Our Church Meetinghouse

I absolutely LOVE Caserta! (Caserta is the name of the city where our church meetinghouse is.) It is a quiet city. I feel safe and at home here. The people are very friendly and there is almost always someone out on the street.

The picture above is a view of the street Corso Trieste looking north. Our meetinghouse's address is 180 Corso Trieste. I've listed the address in case you would like to look it up on Google Earth. Our door is the green one. Up the street about 6 blocks is la Reggia di Caserta (the Caserta Palace). It was an alternate home to the Naples royalty which ruled this area about 400 years ago.

The upper  left picture is Corso Trieste looking south. There are a lot of  "bars" where people stop to eat or drink a coffee.

Bars are the Italians version of our McDonalds or Taco Bell. They stop here and sit for breakfast, lunch and late at night. You will see people there at all time of the day. They are in no hurry. They will sit and read the paper (mostly in the morning) or visit with others (mostly at night).

We are quite amazed because their pattern of use of the bars are not deterred by the weather. Whether a nice sunny day or in the sweltering heat of summer or cold of winter, you will find people sitting outside at the Bar. Generally there is no sitting inside a bar. If people are stopping by for a quick cup of coffee, they may stand at the counter while they drink it and then off they go.

This is what we affectionately call "the hole". This area is under the building where our meetinghouse is. Our meeting house is actually a floor of this building that has been remodeled to accommodate our needs.

This area, as you can see, is the parking area. When we first started parking here the lights were controlled by light switches. However, we knew nothing about the lights or the switches. Our first experience was at night. How funny that was! You should have seen us.

Getting our of "the hole" was easy. We just headed for the entrance, which we could see because it was lighter outside, anything would have been lighter than the darkness of "the hole". Upon leaving I did make note of the ground to see if it was level and if there were any holes or ridged that we might trip upon our return to our car. (I may not be the smartest cookie around but I am not all nuts either.)

Anyway, our return trip to our car was quite the adventure. It was pitch black! Not one speck of light. Luckily for us we were giving a ride home to the missionaries. One of them was smart enough to think of using the backlight on his phone to give us a little light.

Well, obviously we make it safely.

How funny it was when one of the members told us there were light switches! We just chalked it up to one of our many missionary experiences.

Notice this grate. Above the grate is the sidewalk outside the building. Elder Warner loves to get a new missionary, at night of course, who just happens to be standing above close to the grate and Elder Warner starts makes errie sounds while down in the parking area. It is really funny, especially if his companion is playing along; because after all, Elder Warner has previously done it to him.

How many children do I have? 6 or 7? He always keeps me laughing.

You will notice the exit at the far end of the picture. The first time I had to driver the car out of "the hole" I felt like I was on my 4-wheeler and climbing one of our hills. It was very scary for me. Hopefully you will see what I mean if I can get the video to link up OK.

I know my brother Bill will be laughing his head off at the thought of me "Climbing this BIG hill!".


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cXycagG9bk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmz_mN5ag6o

Garbage, Garbage Everywhere, well - almost!

The summer of 2008, just before we came here, there was a garbage strike in the Naples area. From what I was told the garbage was piled so high that you could not see at intersections. I remember when we had such a terrible winter in Utah in 1998 that the National Guard had to take the snow and dump it out in the desert because the piles were so high that it was obstructing the intersections and people could not see traffic. From that experience, I'm glad I was not here during the last garbage strike.

Yes I did say LAST because I have been told by the members on base that as of last week Naples and Caserta are to experience another strike. Lucky us!!

We were beginning to see the garbage pile up - just a minute - I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let me explain the garbage set-up here. Garbage is picked up every day. For us Americans where garbage is picked up once a week that seems overkill. At least it did when we first came here. There are several reasons for daily garbage collection here:

• On the most part, living conditions are very small. I am amazed at how little space Italians live in compared with Americans. I never thought I would be able to survive such a small kitchen.
• The Italians have such an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables, I will miss that when I return to the states, that they have a large amount of compost garbage. Because of the weather here, the heat and humidity, having this type of garbage build up over a week would be horrible. 
• When I asked an Italian about the daily garbage collection, his first response was that it creates jobs. I found it interesting that their first consideration for garbage pick-ups on a daily basis was for the benefit of work for the people.
• Schedule for garbage pickup:

              Monday, Wednesday, Friday - Compost Gargage

              Tuesday, Saturday - Garbage Garbage

              Thursday - Recycling (plastics, tin cans, paper, cardboard)

              Glass is put into special containers so each person is
                  responsible to find those containers and deposit
                  their glass

Anyway, back to today. As we were driving around this week, we noticed garbage starting to pile up on the roads in front of all houses. It's not unusual to see garbage in areas with no houses, plots here and there and short sections of roads with agricultural fields between the small communities, but to have the garbage neatly bagged and stacked in front of all houses and businesses was a different story.

Yesterday Larry was driving from the church building to our apartment and he was redirected to another street because the police were out in such great numbers (he thought every officer they had was on duty). It appears the garbage was being picked up and the police were closing off streets in a wide area (about a 2 block radius) around the garbage collectors. Almost like we would for a parade. 

Well, at least the garbage in our town is being picked up. I did notice last night that in Porto di Caserta the garbage was not picked up. Time will tell what the future brings for Naples and their every perplexing problem of garbage!!!!