Bari

Our last stop of the trip was a small town called Bari which is by the boot of Italy. One of the girls I traveled with, Carmela has family there. We stayed with her grandma's brother and law, Michaeli (84 years old) and his daughter and her husband Rosa and Lorenzo (about 60 years old) We also spent alot of time with Rosa's cousin Joey, and his wife Paki, and 1o year old twins Alex & Franny (We called them by their American names) I couldn't have asked to stay with a better family. They were more than accommodating to us and paid for all our meals, provided us beds and a shower, took us to see different sites every day, and treated us as if we were part of their family!

Every day we would drive about an hour or so to a different town and walk around. We had so much fun seeing the differences between each of the towns. It was fun walking into all the little shops. One day we went by the water and it was absolutely beautiful!!

One thing I'll never forget about Bari is how much we ate. I think we all gained 10 pounds just from Bari alone. Meals were always 3 hours long and consisted of about 10 courses. I'm not joking. One day we had: pasta, then bread and olives, then shrimp, then calamari, then fruit, then nuts, then tiramasu!! I was always soooo stuffed after every meal, and they always told me to eat more because I needed to gain weight (I personally think they're crazy for wanting to eat that much!!) Don't get me wrong though, the food was delicious!

On Sunday we went to the Padre Pio monument in a town about 2 hours away from Bari. Padre Pio was a saint who helped heal tons of people. His casket is currently above ground under the church for people to see so we saw that before mass (he has a mask now, but his body underneath the robes is still the same) There was also a little museum type thing for him under the church filled with pictures from his life, some of his old vestments and chalices which was really neat to see. We then went to mass there, which was in Italian of course! I found it cool though how some parts of mass were in Latin, because I actually knew what to say then!! I sat next to Franny during mass and it was fun translating what they were saying to English! Her and Alex's favorite subject in school is English so it was fun practicing with them. They also taught us some words in Italian and I can count to 10 in Italian too!!

The last day we were in Bari, we went to the family farm where they had flowers, lemon trees and small mandarine trees. The mandarines were so tiny and really sweet but they were delicious!! We also had a little birthday party with cake for Michaeli because he was turning 84 later that week.

We also went to a town that was celebrating Carnival. We got silly string and confetti and were chasing each other through the street throwing them at each other, we had so much fun! They also had a float with singers and dancers to old american songs, we had a blast!

During the day in Bari when we weren't at a city we either read, or we played Scopa. Michaeli taught us how to play. It's a card game that you play with an Italian deck of cards (which is different than the American one! Don't worry, they gave me a deck to bring home so I can teach everyone how to play, it's so much fun!!) Michaeli is REALLY good at Scopa, and his mind is still sharp, so if you don't put a card down fast enough, or take too long on your turn he'll make fun of you! I love that man!!

Michaeli also still drives his little moped around and even gave me a ride on it, it was a blast! Rosa did our laundry one day and we helped her hang it up on the roof to dry. I think it would be so fun to do laundry that way! Except, it rained one of the days our clothes were drying but they were still ready in time for us to go back to Granada!

Some fun things in Bari:

• The twins love high school musical, so we sang all the songs with them, which was a blast
• The showers are very different. It's right by the toilet, and the drain is the bathroom flower, you just pull a curtain around you. It was crazy, but kind of a smart idea! I took a video of the house we stayed in so be sure to check it out!
• The cars are really small. But the streets are also very narrow. No minivans could fit down the Italian streets. They honk everytime they're about to pass by an intersection to warn other drivers coming the other way that they're coming
• Italians are the craziest drivers I've ever seen. You think Americans are horrible drivers? No. Italianas are seriously nuts, they drive really close to each other, squeeze through narrow passageways, cut each other off, not to mention mopeds that weave in and out of traffic
• The second night we were there when we were playing Scopa Michaeli kept referring to me as his esposa (wife) and then asked Carmela if I was offended haha such a funny man
• We drank tons of expresso and cappuchinos which were SO strong, but after putting some sugar in they're delicious!!
  
• Everyone liked giving me a hard time every time we'd pass by a gelato place because they all know how much I love gelato as well as chocolate! (Hence my new picture :] )
  

It was sad saying goodbye to everyone when we headed back to Granada because they really did feel like family by the end of the week. It was such an amazing trip, and I took tons of pictures to document all our fun adventures, you'll have to wait until I come more to go into more detail and tell you all my stories, because it would take me forever to type all of them!

I have 4 photo albums from the trip: Venice, Rome, Bari, and Friend's Pictures from Italy so be sure to check all those out, and look for the videos I've also included in there of things such as: glass blowing, the Vatican, the Pantheon, and the house we stayed in!

It's nice to be back in Granada, and to hear Spanish again! Although Spanish and Italian are similar, it was still difficult to understand at times.

I'll blog more tomorrow about how things are going here, I'm going to catch up on some of my t.v. shows now that I missed out on!!

One week till dad comes to visit me!! :)

Love,
Me