I went to the dentist this afternoon which is something I never thought I'd do here because while Italy is great at the doctor stuff, out living us and having lower infant mortality rates and such, dentists have never seemed to be their forte.  Italians of my generation and up have pretty lousy teeth.  There is no twice a year visit routine and braces are something that just came into vogue about 20 years ago.  I've also heard horror stories from locals and expats alike, so have always been very wary.  I still go to the same dental office in Brunswick that I started with at age 7, (just a few years ago).  Well let me say that I am pleasantly surprised by my visit today.  This is a fairly new facility that employs 30 dentists and innumerable assistants and technicians.  It is in a huge faceless building, (I really couldn't even tell you the color), in one of the business/industrial areas outside of Torino.  Inside the place is ultra modern, all glass and metal, clean and efficient.  I hardly had to wait at all, had wonderful service and all for a lot less than in the States.  How un-Italian!  Of course this place is private and not covered under the National Health Care.  The dentists are all bright, young things.  My assigned dentist is a shockingly handsome guy who studied in England.  He is barely past puberty.  Only the facial hair stopped me from asking him if his mother let him play with those sharp implements.  I was in and out so quickly I had time to read a few chapters of my book while waiting to pick up Grace after tennis.  Happy Thanksgiving to all!  Wish we were there to share it with you.  June seems a long way off.  xxoo me

We had our first snowfall last Thursday afternoon.  It started while school was still in session so the kids were pretty much uncontrollable by the day’s end.  It was one of those autumn storms that came so fast the roads were covered in no time.  Even Northern Italy is completely useless in snow.  The buses that made it up the hill to the school got stuck on the way back to the city.  Some took hours to deliver kids, not arriving till 8 or 9 at night!  Many buses didn’t even get that far and a load of students and teachers were stranded at school.  I had a full carload heading out.  There were big, heavy, wet flakes that slap the windshield and get the roads greasy and sloppy.  In Maine a sprinkle of sand and salt and some good snow tires would have been enough, but here you’d think it was Armageddon.  There were cars abandoned on hills.   Roads higher up were completely closed.  I saw no plows, no sand nor salt.  Our apartment is just below the snow line so though leaving school I drove through it, at certain point the snow turned to rain.  The Italians were a mess.  They drive like Floridians.  Because the roads weren’t plowed and the higher up in the hills the heavier the snow and the steeper the climb, I have two friends who had to leave their cars beside the road and walk home.  Friday it rained on and off all day and it had all melted by evening.  What an adventure!  They're still talking about it.  These are the same people who drive an hour up into the mountains and ski all weekend, but evidently snow up there is very different than snow down here.  Go figure.  xxoo me

Friday night we had an early Thanksgiving dinner with friends.  The couple that hosted are like us, he's Italian and she's American.  There was also a couple from the States who are here with the auto companies and a guy from South African who was there just because.  The food was great as it's so nice to have something not Italian at times.  I had shopped at the market for "roots" not generally eaten here and one gal had smuggled in cranberries.  The turkey was a 10 pounder that seemed enormous to the Italians, (these people eat songbirds), but could fit inside our usual bird.  But alas, no Macy's Day Parade and football on the T.V., no family "onions" and no family.  Sniff.  Next Thursday, official Thanksgiving, is a dinner at the school that we probably will miss as we're leaving Friday morning for a long weekend in Lyon.  Grace and I leave first because we have no school, (parent/teacher conferences), and GP will join us in the evening.  We are meeting the Wheelers at 2:30 in front of their hotel and I can't wait!  Hopefully there will be no complications and we'll all get where we should when we should but with trains one never knows.  More on that when we get back.

Yesterday I has a hair appointment with "super Mario" my pocket, martial arts master, hairdresser with his incredibly tight jeans and tight little......never mind.  Anyhow, I had three hours of color, cut, head massage, dry and do.  I came out feeling and looking great and it will last until my first wash tomorrow morning.  I understand these women who spend so much time and money getting pampered, but just don't have the time and money to do it!  While I was being spoiled, GP and Grace went to check out the Chocolate Fair.  They said it was huge but expensive and God knows I don't need anymore chocolate so I avoided it.  Last night Grace had a couple friends over for an all night web show on one of their boy bands.  The screams and tears lasted until 4 am.  Ahhhh.  To be 15 again.  What an emotional roller coaster.  It's now past noon and I haven't heard a peep from them.  Eventually I'll feed them and then want to get out for a walk.  It's bright and cold and there is a design show in the city that we want to see.  xxoo me

Sunday I was back at the Apple Fest in Cavour as I had promised my German friend that I'd take her to see it.  When we went last week Grace was being obstinate, (shocking), and refused to walk up the huge rock/hill, (that looks like a meteor dropped from the heavens), that the town built is around.  So GP and I left her sitting on the stone steps at the beginning of the trail and sauntered away feeling very proud of our parenting skills, ("Well she can just sit and wait! We'll teach her!").  We made it about a third of the way up the enormously steep path, got out of breath and decided we'd do it another time because "we didn't want to leave Grace alone for too long".  Uh huh.  Anywho... so this time my girlfriend and I walked to the top, with many pauses to catch our breath and calm our racing hearts, and had a great view of the town below.  We would have had an even better view of the mountains a short distance away but it was overcast. Alas. We ate apple stuff and drank apple stuff and bought apples and apple stuff and then came home.  Next weekend is the Chocolate Fest in Torino!  xxoo me

Almost at the top!  Monument to some Saint.

The view over Cavour.

Wow.  Just a quick add-on.  You know how people are always saying "kids today..." in a contemptuous manner?  Well Saturday at the TEDx event I heard 2 twelve year-olds, a 14 year old and a 16 year old talk about subjects of interest to them.  (The model UN, Girl Up and a kids referendum.)  Wow, again.  There is no way on God's Green Earth that I would have had the presence or the self-confidence to do what these kids did.  And I was certainly nowhere as profound or intellectual or knowledgeable.  And mind you they all spoke in English as second language speakers, for 15 minutes, without notes.  Holy Moly.  My kid was not one of them.....

It's another beautiful day.  Sunny, high 50's, slight breeze.  Not at all what they said it would be or what it should be this time of year.  Not that I'm complaining mind you, it's just that it upsets my Maine sensibilities.  We there have very distinct seasons; summer, fall, winter and mud.  Here, not so much.  Though shop windows are packed with wools and leather, the temps are telling me it not even sock season.  We're just back from the big market in the old center of Torino.  I haven't been since the last time I went with my Canadian market friend who has since returned to Vancouver.  I love that market.  We bought "exotics" like cilantro, hot peppers, avocado, sweet potatoes and lime from the North African stands, and local product like turnips, carrots, tiny new potatoes, mandarin oranges and gorgeous tomatoes from the Italian sellers.   Now I'm set for Mexican some night this week and have started collecting the necessities for our Friday (next) Thanksgiving feast with friends.  We also wandered back behind the fish market to the area run by the Central Africans and Southern Italians which is the used market.  Much of the stuff is probably stolen as house break-ins are very common.  But there are also antiques and art and strangely, stands of new electronics.  That's where we were going as GP needed a couple USB plugs.  There is another part of the market that sells home goods and plastic wear and cheap imported products from China run by, shockingly, the Chinese.  The Roma, gypsies, have their own area and sell silky, shiny scarves and clothing.  On a bright, airy day like today the place was a feast for the senses with the smells of spices and fresh herbs and baked goods and all of the colors of the clothing and curtains and bed-covers, and the sounds of thousands of hawkers and buyers in a dozen different languages.  Wonderful.  Grace and I are leaving in a bit to go to a TED conference at the school.  If you don't know TED look it up on-line.  It's a website of "talks".  The program today is an opportunity TED gives to students around the globe to discuss what interests them, (called TED X).  Two of Grace's friend's are doing discourses.  One on "Girl UP", an empowering women group, and the other on something to do with Baha'i.  Should be interesting.  Then tonight Grace goes to the grandparents for the night and GP and I have another dinner out in the wine region at some restaurant that we needed to book 2 months ago.  I'm ready for a nap.  xxoo me

I suffer from CVS!!  For those of you not in the know, that's Computer Vision Syndrome.   I have been spending the vast amount of my hours at work staring at my stupid computer screen, checking in and out books, entering new material into the system, writing lesson plans, doing research for teachers.  I come home with red, tired, watery eyes.  I hate it.  It is one of only many reasons I am technology phobic.  Our school is trying to hail itself as the most technologically advanced school is Europe or Italy or the world, or something.  They are pushing the I-Pad program which means they want all teachers to use on-line sources instead of textbooks, and they want students to record all notes and write all papers on a device.  The aim is to be paper-free in a few years.  As one of the few school printers/copiers is in the library, I can attest to the fact that it hasn't happened yet.  This is what IS happening.  Teachers who cannot issue the piles of textbooks they have on shelves in their classes are photocopying, (paper), these same books, scanning the photocopies and sending the pages via their teacher "portals" to the students.  The students read the info on-line but then print, (more paper), the exercises in order to do the work, scan the finished product and then send it back to the teacher.  Is that not flipping insane?  What's more, the school issued I-Pads to the kids, not laptops, and though they can be used somewhat for note taking, any real writing can't be done on an I-Pad.  Try it.  So students need to use computers at home to do all of their actually writing work.  Mind you all of this means little actually writing with pen and paper which will cause all sorts of problems to the younger students later on in their school careers because the exams in the DP years (Diploma Years or 11 & 12 in the IB program), are all handwritten and they are long.  Students are expected to write for upwards of three hours for some of these exams and if they aren't accustomed to holding a pencil in their hands they will be in deep doodoo.  So while our school is trying to be "technologically advanced", the IB program that they adhere to is lagging way behind and is more concentrated on what the students learn than with the aid of what device.  Today we had a staff meeting where all of this was being discussed and the Headmaster said something about the library going to all e-books in a few years.   I plan retiring way before that happens.  I'm going to rest my weary old red eyes now.  xxoo me

Italians have a weird relationship with their dead.  I suppose it's much the same in many Latin countries but I don't live there, I live here, so I tend to think it's uniquely Italian.  Whereas in the States we dedicate community funds to the Library or sport's venues and parks, here an inordinate amount of time, thought and money goes into maintaining their cemeteries.  Cemeteries are like little marble cities with paved roads and walkways, lighting and high walls and gates.  Families have their own tombs if they've been in town for a while, but people are packed away in drawers in walls if they're new to the area and tomb space is all taken up.   Families compete with neighboring tombs for who has the best flower arrangements which are changed seasonally. There is a lot of eyebrow raising and tsking coming predominantly from old women walking amongst the graves.  The arrangements are very elaborate on Nov. 1st, "Il Giorno dei Morti" or "day of the dead", the equivalent of memorial day.  Old family feuds are usually brought up at this time of year when one family member might have disrespected an ancestor with an inadequate flower display or shoddy "tomb keeping", (weekly sweeping, dusting, polishing etc).  As well as flowers, there are electric candles or lanterns on all the tombs and drawers, though I don't know why because cemeteries are closed up tight at night.  Often times there are rows of framed photos of the deceased on display going right back to sepia prints from the turn of the last century.  The more "upscale" areas of the cemetery have statues and cypress trees lining the "streets".  Apart from the potted flowers and the rare Cypress, there is little green.  No grass, no shade trees.  This is a place for suffering and reminiscing, not picnicking.  But the most bizarre thing has been the introduction of technology.  Some cemeteries are now installing bar codes on tombs so that using your phone, you can download information about the deceased.  I guess each corpse will have their own "profile page" just like on Facebook.  I don't know which is creepier.   The reason I thought of this is that as we were leaving the Apple Festival in Cavour yesterday we walked past the cemetery all lit up like a Christmas tree.  I really hope no one ever stuffs me in a drawer for eternity.  I get claustrophobic.  xxoo me

Illuminated "drawers" at the cemetery in Cavour

 

PARTY!  OK.  So maybe it was more like "party".  Well whatever it was, last night GP and I went to a colleague's birthday festivities.  She is the Pre-K teacher at the school and she's quite the character.  She's British, speaks 4 languages fluently, has traveled, lived, worked all over the globe and looks like a tubby little grandmother.  At Halloween she was dressed in full ABBA regalia including skin tight florescent bell-bottoms and a huge Afro.  Her partner of three years is a man from Liverpool who sings in clubs professionally.  Last night they had various singer friends at the party and it was like being in a night club.  The party was held on their terrace where they'd strung up lights and erected a cabana for food and drinks.  The entertainment was fabulous.  One of the gal singers is an American raised Ghanian who has lived in Italy for 35 years.  She as dressed in tradition Ghanian gear with the head wrapping and flowing robe.  She was gorgeous swaying up at the mike singing jazz.  We had intended to just drop in and say "Happy Birthday" but the music was so good we stayed for 4 hours.  I even danced!  At one point they sang "You Can Leave Your Hat On" and a few of the older gals, (older than me even), tried to get our 6'4" South African Gym teacher to do a strip tease.  He wasn't going for it though he did dance around with a big straw hat on, surrounded by fawning women.
Today we're going to an apple festival that we discovered last year and enjoyed.  Then it's dinner with the Grandparents.  Finally really looking and feeling like fall. The leaves have changed, (as much as they do), and it's getting chilly.  Today is bright and sunny so should be nice to walk around and munch on apple goodies.  xxoo me

I think I've mention, about 47 times, that we live in pretty tight quarters.  A small two bedroom apartment with, thankfully, a terrace and small "garden".  When the weather is warm enough we can move outside but now that it's autumn we a restricted to our 900+ square feet.  So entertaining more than a couple is pretty tough.  Tomorrow night Grace has 5 friends coming for at least the night and possibly the weekend.  There is a new girl added to the already interesting group of 5.  This one has just arrived from Australia and has a strange resemblance to Grace.  That is 6 very long legged 15 year old girls in this place.  I don't know how to feed them or how to sleep them.  This will be interesting.  Italians don't do sleepovers and in fact friends, once past puberty, don't often go to each others houses.  They meet places.  And do stuff.  I'm thinking GP and I may have to take a nice long walk in the city tomorrow night.  Or lock ourselves in our room.  There's only so much teen angst I can handle.  Only so many hours of "One Direction" I can listen to.  If you are not the mother of a teen girl they are the current "Beatles", talent excluded.  They only have the "cute" factor.  And in fact they are adorable but I'll stop now so as not to sound like a dirty old lady.  I want no comments about that!  Wish me luck.  xxoo me

Main Entrance

One of the many Irish Sweets Shops that we had to visit

The usurped cemetery and gravestones

Friday was Halloween and the partying started early.  People were already dressed when we left the hotel in the morning.  The Irish take their festivities very seriously.  The day was dedicated to the justifiably famous Dublin Zoo.  It was great.   The zoo is located in Phoenix Park, one of  the largest urban parks in Europe.  We saw rhinos arguing, giraffes chewing their tongues and lions doing things that should only be done behind closed doors.  Grace didn't think it was amusing when I yelled, "Cover the children's eyes!".  I thought it was very funny as did the various Irish parents with their 5 children each.  Man these people are prolific!  The park is a couple miles from the center of Dublin and the zoo itself is so big it takes a few hours of walking to see it, so with all that exercising we were ready for an afternoon rest.  We had lunch in a lovely little restaurant where GP and I the best Irish Stew and Grace a leek and goat cheese tart.  I'm hungry just thinking about it.  When we went in it was sunny, when we went out it was pouring.  That seems to be Irish weather.  They say you get all 4 seasons in one day and how right they are.  We were alternating between hot sunshine, autumn winds and pouring rain; either too warm or too cold.  That night we wandered the center and people watched.  We saw lots of naughty nurses and maids and an enormous number of vikings.  I had wanted to visit a famous cemetery where many Irish writers were buried, (it seemed so Halloween-y),  but it has become a skater's park and the church beside it is an Italian restaurant.  The gravestones are now all piled up against a wall of the park.  Seems very disrespectful to me and not very Catholic!  I do wonder where the bodies have been moved to?
Saturday, our last day, we went to a little local craft market and then headed out to see Ireland's shining star, the Guinness Brewery.  It covers something like 65 acres of the city.  We didn't go in the museum but just wandered around the perimeters, (for ages), and breathed in that lovely scent of beer belch.  By this time Grace had given up on us and was happily ensconced in the hotel and refused to walk another mile.  So we compromised  and spent the late afternoon in the main shopping district.
We flew out early Sunday morning and were back in time to do 3 loads of laundry and go to bed early.  Dublin was fun and definitely worth a visit but, unlike so many places, I won't feel the need to return.  Next time I go to Ireland I want to see the countryside and the sea.  In April maybe?  xxoo me

Dublin is London's, grubby, naughty, little brother.  Where London is all wide avenues, Georgian townhouses, gorgeous and austere museums and official buildings; Dublin is dark, wet newspaper strewn, narrow streets lined with pubs. SO MANY PUBS!  Mind you I love pubs and there really are some fabulous ones there, but how many can one city support?  Evidently a lot.  I looked this up.  There are approximately 1,100 pubs in Dublin with a population of 527,612 which makes about 1 pub for every 480 people.  That includes all the children, (lots), and all the teetotalers, (few I'm thinking).  Wow. 
Grace and I got in on Wednesday at noon after a trip of planes, trains and automobiles, (and a bus).  I didn't even give her time to check Facebook, (that's a story for another time),before dragging her out to see the sights.  We had lunch first in a great place called O'Neill's near Trinity College.  Of course it's a pub so I had to try my first beer of the trip.  It's a cool old place with many staircases and doorways leading to many little rooms for imbibing.  It looks like something out of Harry Potter.   After lunch we went to Trinity College to see the library and the Book of Kells.  I could live in that library.  It is so beautiful and it smells wonderful, like wood polish and dusty attic.  After that we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering round the town getting a feel for it.  Dublin center is quite small.  Most of the buildings are no more than four stories high and all you need to see is within a half hour walk from the "old town" center.
GP got back to the hotel in time for dinner and as Grace wasn't up for going out, (she'd rather starve and spend uninterrupted hours on-line), it was just the two of us.  GP was in Dublin for an Internet conference and so could get free beverages at various locales around the city.  To get in to these places one had to have a bracelet that identified them as a conference attendee, so being a sneaky Italian, he fashioned one for me out of the cord used for his ID tag.  He was/is supremely proud of this.  We started our evening out in Temple Bar, an area near the river (Liffey!), that looks like the French Quarter in New Orleans.  The streets are lined with Pubs and restaurants that spill out onto the sidewalks.  There is wonderful live Irish music in almost every pub and thankfully most of the streets are pedestrian because they are so clogged with revelers!  This, mind you, was a Wednesday evening in October.  The first place we went to was a gorgeous historic pub that must have once been a Victorian Men's Club.  It is 4 floors of mahogany bars and balconies looking down on the central 1st floor room.  Each floor has various seating areas with fireplaces. It was all decorated for Halloween with 3D projected ghosts flying all over the place.  Next we went to another, less upscale pub to listen to some music.  The band played traditional Irish music and we sat in a tiny cubbyhole with 2 seats drinking our beers.  We had burgers for dinner at a restaurant near-by run by an American woman.  The food was all organic, a big thing in Ireland, with a policy of "homegrown" products.  Very yummy.
On Thursday, Grace and I wandered around the Port District which is where all the money was spent when Ireland went through their short economic boom in the late '90's.  All the old warehouses were either torn down and replaced by mega modern office blocks and apartments or refurbished into shopping centers and park areas.  Unfortunately the boom didn't last and much of this area is empty.  At the same time as the building boom, the country had thousands of service jobs that needed to be filled and a lot of Eastern Europeans came over to work and stayed.  Now it seems as though half the city is from the ex Soviet Block.  I had expected to find the city packed with Chinese and Indian restaurants like in London but we saw very few.  That afternoon we visited St. Stephen's Park, Dublin Castle, and St. Patrick's Cathedral before returning and crashing in the hotel for a couple hours.  We were too tired from hours of walking to go out for dinner so we picnic-ed on Irish Cheddar, Smoked Salmon, Soda Bread and of course, beer.  Yum.  Unfortunately there were a few little hiccups with our picnic.  First GP decided to chill our beer under the cold water tap assuming that any overflow would go down the appropriate overflow drain.  But this being part of Great Britain with their infamous plumbing, the overflow drain wasn't hooked up to the drain pipe.  In fact it wasn't hooked up to any pipe.  It was only when we heard a strange splashing sound coming from the bathroom did we discover that there was an inch of water on the floor.  Oops.  Then while trying to cut the very sharp cheddar with the flimsy plastic knife we'd snatched at the supermarket, a piece of cheese flew up into the air and landed in my eye.  Never try this at home.  Cheddar stings.  So I ran into the bathroom slipping and sliding on the wet floor and started slashing water in my face when GP called me for something.  Of course I answered "I can't hear you!  I have cheese in my eye!".  It would have been better had I blinded myself with the cheddar than to have watched the show we turned on after dinner.  Only the British.  It was called "Embarrassing Medicine" and is a show about real life cases of bizarre and consequently embarrassing medical issues.  There was a man who couldn't pee and we had a nice close up of him being catheterized.  Then there was the woman whose vagina was closing up.  This is the honest to God truth.  They put her up in stirrups for the world and everybody watching BBC to see, with a doctor explaining how her lady parts were too shallow while poking her repeatedly with his rubber gloved finger to show exactly how shallow!  Grace at this point started screaming "Turn it off, turn it off!"  I did. To be continued...  xxoo me

Cheers from Dublin!

Grace in stairway of pub #1