Food and Geekiness

Our Italian-only week is going pretty well so far, although we each occasionally slip up and start talking in English. Sometimes it takes us a couple of exchanges to realize that we're doing it wrong, but one of us quickly switches to Italian and the other follows suit.

Saturday was another pretty full day. At the Institute we scheduled the first meeting of my "computer club" at noon, with five guys who are interested in learning how to build a computer from scratch. Everyone showed up, although each late for different reasons, so we actually started at 12:30pm. We had Iliaro, Daniele, Francesco, plus the two Perego boys, Joshua and David.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the group. Using a short PowerPoint presentation, I went over some guiding principles and gave them some online resources to use. I had put together a list of components for a desktop computer build costing about 500 euros in a shopping cart on amazon.it, and we reviewed them and my reasoning for choosing each one. Things are definitely more expensive here, due only in part to the 22% VAT (value added tax, like a national sales tax) -- this would be considerably cheaper in the US.

My homework assignment for them was to select components for their own design, or suggest different/better ones for mine. In a couple of weeks we'll meet, maybe just online via Zoom, to discuss what everyone came up with. Then we'll decide which parts to buy for my low-end computer for the Institute and order the parts. Once everything arrives, we'll schedule a time to get together and assemble everything. It should be fun! I told them that if one of them actually wants to pay for and build their own computer, I'll be happy to help.

Dee had made a carrot cake for the group, and she was there Saturday with the assignment to go to the pizzeria around the corner and bring back some pizza to consume after our meeting, which finished just short of one hour. When she went out, she discovered that the pizzeria is not open on Saturday afternoon, just in the evening. Who knew? Even Ilario shook his head at that one. So she came back and gave them the leftover sloppy joes from the evening before, as well as sandwich fixings, with potato chips and cake. Not as good as pizza, but nobody complained. Overall, it was a successful first meeting.

When we got home, I walked down to Conad to get some fresh produce, and Dee bought a loaf of bread at the market downstairs. She spent the rest of the afternoon shredding chicken for the senior missionary potluck dinner Sunday night at the mission home.

Just before 5pm we left for the ward activity, filling up the car with gas on the way. It was a Relief Society cooking contest, where all the sisters brought some kind of homemade dish from their native country, with a national flag displayed behind it. They each would explain what they had made to the noisy and hungry crowd. We had heard both 5pm and 5:30pm for the start time; turns out that they told the Italians 5pm and the Americans 5:30pm, hoping that we'd all be there about the same time 😀. Things still didn't get started until about 6pm, with a small program in the chapel for Fathers Day, which was last Monday here (who knew?). They had a brief spiritual message, and the Primary kids sang, then they gave certificates to all the men present. Dee writes: You should have seen the young missionaries' eyebrows shoot up when they got a fatherhood award!

After that we went into the big activity room, where the women explained their food dishes. The echoes due to the hard floor (there is NO carpet here anywhere -- Italians consider it unhealthy) made it difficult to hear over the other visiting going on. 

The last picture is our Relief Society President's display. Isn't it amazing?

They had three men set up as judges (on the right in the photo above), wearing colored ribbons and taste-testing everything. They gave out 1st/2nd/3rd prizes, with the latter going to our young Anziani who had made a carrot cake. So I told the two of them that they were now honorary members of the Relief Society. The prize for the elders was a pair of dangly earrings. The sisters all posed together for a group shot. My wife's comment was "only in Italy can I stand in the second row of a photo!", because here she is of average height.

Finally about 7pm we got to start eating the food ourselves. There was a wide selection of wonderful dishes from around the world, and we also enjoyed the visiting a lot. Unfortunately, we had to leave by 7:30pm to go to Metro nearby to get some food for the coming week at Institute. We were able to restock with a bunch of meat, cheddar, and some plasticware. We were home by about 9pm, which was effectively 10pm because l'ora legale (Daylight Savings Time) was to start overnight -- it's two weeks behind the US switch. So it would be yet another short night, but the day was full of very good things.