Costumes + Horses + Archers = Amelia Palio

I'm going to start this by stating that Amelia knows how to throw a party. They have it down to a science. Take this stage for instance. They erected this stage in the piazza across the street from my apartment for entertainment throughout the two week festival.

Their attention to detail carries over to the Palio. The Palio is when the 5 different contradas get together to compete. There are three forms of main competition (there may be a fourth, but I don't remember). 1) Music, meaning the music while they are processing at noon on the hottest day of the year in WOOL costumes from the top of Amelia to the soccer fields out of the wall. 2) Jousting/Horse racing 3) Archery and then the winner of the overall competition.

This is the beginning of the procession. We waited near the Chalet (in the shade) for them to come down.

More drummers! Each contrada (there are 5) has a drum group and Amelia overall has a drum group, so 6 groups.

That's the banner you get when you win.

I want to make a family banner!

The kids get involved too!

The people that participate as dressed actors have to get together 3 hours before the parade begins to get their hair, make-up, shoes, costumes, etc. perfect!

They close down the streets for this (obviously) and there are a good chunk of riders on horseback.

Amelia and the fields.

Drummers on the left, the flags on the right indicate the track (the flags represent each of the contradas).

This is where the archers shoot from.

On the right is where the archers shoot to. If they hit the target perfectly they release a pigeon.

Drums :-) CRUX BURGI!

The APCA shield in the bottom left corner has two arms, the jousters have to hit their correct "arm" while racing their horses to win the match.

The flag throwers.

Ahhh... Amelia at twilight.

The flag throwers are quite amazing.

Up!

Up and over to another thrower.

One flag up, one spin on the ground.

Here is one of the horses coming around the corner.

Unfortunately one of the horses hit the hay right below. Both rider and horse were fine, but it was pretty scary. These horses run at full speed.

At night the Amelia drummers march with their hoods up, it's creepy but cool.

Crux Burgi won the overall competition!! :-) YAY!!!

The beautiful Porta Romana.

Ciao, ciao!!

Purple Party!!

We decided to have a Purple Party for Olivia's birthday. This was the most organized party that we had ever had, and tons of fun.

Kissy face pictures started early that night. We still try to coordinate open and closed eyes, it rarely works.

again...

Isabel... CLOSED eyes. :-) heehhehe

The band playing. Gavino is pretty awesome!

It was Gavino's birthday too, so Olivia and he blew out the candles.

The man in the middle is our Organized Crime professor. He was doing a jig, and Harasyn and Lauren joined in.

Lauren has to put her drink down to do this dance.

Petrus doing a solo.

CHEERS!!!

This is Patrick, I don't know if he has made it in a picture before. He's a lawyer from Canada. He is responsible for making sure that our glasses are full at all times.

One more try!

Petrus and Olivia dancing.

Birthday dance!

Emily and Michelle doing a "nice" pose at the food table.

Awww... kisses.

After a while Olivia's boyfriend Harry took the stage to entertain. Emily decided she was going to help him sing "Sweet Home Alabama."

They couldn't remember how it started, so I said "Big wheels keep on turnin', carry me home to see my kin" but due to the mindsets (i.e. hours of wine) they couldn't get past big wheels keep on turning, and then went into Proud Mary

Emily, Kate and Julia. Notice the purple! It was supposed to be an everyone dress in purple party because the Italians wear head to toe purple (old and young, male and female, they all wear it), some took that more seriously than others.

:-) It was a FUN night!! :-) HAPPY BIRTHDAY Olivia and Gavino!

Out and about

As the end of the program approaches school work is getting a bit more demanding, so I apologize for the long gaps in posting blogs. I'll make it up with this one, it should be fun.

Last week we went to a pizzeria outside of Amelia with Salvatore (Monica's brother), Michele, and Thomaso. They are quite the entertaining group. You would think that we would get sick of pizza by now, but nope we are still loving it. It is nothing like pizza in the States, so that helps.

So, at dinner I may or may not have knocked my fork off of the table and had it land in my purse. ;-)

Lately we have been on a hold the camera out and take a picture kick. Here is Lindsey and I early on in the evening.

This dinner was particularly funny because Salvatore is like his sister Monica, and tries to get us to use Italian more. Unfortunately I may have made one of the biggest pronunciation mistakes of this summer. Salvatore was trying to figure out how to say sweep in english, so I looked it up in my dictionary and said the Italian word that was there to see if we had successfully matched the words. WELL... apparently I mispronounced it, and my mispronunciation made it quite a bad word, and I had said it quite loud. After the boys all made huge faces and tried to get us to stop saying the word, Emily and Kate said it trying to figure out what was going on. Remember, we think we are saying "to sweep."

Well... turns out I was saying the "f" word. Yep, to sweep and the other word are just one letter off. One tiny little letter!! So that was very funny!

Here are Emily and Salvatore with their nice faces. ;-)

One side of the table: Michele, Kate, Emily and Salvatore.

The other side.

The group!

After the group photo we handed our cameras over to the boys to get a photo of the ladies. As soon as they had the cameras in hand they started rapid fire taking pictures. Hence our funny faces, it was a funny thing to watch. So here you have photo 1.

Photo 2

Photo 3 there are more, but I picked the best so I wouldn't be throwing too many photos at you guys.

Below we are waiting in the parking lot to determine where to go next. This was on a Monday night, so we had 5 more days of class to go and we didn't want to do anything super crazy. Our options were:

1. Go dancing in Terni

2. Listen to live music about 5 minutes away

3. Go home and go to bed

We decided to go listen to music. You get no pictures of this because apparently ALL of the people aged 20-35 in Umbria were there, and I was NOT going to be the stereotypical tourist. :-) Sorry!

After the music we headed back to Amelia and convinced Michele to open the gelateria just for us. Here Lindsey is reclining on the bench.

Michele dishing out some yummy gelato for Salvatore and Kate.

Thomaso is enjoying his gelato.

as is Salvatore.

Kate decided that she wanted to scoop her own.

Another fun night in Amelia!

Ciao Ciao!