ci vuole

There is something very 'magical' and heartwarming about this song. It is usually taught to young children and concerns about environmental appreciation which highlights the proper use of the Earth's resources. It was also taught at my Italian class when I was sequestered for 3 months in Terni. That was part of a lesson to get us to learn in a less rigid way the use of the Italian words and to get into the flow of things. The name of this song is 'ci voule'. Loosely translated, it means '(it is) necessary (to have)'.

It begins with the introduction of a table (tavolo) and what it needs to get that. The final analysis shows that we need 'fiore' or the flower to enable that end product, which is the table. Have a listen to this and see if you can get or catch the 'magic' behind the verses...

This is probably the only thing I like and could live with here in Italy (other than gelato)! :-D

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A Roma! (To Rome!)

It is the last night here as I penned this down. All my things are packed and only waiting for tomorrow to arrive where we would make our journey back to Rome.

It's been a whirlwind of a time here and it seemed like only yesterday that we came to Terni and to this Villa in particular. That's two and a half months gone already and we are now moving onto the near end of the year!

Earlier, we went over to Narni (Scalo), the town that is at the foot of the hill, where we had our closing Mass with the bishop of the diocese of Terni-Narni-Amelia, Vincenzo Paglia. It was at the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Ponte (Our Lady of the Bridge). It was hinted that Narni was the name which CS Lewis used for his mythical land of Narnia in the Narnia Chronicles. Apparently Lewis may have visited this place when he was a young boy with his parents. This hasn't been truly verified but it is interesting to note, as mentioned in the books, that when you are not especially looking for it, the place will show or present itself to you! ;-)

So, this is the last post in Terni. Thanks for all your prayers and your silent journey with me through these posts! More to be done ahead and I am anxious to get all that settled as soon as possible. Till the next one, arriverdeci and ci vediamo a Roma! :-D

I Passed!

I shall take a loooong *sigh* of relief now!...

With a short and simple ceremony at the University for Foreigners, Perugia, our batch of priests received our certificates for completing the language course that we had been struggling with for the past two and a half months. :-) I passed lah! I am happy to have survive these past period here and to have come out of all this intact! Along the way, I have lost a great amount of grey cells and memory and age seems to have been slowly creeping up on me. :-P I am not able to remember things and hold information well...

Nonetheless, I have overcome one hurdle and now another beckons. We shall be leaving for Rome on Monday morning and there I shall need to start preparing to enter the Angelicum University for my REAL studies that I was sent for! :-) My consolation here would be that my course is all in English... :-D

For now, I am just relaxing around while I still can. Tomorrow (Sunday), however, our group will make a trip to Narni. More on that later... ;-)

Finito!

It's over!

The day began as usual. As with our usual daily lessons, we were late in starting our exams. Not that I was complaining. But when we finally began, it was a three hour sit-in that taxed by grey cells to no end. I did whatever I could and when I finally gave my completed papers back to the lecturer, I left the class with a feeling that a huge burden was suddenly taken off my back :-D

I shall be very happy just to get a pass. Anything else would be a total bonus!...

Tomorrow

Tomorrow....

That's when I will go about to do my final exam for the Italian language paper. So will about 47 of my other brother priests.

Today, I am in the last throes of revision that is already making my head spinning from all those grammar and syntax to remember. If I am half my age today, I may just be able to handle all this stress with the greatest of ease. But, when I am at the halfway point of a 'normal life expectancy' and my brain cells are not as numerous as when I was younger, everything is a struggle! :-P

The consolation is that after 12 noon tomorrow, I shall be finished with all this burden!

The End is Nigh....

The staff of the Villa issued each of us a blanket for our room. The days are getting a lot more colder and the signs are showing that autumn is near.

It rained the whole afternoon yesterday and drizzled into the late evening with string gusts of wind that turned the weather all cold and wet. :-P Today it was sunny a while but it was still cold with the biting wind in the background. Throughout I was wearing a sweater which helped a bit. Later in the evening, the skies grew dark again and rain came down for a while. Now it is night and the temperature outside seems to be below 20 degrees. Yesterday it was around 15!

All this also says that the end is nigh for our course and our stay here. We should be heading back for Rome on the 17th...

Andate in Pace!...

Finally, I finished, together with my group, our pastoral duties at the parish of St Chiara (St Clare)!

The parish priest wasn't around but there was a replacement priest from the parish of San Gemini who came and celebrated the 10.15 a.m. Mass. It so happened that there was one elderly couple who was celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. So, it was quite a diverse piece of celebration that had the main celebrant playing the guitar and singing all the songs/hymns as there weren't any choir around that morning. :-D

If you have to ask if the liturgy was following the required rubrics, just don't! :-D Any purists would just died there and then with the kind of celebration which we had, even though it was still acceptable - to my own personal opinion... ;-)

Whatever the case, we had a simple and yet a very big banquet after the Mass that consist of pasta, tortellini, a breaded meat dish, veg & potatoes, wine, coffee, watermelon (cocomero) and other snacks that were handed out! By the time all was over and when we headed back to the Villa, I was already bloated and sleepy from all that drink and food :-P

For the weeks ahead, it is now full steam towards completing the course that will culminate with a final exam! *shudder*

Weekend Agora

I have been rather tired out and exhausted by the week's number of lessons we were having where practically every day we had 6 hours of classes - morning and afternoon! :-P

As such, updating my entries here have been irregular. So, when the weekend arrived, it was with a great sense of relief that I could find some time to just laze a bit, even if I had to take time to complete some homework for the coming Monday.

The Pope in now in Loreto with the youths from all over Italy and other European countries for the Agora gathering. He will be there for this occasion till Sunday, 2 September.

As the Catholic World News explained it:

The "Agora" meeting is part of a 3-year campaign among Catholic youth, which in turn is the result of a pastoral-planning meeting among Italian Church leaders in 2006. The campaign, designed to reinvigorate the faith among young Italians, will continue through the World Youth Day observance in Sydney, Australia, in July 2008, and conclude with a final year of evangelization aimed at Italian youth.

Yesterday, Friday 31 Aug, we the priests from the Villa with the other group from Lugnano went over to the Terni centro (town center) to celebrate mass with 15 other bishops where the main celebrant was Bishop Vincenzo Paglia, for the youths who were going to Loreto for the event. I managed to take a few pictures of the occasion which began at 7.00 p.m.

The event took place in the town square where it could accomodate about 1,000+ people. It was sort of a mini 'Agora' which had songs and dance presentation after the Mass and packed dinner which followed. I was tired out when we all finally came home just before 11.00 p.m.

Today besides the pesky homework, I did nothing much except to put this entry down... :-)

Hot Air!

On Sunday evening, I went up with the hot-air balloon! Along with me was another priest friend from India, called Saji. After two days of deliberating, we finally plucked up our courage and went for the ride that lasted for about 4 minutes. There was already a queue and we thought, being Sunday and all, it would be impossible for us to have a go. That Sunday was the last day for the balloon ride. But we waited patiently and were rewarded by that lift up into the sky! :-D

It was quite a short ride but because it was free, no one was complaining. This was part of the festivity at the park, just outside our Villa. The Villa's carpark was used as the place for this ride.

Meanwhile, the days remaining here for the Italian studies continue to edge closer to our date of completion and departure for the 17th September. This weekend on Saturday, we go for our last class outing to Loreto. This was supposed to be on the 8th September, but they brought forward the excursion to this weekend instead. Loreto is near the sea and the place where supposedly the house of Mother Mary when she lived in Nazareth was finally stationed after it was miraculously brought from Nazareth. Some may probably say this is all full of hot air! :-D

Whatever it is, this weekend may be a rather interesting outing by the beach with our Lady! ;-)

The Weekends

Aaahh... the weekend! Time out to, not only relax even though that helps a lot, catch a long breath of consolidating what we had learned the past week. This usually means using the ample time available to organize my thoughts and directions on what I had accumulated for the lessons we had thus far, though exercises, reading and studying.

Boring, you say? Perhaps. But the necessity of finishing this course in good order and for me to survive all this in one piece overrides all other luxuries for now. :-P This also includes saving some room for the Latin lessons, which, by the way, was surprisingly enjoyable! The best part about the Latin class is that it is non-obligatory with no tests/exams. :-) It helped also that for those who still want to attend the lessons, like myself, the teacher happened to be very skillful in making the afternoon classes engaging.

Meanwhile, it is that special week and onwards where the summer festivities take place in gusto before the season ends. Just outside our compound, where the park is, a celebration or festival of sorts is taking place. This is organised by the current ruling party of the country - the Communist Party (Left), to be exact. There are tents and booths there for food, drinks, games and entertainment that starts after 9 p.m. and goes on till a little after midnight. Our carpark area within the Villa also gave way to provide a hot-air ballon ride! We watched, up close, as the personnel unfurled the giant balloon to set up for the ride, hot air and all. It was my first time seeing something like this with such near a proximity!

By the way, we made a visit to Amelia, a town that is also a part of the Terni diocese. We went there last Wednesday, the feast of the Assumption of our Lady. You can check the outing presented in pictures here.

Have a pleasant and peaceful weekend ahead! Buon fine settimane!

Invitare Peccati!

It began innocently enough with our exercises and homework being checked and corrected in class this afternoon.

We had to expand some dairy entries of a young woman and tell a story about her life as given in point form in one particular exercise. One of the priest read out his piece he did and our teacher brought out a point concerning a romantic candle light dinner (cenato a lume di candela). First, our China priest was asked by our teacher (in Italian, of course) what is the Chinese phrase for 'candle light dinner'. He was confused and thought she meant if he had seen candles in a shrine. When he finally understood what the question was, he quickly told her that people in China do not have such practices. :-)

It's not that they are not romantic, mind you, but just that this isn't in their culture. But modern Chinese nowadays may be more attune to this, nonetheless.

Next, another point was brought out by our teacher that usually in candlelight dinners, the lights would be turned off or dimmed. One of the African priests in our class put up his hands and asked why are the lights switched off. "Is it because the couple can have the better freedom to express themselves?", he continued. That's when we all burst out laughing and the lessons took a turn for the funnies! :-D

Meanwhile, another African priest in the class was quietly observing and reflecting all this and when the description of a candle light dinner continued to be explained, as our teacher did her best to highlight this special occasion between two persons on a date, of which she herself had been through before, this priest suddenly interjected with this comment that it was "invitare peccati. (inviting sins)" The jaw of the teacher dropped as we all burst out laughing again! :-)

Tip: when you are talking to African priests, do not, I repeat, do not mention anything about candle light dinners!

The Greatest Mistake of Our Lives!

A chat with the same Indian priest over dinner today in the dining hall, when commenting over another priest's sacerdotal annivesary, came up with this wicked anecdote: In India, they don't really give much attention to priestly anniversaries but more on birthdays. This is because, for any sacerdotal anniversaries there, it was akin to saying that the celebration is for one of making the biggest mistake of life... ;-)

We had some wine and gelato to celebrate that 'greatest mistake'.

It was a quiet and peaceful Sunday, nonetheless, with a spot of meteor watch later in the night. During the earlier part of the morning, there was a water and electricity outage due to maintenance work at the Villa. So, grabbed that chance and dropped into the main town, Centro, with Fr Richard and Fr Kevin for brunch over cappucino, pizzas and gelato. There wasn't much to see around town on Sundays as most of the shops were close and fewer people on the streets. For some parts, it was like a ghost town. Everything stops here on a Sunday!

Fr Richard Lawrenson, by the way, is that priest who celebrated his 'greatest mistake'! :-) Later in the night we, Richard and myself that is, had a good view of the meteor showers that is the Perseids! It started with a sudden streak in the northeastern sky that first caught my attention. Spend some hour and a half to get a glimpse of another 3 to 4 more we call it quits for the night.

Dilemma

It was raining rocks yesterday evening! Well... hailstones, to be exact. :-) But I didn't know it at that time because they were tiny and came down with the rain. It was the first major rainfall after so many months.

Meanwhile, I am preparing myself today for the Sunday's Mass celebration as I shall be the main celebrant and also giving the homily - and all this in Italian! I am in the midst of cracking my head with the translation of my English homily I done up the night before to the Italian version so that it won't sound totally gibberish to the congregation later.

As I reflect on this I am brought to consider a dilemma I am facing - nothing major, but a thought that nibbles at the back of my mind. As a priest celebrating any Mass, doing this in one's own language and culture is certainly an experience that is personal and for the congregation an engaging experience. You can just feel for what is going on and get in touch accordingly with the moment that is at hand - within the settings of the liturgical celebration, of course.

Since arriving here and still struggling with the language, this setting has become a little alien to follow and its flavour strangely abstract. Every morning, when we take turns to celebrate/concelebrate the liturgy, which is all in Italian, the whole celebration becomes somewhat remote and mechanical for me. I do make a point to be with the whole celebration, but whenever I say those prayers in Italian, I can't help but feel very mechanical about it all... :-P My brother priests may be going through that phase too. Most, if not all, of our Masses, are done in a manner that seems to want to get it over with it all. They and I have not acquired the expertise and intricacies of the language yet, to appreciate fully what we are always reminded to experience in a celebration such as this. *sigh*

Piano o Forte?

I have a little time now and it's after a long 6 hours of Italian lessons today, broken by a break for lunch in between... :-P

Since our group came here, we have slowly picked up and, for some, have improved in leaps and bounds with the written and spoken language of Italy. The Sundays' pastoral sessions in the churches and with the different families assigned to us during the past week has helped tremendously our immersion into the Italian language and the environment.

I am getting into the flow of speaking the language a little better, though it is still a struggle, especially with the prepositions (aaarrgggh!) and words needed for daily usage when buying things or engaging in conversations with people during our pastoral work. But as our lecturers have wisely said:

chi va piano,

va sano e va lontano.

chi va forte,

va alla morte.

Simply put, it pays to go through our lessons slowly and surely and gain rather than hurry and lose everything. ;-) In Latin, a similar proverb comes to mind: festina lente! :-D Meanwhile, whether fast of slow, our class still had to deal with our first minor test yesterday! :-P I managed to muddle through and should pass. Anything more than that would be a miracle! :-D

Another month and a half to go before we get down to the real business at hand - our real studies in our respective pontifical universities. That is where the real challenge lie!...

One Month Already?

Another week is about to end soon and I am still struggling with the intricacies of the Italian language. :-P

By next week, we would have done just about 1 month of stay here in this Villa and, more specifically, in the town of Terni. Next week, too, on Monday, we would be having a 'minor' test to ascertain our progress. For me, no test is 'minor'! It's a great way to give yourself a headache and a mild fit...

Meanwhile, we have been put into groups and send out to the parishes on Sundays to mingle with the townsfolk and concelebrate mass there. Last Sunday, I partnered with my fellow brother priest from the Ivory Coast and went with a family for lunch at their home. We have a roaring good time there with pasta, pork, tomatoes, vegetables, rock melon, wine, limoncello, grappa, beer and coffee! Among all these also was the conversation in Italian, at least those that we can muster and use.

It is a family of 5 of whom three were present. Of the parents, the mother can speak a little English, though her French is somewhat better. She also paints. The father is a true-blue Italian, while their youngest daughter speaks Italian and has learned German and English in school. She is waiting to enter a university in Rome to learn, of all things, Chinese and Russian! Her two other siblings were away. One is working as a nurse and the other is a nuclear physicist. Very interesting family here!

This Saturday, we will be going on an excursion to Assisi. I am looking forward to that and hope to get some pictures to add to the collection.

Skipping Class!

I skipped class today! ;-)

It's for a good reason and it was an emergency. But, I'd rather go for class than to skip it, which was to attend to some passport matters with regards the soggornio application which the College is doing up for uswho are studying in Rome.

I had to go to the Consulate of Singapore (we don't have an embassy here) to get them to certify my name as having a given name and a surname so that the police here who will issue or clear the soggiorno will know that it is me... I know this is stupid but that's the story! :-P

My passport only shows my name in full with no indication or separation of which is my first name and which is my surname, etc. Hence this declaration/certification from the consulate to inform the police of this. I had to go all the way to Rome to get this done. So, I skip class, left with the other two Malaysian priests who were in the same boat as I was, right after morning Mass, and took the train for an hour's ride or so to get to our respective embassies/consulate. :-P We managed to settle the matter with our consulate and embassy by late afternoon. But we had to wait for a later train which left at 4.15pm because we missed the earlier one at around 2+ pm. The return trip had us on a train whose aircon went bust and it was scorching hot inside and outside as we had the evening sun following us all the way. The train was also famously delayed for 22 minutes! I now know how any food feels in a microwave!... :-P

Anyway, while there frantically running all over the place to get our documents done up, I managed to grab some shots of how hot Rome is at this time of the year! ;-) There are people getting drenched and playing in the fountain. The fountain is at the Piazza Repubblica, about 5 minutes walk from the train station.

It was a great relief to be back at the Villa and cleared all that nonsense! I never had problems of this kind with the main immigration and customs. It is the local police department that seems particularly anal about it. *shake head*

Fine With Me!

The four 'carabinieri' that were suppose to catch and fine us for speaking anything other than Italian has eased off much... :-D

One of the assigned had never the intention of catching anyone as he didn't subscribe to this idea of reinforcement and so, never bothered with this. The other had great difficulties in getting to speak coherently in Italian and therefore never bothered to grab Euros from our brothers. It's coming to the third day of this situation and somehow the effect has been a more negative one as lesser people among are actually talking at all! (ya, I can hear you all laughing there...) We use to get very animated and noisy during meals as we exchange greetings, jokes and sharings in all tongues, including Italian as we explore and experiment the language we were sent here to learn. Now, when we have to speak in our mother tongue, we whisper and as much as we could, we would not to speak if we can help it! *shake head*

I, for one, have never any inclination for such a reinforcement. As how we were, before the fines, we were already enjoying ourselves with the exploration of the language and needn't any reminders of why we need to pick up this language as we know it is a necessity/must, especially for the most of us who are taking up courses in the Urbaniana University. Me, I am taking this so that I can survive in Rome conversationally.. ;-)

Anyway, here is one fratello who is taking all this in his stride. He is from one of the former French colony of a Western African country now called Benin. Dieudonne N'tcha is resplendent in his native African casuals with a green outlook that guarantees to drive away those 'fine blues' and put a smile back onto enjoying what we were originally here for! Meanwhile, I am still looking for another chance to reacquaint myself with some gelato and don't want to wait for any fines to enjoy one! :-D

Ciao e ci vediamo!

Speak Like the Locals

I was fined 1 euro this morning for using an English word instead of its Italian equivalent! :-P

From this week onwards we are all to use Italian in our conversations and to put aside our mother tongue, especially English, French, Hindi, Tamil, etc... Whoever caught using them would be fine, like yours truly. :-D

Also, this week onwards, we begin to take turns to celebrate the Mass in Italian at the Clares Monastery. The roster is up for us to see what day we are helping to concelebrate Mass and proclaim the gospel (in Italian, of course!) and what other day we would be celebrating the Mass. I have mine this week on Thursday for the gospel and Friday to celebrate the Mass! Furthermore, on Sundays we will now go to our assigned parish for our pastoral work and mingle with the people there and also attached to an Italian family.

All this for us to get into the rhythm of speaking Italian like the locals... mamma mia!

To Break The Language Barrier!

Well, it has already been 2 weeks since we came to Terni and lessons are getting into full swing as we dwelve deeper into the language that we have grudgingly adopted as our lingua for our studies here.

Our two professoressa (Laura and Chinzia) has been very kind and patient with all of us as they slowly put us through our paces to acquaint ourselves to the various ways of conversing and listening in Italian. Much of what we had learned thus far has been confined to 'Come va?', 'Come sta?', 'Bene', 'Grazie', some major definite articles, verbs and adjectives, for most of us.

Myself, whom have already gone through most of what we are learning, because of the 2-month Basic Italian Course by the Italian Cultural Institute in Singapore, found this a refresher and also a much needed kickstart to speaking more of the language here. However, there is big difference when I start to speak, as the word and sentences do not come out freely or easily as I need to form them in my mind in English firstand I mostly fail to engage in a decent conversation I can be satisfied with. :-P I still have a long way to go!...

Last weekend was a break from all this as we headed down to the town center on Sunday to concelebrate Mass with the Bishop of Terni, Vincenzo Paglia. He is a jovial and affable person who knows how to put a person or strangers/foreigners like us at ease with his easy smile and warm open handshake. He also knows how to use the occasion to promote some publicity for his office, as he engaged a local TV crew to film the occasion. I happened to be included in a short clip which was shown over the TV here last Sunday afternoon over the news! :-D

Meanwhile, due to lack of opportunities for any sort of blading here because there are no proper places/roads or lanes, and that I also did not bring my blades, I have resorted to jogging again. Running a little around the area here helped my bowel problem somewhat and also keep my weight in checked! ;-) The food here can really put on those pounds rather quickly, if I am not careful and remain lethargic or lazy about exercises. I have also resorted to taking long walks with some brother priests, especially during the late afternoons when it is much cooler.

For now, it's business as usual. Not even the recent Motu Proprio on the Tridentine Mass by Pope Benedict caused any ripple here as we are utterly unaffected by it and more interested in getting through our Italian without cracking our heads first! :-)

So, keep yourselves well and ciao!

Babel Reversed...

So, we have finished one week of our stay here in Terni at the Villa Spirito Santo.

One week of finding our way around and getting use to our environment which this district has to offer in terms of climate, food, people, lodgings, and the daily activities of our study program. It has been quite a fascinating experience to undergo a total change from what each of us had been used to. Three quarters of us are Africans. Of them, a good number can only speak and understand French. We also have the Indians who have made themselves a home here with the rest of us, who are Chinese, English-speaking Africans, Malaysians and yours truly. But what bind us all together is this common struggle to read and converse in Italian which will eventually allow all of us to speak and understand one another despite our different background of culture, dialect and language!

I can see the wave of culture that unconsciously flow through out dining table whenever we have our meals as we enjoy both the food and each other's company. The camaraderie is always so palpable that you must be blind not to notice it!

It is no coincidence that we happened to be living in the Villa named after the Holy Spirit that even without our conscious awareness, is doing its utmost to get us united and understanding one another under a single tongue... ;-)

The Villa has been and continues to be our home for the duration that we are here for the Italian language. Staying here has been very comfortable thus far and we are never far from any conveniences. The town is about 10 minutes walk away, we have hot/cold shower, water is relatively clean, the rooms that we stay in are very adequately provided with the necessary amenities. They even provided towels like how a hotel does it!

Despite the main or usual offering of different types of pasta, there has been occasions where they do offer other kinds of food that need not make us cringe with an overload of their wheat-based cuisine. Today, I noticed they served us riso (rice) with fish and long beans. Fish on a Friday!... :-D

Now the weekend is upon us and we get to have breather from classes awhile! We still have our homework and assignments to plow through, though. :-P Still, it is a welcome respite from the tons of headache I get from playing back all those phrases, words, declensions and other tongue-twisting items in my mind!

For now, it's 10.10 p.m. on a Friday evening as I finish this entry. Till the next one, buona notte!