Kirbys in Catania

Brownie Sundaes for the kiddos Okay, so if any of you who read my blog are British or have ever lived in England, you'll know I stole my title from the famous quote, "Remember remember the 5th of November."  Quick history lesson: November 5th is Guy Fawkes day in England. He tried to bomb parliament, but was stopped.  Since then the British celebrate this by having bonfires on the 5th and burning scarecrows, which are supposed to represent Guy Fawkes (I imagine you can figure out how he was put to death).  Anyways, it was one of those things about England that I haven't forgotten. I cannot believe that November is almost over. I am so behind on updating. Bear with me.  There's lots of things for me to include in this post. The girls really liked it! Can anyone say "sugar high?" Watching the movie. Alan and I invited the young girls from church over to our house for an afternoon.  At the time, there was an American family here visiting ...

Alan on top of Mt Etna! Why does smoke get in my eyes? Cause Etna erupted Saturday morning (good thing we went last Sunday and not this Sunday).   Okay, so smoke didn’t literally get in our eyes.   In fact, I wasn’t even aware that she erupted until my dad emailed me about it.   She smokes frequently, so when we see a lot of smoke coming out of her, we don’t think anything about it.   Anyways, Alan saw the red smoke stack coming from her, early that morning but he thought it was the sunrise and a cloud in Etna’s direction (from our street with tall buildings around us, we can’t see the mouth of the volcano).   And, we didn’t really get any ash here either because the wind was blowing in a different direction (thank goodness!) I have to dust enough black ash already from that volcano. Some people from church, who live further up in the villages on Mt Etna, said that they could hear her erupting.   Pretty crazy! If you want to come visit us, don’t le...

Alan and I love those At&t commercials with the kids.   One of them that we saw had a kid who told a knock knock joke, and after he tried to describe it to another kid (who didn’t get the joke) he said, “I make a funny.”   Well, Alan and I have made lots of “funnies.”  So, I guess it’s finally time to share our “funnies” that have occurred since we moved to Italy. As one would expect, we’ve made lots of “funnies” or errors when it comes to the language. So…we can start there.   For those of you who have ever tried to speak or learn a different language, you will know that most errors that you make in another language are highly inappropriate, which I guess makes them all the funnier.  So here’s the list: Alan told one of his students shortly after we arrived in Florence, that we would be staying here for two anuses (the word for year and anus is really close….ani and anni) I told one of my students in Florence that, “I bought a person ye...

Playing in the abandoned ruins.  Can’t believe October is here already. This is my absolute favorite time of the year – fall.   Believe it or not, fall is arriving here too on our sunny island.   The weather has cooled some, and it has that brisk smell to it that always arrives with fall. I am so thankful for this cooler weather. It makes riding our bikes up Via Etnea, much more endurable.   For a while there we were averaging on three showers a day, because we had to shower as soon as we got home from riding our bikes back from the church.   Via Etnea - we ride up that on our bikes every day. We should have legs of steel by the end of the year.    September has been a fairly busy month.   I think I can say that our Italian is improving a lot for such a short amount of time.   It makes a big difference not being around other Americans and getting to speak in English for most of your day.   Now it’...