Happy Birthday

to my parents, who both turn 50 this week! I wish I could be there to help you celebrate (and eat mayonnaise cake), but I'll see you in a week!

Scouting Mission

Wednesday was a school holiday for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. As we are not Catholic, many of us decided to forgo the feast and travel instead. One group wanted to go to an authentic Austrian Christmas market, and as none of us have strong Austrian geography skills, managed to pick pretty much the furthest away, in Salzburg. Tuesday morning, they mentioned that there was one more spot in the car; would I like to come?

During my planning period I made a hostel reservation, then rushed down the hill after school to pack. We set off by six and made it just out of town when we realized we may have a problem. Several of us had written down how to get to the hostel from the highway, but getting to the city from Italy was more of an immediate concern, and much less sure. Some hazy memories of viewing the google map the day before and plenty of sign reading later, and we actually got there!

Tuesday night and Wednesday were spent wandering the city, looking at sights from The Sound of Music, enjoying Gluhwein and roasted nuts at the Christmas Market, and visiting a brewery.

Not bad for a random Wednesday... living in Europe has some advantages.

Quite a Day

Vomit and Lice, all in one day. All in about an hour, actually. Fortunately, neither were directly on me, though both my classroom and apartment currently smell strongly of cleaning chemicals. Huge thank you's to the science teacher, art teacher, learning specialist, and school cleaning ladies for making that happen!

I suppose that's life in an elementary school. Now, off to celebrate the music teacher's birthday!

Thanksgiving

First, last weekend's second adventure was Ikea! It was raining, so we passed on the chance to go back to Slovenia. Ikea is quite the place- a sort of Disneyland of home goods. There's people and stuff everywhere; there's even a map of the store. We finally got a mirror for our apartment, as well as lamps for our bedrooms and throw pillows for our bright yellow couch. We chose green and black pillows, so we now have a Packers half and a Steelers half of the couch.

This week was crazy busy, with a chocolate themed birthday party on Tuesday, conference night on Wednesday, a field trip on Thursday, and then a crazy day Friday with Thanksgiving dinner to cap off the week.

Friday was scheduled to be an in-service day, which means the kids leave at noon and we have professional development all afternoon. For the morning, we finished a movie we had started after the field trip the day before, then I talked about Thanksgiving as a World Cultures lesson, then we ate lunch and sent them on their way, through the SNOW! Between the two groups for the Thanksgiving lesson, it had started to snow a bit, mostly just flurries, but we closed the curtains to keep the distractions to a minimum. Our curtains don't close all the way, though, and from where I was standing near the computer, I had a perfect view through a gap to watch the flakes getting bigger and bigger, and the beginnings of accumulation. By the time we sat down to lunch in our spot next to a wall of windows, the full-on snow storm meant that the third grade ate very slowly as they all turned around to stare out of the window. I couldn't really blame them, and after they left, I wandered around looking for someone to go play outside with me. My southern CA friend was up for it, and we slid around in our not-appropriate-for-snow shoes for a few moments before heading back inside for professional development.

Four hours later, and we we off to very carefully walk to the first grade teacher's house for Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey had been cooking all day and everyone brought their favorite parts of the meal. We learned that Italian homes are allotted a certain amount of electricity at a time, and when you go over it, your power goes off. To turn it back on, you just have to hit the circuit breaker. Simple, when your circuit box is on the inside of your tall, electric-operated gate. That is not the case at this house. At this house, M runs and vaults over the gate to get to the box. The first time the power went out, we were confused. The second to fifth times, we were amused. The last two times, we were just tired of it!

We had so much food- turkey, potatoes with nuts (without the nuts), green bean casserole (without the topping), home-made stuffing, gravy (made by the science club leaders!), cornbread, macaroni and cheese, other mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, eggplant, Indian chicken, stuffed squash, Spanish omelette, apple pie, apple cobbler, pumpkin pie, cake, and that't not even touching on the appetizers! We finally got all of the food warm at once (Congrats, Mel!) and ate around the fire and recorded football game. I inhaled my food, but I think it was all delicious. We sat around and talked and drank wine for several hours, then had a dance party in the basement before finally heading home around 3 am. Quite a Thanksgiving, I must say.

When do you go to another country to see a movie?

When it's the first half of the last Harry Potter, of course, and it's showing in English. After downloading some of the earlier movies to re-watch during the week, we set off this morning for Koper (Capodistria) in Slovenia. We had chosen not to go with the group that went on Thursday night, because we didn't want to be out that late on a school night. We're so boring. (Yes, my friends saw it before you, if you're in the States, as they were home just before midnight, and we're six hours ahead.)

Anyway, my roommate and I met up with another teacher this morning, rented a car, and drove to the mall in Koper. It's only about a half hour drive, so it's really not that crazy, but it was a fun adventure. The movie was really good, though I won't say anything about it as to not ruin it.

After the movie, we wandered around the mall for a little while looking at art supplies and clothes, then got some food at a decent-for-Europe Mexican restaurant and just generally enjoyed the company.

We still have the car tomorrow (and the pass to get into Slovenia), so we'll see what sort of adventure transpires... I'm sure it will be something!

P.S. Post about my trips to Florence and Strasbourg will probably get written at some point...

Halloween

After carving all those pumpkins, I was ready for the Halloween party at school. I was planning to dress up as a ballerina, as usual, since it's an easy costume, but my students didn't like that. Here, Halloween is strictly spooky; all my kids were vampires and witches and zombies and a mummy. When they heard my plan, they were clearly dismayed, though my suggestion to find a witch hat was also met with little enthusiasm. One child sadly told me, "well, that won't win the costume contest." I heard that all of the fifth graders were going as more normal things, like a soccer player, "but dead." I decided to embrace this philosophy and went as a dead ballerina, which was basically a simple ballerina costume with dead/zombie makeup.

We had quite a party, starting with academic stations, then a costume contest, and then dancing and snacks and games. We tried to watch the Halloween Charlie Brown to settle everyone down at the end, but we couldn't really hear it.

After we got everyone packed up with all the parts of their costumes and ready for break, all the teachers took a deep breath and went out for drinks.

I'm scared I'm going to turn orange.

I've got a big backlog of blog posts, so you'll have to bear with me. (And, in my continued procrastination, I just googled the etymology of that phrase. It comes from either a request for forbearance or bearing a burden together. And now I've put off writing for another 10 minutes.)

Three Sundays ago, several of us set off by train to the lovely medieval town of Venzone for the annual Festa della Zucca, the Festival of the Pumpkin. We explored the entirety of the little town while enjoying a whole range of pumpkin themed foods. These included pumpkin pastries and the absolutely delicious pumpkin pizza. The pumpkin gelato was sold out by the time our group got there. I also found the first type of wine that I actually liked! Unfortunately, it's pumpkin wine, which is kinda seasonal and pretty obscure anyway.

This was only the beginning of my pumpkin-filled week. The school PTA bought every class a pumpkin for Halloween, but most classes didn't have time to do much with them. I volunteered to carve ours, so that we would have a Jack-o-Lantern for the school Halloween party on Friday. I had a fun planning period with pumpkin guts up to my elbows and carved both a face and the number 3. By lunchtime, I also had 345 pumpkin seeds! (Yes, I counted. The kids estimated, so I needed to know the actual number.)

After lunch, both the fifth grade teacher and one of the fourth grade teachers had spotted the pumpkins and requested that I do theirs as well. Another face and the number 5 made me only a few minutes late for Italian class, and more than doubled my stash of seeds. That night, I added some oil and salt and roasted them. Once they were done, I had enough to fill a recycled spaghetti sauce jar! Interestingly, the fourth and fifth grade pumpkins were two different types. Though they looked the same from the outside, the insides were completely different.

Friday morning, the other fourth grade teacher mentioned that her pumpkin need carved as well, bringing the week's total to four, and well over 1000 seeds, which I kept as payment for the carving. After 5 batches of salted seeds, I started to get bored, so I also made a spicy version and my personal favorite, caramelized seeds. Yum!

Friday's lunch at school was Halloween themed, with pumpkin rice, pumpkin chicken, pumpkin soup, and pumpkin bread. I chose the chicken and bread, both of which were quite good.

It was all delicious, but I still don't think I will eat much more pumpkin soon, at least for a few weeks...

SotL in dance class

I am taking a dance class each week (in Italian!) and have been reminded of SotL things on more than one occasion. The big two:

1) The word "cambio" means change or switch. That guy from Taming of the Shrew was seriously not creative.

2) We did push-ups and sit-ups to "Personal Jesus" last week.

If that doesn't mean anything to you, you have never been in SotL.

Other notes from class:

1) This is my third language and fourth country for dance classes!

2) I am getting quite good at the numbers 1-8 in Italian.

I ate pumpkin pizza...

and it was actually really good.

Saturday Morning Shopping

I enjoy walking around my neighborhood on Saturday mornings. So many people are out and about, doing their weekly shopping. In the US, this would mostly mean driving to the grocery store and Target. Not here.

Here, you might start at the butcher...

... or the other butcher...

...then go to a bakery.

If you want fruits and vegetables, you have several options. You can go to a shop...

...or a market stand.

Just don't actually touch the food. The shop owner will do that for you, choosing your produce, putting it in a bag, and weighing it.

Next might be the store-that's-like-a-drug-store-except-it-doesn't-sell-medicine. This is for paper products, cleaning supplies, shampoo, cosmetics, etc.

Now, we start to get specialized. You can go to the fish store...

... or the milk store. Seriously. They sell milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, and stuffed toy cows.
After that, you'll probably need a gelato break.

Or, you could just go to Coop.

Because Kevin Said I Couldn't

Here's the house that inspired the book and movie Under the Tuscan Sun. It's in Cortona, on one of the roads from the main part of the city up to the cathedral. Our group agreed that we didn't like the book or movie much, but the house is gorgeous.

We strolled up the long, windy road, peering through the light fog to catch glimpses of what must be fantastic views, up to the cathedral, which was closed. A brief look around, and we headed down a much steeper, much more direct route. This path took us past beautiful mosaics of the Stations of the Cross (in reverse order going down) and the University of Georgia campus where my friend had lived and studied when she was in Italy before.

Wine Tasting

In my attempts to post shorter entries more frequently, I'm going to write something two days in a row! Don't get used to it.

As anyone who knows me is aware, I am a picky eater/drinker, and among the long list of things I dislike is wine. However, since I have moved to Italy, where wine is cheaper than water, I have been trying to learn to like it. (Side note: Having grown up Presbyterian, I was a bit surprised the first time I had communion here. It's not grape juice in the tiny cups.)

Anyway, with this quest in mind, I was game to participate in the wine tasting that our Cortona group signed up for. I can't say that I really liked any of the wines, but I tried all four and learned a bit about them in the process. Did you know that mixing different types of grapes affects how well you can see through red wines?

The most memorable was a Brunello wine, a traditional red wine from Tuscany. Apparently, it's fairly rare and very expensive outside of Italy. I made sure to finish my taste after his description of shipping it all over the world to customers who can't find it. The particular brand we tried was also interesting, as it is produced on an organic-style farm. Of course, the requirements are different, but it's a similar set-up: no pesticides, they produce everything that touches the product, from cows for manure for fertilizer through the entire process. I can't quite say I enjoyed it, but I did appreciate it.

Getting to Cortona

My roommate here studied in Italy in college, in a small Tuscan city called Cortona. As part of her birthday celebrations last week, we planned a trip for her to show it off to us. It's about a 5 hour drive, so 7 of us rented 2 cars, and after our first staff development day, off we went! As we got in the car, Carrie assigned me the job of "capturing the hilarity." Apparently, whenever she's gone on trips like this, something crazy has happened, and she wanted photographic evidence.

Somewhere near Florence, our driver noticed that the other car wasn't behind us anymore. We had found each other before by flashing brake lights and headlights to each other, but our signal wasn't being returned. We weren't too worried, because both cars had printouts of the directions, so we continued on our way.

A few minutes later, Kristin's phone rings. "You WHAT? They ran out of gas!" We all immediately burst out laughing (sorry, guys) and started to try to figure out how to help them. Fortunately there was an area servizio just ahead, which is like a rest stop/gas station. Once we got there and made a brief detour to the bathroom, we ventured into the gas station, where Carrie successfully explained that our friends needed gas. After a debate about needing police involvement, a (possibly) Algerian truck driver offering his help, several phone calls to those in the stranded car, and many conferences between the station attendants, they agreed to sell us gas in a plastic gas can. After a few more hand gestures and some round-about Italian, the attendant also produced a funnel. That's not one of the words that often shows up in foreign language vocabulary lists.

The guys had pushed their car to an SOS, a paved area off the road every so often, and had found the kilometer marker nearby, but they still had a bit of a wait for us to find them. We had to continue on to the next exit to get off and turn around, then go past them to again get off and turn around to come back to where they were. Fortunately we were near a big city and the exits were fairly close together, so this only took us about 25 minutes. This is also a toll road, so each turn around involved a debated as to if it was even legal to turn around. We decided that even if it wasn't, it was more legal to go through the toll plaza, pay the money, and get a new ticket.

We finally arrived to save the day. I continued in my designated photography role to preserve the event for posterity, or at least for blog entry. The gas was poured into the car and we went on our way, again.

Of course, we had to stop at the gas station again so that they could fill the tank the rest of the way, and they also decided to fill the plastic can again, just in case.

But I'm tired...

Because I've been having such a hard time motivating myself to write posts, I'm going to try something new. I'm planning to post about my weekend trip to Cortona in several shorter entries over the course of the next week. Hopefully, the first of these posts will be up tomorrow- check back then!

Address

Several people have been asking, so here's where I can get mail!

Kaitlin Clear

International School of Trieste

Via di Conconello, 16

Opicina (TS) 34151 ITALY

If you want to send anything larger than a letter, declare the contents only as "personal items" with little to no value or else I have to pay tax to get it. Things from the states that I can't get here include peanut butter and hot chocolate powder that you mix with hot water. I also love postcards and letters, which are much cheaper to send! I have a few postcards here that need somewhere to go, perhaps to you?

Birthday Languages

Last week, I was wished, "Happy Birthday" in four different languages. While I was down the hall helping out in First Grade science, my regular students made me a giant card that they all decorated and signed. When I came back to get my things before their Italian lesson, two of them presented it to me, and then they all sang "Happy Birthday," first in English, then in Italian.

That evening, several of us went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant by the water. We ordered a bunch of different dishes to share and enjoyed all of it. My favorites were the lemon chicken dish, one of the vegetable pasta dishes, and a sweet and spicy pork. The fried banana Kristin ordered was a good dessert, but all seven of us shared one portion, because we were headed to a highly recommended gelato shop for a real birthday dessert. Lots more people met us there, and I had some super-creamy Nutella flavored gelato. While we ate our gelato, Veronica sang me her Puerto Rican birthday song, adding Spanish to the list of languages, and a few Facebook messages in German (and more Italian and plenty of English) brought the total to four.

Other birthday awesomeness included a package from my parents with warm blankets, coloring books and real crayons, and a giant jar of peanut butter. I've been alternating between eating it by the spoonful and trying to convince myself to ration it to make it last longer. So far, eating it has been winning.

I also had my first visitor when Ted stopped by on his way from Switzerland to Hungary. It was great to see someone I've known for more than a month and have a chance to show off my new city. He was very patient with me as I led us on a wild goose chase in the rain for the Natural History Museum, which we never found. The Gallery of Modern Art was fun (and out of the rain), if not exactly what we were expecting. I suppose "modern" is relative when there's Roman ruins in the middle of the city. We ate lots of pizza and gelato, so I consider it a successful weekend.

Survived the First Week

The first week of school is over (and I've procrastinated so much on writing this that the first day of the second week is nearly over as well). We have 17 third graders, which is just over half the number of students that were in my class in Cambridge, and there are only 4 boys. They are a rather chatty class so far, both in English and especially Italian, as all but 2 of them speak Italian at home.

It was an exciting week outside of school as well. Last weekend, several of us went to Venice, which is only about a two hour train ride away. Unfortunately, due to some ticket and scheduling confusion, this two hour journey took me nearly 6 hours and 3 trains. Venice is a beautiful, and touristy, city. It's nice to be able to walk wherever without worrying about cars, since the transportation is primarily by boat. After I finally met up with the other girls who had gone on an earlier train, we spent most of our time walking around the city looking in shop windows including many pastry shops, browsing a fabulous flea market/craft fair where I bought a necklace made of Venetian glass, and taking pictures.

Wednesday was Parent's Night, which is a sort of Back-to-School night, Tuesday and Friday were not-actually-the-draft parties for the school fantasy football league (I'm on a team with the chemistry teacher, and neither of us know what we are doing), and Thursday was the opening of a new, amazing cafe called Zoe Food. It's owned by relatives of the associate teacher in grade 2, so we all got invited to see the new place and sample Anna and Stefano's fabulous and healthy food. We had such a great time on Thursday night, we went back on Saturday. I had a banana and peanut butter smoothie. Yep, Anna has peanut butter (yay!), and she offered to put it in smoothies for us, even though it isn't on the menu.

To close out the week, a few of us went hiking outside of a nearby village, in Val Rosandra. This is a mostly limestone area, so the topography is pretty neat. The park is only about a half hour bus ride away, and our bus passes for school get us all the way there. We walked to a waterfall and up to a church built in the 1200s, enjoying the view and the return of the beautiful weather after it had been so cold last week.

Lasagne and Chocolate Salami

The school has a sort of unofficial connection with a tiny evangelical church in the city, with several teachers attending each year, so a few of us went to the service on Sunday. It's in Italian, but a returning teacher translated for us, and we sang several songs I recognized, so I could just sing in English when I got lost following the Italian words. Other songs were new, and we also sang Amazing Grace in English. They were so welcoming and accepting of our translation murmur, and after the service, we were immediately invited to dinner on Tuesday night with one of the families.

After a brief tour of not how to get there, we ended up back in our neighborhood and on the way to Nicoletta and Elio's apartment. It was lovely to visit a real home that a family lives in, rather than our just-moved-in, not-quite-home-yet apartments. The conversation was enjoyable (both Nicoletta and Elio speak fabulous English and are absolutely hilarious, and their two-year-old son was just adorable, if a bit shy) and the food was delicious! Nicoletta told us that she decided that because we just got here, we should have real Italian, and she delivered. We started with sun-dried tomatoes, an olive and cheese dip with bagel chips, and Prosecco, then she served us each an enormous piece of her homemade lasagne. This was followed by an eggplant parmesan-type dish. After a bit of a wait to digest, she brought out chocolate salami, which was a brownie batter/chocolate pudding/mousse dessert with crushed up cookies mixed in. Nicoletta kept apologizing because it hadn't set properly, but I loved it just as it was, all chocolate-y and creamy, with crunchy bits... yum. After that, it was time for grappa. Grappa is an after-dinner liquor that we have now encountered in a few different versions. I chose green apple, which I liked best of the flavors I've tried so far. Considering everything we ate and the breaks for conversation between courses, it's no wonder it was midnight before we got home!

I went to a Reggae concert with a scarf on.

It's still August, but it's barely 60 degrees here today. After sweating constantly all last week, this is a bit of a shock, and makes me hope my boxes with warmer clothes will get here soon!

This week there is an international festival-type-thing in one of the Piazzas with booths and live music every night. So, tonight, this combined to result in a reggae concert with a scarf (and all of my warmest summer clothes).

Today was the first all staff day, and I was surprised to find that there are 50 staff members at the school. It doesn't seem like that big of a place, but I suppose once you add up all the grades and the Italian teachers, too, there's a lot of us. For those who didn't know, I am the associate teacher for grade 3, though I'm not really sure what that means yet. The lead teacher for grade 3 is new as well, and she just got in yesterday! Needless to say, she'd overwhelmed too, so we're still figuring out how everything is going to work. Right now, we have a mostly empty classroom, only a very basic idea of the curriculum, and lots more meetings to attend.

A little more about the school:

- It was founded in the late 1960s for international students, especially those affiliated with the physics research center.

- Now, upwards of 80% of the students are Italian. The other 20% are international.

- The building was designed by a semi-famous architect that no one can remember the name of as part of a design competition. It was originally intended to be built in Africa or a similar climate, making it very difficult to heat in the winter.

- The building was an orphanage/boys home before it became a school. Several near-by buildings are still part of the state foster system.

- School starts a week from today!

Looks like a school, huh?

4 days?

We've been here for 4 days now, and it seems so long and so short at the same time. We are still figuring out how to get where we're going and meeting more teachers everyday, but we've also done so much!

After 3 uneventful flights, (though a slightly eventful layover in Rome where we switched airlines) Lizzy (Kinder teacher from Williamsburg) and I landed in Trieste around 7:30. We were met at the airport and whisked away to our respective apartments and almost immediately off to dinner, where I ate the first of several pizzas so far and met about 20 people who I instantly forgot.

Saturday, we met up to reintroduce ourselves to each other and get Italian phones. Since I left my unlocked UK phone in the US, I had to get a new one in addition to the new SIM card, but this one plugs into an Italian outlet, which my British one would not have. From there my roommate and I went to get pillows, as sleeping on a rolled up towel the night before had not been terribly pleasant. Back to our (giant, very modern, very white) apartment to finally start to unpack. After a short nap, we joined some of the group at a pub to watch a soccer game, then went out to a dance club at the beach. They had strobe lights, so I didn't enjoy the club much, but we got to see some of the countryside on the ride there, including road signs pointing the way to Slovenia and Croatia. We're really quite close.

Fortunately we got to sleep in on Sunday before a trip out to the Barcola. It's not quite a beach, but it's where land meets water and people go there to lay in the sun and swim. I suppose it's basically a beach without sand. Instead, there's big rocks with stairs that go over into the water. I got a Doener Kebab, which is an originally Turkish food that migrated to Germans street food stands then throughout Europe, if I'm remembering correctly. We learned about them in high school German, so I was excited to try one- it was pretty good, if a bit large and messy to eat. Later, before getting on the bus to go back into the main part of the city, we stopped at a Gelataria, where I got a mint chocolate chip scoop.

Monday and Tuesday have been mostly paperwork and meetings at the school, which is useful and necessary, but not terribly interesting to write about. We learned that pretty much everyone in the area has controlled this strip of land at some point, from Austria to Russia, Italy of course, and even the US, briefly after WWII. We learned all about the school's accreditation process and recent curriculum re-write, and how our insurance works. Thrilling, really. Sprinkled among have been fun things like the views from the tram ride up to the school (a long but beautiful commute) and visiting another associate teacher apartment to hang out on their balcony. We also went grocery shopping yesterday, which had been difficult because we kept having free time during siesta, when all the stores are closed. The regular grocery store was still closed, so we had to do the more old-fashioned, European style, where we visited a deli-type shop for meat and cheese (and Nutella) and another shop for fruits and vegetables.

The next couple of days will be more paperwork and meetings, which means lots of hurry up and wait time. I've already finished one of the two books I brought, so during the waiting today I found the school library. It should keep me busy for a while; I just can't finish my current book before the librarian gets settled. We met him today, but he just got in, so it's not really fair to try to check out books already!

Almost time for a shower and bed- post again later!

Made it!

I'm in Italy, but I'm borrowing another teacher's internet connection (currently the only one of all the teachers in our neighborhood!) so I'll post later.

So, I don't actually speak any Italian (yet),*

but by the end of this week, I'll be living in Italy, where I will be teaching 3rd grade at an International School. I'm leaving on Thursday at 3 pm, and will get to Trieste on Friday at 6:30 pm. At this point, I have shipped a few things, my suitcases are somewhat packed, and I have a new toothbrush from Grandma. Hey, I've still got almost 40 hours, right?

Some things I have learned so far:

- Getting a visa to get into any country is complicated, not just the UK. Getting my sticker for Italy involved a 24 hour, 600 mile trip to Philadelphia to turn in paperwork so they could mail it back to me.

- There are many things you can't mail to Italy. Some of them make sense to me, like live animals, weapons, and chloroform, but some don't, like shoes, fake flowers, bells, playing cards, or "toys not made wholly of wood." You can't mail salt or saccharine, but regular sugar (sucrose) is okay. It is also illegal to mail haberdashery, which is just fun to say. (For a complete list, see here. It amused me for a good 20 minutes.)

Well, considering that it's nearly midnight, my plan to adjust my sleep schedule ahead of time seems to have failed miserably. Oops. Anyway, I'll post again when I get there!

~Kaitlin

*According to google translator, the title of this blog is "I am a teacher." I got too confused when trying to translate the actual web address, hence the English version.