There wasn't much happening here to report on in the last week. I didn't get a message indicating that my Italian ID is ready (maybe today?); but I imagine as we're rolling up to Christmas things might have slowed down a bit, so that wasn't really unexpected. The most exciting thing going on is that we've now had three whole days in a row without rain! Whoo-hoo! I think I will wash sheets today...
Since the weather was so nice yesterday, we decided to take a drive over to the next hilltop town to check it out - San Giuliano di Puglia [note: the Italian Wikipedia page I linked to has more interesting info than the English one; you can translate the page via your web browser if you're interested]. The "di Puglia" in the comune name reflects the fact that it was once part of the Puglia region (in English: Apulia), rather than Molise.
San Giuliano is a smaller comune than the one in which we are living. There was a terrible earthquake in this region in 2002, during which the elementary school in San Giuliano di Puglia collapsed, killing 27 children (you can still see obvious damage from this earthquake in some buildings in our own comune). There is now a memorial park on the site.
Here are some pictures I took as we explored the comune:
Top of the memorial park
View of the comune. Very far in the background you can see our comune on the next hill
Looking down the town
A devotional cross above the comune dedicated to several members of a family, I believe...haven't found anything more specific about it online yet
View looking down from the top of the memorial
As I was typing the above, there was a knock on the door - the vigile officer came (accompanied by my landlord) to drop off my new Italian ID card (CIE - Carta di Identità Elettronica)! I wasn't expecting it to be hand delivered; that was nice of them.
This is what the front looks like (certain information redacted):
Perhaps not the most flattering photo, but it will do.
I just messaged Nicoletta to let her know I now have my ID; she asked me to meet her in Campobasso this afternoon, so that we can schedule a passport appointment. The appointment itself will also take place in Campobasso, as that is where the questura is located (the provincial police headquarters - I think the closest US equivalent might be the regional State Police barracks). The passport appointment has to be scheduled via an app that needs to be downloaded to my phone - and of course as it will all be in Italian, she will need to help me to navigate the scheduler.
And now back to our regularly scheduled post:
The only other thing I was going to write about today was that we recently tried pandoro (or more properly, pan d'oro - golden bread). Pandoro is a popular Christmas treat here, a kind of sweet bread/cake. You see it in all the markets; there are a variety of brands ranging in price from quite cheap (maybe 3-4 euro) to fairly expensive (I think I saw one for about 15 euro). It is made with yeast, and, to me, has a light texture not unlike an angel food cake, though with a denser, less "spongey" quality, if that makes sense:
As you can see, it has a very distinctive shape, too. It seems it's often served with a dusting of powdered sugar. I like it a lot, particularly because it is light and, in spite of the powdered sugar, not overly sweet. This is not the same thing as panettone, which is more like a fruit cake/bread. I haven't tried the panettone here yet; we used to have English-style fruitcakes at Christmas when I was a kid, and I was not a huge fan. But I will keep an open mind (and palette), should the opportunity to sample some arise.
