Okay--full disclosure--I'm composing this from my bed, in my house, because the wifi and the time for blogging never met at the same time on the way home, so this post comes to you in retrospect.
We'd been waiting for the Cuggiono day for three years!! We've fully, officially established that Herrin and Cuggiono are sister cities, and both of our towns have decrees that legally proclaim this with signage on the edges of our towns that proclaim it there, as well. Since then, we've been trying to make sure that we visit our sister citizens as often as possible and it's so important that our kids and Cuggiono's kids make connections as well. So the last day of our trip was perhaps the most important of them all!
We arrived to a waiting town that showered us with affection--when the bus pulled up, there was a big sign to welcome us, the entire town was there, the band was playing, and two ladies passed out ribbons with Italian flag colors that were meant to be corsages for us to wear all day! (Must admit, exiting a bus with a waiting welcome wagon and a band was the best greeting ever . . . kinda want to insist on that kind of greeting wherever I go now . . . . )
After pictures were taken for their newspapers and media in front of the Villa Annoni, we were given Italian ices and entertained with music, taken on tours of the Cuggiono museum (which now has memorabilia from Herrin), fed more refreshments, and visited with our old friends. Oreste and Ernesto took us to their town hall, where they explained to the kids about our connection. The citizens of Cuggiono came to America to find better economy and more opportunities during the 1900's at various times, and one place of high concentration was Herrin, where many of the Cuggionesi worked in the mines here. As the families grew and became more comfortable on American soil, the ties back to the Italian homesteads became less binding, but in the past seventeen or so years, steps have been taken to reestablish the bonds we had before. It is working! Our kids and the Cuggionesi kids are fast friends, keeping in touch on their own through various social media and visiting back and forth as often as they can!
To thank the city of Cuggiono for their warm welcome and kind treatment of us, we travelers prepared a concert, and the evening included this much-anticipated event. The band students performed pieces on their own, then joined the town band for other songs, and those who do not play instruments performed a bit of a show choir act. We sang typical American songs, tracing pop music from the fifties to the present day, and singing "Imagine" and "We Are Family" at the end, with much enthusiastic audience participation. I knew Oreste would sing along with "Imagine," for sure, as he is a Beatles superfan, and "We Are Family" touched those who knew we were referencing the love we feel for our Cuggionesi friends--they are family to us! Some are quite literally related, but everyone feels the bonds between our two towns. While we were there, in fact, I got a chance to talk to Michele Loyd's Italian cousins--Silvia and Marta Porro and their father! They've been to visit Michele's parents in Marion, and they very much want to come visit again--maybe even later this summer or next!
After the concert, which also featured a performance of "La Donna e Mobile" by a professional opera singer (and which inspired our kids and grownups to sing the refrain of that song over and over and over and over . . . ), we went to the town's pizzaria, and just like always, we were fed so. Much. Pizza. There were cheese and pepperoni, four-cheese, French fry, mushroom, and so many more pizzas brought to the table--I don't even know how many slices I sampled, and I'm not sorry about the amount of calories consumed that night. Totes worth all the miles on the elliptical I'm going to have to do to get them off.
That night, we parted ways with twelve of our fifty-five travelers as they stayed behind to enjoy an extended stay in Cuggiono. They'd been the host brothers of the Cuggiono kids when they came to Herrin last summer, and now our kids got the chance to see their counterparts' lives and families. Michaelann with bring the rest home on the 8th after they enjoy Italy just a little while longer! It was really a lovely day, and we all felt the loving welcome of our sister city. I'm so pleased I get to be a part of these connections, even though I'm not even a little bit Italian, and I look forward to future projects that cement the special relationship our towns have. Someday soon, we'd love to start a museum of our own like the one at the Villa Annoni, and there are some other projects in the works that we're all excited about! We really do want this family feeling to last far into the future.
What a great way to conclude our tour of Europe! Our guide, Paola, was touched as well--she'd never seen a day like this in her guiding career--most of her clients arrive as tourists and see sites that are completely new to them. I'm glad she was with us to experience today, and our amazing bus driver, Roberto, also got in on some pizza! They feel like our family now, too! The kids were teaching them how to snapchat over dinner . . . I really hope they both made accounts . . . .
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