oh, come on!

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19 march: the first ray of hope?

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ciucci ciucci coo

It can really be hard sometimes living in a country that isn't yours with a different culture and language to boot. But it's all worthwhile when you get nice happenings like this past Sunday. Camposano, a little town near Nola, had their annual Palio, or race. But not a horse race like the famous Palio of Siena, but a donkey race.

Oh how much I do love donkeys! They have such sweet and sad expressions. So we brought our daughter, who has also been a big fan of ciucci since the time last year that a friend's donkey ate her cracker which she'd dropped in the mud. The ciucci raced down a straight blocked-off street, but in their own way, so not paying much attention to the riders, going in the wrong direction or refusing to budge an inch. It was such a fun event and totally Italian, nothing you'd find anytime soon in the States.

Sant'Antuon'

Yesterday was Sant'Antonio, otherwise known as Saint Anthony or Sant'Antuon' here in Campania. Besides being protector of animals, he also protects everyone who has anything to do with fire, apparently because of a story in which he descended into Hell to try to save the sinners' souls from the Devil. In fact, Italians call the illness shingles (herpes zoster) "il fuoco di Sant'Antonio," Saint Anthony's fire. Every year on January 17 in Marigliano, our little town, people make these gargantuan bonfires with old furniture and other junk they have hanging around to celebrate the saint. These fires go really high up, sometimes higher than the apartment buildings around them, and look like a sort of geyser of flames, with chunks of ashes that fly up in the air and come down even hundreds of meters away. Pretty impressive! Here's one that they made outside our apartment, photographed from our balcony. It was nearly impossible to photograph, but you get the idea. You can see the windows lit up in the apartments behind the fire.