Art in Rome

On the street

The guy outside the Coliseum who spray paints pictures of the Coliseum.  Cardboard boxes under his padded knees, mask over his mouth, same playlist going daily (Mary says), spray spray spray.  The crowd gathers.  He works works works.  He dries the painting with a can that sprays fire.  He holds it up to the crowd.  They clap.  They walk away.  Alternate ending: Daniel gives kids money not for painting but for the show (Monday).  Alternate ending (Tuesday): a man standing with a woman buys the new painting.  Sebastian says, "He paid for all of us."

Dancers on Via Cavour.  What we called breakdancing when I was in middle school.  But this seems more gymnastics.  One guy puts his head to the pavement, his body upside down, his arms supporting him at ninety degree angles.  But then he lifts his arms and spins -- spins -- around on that head.  His shirt falls a little and you see his totally muscled core.  The next guy does his walk, walk around the area to warm up, and then does a number that is one from the Olympics on that beam, where the gymnast holds onto the handles on the beam and swings his/her entire body around and around.  He is supported by only his hands on the pavement.  Hannah watches.  Watches.

At the Vatican

"Is this the Sistine Ceiling?"
"Is this the Sistine Ceiling?
"This must be the Sistine Ceiling?"
"Nope."
Sebastian: Who decides what's famous and the best?  I mean, all these painting are good.  I could never do any of them.  But then we walk around looking for which painting is the DaVinci or the Caravaggio, when maybe that's not the one we actually liked the best ourselves, but now we know what to look for and what we're supposed to like.

Sebastian: It's funny that humans collect things other humans made and then put them in a place for humans to look at.  Like a little obsessed with ourselves.

Mary: You're going too fast.  I just want to look and take my time.  (Yesterday she said that she has been looking forward to so many things that she finds herself not enjoying the present but instead thinking about what's next, and she doesn't like that she's doing this.  Oh, honey, you're more self-aware than most of us.  Today she took at least thirty more minutes in the pinacoteca of the Vatican than the rest of us.  No rush, Mary girl.  Way to go.

What I noticed this time: the beauty and space of the building itself; the glorious rooms; the high ceilings; a red wall; the courtyards; the elegance of the rooms and of the buildings; the stairs as artwork and not just tough ascension to the museum.
Did I really not appreciate these before?  I was likely bee-lining it to get to Stanze di Rafael and the Sistine Chapel and Laocoon.  Or is it that I pay more attention to houses now?

What else I noticed: so many scenes are of struggle, violence, murder, death.  Perhaps I noticed this more this time around because I had little people with me, and I wondered how they were processing the martyrdom of St. Someone or the Crucifixion of St. Someone or the bodies in agony on the Last Judgement.  Sure, Laocoon and his sons are getting strangled by snakes sent by Minerva, but at least they know this story as a myth and we've talked about it so many times before.

At Santa Maria del Populo

me: Connor, which Caravaggio do you like better?
Connor: The one in the middle.
me: Huh.  That one's not a Caravaggio.  His are the ones on the sides.
Connor: I like the middle one.  I like the other ones, but I like the middle one best.  It's bright, and I like the colors.
me: I'll see who painted it.  Annibale Carraci.  (Really, Maureen, who cares who made it?)
Sebastian: See...people think they have to see the Caravaggio, but maybe that's not what they would like the most on their own.

Lush

After Villa Borghese races (Connor got the record) and go-carts and lunch by the Pantheon, Mary wants to go to a store she spotted earlier in the day: bath bombs galore.  I don't want to go.  My feet are tired, and I'm grumpy.  Hannah comes, too.  They endure my tired, grumpy mood.  We walk far, far down Via Cavour, almost all the way to Piazza del Populo.  Basins of water are just beyond the door.  An exhibit is starting.  "Parla l'Italiano? l'inglese? espanol?"  The artist will speak whatever language you need.  She runs the water and swirls a ball of what looks like colored chalk.  The water swirls, changes color.  The audience watches, mesmerized.  They put their hands in the purple tinted bubbly water.  Scents of lavender.

It's not spraypaints of the Coliseum this time.  It's bathbombs at Lush.  An attraction, a show, a sale.

Aventine Hill

Mary insisted on getting up this morning and going to the keyhole on the Aventine Hill.  I didn't want to go.  In June 2004 I rented an apartment on the Aventine Hill for a month while I took a Latin course with Reginald Foster.  Mornings I walked or ran and then sat on the veranda after watering the flowers.  Afternoons I went to class.  One morning on a walk, I noticed folks looking through a door, so, once they walked away, I walked up to the door, too.  Put my eye up to the hole there: magical gardens, green, and then, St. Peter's dome in the distance.  Magical.  Precious.

This year we saw the keyhole described in a guidebook.  Mary wanted to go.  Hannah, too.  6:45am we're up and navigating the roads from our hotel to the Aventine.  No phone.  I'm tired of my phone and of looking down instead of looking up and of getting lost even when I use my phone.  We snag a paper map from the hotel lobby and Mary finds our way.

Mary looks.  Mary lifts up Hannah so Hannah can see through the keyhole.  I look.

It's even more magical this time around.

Any time we see St. Peter's dome later on -- from a park, from the Vatican -- Mary says, But I liked it most when it was framed all by itself in the keyhole.

Christmas and Culture

I have on my list of things to do to find out about Christmas here.  This sounds silly perhaps: it's Christmas.  We all know what that is.  But I feel like we'll be figuring out the culture all year, and still we'll have so much to learn.  I mean, at home we do teacher gifts -- will that be okay here or just strange? do kids here believe in Santa Claus?  There are signs for Black Friday and Black Friday week here.  In fact, today is Black Friday.  But we're not sure that the Italian stores actually know the origin of Black Friday.  Mary said that one of her teachers asked her this week to explain what Black Friday actually is.  Her description: the day after Thanksgiving when there are huge sales.  Yep, that's about it.

Black Friday for us as kids meant driving into Boston and meeting my aunt and grandmother at Downtown Crossing early.  It was the girls: my two sisters, my mom, my grandmother, my aunt, and I.  Our mission: find our Christmas dresses.  Actually, this meant find the dresses that we would be gifted for Christmas that would then not be worn until Easter.  So we spent the day after Thanksgiving trying on dresses that we would get for Christmas and that we wouldn't wear until Easter.  After Easter, you could wear your Easter dress all you wanted.  I have fond memories of being in Filene's and the adults' bringing me dresses, but I also remember a lot of being lethargic, the way shopping felt weeks later when my dad would take us out on a Saturday to go Christmas shopping for my mom.  We went to Burlington Mall, store to store, waiting for the Brigham's break.  Cathy would try on some clothes to estimate how they would fit my mom; he'd request the outfit that was on the mannequin; we little kids would find a place to sit every chance we got.

But Christmas.  I'm wondering about Santa Claus.  We have only one who still believes, but she believes entirely, and so her belief might carry us all.  And this reminds me: it's the Friday after Thanksgiving -- Elf on the Shelf arrives today!  Once I figure out where I hid that elf when I unpacked, I can hide him again.  It's possible that this year Daniel and I will have three other elves to help hide the elf with their now knowledge of Santa Claus.

In Viterbo, apparently, people get Christmas trees, but only artificial because there aren't enough real trees.  Daniel spouted me some millions of people population in a place the size of New Mexico yesterday, but I don't remember the number of millions.

[One student just said (students are writing about yesterday's Thanksgiving in Italy...today, a 15 minute writing after days of 10...we are gearing up for next week in Rome = five 15 minute entries on blog), "Are you allowed to comment on our blogs?"  I laughed.  No no no! I wanted to shout.  I want to read their blogs because I like them.  I like seeing this other side of them, reading their ideas and stories and things that they might never say in class...though surprisingly and wonderfully, they share themselves in the most raw way at times in sharing their writing...But I need to call some limits for myself.  If I comment on one student's blog, I will feel the need to be fair and comment on every student's blog.  And it's true, I don't have 66 students the way SYA Spain does, but still, 44 blogs a day to read and comment on is too much if I want a life outside SYA.  A friend at Branson once said to me, as I daydreamed about teaching more than one English class, "Stick with the Latin if you want a life."  O, muse of teaching, grant me the sanity not to read every blog entry and the wisdom not to comment even once.  And make the students see that there is so much value in their writing writing writing even if their teacher is not reading and commenting on it.]

We left our stockings at home.  We're hoping/suggesting that Mary make us all stockings for Christmas with her newfound skills in sewing.  With the boys' birthdays in November and December, I never get to Christmas shopping early.

I want to know for whom we buy gifts so the kids have what they need at school, so Daniel and I have what we need for work.  I live carefully, never wanting to offend.  Early on, at lunch with colleagues, one Italian colleague joked, "We think of the stereotypical American treating the meal, coming in and taking care of everything, you know, rich Americans."  I adore this colleague, who is kind and generous and thoughtful and inclusive.  But since then I have not once treated even coffee for my colleagues, careful.

A friend here had her sister visiting.  The third night she was here I asked her how she was doing with jet lag and adjustment.  She said, "Good.  The culture shock has been tough, but it's getting better."  Culture shock.  I asked her what was the shock.  She said, "The language."

Culture shock is the language.  And culture is so much more, too.  I've seen videos and heard from Italians that Italians do not drink cappuccino in the afternoon; it's for breakfast and for morning.  So for a while I stopped ordering cappuccino in the afternoon and/or felt self-conscious when I did order it in the afternoon.  Eventually I thought, Well, I'm clearly not Italian even when (especially when?) I'm speaking Italian, so I'm going to order cappuccino after noon and let go the cultural norm.  Yesterday between soccer and swim pick-ups, Mary and Sebastian and I sat down for ten minutes at a bar: they got their cappuccino decaffeinato, and I got my tea.  When I went to pay afterwards (always afterwards here), I thanked the woman at the cafe for making cappuccino even though (nanostante -- I looked it up before I went to pay) it was afternoon.  She told me that no, it was fine, cappuccino is for any time of day.  She was kind, convincing, lovely.

So I am still working through so many cultural norms.  It's not that I have to fit in or that the kids need to fit in (I don't think Daniel ever worries about fitting in -- he went to a parent meeting for Sebastian's class last night, understood maybe half of what was said, and felt just fine), but I do want to be appropriate, respectful, not offend.  The kids are on their own in some ways here: they have to lead us regarding school as much as we lead them at home.  They need tissues for the bathroom at school because there is usually no toilet paper.  For birthdays, you invite the whole class or your parents bring in merenda (snack) for everyone.  I haven't given in to Nutella bars every day for snack, but we have enough in the house for once per week.

Time to get Elf on the Shelf out.

And time to get an artificial tree for our apartment.

Thanksgiving

I had planned apple pie and vanilla gelato for breakfast.  Sliced turkey and french fries for lunch while we streamed the Macy's Day Parade.  Dinner with our visiting friends at a restaurant we've seen before but not eaten at.

Alas.  Without the pressure of actual Thanksgiving and with Connor's heading to his friend Manuel's house this afternoon to play, I failed on the first two, but we will get to our 7:30pm dinner reservation with the McVeighs.  And I did pick up sugar and cinnamon this morning to make apple pie this weekend at some point.

Today I'm grateful for being here in Viterbo

for our friends who will be here by dinner time

for a job that allows me to read and work with kids

for family back home

for my run this morning around the Viterbo walls

for walking the kids to school today

for Daniel's making dinner almost all the time here

for the kids

for their flexibility and sense of adventure and adaptability

for laughing on the phone with Chrissie last night

for new colleagues who feel familiar already

for mom who made every holiday special and 

still reminds me that special can be simple

in fact, often, is the most special

for tea with daniel, with friends, with the kids

for Mr. Wiggin and Justin and Gram and Mom, whom I thought of today

for heat in our apartment

for Thayer for letting me come to Italy this year

for the TA students who email me this year

for the SYA students who make classes good and fun

for Bar 103 

whose owners put out a cappuccino decaffeinato before I even order sometimes

for Mary's sewing my smartwool sock this morning

for Connor's reading and enjoying his new Roman Mystery books

for Hannah's waking up happy nearly every morning

and cuddling in our bed for a few minutes

for Sebastian's being excited because I'll walk him to soccer today

for friends -- research shows that you live longer if you have good friends -- I am too blessed in this regard, so perhaps I'll get a long life

for Camilla, who picked up the kids from school today

for music: Castle on the Hill (Latin 2H last year!) and Honey, I'm Good to wake us up this morning 

and Italian pop that Sebastian has on his phone and Mary knows all the words to

for the frizzante water Hannah snagged for me this afternoon from the mensa

for health

for love

for people

for today.

Today.

Via Appia Antica

"Have you been to Rome before?  People who have already been to Rome do the Via Appia Antica, but if they haven't been to Rome before, then they bike the route through the city," the bike tour guy told us.

We'd been in Rome about fourteen hours, eight of which were sleeping, and I was torn between taking the kids through Rome -- the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Piazza del Populo, St. Peter's, the Tiber, the Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona -- and out of the city, along the Via Appia that used to lead out of Rome and to, I think, Brundisium.  I'd already been to the sites within the city, but they feel like old friends to me, like favorite books, so I was eager to get to them again and to show them to the kids.  Daniel had more reason to favor the Appia Antica route out of the city: 1. the city is crazy with people; 2. the city is crazy with cars; 3. you don't need to see and do everything -- you just pick one thing or two things and enjoy them; 4. two adults and five kids (a friend from home was with us, too) on bikes in Rome -- too many to track and keep safe through the city.

One of the reasons that I don't care for skiing (in addition to the cold, the speed, the potential injury) is the amount of time it takes for gearing oneself up -- getting measured, getting boots, poles, skis, lift ticket.  The bike shop felt like this.  The kids biked around in the back of the shop while Federico outfitted us all.  Then over to the Tabacchi to recharge Daniel's phone, over to the Cornetteria to grab some version of breakfast-lunch, and then we headed out --  lined up, single file to get to the Coliseum and around the crowds, through the traffic, across a few major intersections, and then, finally, to the Via Appia.

Catacombs of someone whose name I can't recall said the sign, so we took a right up a hill.  Joy because it was a paved road.  Dismay because it couldn't be that authentic Via Appia from two thousand years ago if it was freshly paved, nice for the bike, nice for me, a welcome change from the sidewalks and cobbled streets of Rome.  But it was sunny and there was pavement underneath me.  A bike ride from home but in Italy -- yes!

Seven minutes later, we're out of the black paved road, crossing another busy intersection (which, of course, abound in Rome.  The kids got so tired of my stopping them over the weekend as they jostled each other precariously by the side of the road, pushed or kicked each other, played tag on the sidewalk, stepped into intersections before we adults approved, ran ahead.  The tired of hearing me  say, "You are in one of the biggest cities in the world, one of the busiest cities in the world.  You need to be careful."  My favorite admonition was on the way back from the Via Appia, back on the modern Roman roads to return our bikes.  I was the caboose and two people behind Sebastian.  He crossed an intersection, impressed with his balance, no-hands on bike, doing a little hand gesture shimmy shimmy to some Italian song he was singing to himself.  The car trying to take the right he was interrupting stopped short, made a face of surprise and frustration, and waited for him to cross.), and then onto what must have been the Via Appia in all its wonderful, bumpy, old stone-paved road.  I enjoyed it for about five minutes, now wishing back the paved road with the cypress trees around me, the sun overhead.  I'd have taken the lack of authenticity again if that means I get a comfortable ride.  But the only way to get that was to turn around.

The kids went faster and faster though I couldn't understand how.  I was just trying to find the most gentle spots to bike.  Sometimes on the actual road, sometimes on the dirt path on the side.  Sometimes following a jogger, who I imagined was Italian and knew the smoothest path.  So this was the road that led out of Rome.  Or into Rome.  Here were the catacombs of saints.  Here was the tomb of Caecilius Mettus, from one of the wealthiest Roman families.  Here were more ruins.  But mostly, mostly here was this cobblestone road and sometimes big stones paved road, and trees lining the road, and little dirt paths along the side of the road.  And a blue sky.  And sun.

Daniel wanted to stop some, but the kids were too far ahead.  They were on bikes, and it had been months since they were on bikes, much less good solid bikes with suspension to take off the jarring of every stone or rock.  Eventually we let them go, and we biked a bit together.  He wanted to explore.  I felt a bit like the kids, not wanting to stop and look at things too much, just wanting to bike, feel the road even as I groaned inwardly with every bump.  I thought, Do tourists really do this and enjoy it?  I had read reviews of this bike ride, and the ancient history teacher at SYA was offering this ride as an optional excursion next week when the school moves to Rome.  I feel pretty healthy, and I felt a bit pathetic and slow.  Folks were walking, pushing strollers, jogging, biking like us.

We heard chimes.  Bells.  I imagined that there must be a church nearby.  Daniel said, "Want to check it out?"  He hopped off his bike and went over to the stone wall from where the bells were sounding.  I acquiesced, put my bike to the side of the road, and did the same.

Goats!  Goats with bells around their necks.  Maybe a hundred, maybe two, I don't know.  But the chimes were magical.  (On our return trip they crossed the road right in front of us.  Mary jumped off her bike and ran ten feet away, afeared of a goat that looked like it was headed right for her.)

We caught up with the kids.  Daniel invited all of them to get closer to the aqueduct.  Mary alone joined him, while the others went ahead.  While Daniel and Mary explored the aqueduct, I biked up to the others.

Gathered around a stone that looked like a table there for just this purpose, four kids and Julie (friend and mom of child also visiting) were playing a card game (Sushi, they told me).  Today they didn't care about the aqueduct or Caecilius Mettus' rich family and huge tomb or the catacombs.  They cared about their game, playing with their friends.  I put down my bike and walked over, faced the sun, sat criss-cross apple sauce, put my hands on my knees palms up, and closed my eyes.  Meditating.

The sun.  The kids playing.  The folks going by.  The goat bells now too far away to hear.

On the ride out I had been thinking about Horace, this Roman poet from the first century B. C., who loves Rome and writes poems not just about Rome (the ship of state!), but also about being away from Rome, being out in the country away from the hustle and bustle of Rome.  In the morning I had felt a little frenetic, wanting to get the kids to all the sites, but once I was on the Via Appia, surrounded by trees and blue sky and the bumpy road that I found tough to bike on, what we weren't seeing in Rome fell away.  What we were missing was nothing.  We were here, headed out on the Via Appia, and there was no need for anything else.  (I'm reminded now of Scituate, where, for me, the busyness of home fades, and I feel present, not tempted by the to-do list.)

My phone rang: Mary was on top of the aqueduct and couldn't get down.

She gave the phone to Daniel. "She's fine.  We're fine," he said.

Just another day on the Via Appia Antica.

Freewrite

I have the students writing and so I feel guilty if I don't write.  I need to take the advice I give to them: Just write.  Don't edit yourself.  Don't worry about where your writing takes you.  Just keep going.  Having finished Othello essays last week, this week is Rome preparation week: readings on writing and on Rome to get inspired to be writing fifteen minutes per day next week in their blogs.  Yesterday in class their prompt was to write for ten minutes on sei giorni, the six days that they spent in Italian school last week.  (Italian students go to school from 8am-1pm six days per week.  Luckily, Paradiso does not have those same hours.  Phew.)  The few posts I read last night mentioned ongoing chatter in classes; kids who were kind and eager to hear about American life; making lists to pass the time; feeling scared; feeling excited; making Italian friends.  I need to not read all their posts.  If I do, I'll feel the need to respond to every story, and I'll our Rome school week in the hotel reading student blogs rather than going out and about.

The students are homesick.  Thanksgiving is this week.  I never liked missing holidays -- not when I was in college and in Rome for junior fall and not when I was thirty-years-old and spending Christmas with Daniel's family in New Mexico.  It's not that the traditions were any more special than anyone else's, but they were ours and they were home.  So I'm aware of this as Thanksgiving looms just two days from now.  The SYA students are bummed and stressed about preparing Thanksgiving dinner for their host families.  If I don't mention Thanksgiving, I'm wondering whether our kids will feel the pang of not being at home with extended family.  I'm thinking apple pie and vanilla gelato for breakfast; sliced turkey (yes, cold cuts) and french fries for lunch with the Macy's Day Parade streaming in the background; dinner with our visiting friends at a restaurant by the beech woods.

But for now, my ten minutes of writing is up, so I'll go check on invocations and write later.

We're working on writing this week in English class and preparing for next week when we move teh school to Rome for the week.  Last night's assignment was to read some poems on Rome and an interview with Billy Collins.  This  morning's 10 minute freewrite is to write an invocation to a muse...an imitation of Hardy's poem... no editing...just get it down...)

Invocation to a Muse (an exercise for English class inspired by Thomas Hardy's poem "The Vatican -- Sala Delle Muse")

O Muse of Good Cheer, inspire in me 

laughter when there is no heat or hot water for two days in a row.

Make me compassionate when students worry about grades more than about learning.

Grant me calm and humor and understanding 

in the face of children's squabbles.

Let me enjoy a cappuccino in Viterbo

rather than being grouchy all day because I got only six hours of sleep, no heat, and no hot water.

Let me appreciate Roberta and Dave and Pat for their humor and efforts in getting said heat and hot water.

Let me remember that image of the map of Italy with my feet on it as I walk the one block, past Fontana Grande, to get to work.

Let me revel in Renzo's loud greeting across Via Cavour this morning, as I stewed over late assignments, and he yelled over, "Buon lavoro, bella!"

I could only smile once I heard his booming voice, saw his happy face, translated his Italian in my head.

Let me be open to those moments day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

This is a day in Viterbo after all.

Capri

Sometimes I feel like any excursions I write about are not so much about the place we went to see as much as about the errors we made and obstacles we encountered in getting to said place.  I've often wondered whether travel goes this way for everyone, or if we just don't plan enough or motivate enough or get organized enough.  Likely all of the above.  Vesuvius was our exception, and that was on our last morning in Naples, Sunday.  So by then we'd had enough of our own nonsense.

But Saturday was Capri.  Sunny.  Warm.  We drove to find the always unfindable metano for the Fiat -- no matter how many directions we got, the metano eluded us on that Naples trip.  Sunday afternoon, what should have been a two and a half hour drive back to Viterbo was a six hour drive because of the holiday weekend (All Saints' Day) traffic.  We stopped for gas along the highway -- I guess it's autostrada here; highway in Massachusetts; freeway in New Mexico -- and when we finally found a station with metano, the line for metano was ten cars long, so we opted for benzina.  Then we got back on the autostrada, or rather, Daniel continued to drive us, per usual.  Sunday night, once we were home, Daniel said to me, "I think I forgot to pay for our gas when we stopped."  Surprised that he pumped the gas before he had to pay, he pumped, got in the car, drove away.  An honest mistake.  Perhaps at home we would hunt down the gas station on whitepages.com, make a phone call, send a check or give a credit card number, or wait for a note/ticket/bill in the mail, explain what happened, and pay.  But here in Italy we couldn't take such a risk: fines are normal and high; the car isn't ours; we've already had sent to owners of car the seventy euro ticket for driving into Pisa and the forty euro ticket for going into an intersection when the light was turning red.  Cameras are everywhere.  When Daniel contacted the owners of the car, Pat (he and his wife Linda own the car) texted, "We all know it was an error...but it could be construed as theft...I don't think I will get arrested but it could create a mountain of bureaucracy."

Six hours driving home on Sunday.  Six hours driving the autostrada looking for, finding, and paying (yes, they were waiting for him -- "Fiat?  Arancia?") for the gas on Monday.

But really, I was going to write about Capri.

We headed to the port -- no gas, but ATM, and then croissants and coffee by the bay on a gorgeous morning.  I thought, Should we just stay here and skip Capri?

Riding down winding steep roads with my eyes closed (I am losing motivation to learn to drive here -- pathetic, I know, but it feels daunting at the moment), we make it to the port sent on WhatsApp by our airbandb host.  No more ferries today: last one left two hours ago.

Daniel: Which port did you look up directions to?
me: The one on the WhatsApp message.
Daniel: Oh, no.  I knew there were no more boats for today; the host told me.  We need to go to Naples or Sorrento.

We drive some more.

By 1:30pm we are on a ferry to Capri, where we want to see the Blue Grotto, hike up to Tiberius' imperial villa, and get my favorite perfume.  Twice I got a bottle for me a bottle for my mom.  Hers lasted years because she wore it only on special occasions.  I still have the little pamphlet from the store from over twenty years ago, and we are finding the perfume this trip.

We take a boat ride around the island, listening to the history and myths, e.g. if you kiss the one you love when we go through this upcoming arch of rocks, you will stay together forever; Tiberius threw people into the sea from his villa up high, and then he would go to that promontory half way down the cliff to see whether they were dead yet; there is a statue of Mary.  (Sebastian takes photos and videos going through the arch, just when Daniel kisses me.  Mary, oblivious to the camera/phone, and scared about making it through this small opening, frets visibly.  I'll try to attach video.)

The waves are too big, so the Blue Grotto is closed.

When we get back to land, we start walking uphill fast: it's 3:20, and Tiberius' villa closes at 4pm.  Connor really wants to see the villa.  I want the walk up the hill because I remember it as so pretty.  We walk, run, lose each other, find each other.  The path is on the most narrow, sweet road.  There are little stores, restaurants, and flowers.  Flowers.  It's so quaint.  The path is prettier than Tiberius' opulent villa ever could have been.

The villa is closed.

But we go in anyway and wander around, debating which rooms were for servants, which for guests, which for the emperor himself.  It's not a mansion: it's a mansion of mansions.  How could one person have a place this big?  We decide that he likely had a huge entourage, so he had to have space for them all.  We are in awe, amazed at the size.  (That night I skim some Suetonius to learn a bit more about Tiberius.  Gracious.  My awe turns into disgust as I read what he did to folks.  Paranoid and tyrannical, he tortured many both in Rome and out on Capri.)

We walk more slowly back down the path.  As we near the center of town, near the bottom of the path, Daniel asks a woman about my favorite perfume shop.  She points over his shoulder, across the mini-road.  It's there, she tells him, but closed now until March.

It's only in writing this now that I see how my three points of interest on Capri were closed.  In the end, it didn't really matter.  I guess, even in the moment, it didn't really matter: we still took the boat ride and explored Tiberius' villa (treating it as not closed), and I (happily) caught Daniel ordering my favorite perfume that night online (price was four times what it was back in 1996, the last time I bought it...ahhh, well).

Capri.

Mount Vesuvius

What was supposed to be the beginning of the Naples trip became the end of the trip.  What looked like a hike in the rain became a hike in the wind.  Vesuvius didn't care: it wasn't going anywhere, and, lucky for us, it wasn't erupting.

Last time I hiked Vesuvius I was twenty-three, it was summer, and my friend Racquel annoyed the heck out of me.  It was hot, and I came prepared with my liter of water.  Racquel, an ardent lover of animals, felt bad for the thirsty dogs on the path.  She, with her tiny bottle of water, had drunk and shared hers already with them.  Now she badgered me.  I wanted my water for myself: that's why I brought it.  (I like to think I've evolved over time, or perhaps it's having kids -- I'm happy now to actually be the one to have something to share.  So often we were the ones without a diaper or a snack or a water, and people rescued us, and I admire these always prepared people, a person I am not as I was in my twenties.  Now I'm grateful whenever I have something I am in a position to share, thrilled to seem organized and to feel on top of things for a minute.  Still, I confess that I would drink my water now rather than sharing it with the dog.)  Eventually I gave in -- peer pressure -- and Racquel and I have laughed about it, both completely aware of the frustration of the other: I thought she was unreasonable and nagging; she thought I was selfish.

Alas.

We brought plenty of water.

For the first time on our Naples trip, we were at an entrance two minutes early.  We parked behind the one other car there, got tickets for the shuttle, and got in.  At the next stop, we bought our tickets to hike up to the crater.  It's not a far walk, maybe half a mile (I should be saying how many kilometers, but I'm not there yet), but it is uphill, severely at times.  We looked out over Naples, the reverse view we had had for four days: from our apartment, from Pompeii, from the ferry ride to Capri -- we were always looking at Vesuvius, finding it every chance we could.  Now we were on it, our feet on the dirt, looking out toward all the rest.

We looked into that massive crater, finding it hard to imagine it full of liquids, so dry did it look.  We extended our arms to feel the wind (try to) blow us on the path.  We drank hot chocolate at the top, where Daniel asked a man whether it was always this windy, and he said, No, just today.  When I got back to the bottom, Hannah and Connor were playing some game that reminded me Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack all dressed in black black black with silver buttons buttons buttons...except that the game is to count and skip a number every ten.  They counted in Italian and laughed.

No dogs to feed.

No struggles over water.

I wonder what they'll remember. 

Pompeii

I think I've been to Pompeii three times before this year.  Twice I was the student, and once I was the teacher.  I had a clipboard, pen, and map when I was a student; a pink backpack instead of a flag when I was a teacher/chaperone (so as not to lose my six charges, freshmen girls who trusted me more than they should have as I dragged them all over Rome until they insisted that they needed a proper sit-down lunch...fair enough).

This time I was the parent.

Connor is fascinated by volcanoes.  One Christmas he got a Magic Tree House book on Pompeii and the craft supplies -- clay, baking soda, food coloring, cardboard box, white vinegar, empty water bottle  -- to make his own volcano.  Last spring we sat in the living room and watched the BBC documentary/story Pompeii: The Last Day.  The night before we headed to Pompeii we watched the documentary again in our air b and b in Naples: Stefano's fullery, pyroclastic flow, magma, lava, Elder Pliny, Younger Pliny, Pompeii, Herculaneum, three breath death.

The rain kept going.  We were soaked.  Pompeii was out of maps.  This would not be the experience I had had as a student or as a teacher -- no map, no notes, no agenda.

We started in the big theatre, testing the acoustics by having one person down low saying hello and seeing if we could hear the voice.  We hopped from stone to stone in the old pedestrian crosswalks, avoiding imaginary horse poop and real puddles.  Mary took gelato orders in a bar, scooping out stratiatella and taking my euro (I didn't tell her about denarii...didn't even think about it).  Mary and I imagined that perhaps there was grain in the large containers.  We walked in and out of houses, debating which ones had wealthy owners and which didn't.  We checked out what I thought was the hypocaust system (another documentary from Latin class) in the Stabian Baths.  Mary and Hannah climbed into what we imagined was an oven and then back out again.  Daniel and Sebastian made it to the forum.  For the first time, I didn't.  We walked under the amphitheatre where there was a Pink Floyd in Pompeii exhibit.

No map, no notes, no plan.

No Forum, no Villa of the Mysteries, no Street of Tombs.

Walking, running, climbing, imagining, pretending.

Looking around.  Checking things out.  Touching the ruins with our hands and feet.

Connor said to me afterwards, "Next time I come to Naples, I want to see Herculaneum and the museum that has all the Pompeii stuff."

Mission accomplished.

Rain Day

Yesterday at about 5pm, Mary and I were watching Season 15 of Grey's Anatomy (Is it homesickness that makes me pay $2.99 per week to watch Grey's and another $2.99 per week to watch This is Us?  Or is it just that I like a good story and good break?  Or is the Thursday night ritual at home?  Or is it a simple lack of discipline?  It may be time to cancel Netflix because we watch it rarely, but I committed this week to season 15 of Grey's and season 3 of This is Us by paying for the whole seasons so I don't feel a bit guilty each week, debating whether to watch.  And there was that little note above the click spot that read, "Discount based on your previous purchase of episodes"...or something like that...sucker sucker sucker...), and then all the other kids squished next to and around us so we were cuddled in on a rainy Sunday afternoon watching Grey's.  (Appropriate for children?...no, some of the time, it's not.  We either tell them to go away or hope the inappropriate parts go over their heads.)

Daniel came in.  "Pat called.  He's picking you kids up in fifteen minutes to take you to see the olives get crushed."

"No!"
"I don't want to go!"
"We're so cozy."
"We want to stay in and watch Grey's with Mom."

I understood only too well.  I felt the same way the day before as I forced them all to go harvest olives at Pat's while I stayed home and got a few quiet hours to myself.  We're in Italy: they've got to go see the olives (some of which they harvested) get crushed.

There are so many things we say we won't do until we're actually in a situation, e.g. We'll never let our kids have plastic toys.  We'll never get too busy with activities.  We'll never let our kids eat as much sugar as so-and-so.  We'll never let our kids have temper tantrums...  We'll never bribe our kids.

"Name your bribe," I said to the kids.

I was thinking, We made them spend Saturday out, we dragged them to mass again today, they go to Italian Catholic school daily, and now they want a little down time.  This seems fair to me.  And yet.  I'm not letting Pat show up and them not go with him to see the olives crushed.  He's terribly generous, and they'll enjoy it.  (Mary arrived home from harvesting the olives on Saturday and said, "It was awesome!  I loved it!")

Not surprisingly, they requested screen time -- the boys to make and play Scratch games; Mary to watch videos; Hannah to play video games.

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While they were out watching olive-crushing, I reread Act 5 of Othello, worked on Connor's photobook for his upcoming birthday, and tried to read, i.e. translate, the 145 WhatsApp messages from the parents of grade 2 (Hannah's class).  The messages kept coming, so I was toggling between catching up and trying to stay up to date.  We owe 25 euro for the cash fund for baking ingredients and another birthday.  Then I started reading things with the words "Maltempo....scuola chiusa...domani..."  I wasn't getting everything, but it seemed to me that they were possibly calling off school for Monday because of the rainstorms and thunder and lightning.  (We had, after all, lost our power in the morning.  With Pat's guidance, Daniel got it back on in the afternoon, accessing the fuse box that I had incorrectly tried to reactivate in August when I blew a fuse.  Who knew that this time we were supposed to check the box that I had incorrectly checked in August?)

Within an hour, it was confirmed: no school for Paradiso, St. Thomas', and SYA.

Monday would be the down day that they kids had been requesting all weekend.

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Lunedi.

Here we are.

It's just like a snow day at home.  It reminds me of Superstorm Sandy, that East coast non-hurricane that was blustery and got us all a couple days off from school a few years ago.  We slept in.  I went for a thirty-five minute run (a recent minute record for me); walked and listened to a Fresh Air podcast interview with Terri Gross (she made a guest appearance on This is Us last week...) and John Green, author of YA novels, including The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down.  I took a long shower.  Worked on Con's photobook some more.  Shopped on amazon for a watch for Connor.

Mary baked cookies.  Connor and Hannah and Mary went to Tiger and then hid the candy they bought, thinking I didn't see them run by our room with big goofy smiles.  Sebastian's been sitting reading on his kindle when he's not eating Mary's cookies or fried eggs.  Daniel's reading the novel Holes to prepare for his sixth grade English class.

The down day we all needed.

Holidays and Homesickness

Last night I read the director's letter to the SYA students' parents.  He mentioned that the students should be talking to their parents no more than once a week and that, "it may seem counter-intuitive, but feelings of homesickness are best faced by seeking resources within their midst here."

Daniel was at meditation (he has no trouble committing to activities -- at the moment he and the kids are olive harvesting over at Pat and Linda's house, as the Agroecology SYA kids did yesterday...I say to our kids, "You get to harvest olives in ITALY...how cool is that?  Off you go!"...and then I stay home, go for a walk, grocery shop, write a bit...), Mary was doing homework, I was writing progress reports, the other kids were watching Italian cartoons, i.e. American cartoons dubbed in Italian (Our teachers tell us that we should!  Even the director of Paradiso says we should!).

I read them the excerpt from the letter.  They were feeling pretty good about themselves, saying, "Yeah, we talk to the Raymonds and to Ellen about once a week."
"And talking to our aunts doesn't count, does it?"

Halloween is Wednesday.  It's the holiday I was feeling worst about their missing at home.  I can't imagine having left home for a year when I was their age.  I liked routine and traditions and rituals.  I found comfort in the predictable and the simple and the ordinary: bags of candy that ended up filling the pantry freezer for dessert for months; turkey dinner for both Thanksgiving and Christmas; our family and Gram and Margo together; everyone around the Christmas tree in the basement (what we called, "Way down"); a Snickers in my Christmas stocking.

We'll be together for Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter, but I still have some trepidation about these holidays for the kids.  Will they be good enough?  Will the kids be sad?  Will we parents pull off the holidays in a special enough way?  Halloween won't have their buddies; Christmas won't have quite as many presents or The Chateau and Brandeis and cousins; Easter won't have the neighborhood Easter egg hunt in our yard.

Halloween feels like a big holiday for the kids because it's with their neighborhood friends, and our neighborhood is alive and full, and the spreading out of all that candy over the living room floor is artwork in and of itself.  They don't ask Daniel, and I turn a blind eye for a few days as they eat way too much sugar; after some days we monitor or give away, but those first few days are kid heaven and kid freedom.

I had intended to make Halloween special here for them, figure out a way to trick-or-treat or something along those lines.  Alas, the Italians don't trick-or-treat; Halloween is an older kid darker holiday, we've heard, where folks dress up as dead people, and there's more tricking than treating.  A colleague told us, You'll be missing nothing (we're headed to Naples on Halloween).  Her description of Halloween did not make our kids want to celebrate.  Instead, she told us about Little Christmas on January 6 and Mardi Gras/Carnival, the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.  The nonne (grandmothers) drive down the street in Fiat 500's and give out candy.  And on one of the holidays there is the largest sock ever holding candy for all the kids.  I don't remember which details go with which holiday (I am generally a step behind), but I know that Mary felt more at ease about not trick-or-treating here in Viterbo and that the kids started to look forward to January 6 and Mardi Gras.

While I'm not importing Kit Kats and Reese's peanut butter cups and Twix for Halloween (though I have a memory that my mom did send these to me the semester I spent in Rome and one of my sisters did attempt to do so before learning at the post office that this sending would cost $88 per envelope), I did put some Ferrero Rocher and Kinder chocolates into my grocery bag this afternoon to put out on Halloween morning.

One holiday at a time.

Everyday Hurdles

I find it hard to make appointments back in Massachusetts -- hair appointments, dentist appointments, doctor appointments.  This isn't a new hurdle for me.  I find it hard to commit to appointments, to know ahead of time that that day and time will work, will not interfere with real life (real life's being not appointments), will not make me wish that I didn't have to go to the appointment.  I've tried to change my way of looking at appointments in the last two years: I try to think of them as opportunities to take care of myself rather than as roadblocks in my routine or as one more thing that I need to do.  If I think, Hey, go me, I'm taking care of myself, I enjoy the shift of time and change of routine a bit more, and I even feel good about it sometimes.

But still: making the appointments is a challenge.  When I leave the doctor, the dentist, the hair salon, the acupuncturist, the assistant asks, "Do you want to schedule your next appointment now?"  I feel a little paralyzed, a little pathetic, thinking, How do I know what I'm going to be doing in six months on a Tuesday afternoon (dentist)?  How do I know if my hair is going to be driving me crazy in ten weeks or I can color it myself a few more times and put it up in a ponytail and get a few more weeks out of today's haircut?  I color my hair myself because 1) it's cheaper; 2) the white appears within two to three weeks; 3) I don't have to drive to the hair salon and sit there for an hour or two; I can color it in my kitchen and putter around my house for the hour that I let it sit in there.  As for acupuncture, how do I know what ailment I have or what if I have none?  Daniel says, Just make the appointment and figure out the ailment later.

So making an appointment in Italy feels like double the challenge.  I've got my regular hang-ups, the language, and the issue of where to go.  Luckily, other folks are happy to share their experience: Linda recommends an acupuncturist; Amy, a hair salon; Roberta, an orthodontist for Mary; Dave, a doctor for Sebastian.

In the last week we've hit all these appointments.  I got a hair cut and color that, with some extensive waiting (no problem since I had Othello with me except that it made me late for the school outing to the Terme de Papi, the fancy hot spring pool in Viterbo...a Thursday afternoon, a large piscina filled with water from the spring, trees and hills in sight, and me thinking, Is this really a school day?  is this really my life today? ), took three hours.  I balked later at the time suck, but then I didn't do my hair for four days, so perhaps the minutes even out in the end.  When I got home, I said to Daniel, "Maybe I'll start getting my hair done regularly rather than coloring it every two weeks myself. " (I started going grey/white at twenty-one.  One day I'll just let it go.  But Hannah's seven, and I'm not ready quite yet to be thought of as her grandmother.  Some people pull off grey or white hair beautifully -- Jedda's mom back in California; Eleonora, the always elegant Italian who matches SYA students with Italian families; Linda, whose grey and white streaks look natural and rich and right.  I'm not one of these people.  As my white grows in every other week, I look more drawn, tired, the opposite of elegant.)

In truth, I've cheated: The hair salon was Aveda, and the Italian owners lived in England for the past six years, so communication was easy and clear.  The acupuncturist and I made up the difference between her Chinese and Italian and my English and Italian: I tried to be really clear about sinus/eye issues and sleep issues, and she was good enough to find a way to understand me.  Our language difficulties really came up only when it came to my asking for a ricevuta (receipt), and she explained to me that she couldn't give me a receipt because we weren't meeting at the hospital where she works.  My eyes are better, and I've slept better for the past week -- I am letting go the ricevuta and reimbursement from health savings account.

I'm not sure whether I was happier after the actual appointments or after I had simply made the appointments.  Making them is the bigger obstacle for me.  Committing to them.

Our kids, for the most part, don't seem to have this hang-up to quite the same degree.  Hannah and Sebastian have signed up for an entire year of soccer -- no seasonal soccer here in Italy.  They are fine with the commitment.  (Connor's decided two practices of 90 minutes for the whole year is too much for him.  Hmmmm...perhaps he's like me in this way, and I have some reflecting to do.  He likes home time.  I want him to do something, anything out and about.  I was thinking something physical; he's thinking something where he's making or creating.  We'll get there.)  Mary's signed up for swim twice a week for the year.

Wednesday afternoon after lunch (okay, and gelato) Mary, Hannah, and I went to check out a sewing studio that was advertised at SYA.  Mary has been wanting to learn to sew and knit for three years.  I can teach her nothing.  In middle school one year, we sewed angel ornaments for our parents for Christmas.  I almost finished, but in the end, I needed help.  Christmas Eve I found my mom on the phone and brought it to her for her to finish it for me.  She laughed and explained to her friend on the phone (I imagine it was Mrs. Egleston) my predicament; her sharing and laughing hurt my feelings tremendously.  It was affection, I know that now.  But it was an ominous start for my sewing career.  Maybe ten times I've sewn a button on a pair of shorts or pants I cherish, but back home I send the kids to Daniel, or I add their needed mending to the cleaners' pile since the woman there can tailor, sew, and fix anything far better and faster than I can.

Mary has classmates encouraging her to do chorus or dance with them.  She wants sewing.  Fifty yards from our apartment building is the studio.

Vincenza greeted us and left us for a minute.  She returned with another woman who spoke some English.  They were joyful and kind and funny.  "We are starting one class right now.  Do you want to come now?"  I was thinking, No!  I had my entire afternoon planned of prepping and doing errands and hanging out.

The three of us took our seats around a table with seven Italian women (two Valentinas, a Georgia, and a woman who told me that she used to host SYA students among them) and Vincenza, the teacher.  She measured each woman, then Mary, asked me how long (or short) a skirt or dress should be.  "Non troppo cordo," (not too short) I said, and they all chuckled knowingly.  She spoke Italian the whole time, showing patterns and measurements and gesturing and pointing.  I took Hannah home.  I returned: Mary was still sitting there, engaged, listening, trying to understand.  Class is once a week for two and a half hours.

Afterwards, we checked in with Vincenza about signing up, cost, etc.  There is the subscription fee (subscription fees are what we'd call joining fees, and here in Italy, you pay them for gyms and most activities), she told us, and then a payment each month.  You can pay all at once or at the end or bit by bit.  Mary was ready for me to pay for the whole year.

"How about we pay the subscription fee now, and then we pay for two months at a time?" I suggest.

Mary says, "Sure.  That's great."

We got there and stayed, we signed Mary up, and we're paying for two of the six months to start.

That's progress.

Calcio

While three of the kids are playing soccer (Mary is doing swim), they are not yet allowed to play in games (in fact, they won't even take our money while the kids "train" twice a week) until we have proof of residency -- which we need to apply for within ninety days of arrival for Daniel and kids (my EU citizenship through Ireland streamlines my process a bit).  So no weekend calcio games for a while. 

At training (what we call practice) this week, Sebastian took off his sweatshirt.  His coach and teammates told him that he had to put it back on because it was slightly raining.  The Italians are concerned that you might get sick if you go out with wet hair or get caught in the rain without an umbrella or jacket. 
Sebastian told me, "The coach asked if I had a jacket, and so I told him, A casa." 
"But you don't have one," I said. 
"I know, but I couldn't say that!"

Add that to the list for the weekend.  (In truth, it's been on the weekend list for at least two weekends because I don't want Paradiso to get after us directly or, worse yet, via my colleague who is our contact.)

Connor's gone to one practice because he was sick for the other two.  We walk the one and a half kilometers there, get him out on the field with Roberto, the coach, and a bunch of eight-year-old boys we've never seen before.  Connor doesn't like to sign up for activities much: he likes to be at home or with his friends or making up his own activities (last week he looked up how to make parchment paper and made it with paper, water, and an iron).  But he agreed to try it out.  (I insist on one physical activity because I see all of us happier when we have some physical exercise going on.)   I read Othello in the stadium.  When I look up, I see Roberto showing Connor how to pass properly.  I see Connor passing and running and wearing himself out well.  When he runs up the stadium steps to get his water, he says, "It's hard for me to leave the house to come, but once I'm playing, I love it.  I just love it."

Hannah's team is a co-ed team, but no other girls are playing this year.  The first time I watched her practice, she had her hands in the pockets of her sweatpants.  She kicked the ball some; the kids didn't really pass to her.  When she came over to get water, I said, "Hannah, play like you would play if you were with your siblings or the Raymonds."

Yesterday I watched the end of practice.  The kids were scrimmaging.  Hannah was running.  She scored.  A little boy ran over, gave her a big hug, rubbed her head.  "Anna!" he shouted.  A bit later, she scored again.  "Anna!" three boys jumped up with exuberance, surrounded her, jostled her with glee.  Hannah hid her smile as best she could.  But I smiled big, not able to hold it in as well as the seven-year-old: the boys know her name.

from September...
Metano e benzina

Benzina I learned from Pimsleur.  Pimsleur became my music, my NPR, my car phone conversations, my company for chores around the house.  Pimsleur taught me Italian for thirty (or sometimes sixty or ninety) minutes a day from late April through July.

My favorite line was, "Dove a imparato l'Italiano?"  (Where did you learn Italian?)
The answer, according to the trusty CD, "Ho imparata da un corso di Pimsleur."

Walking, talking advertisement for Pimsleur!  I laughed out loud when I learned the sentence.  No one asks how we learned, likely because we haven't shown off (ahem) our learning quite yet.

Macchina and benzina and caro I remember: car and gas and expensive.

The owner of the car sent a text advising us to get metano rather than gasoline.  She told us, It's less than half the price of gasoline.  Only certain gas stations have it, and it takes about ten minutes to fill up the tank with twenty euro.

Over the weekend we added 15 euro of metano, saving our pennies and the environment at the same time.  We drove away from the gas station and noticed that that the gas gauge hadn't adjusted at all.  Today I watched the gauge line go down and down and down.  The gas light was on, and I couldn't figure out whether we had already used up all the methane.  We figured out that we need to press a button that activates our using either the benzina (gasoline) or metano.  Then the car uses that source until you switch it over to the other.

Conversation in the Fiat:

So methane is a natural gas?
Yes.
So it's better to use it, right?
Yes.
How do we get it?
Don't we get it from cows?
From their flatulence?
Or just their poop?

Food

Roberta took me Friday to a government building (I followed along blindly) which reminded me of the RMV; we are starting the permit process for staying for the year.  While we waited, I asked Roberta about politics and her favorite food.  (I'll get to politics another day.  I've been listening to too much U. S. news this week with the Kavanaugh hearings.  Troppo.)  Roberta is Italian, grew up in Viterbo, married a Brit and lived there for many years, then returned to raise their son in Viterbo.

"You mean, any food?" she asked.
I narrowed it down to dinner.
One favorite was too tough, so I requested three meals she loves.

"Well, pizza, of course," she said.  "We Italians love our pizza."

As our kids can tell you, there's pizza croccante, which they say is the same as pizza bianca.  Folks eat this for breakfast or a morning snack.  It's basically crispy pizza dough with yummy oil and salt.  At school, the kids buy it for 50 cents for snack.  I like it with scrambled eggs (not an Italian dish at all.  Italians don't eat eggs for breakfast).  There's pizza rosa, which has sauce but no cheese.  The most popular pizza in our house is pizza margherita -- crust, sauce, mozzarella.

"Melanze e ??????"...in other words, eggplant and something I couldn't understand.  After she finished her description, I said, "So eggplant parmesan?"  "Yes," she said.

Her next meal was rabbit.  She said, "I don't even usually eat meat, but this dish is delicious.  Oh, it's so good."

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The boys and Hannah have tried cingiale.  In the Asterix comic books, Obelix can eat three wild boars for dinner.  The kids love Asterix; hence, they are enjoying cingiale.  This morning on my run (when I run around the walls or up and down random streets outside the walls, I listen to my music -- many from my sister's playlists) and I laugh thinking about friends at home; I jog along at a speedy ten minute mile, proud of myself for getting out there once a week, and I think about these friends, this couple who run 10k's with barely any training, marathons with no trouble) I saw a sign: cingiale crossing.  And there was the picture of the boar crossing the road.  Late Saturday afternoon we drove to Lago di Vico for a mini-excursion, some nature time.  Daniel found a sign that warned of cingiale.  As we headed back to the car in the dark, we told the kids to make lots of noise to keep any wildlife away.  "Why?  What's here?!" they asked.  "Oh, we don't know, but in Prospect Hill at home we'd do the same thing if we were there in the dark."  The myth of the Calydonian boar was becoming a little too vivid as we got through the dark up to the parking lot, kids screaming loud.  (Thank you, kids.)

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When we got off the bus in some town near Terracina, the director told the students, "Be back to the bus by 3pm.  That gives you enough time to eat lunch and to wander around and see this town a bit if you want."

Two hours? I thought.  I could eat a sandwich and get a gelato and be back on the bus in thirty minutes.  What are we going to do with all this time?

Rather than go off by myself, I followed the other teachers.  An Italian colleague had gone ahead, found a restaurant, and gotten the owner to open up another room for the group of us.  We sat in this small room, the owner pulling the wine from a shelf right there on the wall behind my chair.  He took orders, walked outside and around the corner to the kitchen where his wife was, returned later with many plates of cacio e pepe -- a Rome specialty my colleagues told me.  It's not as good anywhere else, and now we're close to Rome, so it will be excellent here, they told me.

At 2:45pm, we were on secondi piati, and still minutes away from dolce.  The director sent a message to the students saying to postpone ETD to 3:15pm.

The next evening for dinner, we ate finely sliced meat -- I am inept here in describing the food as an Italian or food connoisseur would.  There were potatoes and prociutto and caprese and melanzane and this melt-in-your-mouth meat.  There was wine and a chocolate cake that hid warm gushing chocolate in the middle.  There was the after-dinner drink.  Then the coffee.

Food is everything.  There is no embarrassment about eating or talk about being hungry really.  It's just time to eat and to eat well often.  There is a pride in the food and in sharing one's dish.  It's quite beautiful.

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At home we eat turkey bacon and turkey sausage: here we eat sausage and porcetta.

At home we drink tea: here we drink tea, cappuccino, latte macchiato (warm milk with a drop of espresso), espresso/cafe.

At home, I'll eat Kind bars and saltines and Trader Joe's dried fruit and Arnold Palmer for lunch: here I eat leftover pasta and salads.

At home, we eat Joe's O's (i.e. Trader Joe's cheerios) for breakfast unless Daniel's cooked for us: I've traded Joe's O's for Noi Voi's Honey Loops (store brand at Emme Piu), and everyone other than Connor and me eats Daniel's cooked breakfasts.  Or, on a special day, we grab croissants (the typical Italian breakfast).

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Mary has been experimenting with her baking and cooking.  She began in September with her cupcakes.  This past week she made stuffed zucchini and pasta for dinner and biscotti for dessert.

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I wonder, Will the kids want to change our Waltham Christmas Eve dinner tradition from the Chateau when we return?

"Yo?"
"Yo mi llamo."
"Como te llamas?"
"Mi llamo Mary."
"Como?"
"I got to get to bed, Sebastian.  Thanks for helping me."

I was so excited that they were helping each other with Italian.

Then I realized that this was Spanish.  The middle school starts Spanish in grade six.  I've no idea how their brains are processing this.  On Saturday morning there was a WhatsApp thread for SYA Italy faculty: birthday wishes for Santo, the SYA Latin and Greek teacher -- Tanti auguri!  Auguri auguri!  I felt bogus sending wishes in Italian, even lamer sending them in English, so I sent them in Latin.   A brain freeze: happy birthday in Latin?  My self-consciousness with Italian was now affecting my ease with Latin.  This was more than uncomfortable: this was frightening.  I typed in my pathetic slow way: Felix dies natalis, Santo!  I knew it didn't look right, but I just sent it.  Moments later I thought, How embarrassing -- there are much more elegant ways to say Happy Birthday in Latin.

But my language confidence was down, so far down.  While I'm feeling good teaching English (even if the students/parents are concerned that their children are not getting A's in English, and it's junior year....she grades too hard!  We need A's for college applications!  Luckily, the director responds to kids/parents, supports, communicates), last week I was feeling despondent about Italian.  I'm not even close to first grade level yet.  I'm not having full-on conversations yet.  I don't understand when people answer my questions in Italian (though I'm excited that they answer in Italian rather than respond to my Italian question in English).  I was thinking, I may just have to give up on this Italian thing.  If I could get myself to one of Ale's Italian sections each day, that would be super.  But I've got Othello and senior college application essays and vocabulary quizzes and my walks and my kids.  I have many excuses.  And I want to learn, I do...but, my goodness, it takes a lot of energy and vulnerability in putting myself out there when I am going to make so many mistakes.

Thursday afternoon I walked up Via Cavour to our apartment.  A familiar looking man stopped me on the sidewalk.  He gestured, said, "Buongiorno!  Finito oggi?"  (or this is what it sounded like to me)

"No, non ancora," I said. (No, not yet.)

"Ahhh, solamento per pranso," he said.  (Just for lunch.)

"Il tuo italiano sta megliorando," he said.  (Your Italian is getting better.)

"Oh, no no!" I said.  "Ho bisogno imparare molto." ( I need to learn much.)

We talked a little more.  He pointed to the Edicola, the newspaper store across the street from SYA, and told me that he reads to learn.  Terrible at facial recognition, I could almost place him now: he works at the Edicola (sells newspapers, stamps, etc.).  We parted ways, and I smiled the rest of the way home.

What I was needing was not just language acquisition but connection, some indication that I could break this language barrier and connect to people outside home and work (and gelato and cappuccino) here.  He gave me this.

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When I go into my office the next morning, on the second floor of the building, I open wide the shutters and look down at Via Cavour.  I wave to the three men standing across the street each morning.  They wave back and smile.

This morning I realize: those men are standing in the entrance to the Edicola, and there's the man from yesterday afternoon.

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An Italian colleague told me this morning, "Hey, I went into the Edicola this morning, and the owner was saying that he was talking to you and how well you're doing -- how you're smiley a lot."

I confessed to Daniele my hopeless feeling last week, how I was thinking, I'm never gonna get there.  He said, "You've got to stay positive.  You just keep reading and talking and putting yourself out there."
I look at Daniele (he teaches Italian Culture and Global Citizenship), fluent in Italian and English and I think, Spanish, too.  The next language he wants to take up is Arabic.  It takes years to learn a language, he says.  But you just keep working at it, being positive.

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But then, last night, Mary wanted to google the Italian fable she needed to read in Italian for homework.  It was over two long pages, small print, and eight o'clock was looming.

"Would it be cheating to look up the fable and then just answer the questions?" she asked.

I say yes.  Daniel says yes.  We tell her we'd rather she read only half of it and not worry about finishing the whole thing.

 I offered to sit and read with her.  She slouched, angry with us.

Half an hour later, a sister had saved her little brother from Baba Gaga in the woods, then gotten help from an apple tree and a mountain of milk and some other fantastical foods who agreed to hide her and her brother from Baba Gaga if she tried their wares.  We read, laughed, guessed.  We didn't get every word, but we got enough to know what was happening, and we had a great time sitting on my bed reading.

Were we reading at an A level for a sixth grader?  Not even close.

As Mary headed off to bed, I said to her, "Mary, there is no way that we could have done that a month ago."

"I know, right!?"

Breaks

A friend in college told me once, "You're the only person I know who plans relaxing."

I thought, Is there any other way to do it?

The American in me judges my day by how productive I am.  Or by how much is not checked off my to-do list rather than what I have checked off my to-do list.  Actually, I don't know whether it's the American in me...or just me.

But sometimes I get lucky.

Last Monday the students were done for the day, I was prepping, figuring out residency documentation, then meeting with a colleague about a student.  Colleague said, "I know you're a pathetic drinker, but want to go have a sip of the good stuff?"  Weeks earlier, when someone had asked what kind of drinkers Daniel and I were, I had answered, "Pathetic.  We are pathetic drinkers."  I had explained that we can handle a glass of wine at most, likely not an entire beer, and often we even share one of these.

"Sure," I said.

He grabbed wine glasses, and we headed down to the school garden where the Agroecology students have been making wine, where Daniel helped carry barrels of grapes, where we watched the students grind the grapes, where Daniel and our own kids got to help mash the grapes one Saturday morning.  He poured us each a few sips while we looked around at the kids' work.  A ten minute excursion and a little wine on a Monday after work.  Not my usual Monday afternoon anywhere.  I walked up Via Cavour to our apartment smiling, grateful for the simplicity, the invitation, the ease.

The next day during morning break I went a separate way from my colleagues: they headed to Bar 103 for morning coffee; I headed to the sports store to get cleats for Sebastian, who was trying out soccer that afternoon.  As I walked around the walls on the way to De Marco Sport, I felt a little bad, thinking that I could have gone to break and dealt with the cleats later.  But I was a bit attached to my walking, my getting the cleats, my getting back to do some work before my next class.

I walked, got the cleats (lucky store number two had his size), and then sat back at my desk and settled in to watching Act 1 of Othello (Kenneth Branaugh, 1995) to prepare to show it later in the week.  Amy walked in.

"Ale and I are going out.  Want to come?" she asked.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

Amy headed over to Ale to ask where they were going.

I stopped her.  I realized that it didn't matter where they were going.  I could just go because really, that was all that mattered, going.  Taking a break.  Being with people.  I was getting a second try, a redo from morning break.

The three of us headed to Bar 103.  Sat in the sun.  Had a snack.  Then lunch.

It was so civilized.

It was not on my to-do list.

It was perfect.

Peace: Perugia to Assisi

Late Saturday afternoon SYA cancels its participation for the Sunday Peace Walk because of the rain.  Daniel, the kids, and I -- in Perugia since Friday night -- balk at their backing out and buy provisions for the 24 kilometer walk on Sunday.

At 4:30am, Daniel tells me, "I can't do the walk.  I have too much work to do.  I'm going to find a cafe to do my work."  He's got law work for a client back in Boston and his sixth grade English class here at St. Thomas'.

I expect that the kids will be devastated, want to back out without Daniel, want to stay out of the rain.

But when we wake them two hours later, they are anything but deterred:

"SYA cancelled, but we're not gonna be slackers!"
"Let's go!"
"I can't wait to tell them that we did it.  We are so going to do the whole thing!"

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The boys get ahead fairly early on, and Mary, Hannah, and I take our time.  We stop to eat almonds, cheese, raspberries.  The boys call us a couple times an hour to see how far behind we are; to find out if we also got the free Perugina chocolate at one stop (yes, we did!  turns out we could get it free right here without a tour at the factory); to ask where the closest bathroom is (I have no idea).

We walk up and down a country road, through a town, along a road parallel to the highway.  The scenery changes, but somehow, always we can find some green.  We are surrounded no matter where we are on this walk.

Daniel calls to check on us.  He walked two kilometers with us, then returned to the car, stopped for some folks needing a ride, and then drove them back to the walk.  He's not even begun his work.

At 2:30pm (we started at 10am), Sebastian calls and says, "There's a church here!  Everyone is stopping here, and there's music.  It's awesome!  We made it!"

I tell him, "You must be at that dome we can see in the distance: you're at the St. Francis Basilica!  We'll be there soon!"

Many chocolate and water breaks later, the girls and I reach the church.  It's immense.  Inside is a line of people waiting to go into the small chapel in the middle of the church, apparently the original chapel of St. Francis around which this church was built  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portiuncula. A friend told me that there were paintings of the life of St. Francis on the walls; I can't find them, but that's okay.  It's nice to sit, look around, rest our feet.

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We sit outside in the piazza, shoes and socks off, depleted, waiting for Daniel, who has gotten an entire hour of work in today, to pick us up.  We wait some more.  Finally, we catch each other on the phone: he tells me, "I think you're at the wrong church.  Are you at Santa Maria del Angeli?"

He's not kidding and he's right: we haven't actually finished the walk or spent the last hour at St. Francis' Basilica. We are in the comune di Assisi, but we are not at the top of the town, that structure that we could see high up from a distance during the walk, a structure that looked like a fancy fortress from afar.  We're in Assisi, but we're not in the old town of Assisi (I suppose this would have been like if we have made it to Bagnoregio but not over the bridge to Bagnoregio Civita, the old city -- there's no comparison.).

It's the journey.  It's the journey, I remind myself.  Sebastian tells me, "We were  happy before we found out that we were at the wrong church, before when we thought we had completed the walk.  Let's get some gelato."

I tell myself, Get over it.  But gracious, my mood has shifted.  The kids are physically exhausted.  I'm grouchy.

I nudge and nag the kids who have no interest in getting their feet back into sneakers.  We trudge a mile to the train station to meet Daniel, who thinks he can get the Fiat close enough to pick us up.  When we finally see him, the kids collapse into the car.  

Except Mary.  Mary wants to finish the walk.  She wants to get to St. Francis Basilica today.  She said she was doing the walk, and we came all this way to do it, and she wants to finish it.

The Fiat takes off with everyone except Mary and me.  Mary and I, fortified by way too many potato chips and determination, walk fast and hopefully and happily.  We are completing the walk!  Yes!  The final 4K is uphill, and we are just fine.  Happy, even.  Daniel and the kids cheer out the window as they pass us, and we cheer, too (picture above).

The top -- o the top!  This is what I could see from afar on the walk, and I wondered what it was.  The basilica is on the corner of the town; it looks like the top of the cliff.  It takes over the entire corner.  It's immense and majestic.  But when we go in, the ceilings are low and painted, and it almost feels cozy.  A priest is saying a mass.  The final song almost makes me cry and I don't even know what it is, whether it's Latin or Italian.  But it feels familiar, like home.

These guys walked most of the walk on their stilts.  Our goal was not to be behind these guys.

Connor's feet at the end of his walk

Green only in the distance here..but we're walking on an ancient Roman aqueduct!

Umbria

An Italian colleague organized SYA folks to do the Peace Walk October 7, 2018, from Perugia to Assisi.  Daniel was all in.  We were all all in: 24 kilometers, a chance to see Perugia, a chance to see Assisi.  We were so excited that we made reservations to stay in Perugia for Friday and Saturday nights at an Agriturismi Turistici, a bed and breakfast spot with a farm, outdoor pool, fresh breakfast, gorgeous grounds.  Having gotten economical deals at airbandbtype spots for every family excursion thus far, we were ready to treat the kids to their own mattresses (okay, three mattresses for four kids...but one was a queen, and this was still a step up from one or two kids on the floor, bribed with the prize of not having the middle seat in the Fiat for a day or choice of movie next family night...the latter not yet fulfilled from almost a month ago...need to get on that...) and a pool.

If you want to go the Perugina chocolate factory in Perugia, make your reservations well ahead of time: by Saturday morning, not only were there no available tours for Saturday, there were no available tours for two weeks.  Ah, well, we can still find chocolate in Perugia.

Also, if you are actually going to book the place with an outdoor pool, perhaps go to that place when it is still hot out and the pool is not covered for the season.

Rain.

Rain.

Rain.

But here's the thing: I, who need the sun, easily accepted this rain because I have been feeling starved for more green.  In Viterbo, the window boxes are vibrant, and the mini-palm trees on balconies add that Mediterranean feel; green hangs down some outside walls.  But Viterbo is also a medieval city with winding roads (intentionally confusing to stymie invaders) and a big wall around it.  It feels dark at times with the tall buildings, the cobblestone streets, the maze of roads.  Outside the walls, a mere thirty yards from our apartment, there are trees and grass and even a small park.   But I'm used to the green of our yard (admittedly not as green as those of our neighbors), Prospect Hill trails two blocks away, Thayer Academy's campus and fields.  I'm used to spaces a bit more open.  I'm glad that we live in the city and within the walls of Viterbo: being new, we need the easily accessible liveliness and stores and people and Italian.  We need to be able to walk everywhere.  We are part of life here because we are within these walls.

And still: I've been needing a nature fix.

Umbria is the landscape I've been craving: green upon green.  I don't know the name of trees or the particular mountains I see, but I know that, even with Act I of Othello not yet prepped for Monday morning, I am so glad to be here in Perugia.  Everywhere we look we see grass and trees: at the agriturismi; on the ride into Perugia; from the vista spots in Perugia.  We don't have to make a plan to find a hike because we are surrounded by the green.

On the walk home from soccer today (first time!), Connor told me that he liked Tuscany, where we hiked in Bagno Vignoni.  He said, "I liked the forest around us and the hills and the fields.  It was awesome."  I agree with him: Tuscany was picturesque in every way.  It was like so many postcards and photographs and paintings that shout Tuscany.

But Umbria.  Umbria went beyond all expectations: green.

When I told a colleague about my love of Perugia and Assisi Monday morning, she said, "Yes.  The Italians call it il cuore verde d'Italia."
I gave her a blank look instead of my usual, ubiquitous, signalling-yes-when-I-really-have-no-idea -what's-going-on and want to be agreeable and appreciative response, "Si.  Si."

She smiles, "The green heart of Italy."

Almost two years ago I got texting.

Three months ago I got WhatsApp.

Usually Daniel picks the kids up from school.  On Wednesdays, the SYA students often have excursions, so I can pick up the kids from school.  Han and Con are out at 1:30, and the big kids are out at 2pm.  So I picked up the little kids and hung out with them for half an hour.  Two other moms were in this same position, picking up elementary grade kids and waiting for middle school kids.  They were wonderfully friendly.

(Waiting outside a seventh grade birthday party weeks ago...a Friday night at 10:30pm, we stood outside the pizzeria for the party to end; a circle of parents was nearby; one looked over at me, nodded to the others and said, La mamma de regazzo Americano.   I walked over the ten feet, introduced myself and put out my hand, "Buona sera.  Mi chiamo Maureen."  I shook all their hands in turn with a "Piacere."  One woman's face lit up and she cried, "Ciao!  Mi chiamo..."  I can't remember her name, but I remember her kindness. 

So pick up on a Wednesday.

Sonia is the mom of Francesco, and she is delightful and funny and friendly.  She offers to add me to the WhatsApp group for Hannah's class and for Mary's class.  Daniel is already on the WhatsApp group for Sebastian's class.  (We should hook ourselves up with Connor's class...when a boy in his class wanted Connor to come over to play, his mom called the SYA director to get our contact information.  This family is hosting an SYA student for the year, so they could contact SYA.)  I am thrilled: how kind of her!  I'll know what's going on!  We can help the kids know what's going on!  Maybe I can practice my Italian -- reading and writing.

Alas.

Fifty-six messages daily from Hannah's class.  What's the math homework?  There are seven October birthdays.  Please bring money for the birthdays.  What's the English homework?  Here's an invitation for Leonardo's birthday.  What's the Italian homework?  We'll bring a snack tomorrow to celebrate the feast day of St. Francis, so the second graders don't need to bring snack.  Did your kids write down what pages to do in the blue book?  or is it in the red book?  There's another birthday next week.

Some nights I sit on my bed with WhatsApp on my phone and google traduttore on my laptop, and I read all the texts.  Other days, I am lazy, and I ask a colleague to listen to the message (troppo veloce per mi!), and they tell me, "There are birthdays.  Bring cash."  Or they tell me, "Yes, ask me.  You do not need to read all these messages.  Ten just say, 'Grazie.'"

Last night I rsvp-ed for Hannah for Giorgio's birthday party next week (at McDonald's...apparently McD's here uses real and local beef...and KFC uses local chicken...while I've not yet tried either, I am still quite pleased by these small details -- go, Viterbo!). This morning I bragged to Hannah, so pleased to be on top of things for her.  I showed her the WhatsApp message I sent.

Alas.

It's the party for Giorgia.