Beppe is our Muratore and lives in the next village. His little boy Davide goes to Carina’s pre school (Scuola Materna). He is such a lovely man, and very patient with our renovation techniques. Sam has to keep telling him to just throw the cement and stop smoothing it out.
Beppe wants to make the house look new and we want to keep it rustic. Luckily he is very wirey as I don’t think Sam would get up and down the scaffold (especially as most of it is tied together with bits of rusty wire).
Unfortunately he doesn’t speak any English so I have been communicating through Sam and using lots of hand gestures. Carina doesn’t care that he only speaks Italian and chats away to him all day long which they both seem to somehow understand.
We pay him 60 euro a day and he works a full day with a break for lunch with us. Sam showed him pics of our house renovation in Wynnum and he was fascinated by the huge trestle ladders (no hire places here) and that we could get a skip at our house (here they are only available for companies not private homes).
He also liked the look of Bunnings (some friends in Australia sent us a catalogue) and he has invited us around to his house which he is renovating. His family are also living out of two rooms and at one stage had 6 in the bedroom (2 kids, 2 parents and 2 grandparents) which beats us.
It was so cold today that the cement was freezing in the cement mixer and even Sam was saying how cold it was. He had to resort to wearing Luca’s beanie to keep his head warm. Even though it is freezing cold we are above the cloud level so we get to enjoy the sunshine while down in the village its usually covered in with cloud.
Not much else happening at the moment, the kids are happy with all the Christmas presents and new movies so it’s not so bad being stuck inside. Sam has just headed off to the local shops to get some nappies and Sambuca (both are essential) for my sanity.
Hope all is well with you, getting computer time is harder and harder now Carina has discovered My Little Pony online.
