decided to get out. I am actually not kidding about my room being a cave ok? This apartment has very few windows, so is quite literally, very dark. In my room, I have one small window which looks out onto an outdoor paved area, which is actually an interior area surrounded by the walls of the apartments on top of this one. Looking up, I see water pipes, electrical cables, air-conditioning units, makeshift washing lines, exposed bricks and flaking plaster and at the very top a small opening to the sky! This is the only natural source of light which isnt much! My housemate Gabriella (the family’s housekeeper ) sits out in this space often to smoke and giggle over her phone so if i have my curtains open I have no privacy… she cautions me often, to never have my curtains open because apparently the man two floors up is a peeping tom and will just sit and stare down into our windows! I’ve decided I don’t care if this man wants to get his jollys looking out his window and into ours, I need to let what little light there is, in!!
Back to my excursion into the big wide world of Catania… I went in search of a bus. Not hard to find, plenty of them at the big bus station just down the road from where I am staying but impossible to tell which one would be the right one to catch! At first I thought about trying to find a beach, perhaps near the hotel I stayed in on the weekend. After asking several people which number bus to catch I stood and waited, and waited and waited! I then changed my mind about going to the beach for fear that it was a bit late in the day to go that far and decided maybe I should just go see the big tourist icons of this city – the catherdral of Santa Agata and the Piazza Duomo where the famous elephant statue is. Again I asked several people which bus to catch – let me say, big numbers said in italian are quite hard to decipher! I got conflicting numbers thrown at me, tried reading some signs at the bus stop to work it out and nearly just walked back to the apartment in frustration! The traffic by this time was horrendous and cars were whizzing recklessly around the roundabout right near this bus depot and I just stood there in a fit of indecision and fear. A lovely Iranian lady with a baby strapped to her front must’ve overheard me asking questions and told me in perfect english that I needed to catch the 531 bus to the Duomo but that it came more regularly across the road on the other side of the big roundabout. She beckoned me to follow her and her husband, so I did. Without fear, they stepped out into the traffic and negotiated their way across this roundabout. I followed, taking my life in my hands as the cars barely stopped for us but continued to just swerve around us!
Again we waited and waited and waited…. eventually the bus came and the couple told me they would tell me where I needed to get off. I thanked them profusely as I disembarked and found myself in front of a church. This church bore the name plaque of Santa Agata but it was locked shut behind iron gates. Nevermind, didn’t look that impressive anyway!
I walked a little way, maybe 300mtrs and lo an behold, I came across the side entrance of another much, much, bigger church. The catherdral in fact, of Santa Agata! A woman at it’s gate thrust a holy card with a picture of said saint into my hands and told me that if I believed enough, Santa Agata would grant me a miracle. Thanking her I wandered into the side entrance of the church. It was grand inside but not nearly as highly decorative as some churches I’ve seen. The only mural was above the altar and seemed to depict Jesus and Mary bestowing a crown on (I presume) Santa Agata. I sat down in a pew and decided to have a chat with the man upstairs and ask him if he could intercede through Santa Agata and please fix my knee. Santa Agata did see fit to grant me something miraculous and sent me over a hundred priests in gold robes! Chanting, they processed from the main entrance behind me, up the aisle to the altar. The pipe organ and a choir of angels joined in and suddenly the church was full of people who all looked like my older aunts and uncles. I prayed harder and then tuned into my left leg and knee and realised there was no pain! A miracle???!!! Wow! This Santa Agata woman was some miracle worker, really…..!
Then I remembered that I had taken two Ibroprofen earlier! (These italian ones must be much stronger than the Austrian ones lol!) Also found out later from Gabriella that there was actually some great feast day that was being celebrated and all the priests in Sicily were invited or something!
Seriously though, it was actually really lovely and somehow comforting to be sitting in this church and unknowingly taking part in some special occasion. I honestly didn’t understand any of the speeches or have a clue what was going on, but I was nonetheless quite moved by the whole spectacle….
I didn’t stay for the whole mass but snuck out the way I’d come in and found my way into the Piazza. The famous elephant statue there is made of lava and is supposed to protect the city. He has an obelisk sticking out of his back which looks painful and he has a series of steps all around the bottom of him which seems to be useful for people to sit on…
It was with surprise and amusement that I realised that I was actually at the other end of Via Etnea (where I’d been the other day) and hadn’t been as far away from these monuments as I’d thought! I decided to have something to eat and stopped in a cafe. After I ordered I heard a lady nearby me ordering in an American accent and impulsivly asked her if she was on her own would she like to join me. She declined politely but gratefully. I sat and ate on my own and did a quick sketch and then left. About half hour later of wandering the shops, I decided to have a gelati. Sitting at the table outside to eat it, I looked up to see the American from before call me over to join her. She apologised again for declining my invitation, said it must’ve been fate giving us another opportunity to meet, and she would love to have a chat now. She introduced herself. Her name was Connie. This is my mothers name! We proceeded to chat amicably for about an hour, swapping midlife men stories! She is also an artist and has retired to the island of Lipari just off the coast of Sicily. She invited me to visit her there when she gets back from America (which was where she was going tomorrow) but unfortunately I will have left Italy by the time she gets back…. maybe….!
To complete this excursion story it cannot be underestimated how random EVERTHING is including the buses. I walked back to the bus stop where I had begun this little journey, again not having a clue which bus to catch back. Asking a lady who was also waiting, I trusted her answer and waited with her. We waited and waited and waited, many buses passed or stopped there and I was beginning to wonder if I should’ve got on one of them! Eventually, 35 mins later, to be precise “my” bus came! I was the only person to get on this bus so I checked again with the bus driver, the lady too made him promise to drop me off at my street. He smiled, said yes and proceeded to drive about a kilometer to a different bus depot than before. He stopped here, got off, told me he would be back in 10 mins and left me there! 40 mins later he got back on and drove the few kms to my street! Yes, yes, I could’ve probably walked back quicker than what it took by this bus but hey I wasn’t in any hurry so….
HEARTSOULCENTER 