Speaking Italian

This is the picture at the end of the morning yesterday.

I finished it this morning.

Dominica, but not so peaceful. Sundays are the day that motorcycles race around our valley much like in Vermont. These motorcyclists are younger, much better dressed and have much hotter bikes than the 60 something Harley riders in Vermont. There is stiff competition between the bikers and the bicyclists. These guys are buff and dressed for the Tour d’ France. There bikes might have cost more than this house. Millions of euros are on the roads today.

I have learned somethings about speaking Italian. If you use words that tell what day you mean you can always speak in the present tense. Irie (like Lake Erie) is yesterday, oggi (o ghee) is today and domani ( doe MANH ee) is tomorrow. You can also make anything into a question by adding e vero? (e is pronounced long a) I remember it because of the bird. I have been stunningly unsuccessful in my attempts to communicate. Even if I am reading the word out of a book it is better to use hand gestures. (As in when I was trying to find matches, evidently only available at the tobacco store.) We finally managed to eat out at the local pizzeria last night. It was great. We sat out side with a view of Gagliano and the Sirento mountains. The sun had just set, because after all it is 8:30 when we got there and we were not the first. Small victory. It is three blocks from our house. The crowd was eclectic with 4 Danes, us, people from the town and a farmer on his own.

I found out the important looking man is the mayor and I had been introduced to him before. I am hoping it is all put down to communication issues. I would be so excited to show my pictures in the town celebration. I am not worrying about how we will show them or anything. I am taking a wait and see attitude.

It is very hot. Some way across the valley two men are putting on a new tile roof. There was a remarkable number of tiles on the roof, but they are all used up now. They totally overlap each other, one up, one down, one up, etc. The red dust from the tile cutter obscured them from view. My pastels are too hot to touch sometimes. I can only imagine how hot a tile must be.

I have finished my latest morning pastel. It is up a street near the earthquake exclusion zone and I am looking back toward the piazza and the church. It is a shady spot. Yesterday afternoon we went out to try a bigger pastel of Castel d Irie. (Yesterday, did you get it?) The bugs were out of control. If I had been doing oils, my painting would have been covered. They were tiny, did not bite, but flew in our ears and eyes. I did manage to complete my drawing and get one color everywhere before I had to run screaming from the spot. Jim finished a good one on some lighter colored paper. I have to go back another day, but Jim is not going and today it seemed to scary to even walk down the road. Yesterday one motorcycle scared me to death by passing a car just as he was even with where I was walking. It is hard to stay on the side walk, because so many people park their cars there. Everyone drives at least twice the speed limit and if they don’t they get passed. Our street could be an endless revenue source for the town, but I have never seen someone get stopped and really how fast would they have to go and no parked cars get tickets. Maybe I will speak to my bud, the mayor.