Paradiso uniform for second and third graders

Helpful tips for Italy:

If you want pepperoni pizza, order d'avalo, not pepperoni.  If you order pepperoni, you'll get pizza with bell peppers.  Instead, you order salami pizza.  It's tasty -- I just finished mine from last night.

Learn how to drive a stick shift.  Today when I was walking, I looked into every car I could, and the first ten in a row, driven by young, old, and middle age folks (yes, everyone) was a standard.  After I counted twenty plus standards (did people think, Who is this strange woman looking into my car?), I spotted an automatic.  I was thrilled...until I saw that it was a BMW.  I have nothing against BMW's, but I don't imagine borrowing, renting, or buying one.  My confidence is low on learning the stick shift.  I was taught once by a high school friend and once by a boyfriend (the latter, on trying to understand why I could not get it down, I accused of simply being a bad teacher -- I believe I said something like, "Well, when one of my students can't understand something, I think about how I could have taught it better."  I was only twenty-two and clearly frustrated and embarrassed that I was terrible at driving a stick).

Don't throw away a key in your apartment, even if it looks old-fashioned and useless, and even if you have packed up and purged and removed two dozen bags of stuff that the previous tenants left, so you think that this is just one more random toy or souvenir that someone picked up.  It could be the key to your hot water heater, which is on your balcony, and which you need to access to get consistent hot water.  Otherwise, you may find yourself looking for a hardware store with unreliable hours or admitting to the manager of the apartment, your colleague, that you threw away the key (or be tempted to lie and not tell him that you ever found it).

Do clean out the kitchen cabinets.  You might find a couple bags of the tiniest and most delicious chocolate chips.

Get WhatsApp so you can talk to your friends and family through the internet for free.

Put your plastic recycling out in a bag and not in the recycling container provided by the city.  Otherwise, your colleague, when he stops by, will carry that bin full of empty water bottles (since you're buying water with no arsenic in it) back up to your apartment, and you'll have to wait another week to put it out on plastics recycling day (when you really wanted a super clean and lovely apartment for when your family arrives).

Save the Honey Nut Cheerios cereal box and read it with google translate.  It makes you feel pretty good that you know that you can almost read a cereal box in Italian.

Pack a change of clothing or two in your small carry-on or backpack in case your luggage gets lost.

Before the luggage shows up, go shopping at all the Saldi rather than returning to stores that you thought you'd like once your luggage arrives four days later.  You can't ask American Airlines to pay for clothing you got after your luggage arrived.

Buy postcards at the Tabacchi, tobacco shops.  They have a large T for a sign outside.  You don't have to wait for an hour for stamps.  And be aware that stamps to the U.S. are 2,20 Euro.

Eat the watermelon.  It's much sweeter than at home.

Don't bring bread when you're invited to dinner.  Just stick with wine.  You might be embarrassed when the host says something nice like, "Oh, I always forget the bread!  Thank you!" but then no one eats it, but they all drink the wine that the other guests bring.  And when you try a small piece (thinking, It was good to bring this, wasn't it?) you realize, Oh, bummer, this is rather tough, and even though Italian restaurants at home put out oil for your bread, which would make the bread just fine with a little oil and salt, you've seen no one -- at their home or at a restaurant -- put out oil with bread in Italy yet.

Don't let your sister know that it's your smoke alarm that's beeping when you talk to her (even if she figures it out over the phone when you don't even know what that annoying beep is).  Then she'll ask you daily if you got a new battery yet (and you're thinking, Will that hardware store have that, too, once it opens tomorrow, or do I have to go to another store for that?).

Do not almost get rid of the blue frocks with white collars that you find in a closet during your cleaning and purging.  Instead, realize that they are the Catholic school uniform for your two youngest, and certainly do not share photos of these frocks before they arrive.   Your eight-year-old son and almost seven-year-old tomboy daughter may not get on the plane if they see these ahead of time.   (And appreciate that your boss' wife has kindly left them for your children to borrow for this year.)  (I am proud of myself for not sharing photos of these frocks with the kids even though it's hard for me not to do so.)

Wait for there to be no cars to cross the road.  Crosswalks mean very little.  If you are someone who plays Frogger (as one of my roommates once accused me of in San Francisco, "Oh, Maureen, I saw your crossing the street playing Frogger!  You need to be more careful!") when crossing, try to change your habit early so that you don't annoy drivers or get yourself killed.

Always eat gelato.  Two flavors a day works pretty well.

Take advantage of the afternoon siesta when everything closes down.  Take a walk.  Take a nap.  Call your brother.  And when you catch him busy at work during his fifteen to twenty hour work day and he talks to you for a while anyway, and it's 1 in the afternoon in Italy, and he says, "Where are you?  What are you doing?"  and you tell him, "Oh, I'm just walking around the quaint streets in no particular direction, and if I get lost it doesn't matter, because somehow, once I look up my address on my phone, I'm always a five minute walk from my address," smile and laugh and appreciate when he says with kind humor, "You're one of those people.  I see people like you walking around by the river in the middle of the day and just hanging out, and I think, 'What are those people doing?  How don't they have somewhere to be?  Why aren't they working?  What's that like?' "  Appreciate his sweetness and his revelling in your enjoying a summer afternoon.

Don't run three fans and a few lights and a the washing machine all at the same time, and certainly not at 8:45pm when you're also defrosting the freezer (I'd like to say, My mom would be so proud of the defrosting, but really, she would think nothing of it, just a given that of course people defrost freezers when they should.  This is the second time in my life I've defrosted a freezer.  I have visions of her going up and down stairs with pots of boiling water for each shelf of the freezer when we were kids.).  The electricity will go out (because you've blown a fuse), you'll text colleagues for help, and they'll tell you where the fuse box is in the living room.  You'll put back up the lever, and nothing will happen.  Then you'll call Roberta (of course), and she'll try to help you over the phone, but you can't send her a photo of the circuit breaker because you have no light, and you can't take a photo and have your phone flashlight on at the same time.  Eventually, she'll call the landlord, and he and his wife will come over, kindly search around, then show you that you hadn't pushed up the circuit breaker.  The circuit breaker is in the box above where you pushed some blue lever up.  The three of you will call Roberta and explain what happened (in English and in Italian), and you'll all have a good laugh, and you'll apologize innumerable times for making this nice couple come out at 9:30 at night to help you get light.

It's strangely rewarding being able to read first grade Italian on a Cheerios box (even if using googletranslate).

Yay for chocolate chips!

The lock to the hot water heater.