Archive | Sicily

Fiumefreddo Beach, Sicily

August 27, 2013 at 1:35 pm

In Sicily there are two kinds of beaches: rocky and sandy. Generally we stick to the sandy beaches because they sound like more fun (right?), but we learned a few weeks ago that rocky beaches have some serious advantages too. Especially when there is an ice-cold mountain stream bubbling out of the pebbles on one of them! We joined our friends the Arthurs at Fiumefreddo for our last beach day together in Sicily.

So windy it destroyed the beach umbrella… typical Sicily.

The men and kids decided to “expand” the cold mountain stream by making new channels for it in the pebbles.

Italian lifeguards & a very cute bambina in her new sun shirt!

Buried alive!

My little man actually seems to be enjoying the beach again… and you know Lena loved every minute of it!

That green promontory in the background is beautiful Taormina. For looks, Fiumefreddo takes the cake, although Cassibile is still our favorite. More photos from Cassibile later this summer, I hope!

6 :: in friends, pretty places, Sicily, Uncategorized

blackberry picking with friends

August 19, 2013 at 2:24 pm

After we had so much fun blackberry picking a couple of weeks ago, we invited our friends the Arthurs to go with us. There are so many berries along the roads these days; they seem to call to us to “pick and eat!” everywhere we go.

Here are a few fun photos from our blackberry picking adventure by an old railroad station. If you’re curious about what we do with all the blackberries once we have them (besides eating them while picking them…), I’ve got a wonderful recipe for berry tarts that I’m going to share tomorrow. The tarts are so good that I have stashed hundreds of berries in our freezer so we can enjoy them long after the season is over.

Lena and Lucas were diligent berry pickers for about 15 minutes before they started eating all they had and sneaking berries from everyone else’s buckets. I’m glad I caught them dutifully in action, though!

Lovely Elise

Children and brambles. We all emerged with a lot of scratches… and some damaged clothing.

This sweet little guy sat in his car seat on the railroad tracks and watched everyone for at least an hour and a half. I was so impressed with his patience! I literally fall in love with him more every day. Is that possible? Somehow… it happens.

Resting and showing off the result of some faithful pickin’.

Still at it. Go, Lucas!

Lena could not stop…

… eating berries! She filled up her bucket and then ate every berry in it.

Where are your berries, Lucas??

The sun goes down by the old railroad station.

Matching fishy faces?

Dads keeping their sons out of the brambles.

Caleb & Elise

The old railway station. The dads and kids explored this at the beginning while Becca and I were filling our buckets.

My family.

And Lena watches Lucas as the sun goes down.

Here’s one last photo from our drive home. We had noticed a few weeks ago that this orange grove looked totally dead. There was not a single green leaf in the whole orchard. Had the owners given it up? Would they just let a dead orchard sit there indefinitely?

Then, when we drove by it after blackberry picking, we saw that they were burning piles of branches. They had chopped up the whole orchard and were burning everything to the ground. It was an arresting — and quintessentially Sicilian — sight!

I saw the orchard again yesterday and there is absolutely nothing left now… just black patches on the ground where all the fires burned themselves out. Now we hope to see some miniature orange saplings in the ground soon, just like we’ve seen in several other orchards around our town. Although I have no hand in this process of dying and planting, I love to watch it, observing the cycles of the land create their own patterns over and above the seasons of the year.

2 :: in friends, Sicily, weekend

transition.

August 12, 2013 at 2:06 pm

I always felt like every year in college was totally different from the year before… almost like I was attending a different school each time. Some things stayed the same — the Lawn, mochas in the library, and tried and true friends that I’d had since school started — but everything else shifted. New faces became dear and familiar. A new house or roommate changed my living experience. New professors or classes changed my school experience. New organizations or clubs (or friends to enjoy a slow glass of red wine with) changed my social life.

All these things made each year entirely different than the last.

Real life is like this, military life especially. Every year people arrive. You might even add a new baby to your family… how’s that for major transition!

I am feeling the crunch of transition right now. I looked at my “Favorites” list of numbers in my phone and realized all those friends have moved away. (Well, except my husband, thank goodness.) At my women’s Bible study in the fall, I will only know about 5 people there instead of 20; everyone else has moved away. The friends that we have loved and relied upon since Day 1 in Sicily are no longer here.

And suddenly we’ve turned into the old fogies. We’re now the ones who speak the most Italian (what?!), the ones who know the best places to eat here, the ones who know where to park there, the ones who can lead the caravan of friends’ cars instead of follow it, the ones who can say, “Well, two years ago winter storms killed the orange blossoms, but last winter it wasn’t so bad, and so I think the blood oranges will be plentiful this year.”

(^ dork alert ^)

Suddenly, even more frighteningly, I am the one who needs to welcome, invite, include, initiate. I have always been on the other end of this, first as the newbie and then as just a friend. Now there are so many people who need me, who need to be found, who need to be befriended, who need another mom who will suggest we pack multiple children into hot cars and head off on a mid-week adventure, just because it’s Sicily and why not?!

Can I love as I have been loved? Can I — with mere months left here — hold open my arms and say, “Hi! Want to be my friend? Are you free on Thursday?”

Last night Elliott and I were praying together, and I prayed that we would “make room” in our lives for new friends. I called this blog “Making Room” because we want this to be a habit in our lives: welcoming people into our home, offering friends and travelers our guest room, having new and old friends over to dinner, participating in Bible studies/community groups that include whole families in each other’s houses, seeking out needs of others and clearing our schedules so that we can meet these needs.

We’re not good at this. We confront our own selfishness (or busyness, or introverted-ness, or exhaustion, or internal strife… this is a safe space!) every day. When faced with these frustrations, we usually choose to make excuses instead of making sacrifices. We choose self over service every day.

But thankfully, we have two things to combat our selfishness and help us “make room” this year.

The first is that we serve a God who not only made room for us in His Kingdom but gave life to us, welcoming us just as we were and then gently and faithfully continuing to sanctify us year by year.

The second is that we have had wonderful examples. So many friends here have opened up their lives, homes, refrigerators, minivans, and hearts for us, welcoming us just as we were. They have never assumed anything of us, other than that we’d like to be included. They have made this strange and wonderful land a home for us, a place we love because they loved it first and showed us why.

Can we do this for others? Can we seek out the newcomers and tell them what we’ve learned? Can we catch them before they escape after church, shy and overwhelmed, and ask them about themselves? Can we get their numbers and invite them to dinner? Can we take them to our favorite beaches, pizzerias, hiking trails, and agriturismi?

Can we love as we have been loved?

12 :: in friends, military life, my faith, Sicily, thoughts

Marzamemi, a Sicilian seaside village

August 8, 2013 at 3:11 pm

On our way home from the beach a couple of weeks ago, we decided to visit a sweet little seaside town called Marzamemi (mar-tzah-may-mee). Once the most important tuna processing plant on the island, it now relies more on tourism than on tuna. We visited just as the sun was setting and the colors of the town came alive.

Local specialties: tuna and sundried tomatoes in olive oil. I could not get enough of the tomatoes… yum!

Artisans set up tables of handmade pottery, jewelry, and friendship bracelets (are they the rage everywhere now??) along the harbor.

There were so many boys selling toys on these rolling metal frames. Lena was bedazzled by them, particularly the balloons. There’s something in her eyes when she sees a balloon that just makes me want to buy one for her every time! (But we don’t.)

Catching crabs.

Simple dinner: arancini and pizza. Arancini (Sicilian rice balls) are usually stuffed with things like prosciutto and cheese, but these were stuffed with salmon, mixed seafood, and squid. The black one had squid ink in it!

Gil was so determined to get a mouthful of the squid arancino! In the main piazza of the town, Elliott and Lena danced to music as people set up for a concert later that night.

Elliott listened to the music playing in the piazza and said, “This sounds familiar, like the theme song to The Last of the Mohicans or something like that.” I Shazam’d it on my phone… and he was right. Wowzers.

Love the single turquoise chair.

Couldn’t leave without a cupful of this!

Goodnight, Marzamemi!

4 :: in pretty places, Sicily, travel

blackberry picking in Sicily!

August 5, 2013 at 1:12 pm

So this happened yesterday: buckets of blackberries, all harvested by our little family… and all from the side of the road!

I’ve been wanting to go berry picking with Lena for a long time, but I never got my act together while we were in the States. Back here in Sicily, I have never seen a pick-your-own berry farm.. and somehow I doubt that they exist here.

But who needs a berry farm? Elliott spotted brambles laden with blackberries when he was out on a bike ride with his soldiers this week. On Sunday afternoon he suggested we go back to glean and gather. We’ve enjoyed scavenging for blackberries on walks and hikes every summer we’ve been here, and the prospect of unlimited berries sounded too good to be true for Lena and me. We found a couple of buckets, loaded up the car, and drove through the sleepy summer afternoon to a quiet back road in the valley.

Note: we dressed completely inappropriately! Blackberry bushes are covered in thorns (“brambles”) and we got scratched up badly, especially poor Gil’s defenseless toes. (My bad.) Next time… pants and close-toed shoes for everyone!

We quoted one of our favorite books — Blueberries for Sal — over and over while picking. “Now Sal, run along and pick your own berries.” Kuplink, kuplunk, kuplank! “Sal picked three more berries… and then ate all of them.” (So did Lena.)