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Published: August 24th 2009
Jason, Mike and Justin
In front of the new facility that has a bowling alley and other American luxuries. Week number 3…
Getting acquainted to a normal summer schedule here, where I work 4 days of the week and have off on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Not that bad. Pretty much I hang out with the kids in the morning by going to one of the parks in town, then we go back to the house where I make some lunch and they take a nap for a couple hours. From 3pm until the rest of the day I have off, although I usually join the family for dinner/hanging out.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but wow it’s taken some adjusting to taking care of kids again. My patience has been tried on more than one occasion, and I forget how much energy they have at all times of the day and how many things appear breakable when they’re around, haha… Plus Gioia is obsessed with the little make-up I put on and once I found her trying to put my eyeliner on her own eyes… she looked like a raccoon. I used to babysit some neighbor’s kids, and was an assistant teacher for little kids at my dance studio in middle school
Me and Mike
Cambridge friends reunited! and high school, but this job has taken my child-care abilities to a whole new level. I’ve already improved on chopping up vegetables and fruits for meals, getting a bag ready for the day- complete with diaper changes, water bottles and snacks, distracting Gabri and Gioia when their parents leave for something, and putting them to bed. I’ve come to realize that this experience will be much more than I thought it would- besides living alone in my own apartment and being in charge of everything there, I’m also learning how to balance in a day more of those domestic things in life. Shout out to Jim and Tara- I will be ready to take care of my two nephews whenever you want when I return home :-) (Even though I’ve always thought he was a perfect kid, lil’ Tyler appears to be flawless against Gabri sometimes, haha).
A couple of highlights of the week though! First and foremost, look in the photo to see who I met on Sunday- Private Michael Borchardt- one of my first friends in Cambridge when I was 5 years old and who I’ve known since then. Also I think he was one
of the only boys I ever invited to my birthday parties as a kid, haha. Well, he has been living in Vicenza, Italy now for 2 years on the U.S. Army base, and has also spent time in Afghanistan. On Sunday I took the train for the first time (the station is about a 5 min walk from my apartment) to Padova and then connected to Vicenza to see him. I can hardly believe how coincidental it is that we happen to live only 45 min apart. He and his two buddies Jason and Justin (a picture of the three of them here), picked me up in their car and I was given a quick tour of Vicenza with the Beatles playing in the background. It was great seeing him and catching up. Although, after spending 2 weeks camping with an Italian family 24/7, you can imagine it was rather a culture shock to be on the U.S. base where we could have a Miller Lite with American pizza, do some bowling with Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift music videos above us, and then see “G.I. Joe” at a movie theatre- and everyone speaks one language: English. We meant to
go around Vicenza (a decent-sized city also less than an hour from Venice), but it was some random holiday so everything was closed.
Apparently most residents in Vicenza don’t mind having the U.S. Base there because, as Michael said, the oldest generation remembers the good they did from the aftermath of WWII, and the younger generation has a bigger group to go out with. It’s mainly the middle generation of people that don’t like having them around, as one of their neighbors demonstrates by hanging a protest banner outside of her balcony in full view of their apartment. But the boys were quite the gentlemen and insisted on treating me to everything- even down to buying me rental socks for the bowling, haha. They left yesterday morning for intensive training in Germany for a month. This training will prepare them for Afghanistan, that they leave for in December. I can’t wait for them to come back so I’ll have more people to travel around with on the weekends.
Another great thing this week- Cecilia announced that I can use her mountain bike any time. Before I was walking everywhere and though this is nice, now I
can ride to a number of nearby towns and stores, making the area much more eventful in my free time. Yesterday I went to our neighboring town called Battaglia Terme and happened to stumble in on a weekend festival, for example, and supposedly there are tons of trails that wind through the Euganean Hills surrounding Montegrotto Terme. One of the trails led me past a beautiful castle (or villa? I’m not sure..) and there’s a picture of it here, with the vineyards leading up to it.
Although it may seem minor, my third highlight was decorating my apartment: hanging pictures, buying some cooking stuff like a cooking pan and frying pan when we went to IKEA in Padova, getting my refrigerator set up and buying some wine, cheese, apples and salad to put inside, cleaning the whole place over, etc. It feels like I’m actually moved in now, and can start living here. I’ve put up some pictures of my flat- you can see it’s tiny and basic, but I like it a lot. The kitchen has a stove and oven, plenty of cabinets, a drying rack, and counter space. I have a bidet in my bathroom (which
I’m still wary of) and found out my shower starts to flood if I take a shower longer than 6 min. My bedroom is a 100% better now that I’ve moved many of Andrea’s teaching books and manuals to one side of the room (it used to be his office/storage room I think) and have room for my own books and clutter. And Cecilia gave me a rusty fan that I scrubbed and scrubbed until now it looks almost new and keeps down the temperature during the day. Plus the grapes growing outside my window over the garage have just started to ripen (making a great snack!).
Alright, I’m taking a break here with the writing, I’m starting to lose my train of thought every 5 minutes…
Next time I’ll make a tour of Montegrotto Terme with the camera to show ya’ll around. Ciao! (See ya).
it
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Deanna
non-member comment
I just love reading your blogs
Hi Katrina, I just love your blogs, it brings back some great memories. I have not been where you are but there are many similarities. I too never had fresh figs until I went to Italy and was frantically looking for them when I got home, they wern't the same:( Your pad looks very quaint! You're getting a lot of life experiences there, Devan calls it "birth control". She went to Japan with my brother and his 1 year old and she thought that was a ton of work...anyway, I love love the gelatto there as well, the pistachio flavor was spectacular!!! Have you had any other great food, you don't talk much about that,or the yummy wine! Being "eye-talian" it seems that's what we love the most..! Take care, Love, Aunti Deanna