Wedding shopping and buffalo mozzerela 7, July 2009

Yesterday we hit the road running…on wedding things.
We went to look for a dress, but were told we needed an appointment. That appointment is set for today, on my 31st birthday. After that, we went to the gift store. In Italy, you buy gifts for the people who come to your wedding. So we bought the gifts, and I am glad to have that checked off of my list. Tonight we are going to the restaurant where we will have the celebration.
The only thing I am concerned about regards the practicality of the night. How are people going to get from their hotels to the church to the restaurant and back home? **Let me know if you have any ideas!**

Other than that, Fabio’s parents asked him what I like to eat.  He told them I liked the buffalo mozzerela I tasted last summer.  Guess whaat my lunch was yesterday??!  A BIG BALL of buffalo  mozzerella!  Of course, there were tons of other things to be eaten with it…proscuitto, bread, other cheeses, another kind of ham, olives…however, as they had served me the entire ball, I figured I should eat it.  And there wasn’t much room for other things.  (I did have some fruit for dessert.  The Italians seem to serve up fruit after meals like it was water.  Maybe we should try this at home…).

Italy 6, July 2009

I’m back!
We spent the weekend in Tuscany…in a little city called Lucca. It’s a walled-in city…meaning to enter it, we had to walk through the entrance of an ancient barrier wall.
The funniest thing about being in Lucca? There are plenty of shops because there are plenty of tourists! You’d think that because it was an ancient city, there would only be landmarks…churches, ruins, amphitheaters to see. We did see a church that was at least 800 years old (I still can’t wrap my head around how old this place is), but we couldn’t go in because there were 800 weddings taking place on Saturday.
That night, we ate at a traditional restaurant. Fabio’s friend and his girlfriend ate tomato and bread stuffing, which is apparently a traditional meal in Tuscany. I had meat, which I hadn’t had in a few weeks. I don’t know how they do it here, but it was delicious! Thin fillets, cooked with oil, wine and maybe something else. Our appetizer this night was the same thing Fabio’s friends had…the tomato bread stuffing…but it was with seafood instead of tomato. Seafood bread stuffing? That doesn’t translate well. But it was also very good. And I’ve been drinking enough wine..red and white…to sink a ship.
Last night, on the way home, we stopped at another one of Fabio’s friends’ houses, in Florence (still in Tuscany), for dinner. Fabio had told them that we had eaten a late lunch, and therefore asked if we could eat a light dinner.

I’d hate to see what a normal dinner looks like :=).
We had appetizers of cheese, sausage that her mom had made at home, pickled vegetables that her mom and her husband’s mom had made, and bruschetta (which I learned how to make, by the way). Then, for our first course (light dinner, remember!), we had lasagna tha ther mom had made. Our second course was meat…made in a way similar to the meat I described from the restaurant in Lucca. Thin cut fillets cooked with wine, oil and some other things I can’t name. This time, she topped the filets with mushrooms. I sadly gave half of my portion to Fabio, because, in case you don’t remember, we were supposed to be eating a LIGHT dinner!
Dessert was some delicious cake made with ice cream.
We ate well in Tuscany.
I’m sure we will also eat well in Lazio, where his parents are and where we will pass the coming week.

Did I mention that Fabio and I ate pizza by the meter on Friday night???!

Rome and Frosinone 3, July 2009

A quick update…we arrived in Italy yesterday. Of course we have eaten lovely food so far…and to my delight…we have been limiting our consumption.
When I walked into Fabio’s parents house, there was a list of 30 things to do for the coming wedding. Oh la la. Maybe its better to elope???
Gotta run.
More later!

TVA and Robin Hood 2, July 2009

Since a friend commented on it, I thought I’d write about my experiences with the lowering of the tax (TVA) on food in restaurants. Yesterday, July 1st, it went from 19.6% to 5.5%, in order to encourage more French to go out to eat.
Maybe it’s the socialist in me, but I was OK with the tax being at 19.6% for those who could afford to eat out. It’s a little bit of Robin Hood…taking from those who have it and giving it to those who need it. France is well known for its national health care, its unemployment payments, etc, which come from taxes.
Enough of the commentary on social policy.
Back to the food tax.
So yesterday, the first day the tax was supposed to be lowered, we had a coffee in a cafe near the Musee d’Orsay. Was the tax lowered? NO!!!
On the receipts in France, you get a grand total of what you have to pay. The tax is already included in this price…it is not added afterwards, like it is chez nous. So, our total was 5 euros for 2 coffees, and below the total it shows us that 19.6% of this total covres the tax.
I think that, near tourist destinations like the Musee d’Orsay, they expect that tourists don’t know what’s going on in French politics. But I had listened to the news the night before! I knew it was coming! However, I didn’t say anything.  But I knew that this place would be pocketing the 14% difference in price.

Then last night, we went out for dinner with a French friend of mine, Sonia. We went to a restaurant and sat down, and the server brought us our menus. Sonia asked the server why the prices  on the menu hadn’t been lowered, as the tax had been lowered. Our server replied (in French) “Uhh…I don’t know…I’m not sure…was the tax supposed to be lowered today? I don’t know when or why that’s supposed to happen”. Sonia looked at him, and told us she was going to go home and read the new law. THEN, this waiter went to his boss, and started whispering that he had pretended not to know anything about the lowering of the tax. Sonia heard him. At this point, we stood up and left this restaurant.
We found a different restaurant, where the new, lower prices were advertised outside.
We happily sat down here and ate our dinner. Sonia again asked the servers some questions about the tax, and we found out that not all products were required to lower their taxes (for example, the wine we drank was still taxed at 19.6%), but that most products had had their tax lowered.
We ate our lower-priced dinner (by the way…during the summertime in Paris, it stays light out until about 10:30 pm!) and took the metro home.
And I had a mini lesson in French politics and attitudes.

Swimming and walking. 30, June 2009

Swimming on the Seine sounds like it could be extraordinary. Even romantic.
It’s not what it seems.
I thought it would be a good idea to walk from the Louvre, where I left Fabio, to the pool, which is at the metro stop “Quai de la Gare”. This, if you look at a map of Paris, includes walking half of the city. I knew this when I started…but I decided it would be intresting to walk almost aboard the Seine, halfway through this city.
The walk was OK. At some points, I was the only one on the street. A few times, I thought I wouldn’t make it. In fact, I stopped at a pharmacy to buy band-aids for my beat-up feet, and asked the Pharmicist where the pool on the Seine was. He looked at me and smiled, pointed across the street, and said “iright under the bridge”. YES! I walked for an hour and a half, and FINALLY I had arrived!
There were a lot of people waiting outside of the pool. I went up to one of them and asked her when the pool opened. She told me that it was already open, but they couldn’t let everyone in at one time. So, after walking one and a half hours, I waited in the sun for another hour. But I was NOT going to leave this pool without experiencing swimming on the Seine!!!
So…I waited my turn. I went into the co-ed locker room (there are little changing closets where you can change without exposing oneself), put on my suit, and headed out to the pool. It really is on the river! If you swim on the north side of the pool, you are afew feet from the river itself. But noone seemed to care. I saw not one person glancing, marvelling at the river they were swimming with. To top things off…ther eis absolutely NO order in Paris (or at least in this) swimming pools. I wanted to swim a mile. But you can actually swim about 3 strokes before running into someone. No rules in the pool, apparently no capacity, and only 1 lifeguard, who was rather hard to spot.
After swimming for about 45 minutes, which probably equaled about 2 whole lengths, I got out of the pool. And went into the co-ed shower! Some women shower with their tops off (not this woman!), bu tmost people jsut rinse themselves. Then, I headed into the co-ed locker room, grabbed my things and went into a tiny changing closet.
My feet were beat up, so I decided against walking back to the Louvre.
I hopped on the nearest Metro, and headed back to the museum.
It wasn’t extraordinary, or romantic. But I did swim on the Seine.

Swimming on the Seine?! 28, June 2009

OH LA LA!! I’m going to swim on the Seine tomorrow! There is now a pool built on this river.
I have to make this a very quick post…Fabio lost his converter plug today so the computer can not be charged…but today, I also went to a Michael Jackson memorial underneath the EIFFEL TOWER! It was crazy! My friend took pictures. I promise to write more about both of these events once the computer charger has been replaced.

Paris 27, June 2009

Here we are! We landed in Paris about 8 hours ago, and have been walking around almost non-stop since.
The airplane drugs I took DID NOT work! Oh la la. They were supposed to be the strong, dream drugs of those who are petrified of flying. Supposedly stronger than the valium I took last time, which didn’t work either. :>) Thankfully, the flight was mostly smooth, and I only death-griped Fabio’s arm during the take-off.
When we disembarked and Fabio was getting money from the machine, a lady came up to me and said, in broken French, “Regardez-moi”. Which means “Look at me”.
I looked at her. She said “”Vous parlez l’angaisa or la francesca?” Which means (in awkward Franch) “Do you speak English or French?” I replied in French, and told her that I spoke both. She was very happy, and said, in English “oh, good! My bank will only allow me $400/day. How much should I take out in Euros?”.
What???
I didn’t know this lady from Eve (and…by the way…why did she tlel me to look at her in the beginning???!)
I answered her in English with my approximation. She said “How did you learn how to speak English so well?”

Well…that’s lovely. I’m passing as a non-American to the Americans. That says something…

My 1st grade classroom and the world 20, June 2009

The school year has ended.

I have emptied out my classroom, and will head back in August, to get ready for a new, fresh bunch of 6 year-olds.

You know what’s funny? My 6/7 year-olds already have a pretty good concept of fairness; or of the difference between right and wrong. My students dealt, all year, with me treating a difficult student different than I treated the rest of them. He got special treatment, a special chair, he didn’t have to do everything as the rest of the class had to. Simply because he had a bad temper.

My students would complain, at the beginning of the year, that this wasn’t fair. Why, simply because this student has a bad temper, should he get special treatment? If we act bad, would we get that special treatment as well?

But you know what? The rest of the class did not start acting up. And I continued to shower special attention on this 1 student. My class simply learned, over time, to accept the unfairness of the situation. The last month of school, I heard not one single complaint about how I was treating this difficult student different than I was treating the others. And I was still treating him differently. We all got used to it.

I am afraid that this might be a bad lesson I have taught my students. If someone acts bad enough, they will get what they want. And everyone, including those in charge, will simply get used to it.

Senior Citizen 28, February 2009

THE GIRLS ARE GOING BACK TO CAMP THIS SUMMER! Thanks to my wonderful friend Jenn, my girls from school will be going to overnight camp, for 2 weeks this time.
As you can imagine, 2 weeks at overnight camp for 2 girls is not cheap. I wrote to many famous, rich people asking for money to send them. I got a few replies, all negative. And I was also ignored many times.
But not this time. Thanks, Jenn!

You may be wondering what the title to my post has to do with camp.
I only wanted to write one post today, and I thought it would be a way to pull your interest (was it?!).
When I was taking my kids to the bus today, my little trouble maker said “Madame (French school), my bus driver this morning was a senior citizen”.
What??!
When I dropped him at his bus, the substitute driver did, in fact, have gray hair, and looked to be in his early 60s.

I can’t exactly explain it, but every time I repeat to myself what this little boy said to me, my insides are tickled and I start laughing aloud.

Outside of the box 22, February 2009

I had a Little Prince moment yesterday.
I was babysitting . For a 4 year-old.
He was practicing writing some letters. The first letters of his first, middle and last names. Then, I wrote I LIKE, and drew a box. He was supposed to draw something he liked to do, or eat, or wear, or play.
Instead, he looked up at me and said “you drew me a cage. So I’m going to draw an animal”.
A cage??? I drew a square. A box. A cage…?! Uh-oh. If squares look like animal cages to little kids, I have to start thinking twice about my lessons at school.
Even if it’s just a box to me, the 1st graders must be wondering why they have been drawing normal pictures inside of animal cages the entire school year.
We’re going outside of the box, starting Monday.