SPSCA won the 2010 prize for best overall program for our work in 2009.
What a year (new film festival, food calendar - much more)
Thanks to each of you for your support and enthusiasm!
For a full report on 2009 - click on Read More:
Best 2009 Program/Seattle-Perugia Sister City Association
Quick highlits of a busy year for SPSCA!
January 22 SPSCA Board Dinner at Tutta Bella
March 18 Member Meeting with Carol Pucci, Seattle Times Travelwise Editor - a presentation about travel in southern Italy.
May 28- June 1 The annual Sister City Market in Perugia. We do this every year, with volunteers from Seattle and Perugia. Every other market, we usually sell raffle tickets for a round-trip ticket for two to Seattle - a way to get Perugia citizens to Seattle, to increase the number of friendships and contacts.
June 13 Dinner at Tutta Bella, then the Italian movie at SIFF sponsored by SPSCA ("Il Divo"). We sponsor an Italia film every year at the Seattle International Film Festival, which gives us some exposure and allows us to talk a bit about the sister city friendship. We try to have a social dinner for members and friends before the film.
June 17 Annual wine tasting for members - Tuscan vs. Umbrian wines. Big winner: Rubesco Riserva from Lungarotti (Umbria). David Johnson was our expert wine master.
August 29 SPSCA annual meeting and picnic at Borracchini farm in Ravensdale (election of new board members). This is a new tradition for us, and great fun. Good food, good accordion music, and great fun singing all the old Italian songs.
Sept. 26-27 Festa Italiana, Seattle Center
(SPSCA booth with information about Perugia and our association - we also sold raffle tickets for a trip to Perugia)
November 2 Calendar launch at Dale Chilhuly studios - our big project for the year: production of a 14-month calendar featuring restaurants in Seattle and Perugia, with color photos and recipes, all in Italian and English. We had terrific coordination between the two cities and associations, recruiting restaurants, photography, finishing translations from English to Italian and vice-versa. In all we distributed more than 2 thousand calendars, spreading the sister city idea, good recipes, and more awareness of our friendship with Perugia.
November17-22 New Italian Cinema Festival - our 2nd major project. SPSCA sponsored, with the Seattle International Film Festival, Pagliacci Pizza, N.I.C.E. of Florence, and others, a festival of important new Italian films. It was wonderful to carry out an idea! we've talked about for a long time. We're already planning for the next edition in the fall of 2010. We also sold more raffle tickets and on the last night of the Festival, drew the winning name for the Perugia trip. Thisr raffle was the first for SPSCA in offering a round trip for two to our sister city.
December Good news from Seattle Parks about a long time dream - to have a Perugia Park in Seattle. This is on hold now, however, due to some expressions of concern re: the Amanda Knox verdict in Perugia. More to come!
SPSCA also hosted in various ways a number of visitors from Perugia, including two students, Tommaso Annibaldi and Flavia Bonifacio.
Flavia
We continued our Italian Table at Caffe` Umbria twice monthly for those members and others interested in speaking and practicing the Italian language.
We offered four (4) scholarships for language study in Perugia during 2009. Each recipient spent a month in Perugia, studying at the famous University for Foreigners. All the students had a great time, and are now enthusiastic volunteers on many of our events.
We continued building our SPSCA web site, always a work in progress - www.seattle-perugia.org (check it out!)
