Fully domesticated ?

I have been made into a stay at home, fully domesticated mom. I had an idea to buy a small poinsettia plant for each teacher. Ago has 6 and Jujee has 4. Augustin "built on" my idea saying we should make a flower and put a chocolate in it. Wellllllllllllll - since he was so gungho and I had some time, I went for it. I MADE teacher presents. ARGGGG. What was I thinking? I was in a bad mood after the first one! We have them done with the additional 6 for all the bidelli( sp?) (janitors).

Note to self : do not be tempted again - you do not like crafting.

Chow for now!

JT

Piemonte - foot of the mountains ( piede dei monti)

Probably not too many have heard of the Piemonte region in Italy - though you may have heard of Turin or Asti a couple of the main cities- and maybe if you are a wine person the village names of Barolo, Barbaresco might be familiar. Here is a little bit more about the area and what we have experienced so far.

Italy is divided and subdivided into administrative sections as follows: region, province, municipality, and fraction. Piemonte is a large region in Italy ( other examples are Lombardi with Milan, Lazio with Rome, and Veneto with Venice ). SB: I have yet to understand exactly the boundaries of the state vs region vs the provinces as far as governance - but probably it has to do with politics back when Cavour was working to unite Italy. There is still politics over how autonomous each region is - you can read up in wikipedia or elsewhere to delve into the intricacies of it all.

Piemonte is known for the food and wine. Carlo and I have definitely explored the gastronomic offerings here and have enjoyed it very much. The white truffles are world famous and cost (like$6 per gram so a grape sized one would be about $30). There is always rumors hat here are not possibly enough truffles in Alba for the world demand and so they may be coming from elsewhere. I like this saying about this: "the only one who can guarantee a truffle's origin is the dog".

There are other typical regional dishes that I have written about before. ONe that is popular right now AND goes well with truffle shavings is fonduta. Fonduta is not like Swiss fondue but rather is simply fontina cheese, melted with milk overnight then warmed and combined with egg yolks. Sort of the richest cheese sauce you could imagine. My fav fonduta dish is over a flan with some sort of vege like asparagus, cardoons, or artichokes. Many have it over simple gnocchi.

In order to "combat" the great food, Carlo and I have taken advantage of the hills surrounding the river valleys ( Po, Tanaro, Belbo) for hikes and biking. When the weather is nice, there are just tons of bicyclists on the roads- in the proper spandex and super kitted out road bikes of course! Italians are always attired and equipped splendidly - no matter the activity. Also lots of motocyclists - gain kitted out royally.

On Monday, for example we plan to walk to Barbaresco and have lunch at Antine www.antine.it/ - then walk back home. About 12 K altogether.

The capital of the region is Turin ( Torino). I love Turin. It is perfectly sized for exploring and abut an hour or so away from here. It has some of everything. It was at one time the capital city when the Savoy's were in power so there is a richness and beauty of the city. I love the covered promenades throughout the center around an radiating from the couple of main piazzas. There are a couple of palaces to tour, many upscale shops, several excellent restaurants, and well I have only been there two times so far. Looking forward to more visits! The Savoy also had other minor palaces here and there throughout Piemonte and of course the royal hangers-on has their castles and villas near the Savoys. This makes for some lovely castles and palaces to visit. Also the skyline is beautiful with the castled hilltops everywhere. We found a little castle in Coazzolo http://www.coazzolo.com/ that is also a B&B - lovely soaring rooms to stay in and you can see our house across the river valley!

We have not yet explored the Alps in the North and West of Piemonte but we will go through the next region north (Valle d'Aosta) and into France to Chamonix next week and plan to do skiing in nearby resorts after the holidays next year! I am looking forward also to some hiking and camping in the western parts or perhaps Valle d'Aosta next spring!

Chow for now & Buon Natale, and Felice Anno Nuovo!

JT

macro versus micro business

My friend Maria asked about why we have so much fresh, local produce whereas the US has so many resources and space and mainly does not have these things...though there are the farmer's markets and that slow food movement is creeping into high-end, gourmet foodies' thoughts and haunts...it is not a widespread thing and in fact organic, local food is sometimes considered as elitist!

I think there are a couple of contributing factors: the micro businesses that fuel Italy's economy and our particular location in Piemonte.

Time has sort of stood still it seems where all the agri -businesses are still quite small and generally family owned. This is true too for restaurants and retail. Note that there ARE big businesses here. The french it seems have learned how to do big business successfully in Italy - they have the big grocery stores: LeClerk, Carrefourre(sp?), and perhaps EsseLunga as well. Further from where we are there is Ikea and the equivalents of Home Depot and Best Buy. But, in Neive lower there is a shoe store, several butchers, several bakeries ( some it seems just storefront someone else's products?), and in Neive upper there are two small markets as well ( kinda of not so good but anyway...). This for a town of 3000!. Then also there is the weekly market - very much like the markets we have - but well not so pricey: The market is: four or five fruit/vege, a fish, a cheese, a meat, four or five clothing, a candy, a hardware, a fabric. The people who use the market are not just the hipster, foodies but the regular residents young and old. In the town 5 km away there is a slightly larger market very similar to Neive's each Thursday. In larger Alba ( 30K people), there is a market twice weekly - and quite a bit larger. It seems to me this is just the way of life that has gone on for very very long time and never changed. Italy kind of skipped the 50-60-70 bigger is better thing. There is some downside too....like the food is *very* provincial here - yeah you eat locally and pretty much only locally- i made some "unsual" pasta sauces that were simply different than the 4 that are here on every menu...( one with basil and lemon, another with sausage and onions only - so you get the idea).

Our particular location too has some influence since 1. it is an agricultural area known for producing fruits and vegetables - not a big city, 2. it is the world center and origin of the slow-food movement ( eat fresh and local is a main mission) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Food and http://www.slowfood.it/ Oh of course the location's climate and soil are the reason it is an agricultural area - but one has to include that very basic thing...

Wine too is small, family businesses. It is surprising, if you have visited wineries in california or even some of them in Oregon, to see how small and unostentatious ( I made up that word ) the wineries are here.

Well that's my babble on this topic!

chow for now-

JT

Missing it or not?

Don't miss the Portland winter weather goddess: "you'll get sunshine when I am good and ready to give it to you - like March or....perhaps May - hhhhhahahahahaha." (evil laugh). It is not warm here now but the sun does come out very clearly and shine for a day or more.

Missing filtered coffee - i like my "watery" coffee, espresso is the caffeine shot not the coffee sipping whilst watching the fog lift ritual.

Missing NPR on nearly all the time ( except for the music shows on OPB - don't care for them s'much). BBC tv is just not the same.

Missing tumble dryer - though not as much as I thought.

Missing unscented laundry soap - eau de Dash "Meadow Fresh" is my new cologne :P

Don't miss driving on I-5.

Don't miss our drafty house - the Neive house is so well insulated, the temp fluctuates mere points of a degree over hours!

Don't miss fast food (and...people I worked/lunched with know I am no food snob when it comes to food choices!)

Missing ordering online ( shipping here is prohibitive)

Missing buying at US prices :-(

Don't miss US wine prices :-)

Missing spicy foods

Missing friends and family

(tunnel+bridge)^85

The drive from Neive to Antibes is mostly autostrada quite easy driving as long as you look ahead for slow trucks pulling out from the right and ultra fast cars zooming up on the left. First drive South on a flat, wide drive then over the pass in the Apennines’. There were inches of snow there today during our drive. At Savona you turn left and the coastal highway drive begins. The scenery is inspiring, sweeping views of the Med and inland between the crags of the Apennines’ as they dive into the sea. The road is tunnel after bridge after tunnel after bridge with no “solid” road anywhere. The temperature to has risen about 10 degrees and there are patches of sun warming instead of the clouds and fog. Then you hit the Grimaldi tunnel and suddenly all the license plates have ‘F’ instead of ‘I’ and the driving is a little less…exhilarating. You are using the “sortie” instead of the “uscita”. Then sortie 44 and in a few minutes you are in the slightly shabby 2 star you have chosen for a base to explore Biot, Grasse, Antibes and the other villages of the Cote D’Azure.

A tout A l’heure!!

JT

Learning Italian - Part 1: Intro, and Julian's path.

4 of us here in Italy, each of us learning Italian in different ways. This post will be a work in progress noting my observations of how this process happens for each of us. Yes, each of us - although you'd never know it from hearing me speak Italian as perfectly and modestly as I do, even an ingrained "mother tongue" gets rusty in certain subtle (and not so subtle) ways when you are removed from "the culture" in the way I have been for the last, oh, 30 years. More about that later.

So, each of us learns differently in striking ways. Let's start with the kids. Everyone always tells you "the younger they start learning a new language the better", or "that (whatever "that" is) is the perfect age to learn". But what do they really mean? Here's what they mean (I think): the big difference is whether you already know how to read and write another language, or not. This is, in my opinion, the big difference between Augustin (8) and Julian (5). They are both making unfathomable strides in their capacity to understand and speak - and, in Augustin's case, write - the language. But in not-s subtly different ways.

Julian is not beginning to randomly insert complete sentences in Italian in regular conversation at home. Not a word here and there. He doesn't struggle to think about something he wants to say. He has internalized a situation from school, and a canned sentence - in his case, a series of sounds - that goes along with that. Because he parses no words in those sounds (or at least only has a tenuous concepts of separate words) he does not bother wondering "am I pronouncing this one right", "does this end in 'a' or ''o'" - he blurts it out. Naturally. For example: we were playing Legos (of course) the other night. I was messing around with a construction he made. He nonchalantly said to me, "No Daddy, non si fa cosi', guarda: si fa cosi!". Wha? Did my kid just speak to me in Italian? Perfect intonation, pronounciation, and all the other -ations. "Not like that, look, like this!". BOOM! Obviously something that came from a teacher (thankfully none of his speak any English) in a classroom situation. In the evening, going to bed he says "Giu' la testa!" ("Put your head down!"), something he obviously picked up at school at naptime (he loves that....). These fully formed, conscious sentences are the culmination of three months of full immersion at school. Julian is quiet and shy and we more than once we wondered if his propensity for isolating himself would mean he would not learn as quickly or as much as Augustin. Boy were we wrong. He is always sensing his environment (just as he is at home when his brother takes over the environment, on the surface, but he is right there with the conversation, even if he doesn't appear to be. A few weeks ago we got the first few glimpses that his brain was working overtime. Once the lights are off in the evening, and the boys are still awake, he would whisper in himself random snippets, half sentences, unfinished, in Italian. Over and over. The same three words. Next night, a different few more words. Like the brain, which had already learned them, was trying to hook up to the speech motor systems for output. You imagine that at the input end there was a similar adaptation where the eardrum was drumming strange noises into the head and at the other end the brain was waking and asking "what the heck" and sharpening its listening circuitry. OK I am engineering here. Anyway, a fascinating hidden process went on between the initial contact, a few months of apparent disengagement, to now, where he naturally is compelled almost, unconsciously to say it in Italian. Sometimes I think he doesn't even realize he used Italian, and surprises himself once he sees our reaction and realizes what happened. This also is happening at school, also out of the blue; the teacher yesterday reported that he walked up to her and announced "E' finita la colla" ("There's no more glue"). Just like that.

Sticking still with Julian for the moment, I will introduce another thread of thought about this, namely that personality has much to do with the ability of one to use a language as anything else. Julian is shy and somewhat of a perfectionist in certain things. In fact, I am reminded that he was really not into speaking in English way back when he started talking. He would rather just point at things he wanted untli one day we suspected that he actually could talk but was not doing so out of ? shyness? (lazyness?). We forced him to ask for what he wanted by name and lo and behold, "Pasta" came out. Julian also tweaks 7 pieces of legos for hours until they are perfectly exactly arranged in the very shape he means them to be arranged. Symmetrical, color balanced and 'fully upgraded' as he calls his ships. And so it id with Italian. He is not going to say anything until it's right. And when he says it, it is. When I made a game-quiz the other night asking what fall fruit we are likely to encounter more of in the next few weeks, and gave the clue that it began with ... C ... A ... S ... Augustin had already come out with a half dozen different semi-on target option, when Julian, quiet until then, nailed it with 'castagne'. 'What the heck?' I am not sure how he knew that.

Which brings us to Augustin. In the next post.

My first run-in with Italian healthcare and an emergency room

To be honest the worst part was the symptoms of nearly fainting, rather than the wound itself.

Went to the emergency room for the first time in my life here in Italy in Alba ( pop ~ 30K). I had punctured my hand between thumb and forefinger. Although the cut was not actually very big - i had no idea how deep plus my hand was twanging as if my fingers were plugged into a socket and I had no feeling in part of my index finger. OK so triage-wise I was not a code red, but anyway off we drove to Alba. ( I spent many minutes at the house sitting outside in the cold air trying not to faint between the time of injury and time of driving to Alba.)

The clerk at the emergency room (pronto soccorso) asked for basic identifying information to register me ( insurance info was not asked for). I was in the emergency waiting room with a few others at 5 pm on a Thursday. Two elderly people came in by ambulance while I was waiting. I wanted perhaps 20 minutes then was seen.

The visit was fairly routine, the doctor (or nurse not sure which ) looked at the wound, cleaned it, asked to put in a stitch - which I refused as not necessary (did not want more fainting symptoms), and then they consulted, by phone, an orthopaedic specialist about the lack of feeling in my finger. The visit cost 30 Euro. Had I been an official resident or Italian citizen it would have been free. If I had seen specialist it would have been 60 Euro.

To follow-up with a specialist about my finger is pretty much like the US timewise unless I want to pay a private clinic ( probably three times the cost for me as if I used the specialists at the public hospital). It takes months to get an appointment. I found this to be the same in the US when I was following up with a specialist for my wrist - about two months to get an appointment.

That's it for now!

JT