Italin Funerals

It turns out that Sunday morning I learned more about Italian funerals that I've ever imagined I would. I got up and got ready for church in the morning. I had no clue what time mass would be, but I had planned on asking Helen--the villa "mom". She looked it up and there happened to be a 9:30 mass (it was 9:00 at the time). So I checked with her to make sure I knew what church I was going to and headed off. It's only about a 15 minute walk, so I got there early.

I was early enough for some guy to come start talking to me, in Italian. I had no clue what he said, but I told myself that he wanted me to scoot over so that he could sit in the pew also. He kept talking though. At his point I hadn't had Italian class so my repertoire of Italian words consisted of Buongiorno, ciao, and grazie! I said to him "I'm sorry, I only speak English." I think he got the point, because he stopped talking. Anyway, at about 9:28 everyone stands up and turns around. I follow suit only to see a casket being carried down the aisle. I'm guessing the man who was talking to me was asking something along the lines of how I knew the deceased person.

Well I weighed my options, and decided to stay. I figured it wouldn't hurt. And hey, mass is mass whether it's a funeral or not! After the funeral I headed back to the villa for brunch. Later on in the day, I went for a hike up the foothill in Sesto with Julian, Nishant, and Andy...the same people I went out with in Sesto two days before. We didn't find the right path, so we never found the great views of Sesto, but it was still a nice hike. Andy picked up a stick to use as a walking stick about 5 minutes into our journey. After a series of hilarious events with the walking stick, we now call him Moses (or Mo for short!). We had a great time during the hike.

Later on we ate supper then played bocce ball and relaxed during our last night of freedom before classes started.

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As an addendum to this post I'd like to speculate that the funeral encounter might not be that strange in Italy. I think that instead of separate masses during the week they just stick their funerals in during the regular parish masses on Sundays. Also, Italian caskets are a lot less lavish and more economical than American caskets.