Hmm. I'm finally actually talking at a normal speed, but to give you an idea of what my family was up against after school today, here you go:
Oh my gosh I was so scared and I didn't know anyone but then the secretary took me to my class and introduced me and said that I was from the United States and the second the teacher left the classroom about two-thirds of the students came over and shook my hand and introduced themselves and I was so overwhelmed but they were all really nice and there's one boy who just came back from a year in America and speaks fluent English and he's really nice and it was the first day at school so all of the kids were really excited and we actually didn't learn anything *gasp for breath* but mostly the teachers talked and the students talked and I have a lot of friends and for English class I stood up in front of the class with the other boy and we talked about America in English and I don't think that the other students understood much but at least they know I can talk and there's a girl from Honduras who's here for a year and she speaks no Italian but does speak English and she seems really nice but seriously everyone seems really nice and I don't have to speak English except when I really don't understand and after school I got home and was barraged by Facebook friend requests and one of my classmates posted a nice welcome on our class page directed especially to me and oh my gosh I know so many more people now and *another gasp* guess what they're really nice and I can't wait for school tomorrow. Oh, does anyone else have anything to say?
Eleanor
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
A narrow scrape, or "Look before you leap"
I haven't had the heart to write about it until now, but...I got the first dings on my car the other day. Sigh.
I was parked in a little alley behind our building that our dear neighbors had recommended. My darling car fitted perfectly in the corner, and everything was great. However, the way I had gone in was a wee bit tight (a couple of inches of clearance on either side), and I decided to go the other way out of the alley. I knew that there was a 90 degree turn because I had come in that way on a previous occasion.
Somehow, this particular time the turn looked particularly daunting because of the stairs right in the way of where I would need to reverse to complete the turn. So I decided to follow the alleyway straight, thinking that I knew where it turned out: on a beautiful road that overlooks the valley. Boy, was I ever wrong! I continued down about 10 meters, and then came through a tiny passage with stairs on one side and a pipe on the other. Less than an inch of clearance on either side, but I made it through!
Congratulating myself inwardly, I went another 30 meters down the steep incline (which was wider), and then found myself at another intersection. My two choices: forward, down steps with a railing and (probably) no clearance, or another (even tighter) 90 degree turn into an alley that was completely blocked by a car. Stunned in disbelief, I sat a few moments to contemplate, while Jeremy peppered me with questions: what should we do now? Which way would we go? What did I think about it?
With a vulcan death grip on the steering wheel with one hand, I revved the engine to prepare to go into reverse (remember the steep incline? This time I had the opportunity to go up it!), engaged the clutch, and dropped the hand brake. I just couldn't get the right line on going in reverse, and kept getting too close to the wall on the passenger side.
Three meters back and two meters forward. I crept up and up and up. After 20 minutes of hard labor (remember, low speeds, in reverse, no power steering) and a break, I made it to an area that was a little wider -- just downhill from the bottleneck (remember the pipe & the stairs?). I had a halfhearted plan to attempt to turn around, but wasn't convinced.
At that point, a sweet looking woman around my age popped her head out of an upstairs window and asked if I needed help. When I said that it would be great, she responded with the Italian equivalent of "bummer, because I can't do any better than you." So -- not only was she of no help, but now I had an audience. At this point, I just wanted to put my head down & cry. So I sat for a minute to regroup.
Just what I needed: two men in their early 60s walked by -- even more members of my personal peanut gallery. My purgatory intensified...
Ding! The light bulb turned on. I leant over and asked whether they were good drivers. One of them responded in the affirmative. As I hopped out gratefully and he started to jump in, I had second thoughts; I asked cautiously if he was familiar with the 500s. "Drove one for 20 years!" he responded. I nearly fainted with relief.
No kidding: after about 45 seconds, he had squeezed my baby through the narrow gap, completed the 90 degree turn I'd wanted to avoid, and pulled it out to the main road. My hero!
The sad ending was that I got some scratches and a dent on my baby. My guilt was enormous until I talked to my friend Ada Maria at the nursery: I told her that it had gone 45 years without a scratch. She responded with a shrug, "Well, then it's about time it had one."
The moral of the story is that I will never ever ever ever ever drive down an alley unless I have recently walked it.
Love,
Alexandra
p.s. The girls' friend Bushi took out the dent with a highly specialized tool: a handy rock. There's not much I can do about the paint, but I'm going to take it to a shop before deep winter so it doesn't rust.
I was parked in a little alley behind our building that our dear neighbors had recommended. My darling car fitted perfectly in the corner, and everything was great. However, the way I had gone in was a wee bit tight (a couple of inches of clearance on either side), and I decided to go the other way out of the alley. I knew that there was a 90 degree turn because I had come in that way on a previous occasion.
Somehow, this particular time the turn looked particularly daunting because of the stairs right in the way of where I would need to reverse to complete the turn. So I decided to follow the alleyway straight, thinking that I knew where it turned out: on a beautiful road that overlooks the valley. Boy, was I ever wrong! I continued down about 10 meters, and then came through a tiny passage with stairs on one side and a pipe on the other. Less than an inch of clearance on either side, but I made it through!
Congratulating myself inwardly, I went another 30 meters down the steep incline (which was wider), and then found myself at another intersection. My two choices: forward, down steps with a railing and (probably) no clearance, or another (even tighter) 90 degree turn into an alley that was completely blocked by a car. Stunned in disbelief, I sat a few moments to contemplate, while Jeremy peppered me with questions: what should we do now? Which way would we go? What did I think about it?
With a vulcan death grip on the steering wheel with one hand, I revved the engine to prepare to go into reverse (remember the steep incline? This time I had the opportunity to go up it!), engaged the clutch, and dropped the hand brake. I just couldn't get the right line on going in reverse, and kept getting too close to the wall on the passenger side.
Three meters back and two meters forward. I crept up and up and up. After 20 minutes of hard labor (remember, low speeds, in reverse, no power steering) and a break, I made it to an area that was a little wider -- just downhill from the bottleneck (remember the pipe & the stairs?). I had a halfhearted plan to attempt to turn around, but wasn't convinced.
At that point, a sweet looking woman around my age popped her head out of an upstairs window and asked if I needed help. When I said that it would be great, she responded with the Italian equivalent of "bummer, because I can't do any better than you." So -- not only was she of no help, but now I had an audience. At this point, I just wanted to put my head down & cry. So I sat for a minute to regroup.
Just what I needed: two men in their early 60s walked by -- even more members of my personal peanut gallery. My purgatory intensified...
Ding! The light bulb turned on. I leant over and asked whether they were good drivers. One of them responded in the affirmative. As I hopped out gratefully and he started to jump in, I had second thoughts; I asked cautiously if he was familiar with the 500s. "Drove one for 20 years!" he responded. I nearly fainted with relief.
No kidding: after about 45 seconds, he had squeezed my baby through the narrow gap, completed the 90 degree turn I'd wanted to avoid, and pulled it out to the main road. My hero!
The sad ending was that I got some scratches and a dent on my baby. My guilt was enormous until I talked to my friend Ada Maria at the nursery: I told her that it had gone 45 years without a scratch. She responded with a shrug, "Well, then it's about time it had one."
The moral of the story is that I will never ever ever ever ever drive down an alley unless I have recently walked it.
Love,
Alexandra
p.s. The girls' friend Bushi took out the dent with a highly specialized tool: a handy rock. There's not much I can do about the paint, but I'm going to take it to a shop before deep winter so it doesn't rust.
Jeremy's First Day!
I understood about 2%. Today, most of the time was spent with dictated forms and some lists. There were two nice boys behind me who let me use their books to copy when they were done with them. However, with the Italian handwriting, half of the letters look legible to us and half of them seem to be just vertical lines that are slightly different from each other, so you have to know the language to know which of the possible letters it is. On one of the forms, when the teacher was done reading it out, she let me see the original (printed) page to copy, which made it a whole lot easier. But the boys behind me started out liking me because I was American. And then when they saw my inlaid pencil case, they were amazed and they started worshiping me. And so I think you can imagine what happened when they saw my fountain pen! When I took out my pocket watch, there was a cluster of four or five boys around me.
We have no homework as far as I know, but we do have to get the supplies on the list and copy the forms to take to the parents (yes, handwritten forms). One printed sheet they gave us to take home to our parents was information about a strike that is Friday, and they don't know what time it is, but parents shouldn't be surprised if their kids come home early.
Love,
Jeremy
The First Day Of School
I am so happy that school has started today. I have lot of friends at school. My friends at school are Anna, Andrea, Gabriele, and another Andrea (those whose names I remember). I am happy that I have a red backpack for school. Today is our father's birthday.
Love,
Giacomo
Love,
Giacomo
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
I'm an aunt! Again!
My nephew, Henry Theodore Probst, was born this morning! Mother and baby are fine, and unfortunately I have no other details at this point, but we can't wait to hear more & post some pics!
Love,
Alexandra
Love,
Alexandra
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Already saying goodbye?
Our downstairs neighbors are leaving us for the winter. I have yet to understand it, but they have property in Vicenze and spend the winter there. We hope that they'll come back by Easter. 
They have been so lovely and welcoming, we will certainly miss them! They, in their turn, have loved having the kids around and lots of life (read: noise!). Fortunately, she's rather hard of hearing, so it doesn't disturb her to have the children thumping about above her head; I think he rather likes it -- if it's any indication, he took a picture of all our laundry hanging on the balcony because he found the volume of it so amusing!And a few bonus pictures of my favorite gelato eaters!
Love, Alexandra
Small Loads Only
The title doesn't refer to Alexandra's car.
Today we discovered the hard way that our electrical service is limited to 3 kW. More than that and a breaker trips at the meter. Apparently this is a limitation of our electrical plan, and if we wanted to we could upgrade the plan.
A standard branch circuit in my house in Atlanta is 15 amps at 110 volts. At full load that is 1.5 kW. My house service is 200 amps at 220 volts. Theoretically I could pull 40 kW. Our service here, which was perfectly adequate through the hot August, is not even a 10th of that.
Let's break this down: we can run the oven, the washing machine, or the hair dryer, but not any three of those at the same time. The microwave? We don't have one of those.
The funny thing is that we use so little electricity that we didn't notice right away when the power went out. I had heated up some lunch in the oven (while Florence loaded the washing machine). There was plenty of light in the house so we didn't have the lights on. It wasn't until I went to wash the dishes that we discovered there was no power. The electronically controlled instant water heater wouldn't come on.
Michael
Today we discovered the hard way that our electrical service is limited to 3 kW. More than that and a breaker trips at the meter. Apparently this is a limitation of our electrical plan, and if we wanted to we could upgrade the plan.
A standard branch circuit in my house in Atlanta is 15 amps at 110 volts. At full load that is 1.5 kW. My house service is 200 amps at 220 volts. Theoretically I could pull 40 kW. Our service here, which was perfectly adequate through the hot August, is not even a 10th of that.
Let's break this down: we can run the oven, the washing machine, or the hair dryer, but not any three of those at the same time. The microwave? We don't have one of those.
The funny thing is that we use so little electricity that we didn't notice right away when the power went out. I had heated up some lunch in the oven (while Florence loaded the washing machine). There was plenty of light in the house so we didn't have the lights on. It wasn't until I went to wash the dishes that we discovered there was no power. The electronically controlled instant water heater wouldn't come on.
Michael
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