Lecco, Barzago e Milano

Ciao!!

I have traveled to Lecco and Milano in the past two days, unfortunately it was very foggy and cold! Yesterday morning we walked through Anita's hometown of Barzago; it was beautiful and neat to see the old villas and the way that they live. It is simple and quiet. We walked to the supermarcado where we bought two baguettes and a loaf of bread. It was much cheaper than the US, only 2 euros for all of it! We then went to the local "bar" and had a briosche and cafe. They do not look anything like you would imagine, just a small room with the locals reading papers and drinking cafe. I am trying very hard to learn as much Italian as I can in as short as time as possible. She said that I am learning fast, yesterday I learned the numbers, alphabet ( which is only 21 letters!!) and some verb endings. Not alot of Americans come to Barzago so everywhere that we went I was stared at... very bizarre! The people are very nice; when we were at the bar a couple heard me trying to say italian verbs and were laughing... it is definitely entertaining! The local church is very very pretty.

In the afternoon we traveled to Lecco to go to the shops and meet up with her friend Gigi. When driving there we were surrounded by mountains, she calls them hills but they are mountains to me!! It is very surreal to be surrounded by such great masses of nature. Again I was stared at.. I guess I look obviously American, haha. While walking I learned how to pronounce all of the store names, it is harder than I had thought it would be. They have an outdoor mall, it is similar to Clay Terrace in Carmel. We walked alot, which I loved. We then went to a very nice pub and I had tea. Her friend Gigi met up with us, he studies Agriculture and I told him about American colleges. He was stunned at the differences! I talked about fraternities, sororities, student loans, highschool "school spirit" ( which they don't have) and how some of us work during school. Italian highschools are more like colleges, you go to a school that specializes in what you want to do. Not everyone goes to college and the people that do mostly live with their parents and take the train to school. The tuition is very cheap, only 2000 euros per year. They can study abroad anywhere as an Erasmus student and no matter how exspensive the school is they pay the same that they would in Italy. Lucky!! We went back to Barzago and had pesto pasta for dinner, it was very good! Afterwards we went with her friends Ela, Monica, Annalisa, Valeria and Allesandro to go Ice Skating. Some of the girls were scared so we tried to help them. Her friends can understand English if I talk very slowly but it is hard for them to respond. I found that after hanging out with them I talk slow and have an Italian accent with my english! It is from listening to them all talk in English. We then went to a very very nice pub where I had my first experience with Gelato. All I have to say is.. oh-my-gosh, malta buena!!! America needs to adopt this food! Blair bought me a book as a joke to take with me, it is called "talk dirty in Italian", it has the curse words and such in it. I brought it to the pub and it was the entertainment for the night. Most of the words and phrases they never use, but I told them that it was just for fun.

This morning we traveled to Milano by train; it was about 40 minutes. When we got out we walked out and the Duormo was right in front of us. I have never seen such a beautiful building! It is more than I could have imagined. We went inside and there was so much art that it was unbelievable. I now understand why Italians are so passionate about Catholicism; they have all of this history to look at and realize why they believe in what they do. People put so much work into their religion because it is what they lived for. In the 1400's art was used as a mean for communication; to tell stories. Art was seen before any language in Cave-art. I believe that the sculptures in the church were made so that we can forever look at it and see what people went through for their beliefs. There were also two Cardinals in caskets that you could see in. One of them still had the original skeleton, it was very neat! I realized that after taking a lot of pictures that I left my memory stick in Barzago and I had no internal memory :( I will be back to Milan soon though. We then went shopping, it was crazy busy. It was very hard to get in and out of shops. The people kept pushing through and hitting you, I kept saying scuzzi (excuse me/sorry) but no one else ever said it; I found it rude. Everywhere had 50% off so I bought a few sweaters for $10. I did not bring enough and it is very cold here! We took the train home and are about to eat dinner.

Ciao until later!!