First Paris Then Rome

The New and Improved...

2008-03-07T16:23:00.001+01:00

Hi there!

Please visit my new blog at The Globetrotter Parent.

Why won't my child answer me in English?

2008-03-04T10:31:00.009+01:00

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to meet many "transplanted" moms. Unlike "expat" moms who are just in a foreign country for a defined term, transplanted moms have effectively immigrated to the country and adopted it as their new home. Often, a transplanted mom's husband is a "local".

Of all the challenges that transplanted moms face, getting their kids to speak English often is the most difficult one to surmount.

Take Andrea. She is from the United Kingdom, married to a French guy and lives in France. They have two school-aged daughters.

"I thought raising my kids in English would be automatic," Andrea says. "It never occurred to me when they were born that they might not be bilingual."

But at age 12 and 10, Andrea's girls are nowhere near bilingual. While Andrea has consistently spoken to her daughters in English from the day they were born, her daughters, from their first word, have always spoken to their mom in French. Attempting to read an English book is too much of a chore to even bother and watching movies in anything but the dubbed "version française" is a challenge for them.

"Friends said that I should refuse to answer my girls when they asked me a question in French," Andrea says. "I called that 'language blackmail' and I refused to engage in it. Now I regret not having taken that approach."

Andrea is one of many transplanted moms who just can't get her kids to bother with English. They understand when their mom talks to them and that's about the extent of their fluency.

Here are my tips for avoiding this situation.

1. Recognize that your child needs a minimum amount of time per week exposed to English if she is going to learn to understand and speak the language fluently.

Your child is not going absorb the English language by osmosis just because one of her parents happens to be an English speaker. Most experts in multilingualism say that a child needs about 20 to 24 hours per week of exposure to English to gain true fluency. Exposure, for this purpose, includes listening to a person talk to the child in that language, listening to people talk to each other in English, hearing it on television or radio, and the child herself speaking English.

Lots of moms complain that their child does not speak English but when you get the details of the exposure the child gets, it looks something like this: the minority language parent works full time and the child is in the local school or daycare where he hears the local language all day. He only sees the minority parent a couple of hours per weekday. Part of the time at home, the minority parent is talking to his or her spouse, in the local language of course. Then on the weekend, the family is with friends and relatives and of course the local parent has to speak the local language with the friends and relatives. Then there is the TV, which broadcasts in the local language... You get the picture.

If you want your child to learn your language, you are going to have to make an effort to make it happen. This may mean ensuring that you talk to your child as much as possible when you are home (more than you normally talk), getting a English-mother-tongue babysitter to pick your child up from daycare early and spend a couple of hours with her, and/or avoiding the relatives on weekends and getting together with other English-speaking families. Bilingualism is not going to happen if you are not ensuring adequate exposure in some way.

2. Always speak to your child in English. This piece of advice sounds self-evident, yet how often I heard my Anglo-saxon mommy friends in France tell their little one to "get into the poussette" (the stroller) or that it was "time for their afternoon gouter" (snack).

It is easy to fall into the trap of using local language words for certain items but whenever you do that, you 1) send the message that using the local language with you is acceptable and 2) deny your child an important piece of vocabulary in English. Imagine your child showing up in your home country when he is older and not knowing the English word for "snack"!

3. Original version only! In our home, we have a rule that when we watch a film or television show, it has to be in original version. We watch French films in French, English films in English and Italian films in Italian. Dubbing is something you have to get used to as a child to like. Adults who watch dubbed movies do so because they grew up with dubbed movies. If your child does not grow up watching dubbed versions, there is a good chance that he or she will always prefer watching the original English version of movies and shows when he is older, even if another language is his dominant language.

4. Books, radio, DVDs...in English! Spend at least half an hour reading to your small child in English. And make it a rule that all animated DVDs are to be watched in the English version (all non-animated stuff in the original version, of course!). You don't need to iterate this rule to your child. Just make it so. He wants a DVD? It gets put on in English. If you have access to an English radio station, tune into it! And don't forget to watch the news on CNN or BBC in addition to the local news that your partner insists on watching at 20h00 every evening!

5. If your spouse understands English, consider speaking to him in English if you do not already (at least when your child is with you). It might feel artificial at first but switching to English when talking to your spouse can ramp up the English exposure for your child significantly. Remember, your spouse can still talk to you in his language. This tactic also reinforces that association your child draws between you and your mother tongue.

Les vacances scolaires

2008-02-27T14:00:00.009+01:00

It is les vacances scolaires in the French school system (16 February to 2 March!!). The Frenchman and I spent one week skiing in the Dolomites. While we were skiing, between falling down and sobbing to the poor ski instructor, "I want my mommy!", the Bambina was learning how to ski. Having clung to the Tirolian, Germanophone ski instructor for the entire five days of ski lessons, she finally decided to venture down the ski piste alone, in snow plough position, during the last fifteen minutes of the last lesson. For that, the Bambina earned a medal, which she has hung proundly on her bedroom wall.

And now, we are back home and have one more week to keep the Bambina occupied before she returns to her école maternelle. Unfortunately, most of her classmates are still on vacation and her buddies in the Italian school system are - in school. They don't get a two-week break in February.

Which leads me to ask myself: what is with the French and their two weeks' vacation from school every seven weeks? And why didn't we take this factor into account when choosing a school? I think the Italians have the right idea having school all year long with no breaks except at Christmas, Easter and the summer. Finding something for your children to do during a two-week period every seven weeks of the school year is a big pain in the behind.

Of course, were we in the socialist paradise of France, we could send the Bambina to the local centre de loisirs every day during school vacation, 0830 to 1630. It is 100 percent subsized, free, and public. God bless their socialist souls. Being stuck in the French education system in Italy definitely has its drawbacks.

Then again, being in the French school system in Italy has its advantages - the ski pistes were practically empty in the Dolomites last week...

A week in Austria

2008-02-25T14:38:00.005+01:00

Well, not really. In fact, we were in that very northern, mountainous part of Italy called the Sudtirol. But it might as well have been Austria. The people speak German (their mother tongue - they only learn Italian at school), the landscape and architecture look like a scene right out of the Sound of Music, the food is Austrian and the people are, well, not Italian.
"Do you prefer to speak German or Italian?" I asked the hotel owner.

"Lieber Deutsch", was his reply.

The Frenchman, in his oh so French "everything must be centralized" understanding of the world, was aghast. How can the Italians stand having people in their country for whom Italian is not their mother tongue, who prefer speck to parma ham and who seem not to care at all for the idea of, well, fitting in (or, dare we use the term, assimilating).

After all, what did the French do once they (unjustly, some would say) reacquired Alsace after World War I? Forced the German-speaking Alsacians to become French, of course! Out of the question to let the Alsacian culture survive! Now, when you meet person from Alsace, even if his last name is Steinbock or Schmidt or Apfelbaum, he is French. Alsace is awash with a kind of cultural Stockholm Syndrome - they adore their French captors to the point of denying any other possible origin of their sauerkraut and spaetzle dishes, their black forest architecture that speckles the Vosges and their "eastern" (read German) accent when they speak. So you had better not even suggest that he has anything other than French blood in his veins, because as far as he is concerned, he is the most French of all the French.

But I digress. Back to sudtirol. Sudtirol is definitely not Alsace and the Frenchman recognized this fact as soon as our tires hit the regional border. The signs are bilingual but, well, the German comes first and the Italian is often (gasp) written in smaller print. The man at the ski rental shop could speak Italian - that was clear. But he had to really think about it when he did and his first instinct was always to respond in German. I am told that the mountains a bit further to the south in the region (we were in Luson - about 100 km from the border with Austria) are more truly bilingual but you still notice the distinct Austrian flavour.

So when we returned to Rome, we had a chat with a few people here in Rome about how they feel about having non-immigrant citizens whose first language is not Italian.

The universal response went something like this: "They hate the Italians. They would rather be in Austria. And they are really ungrateful because they get more money in the form of subsidies than the entire south of Italy put together. And they collect their own taxes because of their 'special status' that they have by law". In short, they are annoying.

To which I responded: "Okay. Er, so why doesn't Italy just give the sudtirol back to Austria?"

To which they answered: "Are you kidding me? We fought wars to get that land!"

accents

2008-02-08T15:29:00.001+01:00

Just a couple of days ago, the Bambina and I had the pleasure of meeting Everyday Yogini and her little bambina, Clara, who happens to be just three months younger than the Bambina.

Now, apart from listening to me, the Bambina doesn't get much other exposure to English(everyone else around her speaks either French or Italian). So I have always been curious as to how developed her speech and language was for her age (in English, that is). Little Clara has spent most of the three years of her life in the United States, so I was eager to listen carefully to how Clara's speech had developed.

Conclusion: I didn't notice much difference in vocabulary but BOY, do their accents ever differ. Clara's accent is all-American. Her r's are fully rounded. Her vowels are long. She says "girl" "geeerrrrelll". A real American.

The Bambina, on the other hand, has an accent that is somewhere between New Jersey and East London. I have no idea how she ended up that way given that the person she hears speak English (that would be me) has a fairly boring run-of-the-mill English-speaking Canadian accent. Maybe from her (British English) nana, who visits periodically. The Bambina says "guhl" for "girl" and "duh-ty" for "dirty" and even "no-ooo" for "no". It's all very cute - but I hope she grows out of it. She needs to speak her native language like a normal person. I don't mind if her accent ends up being British-English, but let it be something native, not some wild concocted accent based on hearing three languages a day.

Maybe I'll send her to English summer day camp.

carnevale vs halloween

2008-02-05T10:26:00.000+01:00

One of the things that thrills me about living in Europe is that they don't do Halloween here. Now, most of my American and Canadian friends looooove Halloween. You just mention the word and they sink into the abyss of nostalgia, relaying to you a year by year account of their favourite childhood pasttime while your eyes glaze over.

Not I. Call me a party pooper by I can't get into a festival that encourages children to knock on complete stranger's doors at night, beg for candy, and then stuff themselves full of junk for the next month or two, rotting their teeth and stacking on pounds.

The one positive aspect of Halloween is the dressing up, which is why I think that carnevale is a great idea. Less sugar, less pigging out, more focus on the costumes.

Today is mardi gras and there is a festa at the Bambina's school. In preparation for this big day, I suggested to the Bambina last week that she dress up as a ballerina. Great costume for her and easy for me - she would just wear what she wears to dance class every week, with a little bit of make-up to boot! And as all of the Bambina's girlfriends planned to go as princesses, at least as a ballerina, she would distinguish herself somewhat. Perfect.

And then yesterday, when I reminded the Bambina that tomorrow was the big day and she would go to school as a ballarina, she popped the big news.

"I don't want to go as a ballarina!" she yelled.

Uh oh, I thought to myself. She wants to go as a princess. I will have to go buy a princess costume.

"I want to go as a LION!" she said.

A lion? She wants to go as a lion?

And then she roared! She really did want to go as a lion.

So I spent yesterday procuring a lion costume (borrowed from a friend) and some face paint. She refused the face paint in the end.

And today we arrived at school. Would you believe, every single other little girl in her class was dressed up as a princess? But not my Bambina. She was a lion!

bye bye wi-fi

2008-01-28T16:21:00.000+01:00

For the past year and a half, we have been using the internet for free. You see, we are fortunate enough to live near enough to someone, somewhere in our building or close to it, who is using wi-fi and has not bothered to do whatever has to be done in the Options menu to ensure that the nearby leeches cannot benefit from what he or she has paid for.

This all ended two weeks ago. Whoever it was has either uped and left or has figured out that others were getting something for free and has cut the connection. Waaaah! So now, we have to (gulp) pay for our internet connection. Heaven help us. It's so unfair.

Okay, it's not unfair but it sure sucks.

This stinks! in English, French and Italian

2008-01-26T16:15:00.000+01:00

Back in May, I posted that I was worried that the Bambina would never really succeed in speaking English, French and Italian. Three languages just seemed like it was too much for her to absorb.

Well, now she goes to a French preschool (whereas back then she was attending an Italian nido) AND we have a French au pair. As could be expected, her French has picked right up and she is speaking it almost as well as English (English is still dominant, though, and I would like to keep it that way;-)) So I can definitely confirm that the Bambina is bilingual.

But the real surprise is that she is also speaking lots of Italian now. Well, three-year old Italian anyway. She won't speak it much with me but I hear her with other children (all the children in her French preschool class are Italian, for starters) and she is definitely speaking Italian with them. She doesn't really distinguish much between questa and questo or il mio and la mia but she gets her point across!

She does save some choice phrases for her parents, such as:

Puzza! (I had to look this up in the dictionary. It seems to mean "this stinks".)
Butta questa, non mi piace! (meaning "throw this away, I don't like it!" or something to that effect, although I wonder whether she should not be saying "Butta questa via).
Tu sei cattiva! (meaning "You are naughty!", usually directed at me).

I guess I won't hold my breath while I wait for her to tell me in Italian that I am her wonderful, beautiful, smart mommy. :-)

Binge

2008-01-21T14:55:00.000+01:00

There was a classic study carried out a number of years ago on the eating habits of three- and four- year olds. In the study, children were given the choice of a whole range of food at each meal every day for a period of six months.

Within the six-month period, the children tended to “binge” on one food or another, be it bread, rice, meat or sweets, for periods of a few days or a week or two. However, when the scientists reviewed all the food that each child had consumed over the entire six-month period, they found that most children had a fairly balanced diet overall.

Back in France, the Bambina’s pediatrician used to refer to this study periodically to remind us that our job as parents was simply to offer the Bambina a range of healthy choices of food to eat at each meal. We should then leave it to her to decide what and how much to eat.

With this advice in mind, was I wrong not to stop her from finishing off a whole jar of (organic, no-sugar added) strawberry jam (without bread) in one sitting?

Whoever said that Italian administration was bad ...

2008-01-17T15:50:00.000+01:00

has never had to deal with Canadian administration.

When the Bambina was 22 months, I figured that I might as well start looking into applying for her Canadian citizenship card and passport.

The French carte de nationalité and passport had taken something like one week altogether and was so simple. The Frenchman just went to our local mairie (city hall) in Paris, showed his carte de nationalité, presented the Bambina's acte de naissance and some photos of her and presto, we got the documents within a few days time.

So why does the Canadian process have to be such a nightmare??

Take the photos: it is not enough to just go to the little cabin in the subway station to get the photos taken. No, no. You have to find a photographer who will take the photo and then fiddle around on the computer for half an hour to make sure the head is no bigger than 36 mm and no smaller than 30 mm (and that is just the passport photo. The citizenship card photo has to have altogether different dimensions) and the picture itself is X size.

20 euro later, you finally have your photos, which the photographer had to stamp and date. Now you have to find a lawyer or doctor who has known you for two years and use their precious time (like they don't have better things to do with their day...) to act as guarantor and sign the photos.

Then you have to go to the passport office with everything filled out and wait in line for what, three hours I think it was the last time in Paris, when the construction works at the consulate in Paris were going on?

And once you get to the wicket, the exhausted officer tells you that it will take, now get this, ONE YEAR, to get the citizenship card.

Have they lost their minds??? What on earth could possibly be going on that it takes a year to get a plastic card with a photo on it??

In the meantime, you get an interim passport that is valid for one year. But wait, you have to wait three months to get that passport.

So when we finally got the temporary one-year passport and then the citizenship card, I didn't bother extending the temporary passport for the additional two years. Instead, I let the passport expire and set out to apply for a brand new five-year passport for the Bambina. I go through the whole rigamaroll: the application, the photos to the exact dimensions, the guarantor, and I trudge over the Canadian Consulate by bus yesterday.

And what does the lady at the passport office tell me when I arrive:

"I'm sorry, madame, but we cannot issue your daughter a new passport. This recently expired temporary passport must be extended for the time remaining of the three year period from when it was issued."

Arghhhhhh!

So now, I have to go through the whole passport application process AGAIN (oh yes, the application, the photos, the guarantor...) next year when this passport expires.

My conclusions from this whole experience:

Italian administration: inefficient but at least flexible (they would have given me the five-year passport)

French administration: not always flexible but at least somewhat efficient and when not efficient, at least flexible.

Canadian administration: Neither efficient, nor flexible.

Fa freddo!

2008-01-14T17:27:00.000+01:00

I am starting to discover just how obsessed the Italian nation is with being cold, or should I say, not being cold. They are so obsessed with temperature regulation that they even wear additional layers of clothing for indoor sports.

Allow me to elaborate. Every Wednesday afternoon, the Bambina takes ballet lessons. Not real ballet lessons but what Maestra Simona calls giocho-danza or "play dance". The Bambina loves it. All the little girls, aged three and four, get dressed up in their matching leotards and wear their hair in a bun if it is long enough. Then the maestra comes into the changeroom, taps each little girl with her magic wand to transform her into a ballerina and the girls go running out on tip-toe into the dance studio. They have great fun.

There is just one thing that I don't understand: why, oh why, do the parents, grandparents and nannies of these little girls insist on leaving their child's undershirt on, underneath the leotard. For one, it ruins the whole dance outfit and the effect of uniformity. But secondly, I cannot believe that the children are actually cold when they are play-dancing. But the nonna (grandmother) of Juliette's friend Barbara doesn't agree. "The girls might get cold in just the bodysuit," she insists.

Maestra Simona concurs with my view. She explained to me that the undershirt is something molto italiano and that leaving it on is, in fact, counter-productive, as when the girls dance and run around, wearing an undershirt under the leotard will make them sweat more, which will make them cooler than they otherwise would be without the undershirt. But try telling Barbara's nonna that.

And so the Bambina is usually the only girl in her dance class who wears just the leotard, without the undershirt underneath. She looks sooooo cute in it, I have to say. And as Maestra Simona insisted that the leotard be made to measure, it fits perfectly. She sure is fussy about a leotard that most kids end up wearing over an undershirt anyway but she explained to me, "Le Bambine devono imparare che la danza è un' arte è una discipline." or something like that, meaning "The children must learn that dance is an art and a discipline." But she doesn't have the courage to insist on the girls going undershirt-free.

Our schools are better than yours and other cultural clashes

2008-01-11T11:41:00.000+01:00

Lunch with the ladies at Rome Accueil yesterday. Most of them have older kids in elementary school or lycée who attend the Lycée Chateaubriand, the school for French kids in Rome. They go on and on about what a terrible school the Chateaubriand is. It has, if I understood the discussion correctly, been contaminated by Italian notions of going easy on kids.

"And do you know" Genevieve was saying as I was mowing down my lasagne, "that I called my son to leave a message on his mobile while he was in class, and would you believe it, he answered the phone while in class and then excused himself from class to talk to me on the phone?? And the professeur didn't care at all!"

There were many other shocking and funny anecdotes, but the best anecdote of all was the attitude of the Italian kids to exams. Apparently, there are three sets of exams per year at the Lycée Chateaubriand. The French kids diligently study and take all exams. The Italian kids diligently study and take the first set of exams. If their mark on the first set of exams is high, they skip the next two sets on the grounds that they are "ill" or whatever, so as not to lower their average. And the school buys into it. In France (as anywhere else, I would think) you would get a zero on the exams you did not take and your average would be the mark you received on the first exam divided by three. Here, you just get the mark that you received on the first exam. Amazing.

"And do you know," Genevieve went on, "that we were at an Italian couple's home for dinner the other evening and they asked us if we had children and I said that we had three kids and that they attended the French lycée and do you know what the woman said to us? She was so surprised and she said, 'Ma è troppo severa, il sistema francese, sinora'."

The other French ladies around the table gasped. Too severe? Our school system? This was actually news to them. The Italian system mollycoddles children and gives them no sense of personal responsibility. How could they possibly judge us?

I remained silient through all of this discussion, thinking throughout that both the French and the Italians were 100 percent correct about each other's school systems.

New Year's Resolutions

2008-01-07T22:29:00.000+01:00

I will:

Take one of those Rome tours put on by Rome Accueil (I am a member of the association, after all), no matter how boring I fear that it may turn out to be (my French expat friends tell me that I am crazy not to have attended one yet but come on, can one really enjoy staring at the art of Caravaggio for 90 minutes straight? While listening to a ten minute speech on each painting? In French?).
Listen to Italian radio instead of French or English radio (I may have to kill off this resolution, first of all because all I can get on my portable radio is Radio Vatican (no matter what frequency - very bizzarre - the Frenchman says that it is all part of the Catholic Conspiracy), secondly because the Frenchman has insisted on French satellite on our television, and consequently the only satellite radio we get is French radio and BBC World Service, and thirdly because, well, soccer just does not interest me that much).
Resist having my collazione (breakfast consisting of cornetto and cappuccino) at the bar every day, thereby saving about 30 euro per month (then again, when in Rome....).
No longer purchase one new outfit per week for the Bambina (she currently has a wardrobe that any 16-year old girl would envy).
Wear make-up, jewellry and fur trimmed coat when I drop the Bambina off at school every morning, such that staff and parents no longer assume that I am scruffy and unfeminine anglo-saxon mommy but instead just like the other elegant and sexy French or Italian moms (of course, then they hear me talk...).
Find the Bambina some English nursery music CDs that she will listen to (the one she has sits neatly on the shelf, untouched after one play. I am slowly facing the fact that English preschool music can't compete with il coccodrillo com'e fa and i due liocorni. Italian children's music is so good, it could be on AM radio).
Write a letter to the Economist. The Frenchman hates "that right wing neo-con rag" so lending legitimacy to the publication by getting a letter published in it will annoy him all the more. :)
Follow the American presidential election, firstly because, after all, it is history in the making and secondly, so that I will have some other subject to bring up when I become bored at one of the Frenchman's interminable evening company events or when a friend drones on about some obscure store that she has recently discovered in Trastevere (if there is one thing that is more boring than shopping, it is talking about shopping).

Outdoor Fun in Abruzzo

2008-01-04T20:58:00.000+01:00

Sometimes the Bambina surprises me with her insights. After spending a supposedly fun-filled hour on the toboggan at an Abruzzo ski village, the Frenchman asked the Bambina once we were back in the car:

"Did you like the snow?"

The Bambina's response: "Not really, because it's cold."

And of course she was disappointed because all we could show her was icky powder snow layered with ice, instead of snow that you can pack together to make a snowman. But even if we had the good snow, I am not sure she would have enjoyed herself that much. She didn't seem into being outdoors in below zero weather, even dressed warmly.

Aside from the disheartening revelation that the Bambina does not aspire to become the great Canadian winter athlete that I had dreamed she might become one day, I have discovered that whatever charm lies in the Abruzzo countryside resides far far away from the ski pistes. Industrial skiing anyone?

Tanti Auguri!

2008-01-01T18:01:00.001+01:00

Yes, it seems like a million years since my last entry but I am back again, determined to keep going!

We didn't bother going out on New Year's Eve. Unlike France, where the state seems to control everything from the sale of fireworks to your brand of underwear, in Italy, anyone can buy or sell fireworks. As a result, whereas in Paris, there is just ONE fireworks display that takes place on New Year's Eve (the state-sponsored one, obviously), in Rome, there are lots and lots of them happening all over the city. There is the main one at Piazza del Popolo, the one at the Vatican, the Hilton Hotel, other hotels, lots of private residences of course...

And since we have this fantastic view of the city from our apartment, we stayed home and watched all the fireworks displays going on throughout the city.

Very cool to watch twenty simultaneous fireworks displays, let me tell you.

PISA

2007-12-06T17:13:00.000+01:00

Not the leaning tower but the Programme for International Student Assessment. The results from their most recent triennial study of 15-year old students from 57 different countries in math, science and reading can be found here.

Canada's 15-year olds ranked third in the world in science.

France ranked 22.

The United States ranked 24.

Italy ranked 35.

The outcomes for mathematics and reading were similar.

My first question: How on earth did Italy manage to get such an abysmal ranking.

My next question: Given that Canadian students clearly know their stuff, why, when one of them shows up in France or Italy for a year or two, does he or she get placed two years beneath his grade level? Is old Europe really so snobby that they still think that kids in the new world cannot possibly be up to snuff in school?

What do we tell her about Santa?

2007-12-03T19:48:00.000+01:00

The moment has come. The Frenchman wants to tell the Bambina about Père Noël. I do not. Or should I say, I do not want to tell her that a fat old man in a red suit will be coming down our chimney on Christmas Eve to leave her presents.

What is worse, the Frenchman wants to do Père Noël à la française. The French version of Santa differs a little from how it is explained in North America. Where I grew up, Santa left you some presents but then you also got presents from Grandma and Grandpa (both sides), Auntie Lois, Uncle Jimmy, maybe even from a godparent. In France, all presents come from Père Noël. So when the Frenchman gets a Christmas present for his godson in France, as far as the godson is concerned, the present is from Père Noël, not his godfather. His godfather gave him nothing. How messed up is that?

But my bigger problem is with the whole notion of telling my daughter that any of her presents came Santa at all because, unless I happen to discover gifts that some stranger has surreptitiously placed gifts under our tree while we were asleep, telling her that her presents came from Santa Claus will be a lie.

"So what?", I hear you saying. "It's a nice lie."

I don't agree. When we tell our children about Santa Claus, we do so because we know that small children are too young to know any better. We are appealing to our children's naïve and gullible side. We are saying to our children, "I am going to deceive you because I can, because you are incapable of knowing any better." To me, deception based on the other person's inability to think critically or realistically about something shows that you really do not respect that person. We tell the truth to people whom we respect.

Of course, the Bambina may have an entirely different opinion to the one that I proffer her about Santa Claus. So far, I have told the Bambina that Santa Claus is a nice story. Whether she chooses to believe me or not is another issue.

bye bye baby curls

2007-11-29T14:31:00.000+01:00

When she was born, she had straight black hair. That hair fell out within a few weeks. It came back reddish brown and got blonder and blonder as she got older. By age one, it looked like the hair was growing into little curls. By 18 months, she was a headful of ringlets. She was a true Goldilocks.

And now (sniff, sniff), my little Bambina's hair is getting longer and her ringlets are growing out. What's more, the new hair growing in at the roots is (sniff, sniff) straight as an arrow.

The Frenchman cut off a lock last week and I nearly shot him for it. But he made the point that soon, there will be no more curls to cut and we need to have some kind of souvenir.

I hope that she at least retains a bit of the wave. Anyone know someone whose curls returned later in life or should I just give up all hope?

social doos - just don't.

2007-11-27T17:41:00.000+01:00

Here in Rome, we are expected to do a certain amount of entertaining and socializing, meaning we have to invite people for dinner from time to time and we have to do our fair share of attending dinners, cocktail parties, concerts and other evening doos, be it at the French Embassy, the Villa Medici or an actual person's house.

I don't mind having people over for dinner, as at least then I can choose whom to invite and I always make sure that the invitees consist of a good mix of people whose company I enjoy. I don't mind preparing the meal either, especially if the Frenchman chips in for the meat, which he is better at preparing. The only real downer is getting the guests to leave. I get tired far earlier in the evening than most grown-ups (at 10PM, I'm happy to be reading in bed) and these dinner doos usually last longer than my eyes and brain can stand.

The social events that take place somewhere other than our own home are, for me, a drag. A couple of weeks ago, we had to listen to this concert of "contemporary" classical music at the French Embassy. I thought I was going to die of boredom or my ears were going to tear themselves away from my body to get away from that place, the music was so bad (you know the kind of music that I mean - not one major chord in the entire piece). After the torture, I mean concert, there was a cocktail complete with prosecco and finger food. And it is always finger food at the French Embassy in Rome, never real food. The kind that you know some stranger in the kitchen has had to maul with his sweaty hands and dirty fingernails for a good 10 minutes per piece to make it look perfect. It consists mostly of seafood (which I don't eat anyway), a plate of gorgonzola and ricotta (ditto), and tasteless stale white bread with the crusts cut off.

Then there are the art exhibits at the Villa Medici. Not that I don't enjoy some contemporary art but frankly, I have had enough of the exhibit after looking at it for about, er, ten minutes, at which point I am ready for the food, which admittedly is very good, as long as you don't mind having to make conversation with the people who sit next to you at your table.

But the worst are the dinner parties in people's homes because they go on so late and I am trapped. I am not allowed to leave. Our hosts are usually some other French couple living in Rome (why don't the Americans ever invite us??). And we talk about...what DO we talk about? Absolutely nothing relevant to anyone. The French have this thing about remaining on subjects as impersonal as possible. So we talk about the situation in the Middle East, French politics, Italian politics, our jobs and doing business in Italy. But the conversation never goes into our personal lives, which I find a bit of a shame. The closest we get to it is where we are going on vacation next summer. Boring. The food is okay but inevitably there is too much of it and I am full by the time they serve us the main course. And they always choose to serve something that I will refuse to eat (fois gras, anyone?) and then accuse me (in a teasing way, of course) of having too many Anglo-Saxon sensibilities when I hand over the plate without taking anything.

And no matter what, I am always dead tired by about 10:30 PM.

Not looking forward to December!

house call

2007-11-24T13:28:00.000+01:00

So yesterday, the doctor came to our house (they make house calls in Italy - a big perk). She was French, recommended by the embassy. I was (and still am) afflicted with a sore throat that could cut an ice sculpture, trembling, feverish, and my left ear really hurt.

She didn't bring her bag of instruments with her. Said it would have taken too long to get here. So she didn't have her otoscope or thermometer. She felt my forehead.

"At least 38 degrees," she said. Then she looked down my throat.

"Very red. Definitely a throat infection."

She did have her stethoscope, and she placed it at various points on my back to listen for inner murmerings. She didn't hear anything bad but I guess she was impressed by the view of my spine because when she was done listening, her only comment was,

"You are too thin. How much do you weigh?"

This is the second French doctor to make this remark to me (both women, I might add). I swear, they are obsessed with weight.

"Er, in France, I weighed 57 kg. Here, I am closer to 55 kilo. Not that I have been on a diet. It just happened. Why, do you think low weight has caused my illness?"

"No. But you are nevertheless too thin. Look at me. I am the same height as you and I weigh 70 kilo!"

I looked at her. Her morphology was totally the opposite of mine - skinny legs, larger waist. No way I would ever look like that, no matter how much weight I put on.

"Yes, but this is just the way I am. Even if I gained ten more kilo, I would still be skinny up top," I replied.

"C'est pas vrai. [Basically her way of saying "Rubbish and you don't know what you are talking about"]. What do you eat for breakfast?" she asked. I then told her what I ate for breakfast. Then she wanted to know what I ate for lunch and supper and she proceeded to devise a calorie-rich meal plan for me. All this during a visit to look at my throat and ears.

Meanwhile, my body temperature was over 38°, I could feel myself sweating, pain seared down my throat every time I swallowed and I was wondering when she was going to get down to diagnosing what I had.

After spelling out a meal regime that had about three times the Frenchman's daily calorie intake, she wrote out the prescription for my throat. Now, back home in Canada, a prescription was a small piece of paper with one illegible word scribbled on it that you handed to the pharmacist. In return, you got a little brown bottle with exactly the number of pills that you were to take over the next few days. No more, no less.

In France and in Italy, prescriptions are a whole different ball game. You don't just get one medication. You get a whole laundry list of things that you are supposed to get from the pharmacy. AND, you get the whole box of each item, not just the number you have to take to get well. So I now have:

- Box of Cefixoral (the antibiotics)
- Bottle of FROBEN spray (to spray the back of my throat to numb it. Does not work as far as I can tell).
- Propolis spray (some kind of natural substance also to spray at the back of my throat, in the event that I really want to delay the antibiotics and try to get better without them. I tried it for two hours. Decided that I had suffered enough and took the antibiotics.)
- Acqua di Sirmione (Water that tastes and smells like sewage. I am not kidding. Apparently, it will keep my nose clear and ear tubes clear. Needless to say, I won't be going through one tube a day as prescribed.)

And I have enough Froben, Propolis and Acqua di Sirmione to last me through three or four more illnesses, at least. All paid for by insurance, of course.

Sick of Being Sick

2007-11-21T20:35:00.000+01:00

Woke up this morning with a very sore throat and aching muscles all over. I am so sick of getting sick in this country. What is it about the weather here that is so conducive to microbes? I'm supposed to be the hardy Canadian and yet every month, I have another version of cold, cough and flu. Without fail. The Bambina is sick less often that I.

Ok, I'm going to go to bed now.

Farms to visit near Rome - Agricultura Nuova

2007-11-19T18:31:00.000+01:00

There are a few organic farms around Rome that you can visit and even buy fruit and vegetables, eggs, milk and meat. We always head to Agricultura Nuova.

I always feel a little bit conflicted about visiting this farm. On the one hand, we contribute a lot more carbon emissions by making a point of buying our food there than by heading to our local GS supermarket. On the other hand, they have a much better selection of in-season fruits and vegetables, the food we get there tastes fresher and home-grown, I see how the animals are being raised and I have the assurance that there are few if any nitrates in the Bambina's spinach and swiss chard. AND, if we have reserved ahead of time, we can eat a real Italian farm meal (all organic) on the cheap at their restaurant (which is really more like a big dining room than a restaurant, as you are seated at one table with about ten other people - quite fun really).

Agricultura Nuova is at Via Valle di Perna, 315 - 00129 Rome, near the south end of the Grande Raccordo Anulare. Make sure to call and reserve for lunch. Telephone 06 50 82 82 94 / 06 50 70 453.

I'm back

2007-11-16T11:16:00.000+01:00

I know, I know, it has been eons since I have written a post. I have been busy completing a six-week course on writing, put on by the Writer Mama (great course, by the way. Any moms out there interested in launching a career in freelance writing should check out Writer Mama's courses).

Today, I just wanted to write an observation that I made this week when dropping the Bambina off at her fairly international preschool:

What North American moms are wearing when they drop their kids off at school: track pants and sneakers (Why do we do this? We look so hideous. Why, why why?).

What French moms are wearing when they drop their kids off at school: pencil skirt, silk blouse, high heeled shoes (My question: how do they manage to walk on the cobblestone streets and climb up the 80 or so stairs to the school without breaking a leg?).

What Italian moms are wearing when they drop their kids off at school: designer velour track pants purchased at La Perla or Armani, Converse or other designer sneakers with not a scuff on them, gold necklace, gold earrings, counterfeit Cartier watch.

I think the Italian moms have got a good compromise going between comfort and style...

Autumn in Abruzzo

2007-11-05T11:58:00.000+01:00

Here in Rome, the leaves on the trees are still green and yesterday afternoon, the temperature hovered around 24 degrees celcius.

But the day before, in the mountains in Abruzzo, just two hours away, it was five degrees and the leaves had all turned to hues of yellow, orange and read. I felt like I was back in Canada (except, of course, in Canada, the leaves look like this by the end of September!).

Then we arrived at our destination, Santo Stefano di Sessanio. Definitely not Canada. Here is a glimpse:

More on this incredible destination another day.

The 60-Hour Workweek (for our child, that is...)

2007-10-30T09:59:00.000+01:00

She's only three and wouldn't you know it, I have done the thing that I loathe, the thing that New York City Alpha moms are notorious for, the thing that I rant about all the time when I hear the horror stories coming out of the United States: I have overscheduled my child.

She has preschool (école maternelle) every weekday morning from 8h30 to 12h30. She has stopped taking the afternoon nap, so the rest of her day is, I mean was, free. I figured that since many if not most parents in this country put their three-year olds in preschool for the whole day, five days a week, the Bambina had it pretty good. So I went ahead and signed her up for afternoon activities. Monday she has free. Tuesday she has theatre class at the Centro San Luigi dei Francesi. Wednesday she has dance class (in Italian). Thursday she had an English playgroup and Friday, Suzuki music class.

Did I mention that she has stopped taking the afternoon nap? The result: an exhausted child, ready to collapse at about 18h00, and a schedule that is falling apart. The English playgroup was the first to go. What on earth was I thinking? English is already her dominant language and all the other kids in the group were speaking Italian. What's the point?

I'm now considering dropping Suzuki music, too. I had always dreamed of putting the Bambina in Susuki music but, besides the fact that the class is at 16h30 on Friday afternoon and takes four metro stops and three bus stops to get to, it's an hour long, which is manifestly about 30 minutes too long for the Bambina. At 17h00, she has had enough Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to 20 different rhythms. Plus most of the other kids in the class are a year or two older than she and are far more capable of the finger coordination exercises. She seems a little too young for it all, notwithstanding the Suzuki instructor's insistance that three is the ideal age to start the rhythm classes so that they can begin to play an instrument when they are four.

At least she still loves the dance and theatre.