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Published: June 14th 2017
Geo: 46.1445, 8.72654
Nonno's birthday! We headed down from our mountain home for Mass at Ronco at 11am – the Australians doubled the congregation! Mass is always hard for the kids (read, the boys!) but even harder in a language that they didn't understand. For me, singing hymns in Italian is easier than speaking it – it is a phonetic language and the tunes are the same. Other than Tom nearly making his First Communion (apparently, crossed arms is NOT universal sign language for a benediction, although it worked in France and the UK), it went well and the kids were very good. Then, we headed back up to Il Monte (just us and Nonno & Nonna) for a quiet lunch before an unofficial birthday afternoon tea for Nonno. My mother in law said that because she was away (at Zurich) on Thursday and Friday, she hadn't had time to organize a party/BBQ for Nonno on Sunday. But (and I love that this is typical for my very gregarious mother in law), one by one, she invited people to come up to Il Monte for a coffee at 3 or 4pm – we had about 20 people here for afternoon tea, and
I still can't work out why this wasn't the party. We're going to repeat it all next Sunday, for the official, postponed party!
The boys had gone to sleep before everyone arrived, and were both upset when they woke to find the house full of people speaking a foreign language! But, after a little while, they both pulled themselves together, and had a great afternoon playing soccer and hide-and-seek with Daniel (Martina's son, aged 8) and Georgia. Taira and Andrea (both 13) were too cool to play little kids games, but were very nice – they have a few words of English. Then, as the afternoon tea was wrapping up, we walked down the dirt road to Eurosia's cousin (on Romano's side) and her farm – they have goats (and make fresh cheese) and chickens, and so we bought very fresh eggs for dinner ($10 for 14 eggs – this seemed expensive, but now that I've seen the price of meat here (now $85/kg for beef fillet and $30/kg for sausages) I'm not going to complain. A quick scrambled egg dinner and off to bed!
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Siobhan
non-member comment
I could definitely get used to that!