Sara's Adventures Abroad: One Dollar Wine

Day 12

Woke up so tired today, even though I didn’t start teaching until 10:30. It was a nice sunny day in Sulmona for once, usually our walk to school consists of rain. We had grade 4 class again, and we taught them the lesson on street signs as we hadn’t taught this class the lesson yet. Unlike the previous lesson, we couldn’t take these students outside to play red light green light, so instead we created a BINGO game with street signs and played that with them. It took them a while to understand the concept of BINGO. After that class, we had grade 3’s for the first time, so did name tags with them and the human body lesson. There was another Sara in this class too! They love singing songs like head and shoulders, and playing Simon Says. Those two hours went by fast, which was nice! We finished at 12:30 and went to the cafeteria for lunch. They gave us a tiny portion of fries, plain risotto soup and tuna. After lunch we met up with Kelly and Shannon, and went to the mall as most stores in downtown Sulmona were closing for siesta. Of course it started raining too when we started walking. The weather in this town is so bipolar, it is sunny for some of the day, then it rains and clears up. Luckily, I usually carry my umbrella with me for that very reason. The mall stays open during siesta so we decided to go there to get some lunch and do some more shopping. I got a slice of pizza as I learned from last time, a small pizza is more like a large pizza in Canada and way too much food. We went back to the penny market after the mall, and Shannon and I got a 1 dollar carton of wine, couldn’t pass that up! We dropped our bags off at the hotel and headed off to some stores. On the way I went to the bank machine to try taking money out for the first time since I got here as I was getting low on cash. I tried and just before I thought my money would come out, the machine said “please contact your bank.” I first thought maybe I either don’t have enough money in that account to take out the amount I wanted, so I tried a smaller amount and it told me the same message. I couldn’t believe it – I went through all the right steps and had the bank put in a note saying that I would be away. We went back to the hotel so I could Facetime home and get someone in Canada to call the bank for me to try and figure it out. In the meantime we went shopping at a few stores then came back for dinner. Dinner was really good tonight! First course was gnocchi, which as ususal is always good. Second course was a caprese salad – mozzarella cheese and tomatoes. Then dessert was a chocolate cheesecake that was so rich and smooth! I was told to get the operator and explain that I need to make a collect call to Canada and the bank would sort it out. I had Kylee come with me after dinner to the payphone to make the call. It wouldn’t work, and at this point I was getting so frustrated and upset that it wasn’t working out. I came back to the hotel and one of the trip coordinators, Jenny found me upset in the hallway and helped me try and figure it out. I would have to buy a cheap phone card as the payphones here only use phone cards, not coins. After all the frustration, Shannon and I decided to get into our wine and everyone was going out so I decided to join. We went to the first bar, and people were having shots of absinthe, which I definitely did not partake in. It was a really fun night, just relaxing and exploring the city and hanging out with the con-ed group. Justin, Steph and I came in at 12:00 and I went right to bed as tomorrow would be a long day.