Games

Some of the games we played as a group during the trip (many of which became instant classics):

1. Mafia: Classic teenage game of choice. To play, there is one God.  That person selects, in our case, two people to be the mafia, one to be the angel and one to be the detective.  Everyone goes to sleep.  The mafia pick someone to kill.  They put their heads down.  The angel picks someone to save.  Their head goes down.  The detective asks if someone is the mafia.  They can steer discussion later, but put their head down.

So the game progresses and people die.  The townspeople try and determine who the mafia is.  It led to some prety funny moments.  One night, Grace had a rough time.  One time she accidentally revealed herself to everyone as the mafia before the game by asking God, “Was that me you tapped?”  Later, someone else asked, “Am I dead?” and Grace said, “Yeah, because I killed you!”  We played every night in Cortona and occasionally throughout the rest of the trip.

2. Scopa: This beautiful Italian (well Napolian) card game was learned throughout the trip.  Its played on a different set of cards.  See below…

A deck of Scopa cards

The point of the game was pretty simple actually.  Each player gets three cards and there are four in the center.  You want to put down one of your cards so that it adds up to something in the center.  You then take that card(s) from the center.  If you can remove all the cards from the center with your card you scopa.  There are points awarded for having the 7 of coins, most cards, scopas and several other rules.  It’s really fun.  Scopa means to sweep or an expletive in Italian.

3. Merda: I learned this game, which means “shit” in Italian from my 7-year host brother.  Yeah… So it works basically the same as spoons.  All the ones, twos and threes would be distributed, and you would look collect all four of a certain number.  The first person to get all four slaps the pile in the center and yells “merda.”  The last person to slap the deck loses and draws a card.  They produce that many kilos of merda.  Who thought of this game?  We had fun with it though.