la famiglia orsettino

New friends and family: la famiglia orsettino
These two friends - Louisa and Aurelio - were part of my new "family" the first two weeks at camp. We ate 3 huge meals a day, two of those sitting in families. For lunch and dinner, two counselors would sit with a group of about 8-10 kids and make sure that hungry campers didn't become physically violent while trying to both eat the last piece of homemade cheese pizza (all the while talking in Italian, which was completely incomprehensibile to most of the campers...) The girl in this picture, Louisa, was one of our many campers from inner-city Chicago that in all honesty, didn't want to be there and sometimes made it really difficult for us counselors. Possibly my proudest moment was when I double-dog dared her to eat some of these mushrooms that she thought looked disgusting, and after taking the dare, and pretending to throw up, she ate like 3 more helpings of those mushrooms!!! at least i opened new horizons for somebody! she in turn, helped me opened my horizons as she attempted to teach me to jump double-dutch with a jump rope. she was about as successful at that as I was teaching her italian!!
the young man in this picture is Aurelio - a very talented piano player and hilarious italian. i really enjoyed having him in our family because he was way too lazy to try and make himself understood in Italian, and so he just spoke to the kids in his somewhat-broken English. his proudest moment came when he finally mastered the phrase "What you doin' gettin' all up in my grill, b****?" i'm not kidding.....he took him several days to get that down. and imagine that being said in a mixture of italian mafia/ebonics/english accent.