As the school year draws to a close, at the International School we get an extra two weeks of school, as Italian school finished earlier and all the italian kids are off to the many campi estivi ( summer camps ).
We will be starting a new phase in our sojourn in Italy, not a sojourn for the ragazzi though, they will start at the Italian school ' Malpighi ' in September, so they are busy with their tutor Nicola twice a week, Poverini!!
We will miss some aspects of the Bubble, oh, I mean the International school. We have met some great people there, in the early days of being here and trying to figure things out without many language skills it was easy being surrounded by english speakers.
Now after three years its finally time to fly the coop. We are ready for the next challenge.
Not sure if the boys are though, Ewan has been rather grumpy of late, and the playstation is foremost in his thoughts as an escape I presume.
Although he does now have very straight and perfect teeth after his braces have just been removed by our wonderful italian orthodontist Christina, like all good dentists she likes a chat, the fortunate thing is she chats to me and Im not in the chair, about where we are going and where we should go on our travels.
This school year Ewan was lucky to have a wonderful piano teacher, Nora from Portland, Oregon who came here with her family, Liz, Alex and Sophie on sabbatical. She is now going back to the US, we will miss her a lot, she became a wonderful friend, Ill miss our cups of tea and chats about music and her events of the day writing her book on Medieval music and Boccaccio, prior to Ewans lesson.
Also Ilse and Sven from Belgium, who we came to know over the year are off to Shanghai. We wish they weren't leaving. We will miss them too and Ilse's laugh.
I suppose that is the life at the International School, people come and people go, we have met another great couple Gina and Stefan, so will enjoy them whilst they too are here.
Luckily for the boys their classmates in the boy dept are all Italian and they will remain in Bologna so they will hopefully catch up with the three boys in their class Michelangelo, Gianandrea e Matteo.
The new school they will have 100 kids in their year so potentially lots of friends to choose from.
Hunter has really got into world Cup soccer fever and has been up most nights to all hours watching, along with us after two 230am nights on the weekend. He went to Michelangelo's for a sleeepover with Ewan to watch Italy and England, Ully, Mickeys mum told me Hunter was the only one who would'nt wear the italian jersey, I think he was still upset after Australia lost the other night to Chile.
The joys of the bureaucracy of Italy we have been waiting nearly two months for our Permesso di Soggiorno, which is our permission card to stay in the country, I normally would'nt stress over these matters, but apparently you can't travel in Europe without it, and we plan on doing a lot of plane travel in the holidays, hence my concern if it interferes with flitting around the place.
There are now local police at the Questura, and I thought it seemed more efficient when we went to do our paperwork and fingerprints, no stupid questions like Residenza Elettiva? , non ho capito!!!I think they seem to think why on earth would you elect to come here voluntarily, siete Matti!!
As they say, all good things take time, not excluding the permesso, we need it to stay in this wonderful country despite its bureaucracy.
Well the skies are a bit grey today with rain and humidity, it has put a dent in my trips to the tennis club now the pool is open its very relaxing by the pool with the cicadas and loving my sessions with my trainer Fiorenza who is helping me to get my knee stronger after my skiing accident in January. Still can't run for a bus though, luckily I don't take the bus.
Art Class has wound up for the year with a morning of 'plein air' drawing at the Lido di Casalecchio now dont get excited the Lido is not what you think, it was lovely in the shade drawing a structure on the riverbank but its basically a park with people bringing along their banana lounges to sunbake along a murky river, bit strange.... I remember when I first started going to art classes with Antonio two years ago as an excuse to improve my italian, as I am no artist. I bought along some friends from the International School and it started a group of us that has expanded and now English seems to be the flavour down our end of the studio. I do love this morning with cups of tea and cake and Cookies that the die hard Italian Signora's have baked, that have been frequenting for years.
My last picture was of a sculpture at Certosa Cemetery, I think this was a dark period in my life just after my skiing accident, will now move on to brighter things after the holidays with new inspiration after we will have visited Basel, Puglia, Spain, Paris and London.
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