Well it wasn't muthas turkey dinner but it was cooked served and cleaned for us so no complaints.  The menu was more Italian than colonial American with sliced turkey, squash flan, green beans wrapped in prosciutto, and some sort of stuffing made into a sort of loaf.  Hmmm.  I miss the home cooking and the company of family.  Heavy sigh.  MIL is healing well and rather enjoying her time at the rehab clinic because everyone tells her she doesn't look er age (she doesn't) and how quickly she's recovering (she is) so it's good for her ego (which needs to be stoked).  She comes home Monday so we'll see how that goes.

Thursday morning I talked to my classes about Thanksgiving and had a truly international/culture shock moment.  The class I was speaking to is made up of 20 six year old children from across the globe.  There is only 1 American in the group so I was explaining why we celebrate Thanksgiving and what we do.  I mentioned that we eat traditional food.  A little Japanese girl asked if we ate sushi.  I said no.  A Turkish girl asked if we ate kebabs.  No.  I heard tortilla, pasta, etc etc.  with every different nationality suggesting their traditional food.  I think I needed to be more specific.  It was great.  I wish I could have recorded it.

Anyhow, this lousy month is coming to a close.  It started with the terrible accident with Grace's classmate and was followed by the attacks in Paris and all the fallout.  Let's pray for a more peaceful December.   xxoo me

I'm home sick again today.  Can't seem to beat this bug.  Would probably have been fine today if I hadn't come up with the great idea of meeting our friends in Florence for lunch yesterday.  Doesn't sound bad til you consider that Florence is a 4 hour drive away!  We left at 7 am and were home by 11pm.  It was great to see them, Florence is ever lovely and the weather was beautiful, lunch was yummy but I don't know as we'll be doing that again any time soon.  The drive was exhausting especially for GP who did most of it.  Poor guy.  I put him through a lot...  It was a fine little adventure though.  We drove down following the Maritime Alps to the Apennines Mountains that make a spine down Italy.  It was gorgeous.  It has already snowed up in the mountains so we went from grey autumn here to bright snowy winter and down into the warm spring-like sunshine of Tuscany.  I think I got over-tired though because coughed and sneezed all night.  That'll teach me for gallivanting about.

Just realized I never posted this.  Must have been the cold medicine.  Better now!  xxoo me

It hasn't rained and there hasn't been even a puff of wind in weeks.  The smog is terrible.  My eyes and throat burn and the air is actually visible.  Bombs haven't killed me but pollution might.  A little gallows humor there.  We are all watching the events unfold and thinking that this is a unique and dangerous time in history.  But no!  Funnily, today at work I came upon some old history books called "Decades" in my struggle to reorganize the library.  They are short magazine-type books talking about the '60's, '70's and '80's.  That might seem like yesterday to many of us but is certainly considered "history" to our students.  If you look back, the '60's and '70's were rife with terrorist attacks and coups.  Especially in Europe.  They were mostly communist factions but dead is dead and there was a lot of that.  When GP was in school in the '70s, his bus had to go through road blocks in the city.  The Red Brigade was blowing up things left and right and there were assassinations and kidnappings weekly.  There were the Palestinian hijackings and bombings of airplanes and the attacks at the Olympic Games in Germany in 1972.  This isn't new.  But every time something happens it feels so raw and as though we've lost our footing.  One would think we'd smarten up but humanity seems determined to wipe itself out.  So we go on going on.  This weekend there is lunch with MIL at the clinic and then Sunday in Florence.  It will be a loooooong day as the drive is 4 hours each way but our friends the W's will be there and we think they're worth it.  Plus they are delivering Baking Soda, a rare commodity in these parts where people actually cook with yeast!  xxoo me