Not Intent on Arriving

So we depart the homestay community early in the morning and head off toward our next destination — Pompeii.  All of the families show up on the platform, we take a few more pictures and we hop on the train.  Some of the siblings were in tears, but none were cuter than Bajia’s host sister.

Last group photo in the homestay

Carolina is four and was struggling to figure out what was happening.  She realized that Bajia (and Rob) were going away that morning and became unconsolable.  She wanted to come along and was in tears on the platform.  It was adorable.

Thankfully, this train ride was nothing like the past one. We hopped aboard and enjoyed cool, air-conditioned compartments.  I tried to make contact with our local rep, Enzo, to tell him it would be late, but had no success.  Strangely, the train made up the 30 minutes of lateness it had accumulated and we pulled into Napoli Centrale on time.  Italian trains make no sense.

Checking in on the kids on the train

I tried calling Enzo again with no luck.  We walk down the platform, hoping that someone will be there and he is!  Enzo is an English teacher and speaks it wonderfully.  He has lived in the Napoli area (well actually right on the side of Vesuvius) for most of his adult life.  He knows everything about the city and has every moment of our stay planned out.  His staple clothing choice is a NY Yankees shirt.  He loves American culture and knows many TV shows I’ve never heard of.  His son and a friend are constantly with us, though the fact that they speak no English impedes our ability to interact with them.

Enzo, our fearless guide through everything Napoli

We hop on the bus and take a 20-minute ride up to Pompeii and our hotel.  The rumors online suggest that it’s haunted but, other than Maggie and Caitlen freaking out late at night, nobody finds any conclusive proof of that.  So we check-in and go play in the pool.  Enzo says that he and I need to chat later, but everybody can play in the pool until dinnertime.

Our hotel in Pompeii

So I wait and wait.  Finally Enzo shows up.  I follow him as he moves toward another side of the complex.  His son and friend come with us.  I’m thinking this is strange.  We stop and walk into a room…. it’s the bathroom.  I’m thinking, “Uhhhh.”  Enzo says, “Come, you can have a stall if you need one.”  And I realize there is no meeting.  I’m pretty embarrassed actually.

The pool is wonderful and we have tons of fun that afternoon.  I’ll talk about our first dinner with Enzo tomorrow.

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.