Italian Jokes

I am in a food coma right now.  Easter was an insane meal.  I am about to go lay down for a little nap, then I may go for a walk.

Friday night we went to an amazing Good Friday procession through town.  It was like a little parade.  First a cross, then a full marching band, then a whole bunch of priests, then people carrying a statue of Jesus laying down, then the Virgin Mary, then about 1000 people.  The Stations of the Cross service is always one of my favorites, and we had a decent view (sitting on very cold, marble steps).

Saturday was a big tennis match.  I lost badly.  Oh, my arms are sore even now.  I blistered on my thumb and at the base of my palm.  Soooo much fun though.  I love to play even if I am really out of practice.

I forgot to mention that on Friday I went to the hair salon where they did my hair 2 years ago for our wedding and I got tons of it lopped off.  It's (found the apostrophe key!) just above my shoulders now.

Anyway, the days are really running together.  So much eating.  I was saying that I feel like visiting a vomitorium.  Ugh.  I actually spent the entire morning today at Easter mass feeling ill. 

Last night we went to dinner with our best friends who live here at their house.  It's chaotic.  2 little boys, the older one is okay, but the younger one is a tsunami, as they call him.  A complete TERROR.  I know kids in America can be very badly behaved, but wow, kids here are really really bad too. 

Aside from the chaos of the kids, we had a great night with our friends and as always, the time passed too quickly.

Did I mention that my husband's aunt is sick?  It means there is an endless parade of people through the house visiting her and saying hello to us.  Many of them are very old and we can't understand 90% of what they say.  But these Belgian cousins are awesome.  She speaks very slowly to us and in perfect Italian.  He sometimes pulls our leg with jokes but is also pretty easy to understand.  Though seriously, not a lick of English in this family.  They know some very basic phrases, but I am amazed to hear how many years some of them took English in school considering how little they seem to remember.  It has been fun talking to the guy from Belgium though because he gets it when I say something in French! 

So my hubby is a pretty funny guy.  He makes me laugh a lot.  I thought I'd share what I have decided are the two funniest things he's said (that I remember) on this trip.

First, by way of background, sometimes to make a word into its opposite, in Italian you put the letter S before it.  So fortunatamente is fortunately, but sfortunatamente is unfortunately.  We were perplexed by a word we saw on a menu:  spuma.  My silly husband decided that it meant "not a puma."  Hahahaha.  It means foam apparently.  But that little Italian joke made me laugh.

The second joke happened the other night.  Our weather here has been perfect, but it's cool at night.  We were standing together, thinking about getting ready for bed on Good Friday (after don't forget, the second time in 2 days we'd been to church in Nicastro).  I told my husband (in Italian, we've mostly transitioned the language) to hug me and I kind of scrunched in my arms against his chest and he put his arms around the outside of my shoulders and arms.  I said "giu" (pronounced jew), which means down.  I wanted him arms more around my waist and not squishing in my arms.  He said, in English, I'm not a Jew, I'm a Catholic.  Hahaha.  Silly guy. 

We are really having a great time.  We walked to church this morning and then came home and just ate the most insane meal ever.  I took photos of it all and will have to post, but right now, I can barely keep my eyes open...