Italian
Recently we have started going to Italian lessons. After some looking around we found a place called Canadian Island that was willing to do Italian lessons for kids. We have gone about 10 times since then. Our teacher’s name is Agnese. I think that she is a good teacher. The only problem with Agnese is that she does not speak much English to us. I don’t know whether that is because she does not know English or because she thinks we will learn more Italian if she only speaks Italian to us. Agnese has been teaching us Italian while doing fun stuff like teaching us the names of colours (like terra di Siena, gello, blu, rosa, and verde), by painting and making carnival masks, and teaching us the names of food (like mela, zucchero, farina, ouava, and buro) by cooking cookies and strudel. Of course, she also tries to teach us other ways, for example, when we told her we would be skiing and horseback riding, the next week, she wrote the names of all the ski and horse equipment. She then put it into a book that she had made for us that consisted of many, MANY pieces of paper.
Pottery
A while ago, Papa was looking on the internet for some activities for us to do, and found a potter who was teaching people how to make pottery. Papa suggested going and Nina and I agreed, so we went to the pottery studio and painted plates. We thought it was fun, so we asked Papa if we could do it again. He said yes and we have been doing it since. So far we have made the plates, some small bowls on a spinning wheel, some bigger twisty bowls molded on pre-made bowls, and candle holders.
Horseback Riding
Some time ago, while Papa was looking for some activities for us to do, he was also looking for some friends for us. He would go online, get in touch with someone, set up a time to meet them, then see if we got along. Siena was one such person. Papa talked to her mom online, they arranged a time to meet, and we met them. While talking to and playing with Siena, she mentioned that they could not find any places to ride horses in Italy. We remembered that our landlady (her name is Doreen) had mentioned that there was a stable near our house. We mentioned this to Siena and her mom, but said we did not know where it was. Her mom suggested contacting Mama who knew where it was. When we got home, we asked Mama if we could do riding lessons. A while later, Mama announced that we would be going to the stable for a riding lesson. We liked it and decided that we wanted to do it again. The first few days, the instructor tested our abilities. She had us trotting and throwing a ball around, riding the horses backwards and sideways, trotting sitting down (this was especially hard on Nina’s horse Hobbit because he was very bouncy), and trying to stand up with our feet out of the stirrups. Finally, just three classes ago we graduated to the big ring and our teacher had us doing figure eights and going around it only halfway, trying to get us to go in exactly the right formations. Then, just last class with Isla, (Nina or I will talk about her in a later post) our teacher decided to change things up. Isla got the horse that I was used to and I got a new horse. Our teacher decided that we had not done enough hard stuff so she made us bring one of our legs over the saddle and stand on one stirrup while the horse walked(oh, then we had to touch our foot to the ground). Despite the difficult and unusual stuff we do, I enjoy riding.
Karate
While searching on the internet for activities for us to do, Papa found a karate studio that was giving out free trial classes. We went to a free trial class and liked it. We found it fun learning the stances, punches, and kicks as well as doing the (at least in my opinion) hard warm up. We have been going once a week since then learning moves with some interesting names like “delayed sword”, “alternating maces”, and “sword of destruction”. We are working towards a yellow belt and hopefully if we learn enough karate, we will be able to get it before we leave.
