Un Buon Compleanno

Today was my birthday. This morning, we got a car sharing car to drive out to a region known as the Colli Euganei. These are hills that were formed by volcanic action, and there are a ton of vineyards there. Dave found a great one that gave us a tour of the vineyards as well as the barrels. I don't have the right words to use for this right now as the tour was in Italian and I understood about 60% of it. Just like at the Colosseum. We bought some wine to bring home and asked for a suggestion for a lunch destination. 

They've been troopers on a few different activities with not much excitement for them.

Lunch was fantastic! They had a cinghale dish, which Ethan is always excited about. Cinghale is wild boar, and it's a dish that is pretty specific to a few regions around here in Italy, I think. I have not had time to be hungry on this trip. There is always another meal to have. We are, at least, eating well. Most, if not all, of the food we've eaten has been fresh. After lunch we took a rest period at the house. Then we took out the soccer ball and headed to the Prato. On the way we found cannoli at a new Sicilian place in town, which is what I wanted for my birthday. It was excellent! The boys only played for a few minutes because the bugs were pretty annoying. 

I'll find the pics of them playing four years ago and compare them on Facebook.

Finally, Dave got some fresh gnocchi and prepared dinner again tonight. We played a couple of hands of euchre, which is still pretty hilarious as the boys don't have quite all the rules down yet.

More Italian Things: A Castle, Soccer, and Laureates

 

 

Today is Thursday, and we took the train to Ferrara to check out the town this morning. The highlight was a castle! With a moat! I've never been in a castle with a moat. This one was pretty large, and we got to visit the dungeons as well as the tower on top. We can't remember the name of the castle, other than it was part of the Este family. We also had pasta for lunch and weathered a quick rainstorm before heading back to Padova. 

We took a rest, then headed out to hit another venue on our 'Tour to Recreate our Time in Padova'. Pier 88, better known by us as the 'Bubble Bar', is on the tram stop towards where the boys played soccer. We had an aperitivo and enjoyed sitting outside near the canal, despite the cicada noise. We have had great weather here- it's been in the high 70s to mid 80s. It's supposed to get very hot in the next few days though.

Speaking of soccer, we have tried to get the boys an opportunity to play here. Just like in the States, most teams are on break right now. There was an open day (kind of like an ID camp) that Ethan could have gone to, but he needed a physical, and that was too much for us to pull off. Dave found an app that has pickup games on it but Ben is too nervous about his inability to speak Italian to try it out. We did finally get a message back from the boys' coach in the past few days, so we will see if that amounts to anything.

Padova is a university town. Graduations here do not happen all at once. Students, especially PhD candidates, graduate on their own date and usually there is a small gathering to celebrate them. I've enjoyed seeing the groups in town. You can tell who the graduate is because they are wearing a laurel wreath on their head (hence the term laureate).

Amici (Friends)

Over the past couple of days we have been fortunate to meet up with some friends we made in 2019. Antonio was a classmate of Ethan, and his dad, Simone, and Dave talk almost every day over WhatsApp. (The rest of the world uses WhatsApp to communicate as their text system.) We met up with their whole family on Monday evening for gelato and a giro (walkabout) in the evening. It was fantastic to see them and hear about the kids' musical endeavors. Antonio and his sister sing in a choir that has traveled through Europe, most recently Croatia. They also let Ethan know that the fountain in the Prato is off because of the recent drought. They got very little snow over the winter, so the reserves are down. 

Ethan, Ben, and Alberto (I made the boys wear collared shirts and then Alberto wasn't wearing one... ha!)

 

Tuesday evening we got to see Alberto's family for dinner and gelato. Alberto was a classmate of Ben's, and we got together to play Ticket to Ride while we lived here. Alberto has been busy with fencing, and is leaving in the next few days to go to a sailing camp near Trieste. He just finished his exams to get in to high school.

We also had an aperitivo (pre-dinner drink) with our former landlord, and have plans to see another of Ben's classmates and his family tomorrow. 

Ethan: We're in Italy!

 Before we left Rome we went to the roman Colosseum. We had a great time and our tour was in Italian. The tour was really hard to understand. When we got to Padova I  was so excited because i wanted to see the prato. We got to the prato and the fountain was gone. :(

Italian Things

 

Once upon a time, during our earlier visit to Italy, I had a whole post ready to write about laundry. I think a picture and a few sentences will suffice now. Most Italians do not have a dryer, only a washer. That means there is always laundry out drying. 

Public transit is very Italian. We took the bus and tram to Padovaland today. They were both packed with people. Transit is reliable and affordable, and part of the culture. When we first got on the bus, there was drama between the ticket police and others who had not paid for their tickets. Periodically the ticket police will get on a bus or tram to make sure that you have paid and validated your ticket. 

Padovaland is a water park that is a bit larger than Rolling Hills. Dave found out that they have a super deal on Tuesdays and entrance is only 12 euro per person. It was a lot of fun, though several activities would not pass U.S. liability checks. 

Roundabouts are also very Italian. There are very few stoplights, only in major traffic centers where there are also a lot of pedestrians. 

Both of our Padova apartments have had this type of key.

Dave got this anti-itch cream for mosquito bites from the pharmacy. All of their products have Braille on the outside of them.

From 2019: The End of an Era

I'm going back to work.

It's about time. We definitely have spent a good amount of money, and it's time that I bring home a real paycheck.

I did work this summer, but I brought the boys with me.

I'm so grateful.

To Aunt Ruth, for the funds that paid for our plane tickets.
To the boys, for being brave and having a good attitude about our adventures.
To Dave, for organizing so much and being our go-to Italian helper.

I was a bit teary tonight at dinner, telling the boys how much I've enjoyed my time with them. When Ben reminded me that they would also be going to school, I reminded him that yes, but in the spring I was able to walk them to and from school. That will not happen again, and man, do I treasure those days.

While I've been grateful every day of this experience and really tried to appreciate it in the moment, I have one regret that goes along with that. I wish I had blogged more. I had really hoped to have an account of what life was like as an expat family, and I just didn't get the day-to-day recorded as I'd hoped. As I start to see my colleagues again, who knew just how excited I was for this adventure, the stories are popping up and coming to mind. Tonight I'm motivated to write. So hopefully I'm not completely done writing, and I can use this trip to share my experiences with others, as I'd hoped.

Old Haunts: Padova

We took the train from Rome to Padova on Sunday. It is extremely pleasant to travel by train in Italy. They are dependable and clean. The boys spent their time on devices and I read, reminding everyone to look out the window from time to time as we passed through Tuscany. 

Arriving in Padova, I found it so quiet compared to Rome. There are less pigeons, less cigarette butts, and almost no scooters. There are huge areas that are car-free. We walked to our apartment, which is a two bedroom. This means we have some space to relax that isn't anyone's bed. As soon as we put our stuff away we were out the door to go visit some favorite places.

We strolled down the main area pedonale (walking area), checking out which stores were still there post COVID. There are very nice shops, like Dolce & Gabbana and Swarovski, as well as toy stores, pasta shops, etc. When we got to the Prato della Valle, the first thing the boys wanted to see, there were scuba divers there from Venice searching for something in the water. We never found out why they were there but there were huge crowds. Ethan was very disappointed to find that the fountain in the middle of the square was removed. 

Dave had called and asked for a reservation at our favorite pizza place, Al Borgho. They said they didn't have any tables available. We walked by there anyway, and were greeted with hugs from the owners. They were more than happy to give us a table for 8:00. We headed back to the Prato to have a spritz (pre-dinner drink). This was at a bar that was right around the corner from where we lived while we were here. The owner took a minute, but she did remember us too. 

Dinner was awesome- just as we remembered. The service was great, the food was excellent. Ben has been very health-conscious, eating salads for dinner the past two nights. Ethan ate less than half his pizza, but was forgiven. After dark, Dave and I went for a walk and had a digestivo (post-dinner drink) in the Piazza dei Signori. 

Today (Monday) has been a lazy day for us. We slept in, and Dave and I went for a run. Dave is cooking dinner in the apartment and we will just hang around here. We are contacting people we knew when we lived here to make plans for the rest of the week.

The old apartment entrance. The building has been redone; the owner sold just after we left in 2019.

Ben: 1

SO far in Italy it has been fine walking around is kind of boring. The food has also been great. Another thing is that Ethan smells really bad because he has not taken a shower in days. I don't like Rome because its boring and there are too many people. Lastly I cant wait to go home.

From 2019: Home

 

 

That's my first grader's cursivo!

A few years ago, Disney released the movie Inside Out. I've spent a lot of time thinking about my thinking and my brain this week, and this movie has repeatedly come to mind. Like many of Disney's movies, it's a good one for adults and kids alike. The psychology major side of me really found the parts about the inner workings of the brain very interesting. In particular, I was really interested in short-term vs. long-term memory, and how the brain retires old information and memories that are no longer useful.

We got home. I can't remember which light switches to use. And not in an, 'oh, right, that's the right switch' kind of way. In a repeated,*

Oh, and we got a puppy. Less than 24 hours after getting home. It's crazy, and it's not. 

[Again, this post was started in 2019 and unfinished. There is enough here to post, and this is one that I think I remember enough about what I was trying to capture for me to attempt to finish it.]

*In a repeated, "How do you turn this bank of lights on?", walk around the perimeter of the room way. Apparently the location of the light switches in our house was so unimportant that it was part of my memory that went in the 4.5 months we were in Padova. 

The other very weird feeling I had was driving, or taking a car, anywhere. I remember it feeling so strange that I would be in a vehicle for a short trip, like to the grocery store. The first few days it almost made me feel a little sick to be driving instead of walking. (We did rent/carshare a care a few times in Padova, so it's not like I hadn't been in a car at all. It was just that I wasn't used to using one for everyday, short rides.) 

Il Colosseo

Our loft apartment in Rome

 

Ethan has, since we started talking about this trip, wanted to visit the Colosseum more than anything else. Dave looked for tours, but most of the English-speaking tours were selling out faster than he could get tickets. He asked me if I thought we could do an Italian-speaking tour, and whether it would be OK to do one at night. I was more concerned about the time of day than the Italian given that it would only be our second day after the time change, but we decided to try it. 

There are a few less pictures of Ben, as this is the best he gives me for pictures.

We headed out on foot and walked by the Forum. We found a place to eat with very affordable pizzas (8-10 euro). Once we reached the Colosseum, we waited at the gate for our start time, 8:30. There were a lot of other English speakers also waiting, which made me think maybe we were getting the English tour. It turns out that they had the same experience trying to get tickets as we did, but speak less Italian. The tour guide handed out headphones and audio sets so that we would be able to hear him the whole time.

Dave's Italian is pretty good. Mine is functional beginning, to be kind. I could understand about 60% of what the tour guide said. It was helpful that he spoke plainly and used lots of gestures. He also had a beautiful visual aid to help him. We got to walk along the very bottom floor of the Colosseum, seeing the drainage system, where they had elevators and ramps to let animals and gladiators into the arena. He talked about the history of the Colosseum, and how after Rome was Christian there was a little bit of a problem with such brutal entertainment. Ben was a good sport, listening to the tour guide the whole way despite not knowing basically any Italian. Ethan made it 75% of the way, and then used an umbrella to simulate gladiator battles.

Maybe I'll just take pictures of the back of his head.

One happy kid.