little weirdo

Taking a walk to the grocery store, it's a bumpy ride for Smalls today.  People stare as they pass us, and I wonder, what makes us worthy of consideration...  People sometimes also speak to me regularly in Italian, as if I could pass for a local.   It's a conundrum.

I took a good look at the houses in the neighborhood as we strolled.  A "boarded up" house looks artistically adorned.

I wonder about the previous habitants, and what led to "bricking up" the doors and windows.   I wonder about the cost of wood in this country, and note that all of the floors I have seen here are tile or marble.

I feel like I don't really look that closely at things in America, I don't think...  and yet, here every road is a curiosity, every aisle in the store has potential to produce an exciting treat.  Like these little individually wrapped chocolate wonders -

I am sure that things will become "normal" here after a while.  After the adjustment of taste.  Did I mention that food just tastes better here?  The lettuce actually smells delicious!  We are still reasoning that one out...

Volcanic ash + less chemicals? + more sunshine/humidity/something weird about the weather or climate or...  some other mysterious factor.

In the meantime, we are still shamelessly, and seriously, obsessed with the tomatoes.

And so is Smalls.  She has been eating raw tomatoes and sucking the sauce off of pasta around here like it's her j.o.b.  Think pasta sauce from tip to tail...

The yolks of the eggs here are much more vibrantly painted.

AND, you don't refrigerate the eggs over here...  something to do with never having refrigerated them?  They remind me of the eggs we got from a farm in Virginia once (there were even green shells that time).

We tried the white eggplant.

Delicious as you would expect.  Not too different than the taste of regular eggplant - but the Major made it with salted capers, and that was a winning combo right there...  funny thing is that it barely looked white anymore after it was "browned".  Heh.

And we have been eating figs like they are going out of season...

I actually think they are just hitting their season - lucky for us.

There are some things that I haven't quite figured out yet.

Like, condensed goat's milk, for example -

And this strange offering at the ortofrutta...

Looks like a type of nut?  I haven't had the courage to ask.

As the Major and I work towards some kind of proficiency with the native language, we have found a couple of Italian friends who have insisted on assisting us.  Yesterday our mission was to decode cell phone contracts.  It took our friends, and their daughter, speaking in Italian (with us, each other, and the Tim store lady), French (with each other), and English (with us), about two hours of debating

to decide that we should just figure out a way to get phones from the US - never mind a ban on shipping lithium batteries...

While the language circus progressed at the Tim store, Smalls and I contemplated acquiring a Lover Card,

and heading down to McDrive ...

Ok, not really...  Actually I am very impressed that I have only seen two McDonalds and one Burger King in our three weeks here so far - at least beyond the gates of the SS.  And, not tempted in the least for some "American" food as of yet.  Although this phenomena did occur when I studied abroad in Bangkok.  Granted, the food there was a bit more "foreign".  And I was in college.

After the cell phone negotiations were kaput, we joined our new friends for a cafe, and debated the merits of Italian coffee (small but mighty).

She thinks that it must be weird for Americans to see Italians drinking out of such a tiny cup.  Perhaps a little weird, it's true, but oh so delicious!

We take Smalls, in desperate need of a nap, and head back to our lodgings - to study the language, and for a salad bursting with both color and flavor (radicchio & rucula).

Tonight we try these beautiful zucchini.

Will have to let you know how those little weirdos turn out!