ospiti, ancora

More fun with Adam and Britta and the kids in Dozza and at the Ferrari Gallery :)

ospiti

Britta, Adam, Aksel, and Willa all came to visit us for the week. It has been a thrill to have friends from home with whom to share our experience as well as to catch up on things from home (we now have an Obama sticker for the car).
Early in the week, we made a pilgrimage with Adam to the formula 1 race track nearby in Imola where Ayrton Senna tragically died in 1994 to visit the memorial to him there. It was a very lucky day: there was a race we could watch and get a feel for the fast car action and we met a kind Italian man who rode his bike along side us to the memorial site to ensure our pilgrimage was a success. Here are some pictures from Imola and from lounging at home.

passeggiata

Now that my classes are over, learning Italian has become a much different venture. While the kids are at school, my days are filled with trying to find opportunities (big and small) to speak Italian. One of my favorite ways to do this is a weekly walk with my friend Lucia. She lives on the same hill we do, only way at the top and facing the other direction. For the last two weeks we have walked around on the ridges at the top of our hill, and this week we walked to the nearby organic dairy farm and 'agroturismo' (a farm with restaurant and inn that offers food mostly grown/raised on site, but everything coming from the region- it's a phenomenon that's helping small farmers stay viable in today's Italian market). The proprietors invited us in for a tour and some coffee. The best part was that I got to meet the cows who give us our milk everyday- once or twice a day they bring their milk down to Monterenzio to stock up the automatic milk stand we frequent (see pictures from September blog).
The pictures I've included here are of the panoramic view at the top of our hill. They were taken a couple months back and show Maddy and Gus with the Lucia & Luciano's girls, Giulia and Emma. It has barely rained since these pictures were taken in August, so the hills are starting to look pretty yellow and grey. This is unusual. As my landlady says, it's frighteningly dry. Nonetheless, we are getting a little fall color and I can't complain a bit about the temperatures- we've been steadily in the mid to upper 20's during the day (that's 75-80 farenheit)

communicazioni

I struggle with what to put on the blog. We think of you all so often and would love to share everything with you, but things slip by so fast... we have a long list of 'blog topics' we want to come back to, and then a bunch of new stuff comes up.
Then, in the last week, we've gotten two emails (yay! keep them coming!) mentioning that our lives here sound idyllic. And yes, we are having a great time, but I feel compelled to correct this impression- it's not fun like a lazy day at the beach, more like a roller coaster ride- thrilling but scary, sometimes you're not sure you'll make it. The analogy isn't perfect because I don't recall being regularly embarrassed on a roller coaster and that happens all the time here.
With this analogy in mind, the last few days have been some of the most intense yet, starting with a few notes from Gus' teachers and leading up to conferences at school. To prepare for the meeting I've had to write notes planning what I need to say, look up key words, ask for diplomatic advice from Italian moms, cold call a stranger and ask if she might be willing to do some Italian tutoring, and then Gibbs and I had to sit down across a table from a row of four teachers and discuss the skills, motivations, discipline, impulses and interests of an 8 year old boy who is not (and may never be) a teacher-pleaser.
Well, we did all survive. And in the process Gus came up with two strategies for resisting the urge to poke his classmate with a pen (namely, imagining this particular classmate in his underwear when he tries to tease Gus, or treating him with kindness and consideration, because, as Gus' favorite bumper sticker says- your enemies HATE that).
Thank goodness we have each other, a few kind and interested Italian friends to counsel and support us, and a nice glass of red wine at the end of the day.

una macchina nostra

Gibbs is not a blogging man- if he were he might have already blogged about doing computer favors for our Italian neighbors, being dubbed the 'mammo' by the school moms in September, italian cooking adventures including trying to find cavallo meat in the supermarket, meeting an Italian guy who has as many motorcycles in his garage as he does, getting his Italian ID card (that was a big day!), having long conversations about the nature of the afterlife in Italian with our local Italian Jehovah's Witnesses (yes, they exist), or maybe seeing dozens of vintage motorcycles at the Italian National Motorcycle Museum in Rimini last weekend.
He's not a blogger and so you haven't heard about these things, but today was just too big to go with out an entry- I have taken pictures and offered to post a few Gibbs reactions to the whole experience. He says:
"I had to show the car dealer my Italian ID, prove my residency, offer them copies of my receipt to apply for a 'permesso di soggiorno,' promise not to let a person under 25 drive the car, and have them call to veryify passage of a new law allowing foreigners to buy cars before they receive official paperwork, but never did they ask to see a driver's license."
"È vecchia, non è bella, gira come una mucca, ma è nostra" (She's old, she may not be pretty, she steers like a cow, but she's ours)
In the pictures you can see it's a totally basic model- our only extra is an analog clock. No radio, but that's OK, we have a manual one (Gibbs will sing short songs in Italian to any tune you offer). Every car in Italy is now required to have a reflective triangle for breakdowns. And our car came with a special sticker- for the record we have two 'bimbos' and I'm not one of them!

il blog di maddy- scimmia

Hi, I like trees. here there are lots of  'em.  Big trees,small trees, huge trees,tiny trees,brown trees, black trees,greenish trees,gray trees,even...purple trees!(just kidding.) any how, they've also got perfect trees, that is for climbing.  Yes, I've been climbing lots of trees.  Here are pictures.P

My mom made me write something about school, so here it is: 

It's very fun, all of the girls are friendly.  Even though I can't talk to them, people talk to me a lot and they ask me to do things, for example I went to a birthday party and to the movies.  The birthday party was really fun- that's where I was called 'scimmia' for the first time, which brings us back to our topic: trees!  I climbed a tree and they called me 'scimmia,' which means 'monkey'. 

il blog di gus: mio lego

First I was making a LOT of things with the instructions for my lego set, go back nine blogs and you can see three ones I made with the instructions.  Now I'm makings things without

the instructions and I did better like these two pictures.

My mom said I have to say something about school, because you'd like to know: the first week was half days and now I'm having almost all the time full days.  My favorite days are when I have gym class, because I like running around.  There is a gym in the attic of the school, and that is where I played a game where you are in a line and you have to run to the other side once the person in front of you touches you.  I understood the game because the teacher knew some english and he explained to me how the game was in english with some Italian bits.

One thing I know in Italian now is: andare in la fila which means 'get in line'.