The picture below is Fabio, Gianni, Bill, Janet and Anna at the Mexican restaurant.
My camera was stolen and my new one has not arrived yet so the pictures below are from the Toppenish Mural Society website. I downloaded them for your pleasure.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
TOPPENISH AND ITALY
What a fun day we had yesterday. We visited Toppenish on the Indian reservation and also got a taste of Italy. Fabio had to go to Yakima to the INS office. Yakima is only 45 miles away so we made plans to meet him for lunch. His parents are visiting from Italy so we thought it would be a great opportunity to meet Fabio's parents. They don't speak English so I have a whole new appreciation for Fabio. He was our life saver yesterday. Anna and Gianni were more than gracious. We rescheduled our plans and met in Toppenish (20 miles closer to us)to show them a flavor of a unique western town. Actually, Toppenish is on the Yakama Indian reservation. In 1989 they started a project to clean up the city streets. Each summer they have up to 12 artists come to town and they paint murals on the sides of buildings that tell the history and legends of the area and agricultural community. There are 70 murals now. We walked around town and saw probably half of them. It was so cute to see how Anna and Gianni took so many pictures. I think they really enjoyed it. They have a really cute soda fountain place on main street so we went in for a drink and ice cream cone. Anna thought she was eating Indian ice cream. She really liked it. It was just your basic hard scoop mudslide cone. Bill was working but met us later at a Mexican restaurant for a late lunch. Bridget and Anna bonded really fast and found a language of communicating. They would name different actors and actresses and they both knew who they were talking about. It was a fun day and I told Anna I would start learning Italian. She felt so bad that we couldn't communicate. She loves Emalei and thought we were just as nice. She couldn't get over how young Bill and I looked - - hey who wouldn't love someone that thought that of you. Gianni is 50 and Anna is 49. They were both younger than us. Thanks Fabio for taking the time to meet up with us. We're glad we could be your tour guides for a day.
The picture below is Fabio, Gianni, Bill, Janet and Anna at the Mexican restaurant.
My camera was stolen and my new one has not arrived yet so the pictures below are from the Toppenish Mural Society website. I downloaded them for your pleasure.
The picture below is Fabio, Gianni, Bill, Janet and Anna at the Mexican restaurant.
My camera was stolen and my new one has not arrived yet so the pictures below are from the Toppenish Mural Society website. I downloaded them for your pleasure.
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4 comments:
Great post Mom! But you might want to change it to "They don't speak English"... because they do actually speak Italian. Oh and Johnny should be spelled Gianni. :) I wish I could have been there. I could have helped with the translation somewhat.
I'm so glad you all had so much fun! I'm sorry to have missed out. :(
When H and I went to France I felt the same way, so grateful that H knew the language. I felt weird and foreign (duh)! Anyway, glad you had a good time. You look good by the way!
What a great post. I knew about the murals but didn't realize they were being added to each year. Do you remember how we went to see them as a family Thanksgiving 1993?
Your post answered my question as to where Fabio was.
The other thing I remember about Toppenish is how our Aunt Mil used to take the bus to come visit us and we'd pick her up there. The problem tho was that she had a hard time remembering the 'real' name and once asked for a ticket to 'Tabernash.' That Aunt Mil was one in a million, that's for sure.
Aunt Beth
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