Paderno del Grappa

Don't try looking us up on any fold-out map of Italy. Chances are good that you won't find Paderno del Grappa, regardless of how accurate or current your map is. Google Earth would get you there, for sure. But Paderno is like thousands of other minute communities throughout Italy that are simply too small to register. The "comune" (com-oon-eh) di Paderno consists of two main crossroads, one of which locates the campus where the school happens, the other gets you to the "municipio" or town hall and church, just past our apartment and 600 meters past the first. A post office is another half kilometer up the hill, and there are two bars, two tabacci stores (not just cigarettes, oh no! - snacks, notebooks, magazines, various important foodstuffs like bread and nutella, bottled water, lots of bottled water, and candy bars. Think a tiny 7-11 without the Slurpee machine.), a cafe, a bank, three restaurants, a lighting store (go figure, but there's also a fabrication shop for this brand in Paderno, so apparently there also had to be an outlet: Aldo Bernardi.), a farmacia (a lot like a small pharmacy, but with very little in-store inventory, and also sells vitamins, herbs, and homeopathics) and a women's clothing and gift shop.

Many of the buildings are older and the area is totally lovely and picturesque. Our apartment is within easy walking distance of the campus, so we trek back and forth multiple times a day.

This is our daily walk from the apartment to the school. On the right are a couple of soccer fields, property of the Istituto
Filippin, our host campus. On the left is an abandoned elementary school, a 'farmacia', and Alpina, a local cafe/pastry shop/ hangout.

This is our apartment building. The lower front houses a salon/spa. Our rooms are in the back, caladryl-colored section, second floor, closest to the front building.

This is the view from the little deck you can see in the previous photo. That plain that stretches out beyond the foreground vegetation goes all the way to Venice, and on a clear day we pretend we can see the lagoon.

This is part of the view from the other side of the apartment. Notice the proximity of the local church bell-tower. We sure do. Every hour - starting every day at 7 am - on the hour, with casual reminders at the half-hour. Sundays, the stops come out and somebody swings from the bell-rope for 5-10 minutes at the beginning and end of each Mass. Mercifully, the hourly tolling stops at 10 pm. Think about the integrally interwoven aspect of the Church into daily life. It is omnipresent.

This is the remainder of the view out that same side: lovely Monte Grappa. Many of the local burgs have 'del Grappa' tagged onto the end of their name, as in Paderno del Grappa, referencing this beauty. Not the beverage. Though it is indeed from this region, and there is a museum dedicated to it in Bassano del Grappa. More on many of these topics soon.

The school: The campus here is actually part of a private Catholic high school run by the Filippin order - Istituto Filippin. Some of the high school is dedicated to boarding Italian students, and a separate dormitory houses the US students. This term. Usually the enrollment is on the order of 100-150 in the fall, but this year it is very reduced, only 74 or so. There are also spring and summer terms, more popular and populous, sometimes as many as 250 students. In flusher terms, the US students overflow into the Istituto's dorms.

From via San Giacomo, one turns right, here, into the Istituto grounds. I'll include some photos of those soon. Promise.

The US school is run by a consortium of around 30 US business colleges in universities across the country - U of Oregon, Oregon State U, Purdue, Virginia, North Carolina, Kansas, Iowa, etc. Iowa is currently the U that runs the administrative component stateside.The students and the faculty come from any of the 30 contributing campuses.

This year, the U of Oregon has the largest enrollment, due, I'm sure, to Mike's influence. No, really! Some of them actually like his teaching so much that they jump at the chance to take another course from him. You see, back at the U of O, Mike teaches every business major student their Marketing 311 course. Unless they mess up and take it in the summer- a total rookie error. But here, he teaches that course and one called Consumer Behavior, so those who took him before can indeed take him again, and do.