More Milazzo

10 July

Well last night's dinner was very nice: swordfish and aubergine with pasta.  This is apparently a Sicilian classic and is what I will now be cooking when I am in Tuscany with Hazel and Neil.  We polished off a bottle of wine and shared a rambling conversation in Italian with a bit of English and Spanish thrown in for good measure.  I'm not always convinced that Enrico and Melisa understand everything I say but we seem to make progress...

School was the usual three hours or so of nothing but Italian and grammar, but not in a bad way.  Since we seem to be able to spend nearly all that time speaking in Italian we must have learned something.  The mid-morning break is always a pleasure as we go to the cafe up the road for our coffee or ice cream or grenita (or sometimes all three...) and that is a time to speak English and let the brain wind down a bit.  Today though Elvira joined us and as she speaks little English we remained speaking Italian.  

I decided that as I am approaching the end of my time here it was about time I tried to visit one of the small museums.  The trouble, as ever, is the siesta that limits the time you can get to see such things.  Elvira, the teacher, volunteered to have a word with the people that run them about opening times and accompany me on the trip as she is into archaeology and local history.  So after class I did some work at school, sorted some emails and other such things, and then went back to the house before coming back to meet Elvira at the school.  As it turned out we visited both museums, the first an archaeological museum with finds from Milazzo's past that ranged from Neolithic through to Greek and then Roman.  I was given an hour's tour in Italian explaining these things and to my amazement I understood most of it.  The second museum was even smaller and was an old jail that now stored things from the industrial past of Milazzo.  It was a like an organised version of my dad's garage with small displays covering the ship building, tuna fishing, wine making and jasmine growing that have all been part of Milazzo's local industry.  Again, I understood the majority of what I was told but I was also aware of the concentration it required from me.

Afterwards we wandered down to the beach for a prearranged meet with Joel and one of the new guys (a German policeman) who has joined the school this week.  The plan was to go for a swim prior to eating but I got there late and the wind was really up with massive waves of over 12 feet rolling in.  It looked great fun but the guys were just getting out so I didn't get to have my dip and we all ended up in a small pasta restaurant a couple of blocks from the sea.  After a nice meal, some rough old wine and a limoncello I wandered back to the house and to bed in readiness for the forthcoming hangover.....