Castagnas (Chestnuts)

Monday is here already, and Halloween is just around the corner! This past week has been busy...

The last time that I wrote to all of you I was heading off to my first Chestnut Festival. Let me tell you, I have never eaten so many chestnuts in my life! We started off by sampling regular, roasted chestnuts. I had never seen how chestnuts were roasted, but they are literally roasted over "an open fire," wow, after 22 years of my life I finally understand the Christmas song that I hear loads of times every year during the holidays. Next we ate something called, Canonchini. This tasty treat was not made out of chestnuts, but was like a croissant in the shape of a cone and then filled with the type of cream found in my favorite doughnuts, which are Bismarks;) Then we moved onto eating, what I originally thought was going to be wheat pasta, but to my surprise these brown, little noodles were made completely out of chestnuts. On either side of the "noodles" was a puffy dollop of cream. This dish is called, Vermicelli. Last on our list was a coffee cup, but don't judge a book by it's cover because Foldgers was nowhere to be found. The cup was filled with hot chestnuts and was topped off with a swirl of cream. The cream would then melt, which would leave the chestnuts to soak in a bath of sweet liquid. I ate this treat with a spoon, one chestnut and some yummy, warm, sweet liquid per bite/swallow! Sunday night we ventured out to a Mexican restaurant in Como, Italy called Cactus, where we politely devoured Chimichangas!

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...

We ran into Willy (our VP) and his wife.

Lucas and I eating Canonchini.

Vermicelli

Moving onto Monday. Well, after a day of indulging in chestnuts and chimichangas I was feeling a little guilty, so I went for a run. That night in practice, however, would prove to be one of our hardest practices yet. Does anybody remember doing the "Beep Test" in elementary school gym class? Well, I thought my days of doing that were over, but to my DELIGHT that is how we started off practice, followed by fast break drills for the remaining hour.

On Tuesday I found myself in Lake Lugano, shopping in a quite massive store called, Manor. Nothing too exciting happened here, except for the fact that every time I venture out to do some shopping I am continually reminded of how UNfashionable I am.

Wednesday was my busiest day. I ran in the morning and was looking forward to showering on my return home only to find out that our water would be turned off for the remainder of the day, surprising...not really. Then we went to the doctor just to get our bumps and bruises checked out, after that was lunch, and then we attended our first Italian class! We are in a class of about 30 students, and everybody hails from different corners of the globe. The teachers wanted to get an idea of where everybody's italian skills were at so we each filled out 3 different sheets of paper. The questions were pretty basic, what's your name, address, where are you from, phone number etc. Then we had to look at a picture and identify everything that we could, street, car, woman, man, flower, window, bus, shoe, etc., and then class was over. Our next meeting is on the 5th of November. 

When class was over, we hustled out to Riva San Vitale, where we helped with something called Mini Basket. During the first hour we worked with little kids ages 8-10 and the second hour with 11-12 year olds. I was really quite surprised when the coach/teacher started the second class off by reading all their stats from the last game! I mean, these kids are in 3rd grade and this guy was making a big deal about their stats! When I was in 3rd grade I think I was more interested in coming up with names for our plays than I was in my STATS.  After helping with these two practices we went to our own practice. Practice was going really well and then I had to go and step on someone's foot and sprain my ankle:(

So, on Thursday I found myself at the physical therapist and Friday as well, but I was not about to let a little ankle sprain keep me cooped up in the apartment all day! On Thursday, my friend Cinthia picked me up and we drove up into the mountain where her grandmother lives. The plan was for me to help her grandmother make lunch. 

The kitchen was long and narrow, which made passing each other somewhat difficult. What was on the menu you ask? Gnocchi! Gnocchi is made out of potatoes. You boil the potatoes, peel them, put them in this little mixer where you turn the handle and the potatoes get smooshed out the bottom into little strings, then you add two egg yokes, some flour, kneed it all into a big ball, cut off little pieces, roll them out into long little snakes, cut them up into inch long pieces, toss them into some boiling water and then take a slotted spoon and extract them when they are done. Many of you have probably eaten this dish before, but I personally never knew how it was made. At lunch I felt like the guy in the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" because I was full, and the grandmother asked if I wanted some more, and before I could even really answer, her aged hands shot out across the table like the tongue of a frog, snatched up my plate and started filling it with more food! I felt that it would be impolite to ask her to stop so I just let her do her thing;)

Rosilde, Cinthia and I sitting at lunch.

Making the gnocchi!

Narrow walking paths near Cinthia's house.

Beautiful house next to Cinthia's house.

On Saturday, P, Keisha and I drove about 2 hours away to a nice town in Italy called, Parma. The center was quite large and what I loved most about it was that only busses and bicycles were aloud inside, otherwise everybody was on foot.  The variety of people who were riding bicycles gave me quite a shock.  From teens to seventy somethings, everybody was using their bikes.  Furthermore, the seventy somethings were not wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, no, they were decked out in their Sunday Best! Every older woman that passed us on a bicycle was wearing a long skirt, nice shoes, some sort of blazer, their purchased items were in their basket, and their hair always managed to look perfect as can be!

Ok, I'll wrap this up with our game that we had yesterday. Yesterday we played Troistorrent, pronounced Trah-tor-ohn. This team is located on the French side of Switzerland, so it was about a 4 1/2 hour bus ride. Once again, the landscape was stunning. Some trees are still hanging onto their colors, but many have started to turn brown. The mountains reminded me of the backs of buffalos; large, brown, furry looking humps that rise up and down across the terrain. We passed a down right beautiful lake called, Lake Maggiore, that just seemed to sparkle something fierce in the autumn sunshine. There was a little island in the middle of the lake, Isola Bella, and it was just big enough for one hotel. We crossed over a famous pass called Passo De Sempione. At this point we were at 2,200m. I saw several people out hiking with their poles. I haven't the foggiest idea as to where they were going, they seemed to be in the middle of no where, surrounded by mountains, but I found myself wising that I was out there with them. At some point I will get the chance to do the same! We passed many cows, horses, goats and sheep. There were a couple of distinct views that reminded me of pictures that I have seen in books, where you see the mountain, a tunnel, a house or lodge built right into the side of the mountain, smoke swirling up into the sky from a chimney, and rickety, little, wooden fences that stretch over the grass containing the livestock.

Teammates, Claudia, Lisa, Me, Judit, Julia and Samantha

Troistorrent.

Their gym.

We ended up losing the game by 20pts. Sitting and watching from the bench is not my cup of tea. They were a good team, but I think by the time the end of the season rolls around and our point guard is healthy, there is no doubt in my mind that we will be able to hold our own.

Take care everyone!
Leslie