Agira and Leonforte

Stop 2 on the Sicily/Tunisia expedition was a visit to the central Sicilian towns of Agira and Leonforte. The Ancient History teacher here has an Uncle who is the principal of a school in the town of Agira and an arrangement was made to have our school visit their school. A stop of few tourist agendas, Agira and Leonforte are Sicilian hill towns at their most authentic.

Approaching the town of Agira. Our visit was a huge deal as evidenced by the fact that we stopped at a gas station to be officially welcomed by a provincial official.

The liceo our school visited, named after Martin Luther King of all people.

Here is our school director being interviewed for local television.

Students were divided into groups of 6 or 7 and led on a tour of town and school by students of the liceo. The Italian girl in purple in the center of the photo I challenged to an Italian/English face off. I lost after three rounds as I didn't correctly conjugate a verb and said the equivalent in Italian "We is Americans." Some of the students are supposed to Facebook friend me.

Men of Agira...for my Italian Men on Benches series.

At the end of the tour of town, we climbed to this lookout for a magnificent view of Mount Etna.

The two groups of kids before heading down for an amazing potluck lunch of homemade food served up the the mothers of the students.

After lunch we moved ourselves over to Leonforte. This town, mayor is looking to the left in the center, rolled out the RED CARPET for our visit. We were given a thorough tour that lasted five hours. We started with a church and then a beloved city fountain.

This is a belltower with tilings that show an Islamic influence. One of the major themes of our journey is how the island of Sicily, at the center of the Mediterranean has been ruled influenced by many different cultures.

Stop 3 was this fountain.

It has 24 spouts.

Legend has it that if you drink from all of them you will be blessed with good luck.

I thought this was just a cool looking picture. At this point in the day, the students heard "cappucini" so they were excited to go and get coffee. Little did they know they were actually on their way to ANOTHER church, of the Cappucini order. The name of the coffee is named for the color of the robes of the order, which match the drink itself.

Here is the mayor of the town speaking about on of his towns proud sites. Our last stop was a visit to the newly built athletic complex. After a long good and heartfelt goodbye by residents and students, we drove off into the night and onto our next Sicilian adventure.