Home stay

For the week we were staying in Besana, Italy, we did home stay. In other words, we ate and slept at a one of the volunteer homes for free.

It is a tremendous thing to do, to volunteer your home. Like Cedric and I, many of us who stayed grew quite attached to families.

We stayed with the Vigano family. The day we first arrived, Christina came to pick us up.That was about the time I was formally addressed with an Italian word.

"Ciao," she said. Ciao ,we found out a little later, is hi and bye in Italian.

Something clicked then from a advertisement long ago. About Ferraris I think. Just as the red Ferrari was pulling away, the guy in the car says, "Ciao Romano!"

I don't know about you but that left quite a deep impression on me. Much later in the week I asked her if she knew what it meant. I now know for a fact that he was saying goodbye in Italian.

Our first day in Italy was mostly spent sleeping. By dinner time, Luciano, Christina's husband had come home and was introducing us to his vegetable garden. Like most of the residents, they grow their own vegetables. From zucchinis to eggplants to herbs used in cooking, almost everything in their garden is edible.

He also tried hinting his name to us.

" Pavarotti , you know? " Luciano said.

"the singer?" he ventured.

He was referring to Luciano Pavarotti but we didn't know at that time. It's no wonder he looked rather perplexed when we called him Pavarotti some time later. Maybe he thought we were trying to be funny. Haha.

Other than having their own vegetable garden , the residents there also love their dogs. I should know. Our family had two German Shepards and they never fail to bark at us when we came home. Actually, towards the end of the stay I was starting to get a little irritated with them. One week and they still didn't recognise us - really!

We lived in the basement of the three -storey house. We had our own dinning room, kitchen, bathroom and a bed. The most interesting part of the basement is probably the toilet. There, beside the toilet bowl is an oddly shaped contraption similar to the toilet bowl. We didn't know at that time but it's called a Bidet. At first I thought it was a urinal unless Cedric convinced me otherwise.