School, Work, Life, and the Stomach Flu

(Written February 25, 2014. Delayed posting due to technical computer issues.)

Life in Italy is beautiful. It is also life, and with that comes work, school, after-school activities, birthday parties, house projects, and the yearly bout of stomach flu. Josh is going on day 4 of it right now. As I am stuck at home with his aching belly, it gives me a chance to catch up on my non-existent blogging. If we still have any readers, I can tell you, you have not been away from my thoughts. When I pass an enchanting scene that is quintessential Italy, only-happens-in-Italy, or only-seen-in-Europe, I think, “wow, that would make a nice blog.” Usually, that’s as far as the thought gets. Sometimes I snap a picture with my cheap, highly-inferior-to-an-iphone/galaxy phone and think about adding it to a blog. I will work some in now!

My favorite cheese man where I get the best cheese Saturday mornings. It's the freshest best cheese and so delicious.

Our town's small open air market that is held every Saturday morning. I love it. On any given Saturday morning, I might buy a tablecloth, socks for the kids, a new scarf, and definitely cheese from the guy pictured above and fruit from the stand pictured below.

A typical scene downtown Vicenza. I was walking back to my car after shopping the large downtown market on a Thursday morning.

First, though, I must go back to my last blog from, oh, when was that? Yea, 4 months ago. Actually, it was my second to last entry. I must amend the entry when I talked about school. At the time, the kids had just returned to school from a long summer break where they are mostly home with me and vacationing with the family and it’s all in English. It took a little while for them to get readjusted to Italian immersion life, but like most kids, they did great. By December, when we had Isabel’s parent-teacher meeting, her teacher was beaming and remarked how Isabel had “blossomed”. As she will keep her same teachers throughout her elementary school time here, we should get a true commentary on how she is developing. They will observe the full transformation from the American who started first grade knowing two words of Italian, to the girl who can jabber with her Italian friends and perform with the best of her class.

Isabel's most recent journal entry.

Josh, too, had a good report. It was different, of course, reflecting on the difference in personalities between the more reserved and studious girl, and the vivacious and extraverted boy. Josh’s teachers remarked how he is very good in the classroom when given a task or project. He does his individual assignments well and with accuracy, and he also works well in a group. His only weakness is during free time when he gets together with his group of friends. There is a particularly strong group of boys in his class and he is a part of this group. From the sounds of it, they can get a bit rowdy and don’t always follow the rules. We hear, not infrequently, about pushing, pinching, dare un pugno all’ ochio (punching in the eye – only one time for that one thankfully). It’s playground rough-housing and at this point we’re taking it as normal boy stuff.

The kids playing with a St Bernard puppy on the farm where we stayed in the Dolomites over Presidents' Day weekend.

Josh is in the American equivalent of kindergarten, though in contrast to American kindergarten, it is mostly play. They do lots of drawing and painting. They are working through writing the alphabet in their notebooks and also some numbers. They do not start learning to read at this level. That will start next year in 1^st grade. Kindergarten here is mostly fun and getting along and learning rules and fine motor skills. Next year, the pressure will start as they move fast in first grade. He will start learning to read (in Italian) and the homework is impressive.

Josh's coloring of Palladio's most famous Villa Rotonda.

Josh is a bit nervous about starting elementary school next year. His sister has already warned him about all the homework he will be assigned and all the times where he will have a story to read 10 times. That is one of the most common homework assignments: “Leggi 10 volte” (read 10 times). One day I caught them together and Josh was in tears as his sister was really laying on the scary stories of first grade. Poor guy. At least he will be going into it having a good comprehension of the language, unlike Isabel. I asked at Josh’s parent-teacher meeting if he was speaking in Italian in school. They answered, yes, too much. Ok, got it.

Other than school, Isabel continues with gymnastics and she recently started piano lessons. Josh is doing soccer with our local town’s team. Calling it soccer does not seem to really do it justice. It’s Italian football. It’s their most prized national sport and it’s taken very seriously. Josh is the youngest on the team and some of these 6 and 7 year olds play like American varsity high school soccer players. I’ll let Chris expand more on this subject. For now, I’ll leave it like that and say it’s IMPRESSIVE!

Besides school, there is the rest of life. We are trying to finish plans for a new bathroom with frequent meetings with the contractor, which are all in Italian, just to add another challenge to a house project. Chris is dealing with a crazy, demanding schedule at work right now, and we are, of course, trying to plan our next round of travels. Traveling is still one of the most beautiful benefits of being here. We just finished a weekend of skiing in the Italian Dolomites and we are looking towards some great trips to come. Life never stops, no matter where you are. We are rolling with it, and trying to soak in as much of the beauty that is this place where we live, along the way.

Skiing at Alpi di Siusi. February 2014

Josh's bilingual stories_Pics from Paris Day1

Even the kids were impressed with the rose windows in Notre Dame

 Here we have had all of these wonderful, incredible adventures over the past few weeks and months and what finally brought me to my latest blog post is a simple parental anecdote.

Josh can be quite the character.  I think back to some of the yarns he will tell from time to time and it’s pure comedy.  First of all, he doesn’t lie as much these days as he used to, but you always have to stay on the lookout for it.  For Isabel’s complete lack of ability to lie, Josh makes up for it in spades.  He has been known to tell some doozies, and with such passion and conviction too.  In any case he certainly can streeeeeetch the truth sometimes, especially when he gets excited, and he clearly has a more “creative interpretation” of the world than our more literal Isabel.  That’s first.

Secondly, his stories have considerable “bounce” to them.  By bounce I mean that they jump all the Hell over the place.  “This person to that thing to over there and then this other thing and oh my then you’ll never believe but so-and-so was there and oooooh that happened, bla, bla”…it’s like a Robyn Williams stand-up routine - it’s hard to follow, but entertaining as Hell.

And lately, what really makes it fun is the fact that he now tells the story of his day with a bunch of Italian words thrown randomly into the mix.  Not only that, but he pronounces the Italian words with legitimate Italian pronunciation.  Like the other night:

“Ooh Daddy, I have to tell you about what happened today.  Maestra Donatella told us all to line up against il muro so we could get on the pulmino to go down to the piscine.  I drew a picture, did you see it yet?!  But ooooh, Tomaso was being molto male and Mamma Mia! you wouldn’t believe what he did!  I like Catarina a lot, she’s my friend, even though she spilled latte on my grembiule.  Oh yeah, then Sofia got in the way of Matteo so Luca pushed her back into la scuola and boy oh boy was Maestra Donatella arrabbiato!  I tried to tell Filipo that io non fato niente because I didn’t want to get into trouble because I’m a good swimmer even if I don’t like to swim in aqua freddo.  And did you know they have a big scivolo which is totally AWE-SOME!  And that’s why my giorno was super-fun today!”  …on and on, hand gestures and all.

It’s classic Josh.  He’s awesome!  Suzanne and I just sit there and watch.  Occasionally we’ll look over at each other with the expression of “Do you know what the HELL this kid is talking about right now?” and then we’ll shrug the response “Nope….whadya gonna do?”

….kids!

;)

ct

On Pont Neuf

Birds eating from their hands in front of Notre Dame

View from the top of the Ferris wheel

Halloween, Italian Style

Happy Halloween everyone! Many ask if this holiday is celebrated here in Italy and the answer is, "kind of." Each year this holiday becomes more and more popular. There is still no traditional door-to-door trick or treating in Italy, but there are fun readings in school with pumpkins and bats and ghosts. This year, Isabel's school actually had a Halloween party at a local community center. The kids got dressed up and had snacks and there was even a dj spinning some dance tunes. The kids were mostly dressed as scary things like monsters and witches. That is how Italians see dressing up at Halloween. It brings one back to the more scary and spooky part of the tradition. There are no strawberry shortcakes or other cute characters. I did see a couple monster high girls, just tell you that is popular with young girls across the globe, or at least here in Europe.

Josh and Isabel ready for the party.

Isabel and a couple friends at the school Halloween party. The girl in the center dressed as Rainbow Brite is Isabel's American friend. She is the only other American at their school.

Italian kids here in Vicenza have a special treat in that they can go traditional trick-or-treating at the Army Base Housing area. They have started opening it up to Italians. Tonight, we are bringing a couple of Isabel's best Italian friends. It should be kinda crazy as this is a small housing area and all American families, and now Italians too, will be descending on these poor people who live there.

The true holiday for children to dress up in Italy is actually Carnevale. This is the time just before lent, better known to Americans in the form of Mardi Gras. During Carnevale, kids are off from school. There are parades in various towns and sometimes a costume parade at the mall. Kids throw streamers and there are special sweet cakes that are baked only around Carnevale time. The biggest carnevale celebration is in Venice where people come from all over to participate in or just observe the elaborate costumes and masked that are worn.

Carnevale in Venice

La Scuola (School)

We have completed our first two months of the new scholastic year. This will be our second year in the Italian school system. I had great hopes of writing more about the school experience last year, but, like many resolutions, it just didn’t happen. I’ll try to make it up this year. So, here we go….

 

Isabel and Josh in front of Isabel's school.

Isabel has started second grade (seconda). Yea! She is really excited about it. She completed first grade last June.  We threw her into Italian elementary school with the sink or swim attitude. We figured, if she sank, she was still young and all would be fine. If she swam, it would be wonderful. Well, we think she did great, and she remained happy which was one of the most important things for us.

 

Of course, the question everyone keeps asking is, “So, does she speak Italian?” That is actually a hard question to answer for a few reasons. First, kids don’t learn language like we do. She is not studying verb conjugations and proper Italian grammar (yet). She doesn’t know what the subject or indirect subject is in a sentence. She picks up things that she hears. She learns some simple vocabulary from her homework. She pieces them together and out comes some speaking, however grammatically incorrect.

 

The language skill is also difficult to judge since she definitely does not want to speak it, at all, in front of us. If I am around when she is playing with an Italian friend, I catch a few words muttered here and there as I am hiding behind a wall being very quiet. It’s coming along. Her Italian is not grammatically correct and sometimes it’s just totally crazy wrong, but I’m glad she is trying. Today was the first time I heard her mutter, “Ma dai!” and that told me she will be picking up extraordinarily more of the language this year since she is going into second grade with a year of Italian school already under her belt. “Ma dai” is the equivalent in English of saying, “come on!” in an exasperated way as if the person in front of you on line is asking one to many questions to the cashier and taking way too much time. “Ma dai!” is often used with an exasperated hand gesture.

 

Josh has also started school with one year completed. He is in what they call “Grande”. It’s the third year of the preschool. The preschool is basically divided into Piccoli (3 year olds), Medi (4 year olds), and Grandi (the 5’s). In the American school system, Josh would have started his first day of Kindergarten this year. He would have been starting elementary school. It was a little hard for me to see him continue back to preschool, but I remind myself that his experience is so different than most other American 5 year olds. I have to appreciate that, and I hope he will too someday.

 

In Grande, Josh will learn to write all the capital letters and do some very simple writing and calculating of numbers. That, and the continuation of fine motor skill development, is pretty much all the curriculum that is covered at this level of school. I’ve heard people say it’s what American kindergarten was 40 yrs ago when mostly you did the alphabet and some finger painting.

 

When Josh moves on to Scuola Elementare and the first grade, he will start with A, capital letters, and 2+2. They start very basic. Preschool is not mandatory, so some kids are coming to first grade with only 6 years of being home with grandma. When starting first grade, they basically only assume the kids know how to write their name and know how to write all the letters in capital. That’s it. They start slowly, but give them loads of homework every week so they progress quickly.

 

Isabel’s homework last year proved quite challenging for both of us. She attends school from 8a-4p Mondays and Wednesdays. The other days of the week, she attends from 8a-12:30. She would come home, eat lunch, and then start homework. It was basically like homeschooling your child, with the added challenge of everything being in a foreign language. I would sit there with her, surrounded by Italian dictionaries and Google Translate on the laptop. She was exhausted. One day she simply fell asleep with her head lying on her notebook. As the year progressed, she began to understand more and more Italian, and her exhaustion lessened. Oddly enough, I hadn’t even noticed this phenomenon until the teachers pointed it out at a parent-teacher meeting sometime around March.

 

One example of homework from first grade. Each week was a new letter of the alphabet and its assorted combination with the vowels. It cracks me up how sigaretta (cigarette) was one of her S words (the picture colored orange). Would you ever see that in an American school??

 

 

Another homework example from later in the year.

 

 

I can certainly say this year is easier already. Having a much greater understanding of the language is the biggest help. Also, the teachers you start with in First grade are the same ones you have all through elementary school (unless they quit or retire), so her teachers know her well and she is very familiar with them. I think she got lucky, because we really like them both and they call her their little amore (love). All in all, school is going well for both kids this year. It’s definitely an adventure, but a great one.

The “Boh…..” Blogpost

Looking out from Da Sagraro to the East toward Padova

Festa Della Trebbiatura (Threshing Festival)

Prologue: The photos in this post have nothing to do with the post itself.  They are photos of just some random events from this month that I included because they are so great and they may not get included anywhere else.


There are all kinds of interesting phrases, expressions, and sayings we run across in our endeavors to learn the Italian language and culture.  I’m still trying to fully master one expression that apparently has many little twists:  “Boh….”

The first time I heard it, one of the guys on my staff said it as we were finishing a short discussion.  I was in the process of walking away since we had stopped talking, he said it, and I did a kind-of double-take because I wasn’t sure what he said or whether it was something I needed to respond to.  In that moment, I could see that he had moved on to something else as he said it, so I just walked away.

Then I heard it again one day by someone else.  Then again.  For a while, I couldn’t figure out whether it was just an end-of-conversation grunt, a form of a sigh, or what.  Well, like a lot of times when learning the language, you hear something, don’t know exactly what it means, make a mental note of it, and then you’ll hear it over and over and over.  So I kept listening and paying attention and tried to figure out what this expression was all about.  I finally figured it meant something like, “Uh, I dunno…” or “Oh well…”

My beautiful wife at Agriturismo Ca' Bianca

Then I finally asked my guys about it.  For the most part, it seems, it does more-or-less mean “Oh well…”, but I gather it has a more exasperated, can’t be helped, there are forces beyond our control working here – tone to it.  Almost like, “That’s the way things are, I guess, so what the Hell do you want me to do about it?”  Maybe a little like “It is what it is.”  {Another classic expression in Italian “piu o meno” for “more or less”, since nothing is exactly anything here.}

Calici delle Stelle

But it also has little twists, I gathered.  If you say it more like “Buh…”, it seems to mean more of the “I dunno.”  If you say it more like “Bah…”, it seems to mean more like “What the frick?”
 So now I try to pull it out myself when I think it may be appropriate.  Of course, I’m still way too eager with it.  I’ll be in a conversation, see a good opportunity to pull out a good “Buh…”, use it, then anxiously raise my eyebrows to look at the person I’m talking to and see if they are impressed with my mastery (cough, cough) of the nuances of the Italian language.  One time, I get the best confirmation of all, I grunted out my best “Buh….” and the person I was talking to grunted back at me “Buh…”.  I walked away from our guttural exchange very happy with myself.

Josh was totally jivvin' with the live jazz performance!

Yet another spectacular evening with the family!

ct

Sicily...in summary.

Taking the overnight ferry (with car) through the Straights of Messina.

Sunrise at the "toe" of Italy.

Our first glimpses of Mt Etna and Sicily.

I quickly became overwhelmed with the task of blogging from our vacation.  There was just too much fun to be had to stop and write about it.  Now I find myself in a position where I am writing one blog covering the span of about two weeks when each day of our trip really deserves its own description.

Overall, the trip was simply awesome.  I imagine it’ll be one of those trips we’ll reflect on for the rest of our lives.  I hope the kids remember something about it, anything about it.  If not, the 1,000 or so pictures we took may help to tell the story for them one day.

Lord where to start…ok, let’s start with some overall impressions.

First, for the record, one of my most favorite things to do in this life is to go swimming, long open-water swims, in the salty clear-blue water along the Mediterranean coast.  Quiet, peaceful, no current to speak of, no time constraints, warm sun, gentle waves (most of the time), extra buoyant because of the high salinity, clean water, swimming far away from the shore, just swimming until the swimming is done.  Won-der-ful!

Second, we ate well the whole vacation.  I’d say our meals ranged from “good” to “really damn good!”  Really good wine too.  The Nero d’Avola wine, famous in Sicily, is tasty and not expensive.  As a matter of fact, everything in Sicily was either inexpensive or at least reasonable.

 

Sicily is a really interesting place in that for all its beautiful landscape, amazing ruins, incredible beaches, and utter charm, it is largely unmaintained to the point of being really dirty and run-down in a lot of areas.  We were there in what is still considered the “off season”, but for being early June it still felt like a lot of places were like ghost towns.  We drove through many little towns that looked completely abandoned; little seaside towns lost in time, where there may be 6 or 10 houses that looked as if they hadn’t been lived-in or even touched in many years, another few houses that were in various stages of halted construction or demolition, then every so often a really nice looking place with a manicured lawn and garden tucked behind a series of walls, gates, or shrubs.  Suzanne commented that it often reminded her of rural Mexico.

Our children have become world-class travelers.  For being 6 and 5 years old, they are perfectly comfortable hopping on and off planes, ferries, buses, trollies, gondolas, fernunculars, cabs, water taxis, trains, or driving long distances in the car.  They walk through crushing crowds in tourist centers, scale ridiculously steep and narrow steps up a variety of churches and castles, hike along treacherous trails with side slopes that plunge hundreds of feet into the sea, swim in icicle-cold mountain lakes or in crystal-clear blue seas, ski in the Alps, wait in oppressive lines or race to catch our next mode of transportation.  Josh has become our go-to guy for repeating “No grazie” over and over and over to all of the African salesmen who often inundate us on the beaches with offers to give us the “best price” on towels, earrings, wood carvings, sunglasses, and a hundred other trinkets.  Isabel loves to look at maps and figure out where we are and where we should go.  Both of them strap on their backpacks and pull their own suitcases, hauling luggage up and down stairs “BY MY-SELF!!!” 

From where we sat at dinner on our first night in Giardini Naxos.

And do they walk!  I mean, we do some serious walking, and they walk!  I distinctly remember our first couple of trips in the first weeks we arrived in Italy.  Ho-ly-canoli did I spend some time walking through Venice and Salzburg with one of the two kids on my back piggy-back style.  But once they built up some stamina and learned what the expectations were, they’ve been some walking fools ever since.

Well, not only does that not cover our experience in Sicily, it doesn’t even scratch the surface.  I must find a way to come back to this trip for our blog and describe some more about the sights, sounds, places, people, and wonderful experiences.  But for now we’re moving on because there are too many other things to go do and see and experience, and the writing-about-it part will just have to take a back seat. 

In the public gardens of Taormina.

I caught Isabel enjoying some quiet time sitting on the ruins of the amphitheatre in Taormina.

Josh doing his best King Arthur routine.

My hope is that these experiences stay in our memories and in our hearts for the rest of our lives; a deep well of story-telling that we can draw from during family gatherings for decades; experiences we share together as a family and become part of our collective history.

Playing catch on the beach below Taormina.

ct

p.s. The pictures I’m posting on this blog are not necessarily the best we have of our trip or capture anywhere close to the entire experience.  Not by a long shot.  They aren’t even necessarily the best pictures of one DAY of the trip.  Most days, we took over 100 pictures.  Generally speaking, I have been sifting through one day’s worth of pictures per blog, try to pick a few from that day that catch my eye, and include them in the post.  I haven’t even bothered to sift through 500-600 pictures from our albums for inclusion in these blog postings.  It’ll have to do.  ct



Positano Day3

(Originally written 27 May 2013)


Good gracious, keeping track of time has become a real chore.  Wait, is today “Day 3” of our vacation?  Let’s count.  Oh, but wait, first somebody remind me what day of the week it is.

We had a nice, lazy breakfast in our apartment followed by several hours of hang-out time on the beach.  The sun was shiny and hot today, but there was gentle breeze to cool things down and if anyone needs an immediate cool down, all they had to do was put their feet and ankles into the freezing cold water.

Our kids often remind me of our old dog, Enzo.  They take to water like it was their mission in life to find it and frolic in it.  If they even see a body of water somewhere, it is almost an inevitability that they will find their way into it.  Here are your choices as a parent: take a bathing suit and towel, strip them naked, or accept the reality that their clothes will become wet.  Does it matter that it is icicle cold?  Certainly not.  And just like Enzo, there is such unadulterated joy when they are out there playing in the water.

After lunch, we decided that we would venture into the town of Amalfi for a little touring around and dinner.  A little mix-up at the bus stop caused us some delay and inconvenience, but I suppose it also provided an up-close and personal view of the insane scenes that occur on the local roads throughout the day.  Nothing in the American experience can relate to how narrow the roads are, how sharp the turns are, how fast the people drive, how many scooters zip in and out of the flow of traffic, how many pedestrians are out meandering around on pathetic excuses for sidewalks, how utterly inconsequential any of these conditions matter to where people park, and how there seems to be a complete disregard for personal property, safety, and the value of life itself.

The town of Amalfi is very nice.  Suzanne observed that the waterfront areas are a little more like ports or marinas as opposed to the sunbathing beaches of Positano.  The narrow, cobblestones streets are the same though, with steep slopes and lined with crowded shops of ceramics, lemoncello, jewelry, bars/cafes, beachware, and tobaccorias.  It has a beautiful church in the center of town, at the top of a pretty impressive set of stone steps.  We went inside and sat down for a while, enjoying some quiet time and the beginning of an evening mass.

Suzanne asked one of the local women for a trattoria recommendation and that led us to a small, local place where we “ate very well” and enjoyed (finally) some more reasonable prices. 

I have always found that Italian expression to be an interesting clue into the way Italians view food and eating.  As Americans we would ask, “Did you have good food?”  The Italian way of asking that is, “Did you eat well?”  I’ve talked about that on several occasions with Italians.  From the Italians’ perspective (and I tend to agree with them), Americans view eating as more of a transaction.  More often than not, you go someplace for food, food is prepared and served, you eat the food and hope that it is good, then you leave.   For the Italians, it’s an event, an attitude, a way to spend time with family and friends.  It’s not that Americans never do that.  Thanksgiving is a good example.  With most Italians, though, Thanksgiving happens pretty much every Sunday.

Here’s another example, for the first several months we were in Italy, we were still figuring out when places were open, when people ate, and when it was appropriate (or required) to make reservations.  It took us some time more to get adjusted to the process of making a reservation.  It is often the case that the person taking your reservation will not ask about the time of your reservation.  That is for a couple of reasons.  First, like other very culturally rigid things here, people generally eat dinner at about the same time.  Go to a restaurant at 7:00pm and it is empty, if it’s open at all.  We often eat in restaurants completely by ourselves, wondering why more people don’t patronize such a fantastic place, only to see the parking lots and tables become packed with people about the time we are leaving at 8:00 or 8:30. 

The second reason you generally don’t need to state a time with your reservation is because it is generally accepted that whatever table you get will be your table for the whole night.  From what I can tell, it is by far the exception to “turn over” a table and have more than one patron eat at that table on a given night.  No one restaurant owner will take offense to you taking 45 minutes to drink your after-dinner coffee, because they didn’t expect to use that table for another patron that night anyway.  In a lot of places, they don’t even bother taking your name when you call for reservations.  Really, all they want to know is how many people are showing up for dinner tonight so they know how much food to prepare.  So you call and ask for a reservation for 4 or 8 or whatever, and that’s it.  Then you show up and let them know that one of their 4-person reservations has arrived and they show you to your table.  Basta (that’s it.).

 

And so it goes.
ct