An Italian in Wyoming

Signore e Signori,
meine Damen und Herren,
Ladies and Gentlemen!
It's with great pleasure that I announce the birth of Sofia, the first baby of the next generation in my big family! This post is entirely and warmly dedicated to Sofia! Benvenuta tra di noi Sofia! Non vedo l'ora di vederti. Auguri Anna e Luca!

It was an intense week. On Monday (and on Thursday) we had to issue 4 courses which means prepare on one day about 1.75 pound food for about 70 students + instructors for 30 days = 1665 Kg to be issued on one day. The challenge is to move many people including instructors and students very quickly and efficiently so that they can leave the Rocky Mountain Base as soon as possible and get by bus out into the field by the same evening. The Rations Department is pretty much well organized; there's always space for improvement, though and I regret being here in a so busy time, where you don't even have the time to think time is going by... that Justine comes and says "can you believe it's Friday again? I mean, we had Friday last week!" She's so funny. I was driving with her from Riverton back to Lander on Friday night as we saw a huge orange and blue fireball going through the sky. I was scared for a second as I thought it was a burning plane being almost as big as the moon and, in addition, it seemed to us to be very closed to the meteor. Awesome scene! We were coming back from a car show where you could see old cars "Happy Days style" and experience some good intentionally and proudly and legally polluted air: the "burning tyres competition" is a serious staff. More you burn your tyres stepping on the accelerator, more chances you get to be the winner. Families with their young children were standing and following carefully this stinky show. No comment!
Walter showed us the journal office where he works and then we got to his place to get a good view from his terrace. To get there we needed to climb up through a small window of the kitchen. It was actually the best show of the evening after the meteor!
But this was also the week of my first horse ride through the desert thanks to Jane, my co-worker, and her husband, Steve, who rode with me. It was so great that I accepted to do a longer ride instead of going back directly at home in spite of my strong snakes phobia. Afterwards, we had a super-delicious hamburger at Jane's.
On Saturday morning I woke up at 7 am, reached the Open Door Coffee Shop where Justine works, had breakfast (I love having breakfast in places which look like the TV series "Friends") and went to work. In the afternoon Matt, Justine and I got to an Indian powwow, which is a traditional dance taking place in one of the many Indian reservations in Wyoming. Everything starts with 2 marines holding 2 American flags and 2 other people holding 2 other flags. After that they went in procession to remember an Indian marine dead in Iraq as I could understand from the picture of the soldier with an American flag background.
After that different groups start singing and playing drums which are made with a tree log whose diameter is about 1 m and alk skin. Everybody wears feathers with some differences: the boss has bigger ones and a menacing stick in his hands. Normally you are not allowed to bring any camera as they believe you would steel them their soul by taking pictures. They are very serious... however, Justine and I could take a picture from the backside. (I'll publish it as soon as Justine sends it to me).
Talking to different people here in different places I realize most of them have never met an Italian which is a kind of weird and interesting stuff for me.
Today I got up pretty early to ride my bike to the only catholic church in Lander (there are 12 different churches of other religions, though). At noon it was again climbing time! I've been enjoying it a lot here even if I'm not so good as the others;P
Tomorrow I'm starting at 7 am so that I can take next Friday off to get to Yellowstone Park! I'm looking forward to it! But now it's time to go to bed.

Buona notte a tutti!
CU next week!

Antonella