I haven't been writing.  Haven't been doing anything not strictly obligatory.  I'm too depressed.  I've been drowning my sorrows in red wine and chocolate every evening before going to bed early and having nightmares.  This guy is gonna be the death of me.  Or at least of my waistline.

My American friend C from school convinced me to go out on Tuesday to relax and get out of our heads so to speak.  We went to a Hammam, (a Turkish Bath).  If you have never been to a Hammam, I'd highly recommend it but you'll probably have to leave the country to do so as we're gonna kick out all them Muslims (and them Hispanics too!)

The first big influx of Muslims here were the Moroccans in the late '70s early eighties.  When I came here in '84, they were all single young men doing anything for a dim; washing car windows, digging ditches, doing jobs Italians refused to do.  Now after a generation there is a large North African community in the central market area of the city with their own shops and restaurants and mosques.  The men had brought over their wives and their children have grown up more Italian than Moroccan, dressed in Western clothes and refusing to speak to their parents in Arabic.  Typical teens. 

The Hamman we went to is on a tiny alley across from a kebab place.  When we walked in the owner greeted us with little cups of soap with the consistency and color of earwax and sent us through to the baths.  They have a lovely little central open air space with a fountain in the middle.  In warm weather the women sit here and drink tea and relax.  (Men only get one evening a week here.  Gals only.) On the other side there are the warm rooms.  Some Hammams are large but in this case the place was tiny.  We stripped to our bathing suit bottoms and slathered ourselves with the earwax which foams up like crazy.  Then we sat in a tiled sauna for 20 minutes to soften up for "the scrub".  Next we showered and then the attendant told us to lay on a marble slab and she proceeded to scrub us down with a bath mitt made of fabric like sandpaper.  It was amazing and disgusting at the same time.  The dead skin comes off in rolls!  Oooooooooh it felt soooo gooood!!!  A half an hour of that and I felt new.  Finally, she plastered us with some kind of mud and we sat in the sauna for another half an hour.  When we left we were light as feathers!  The Hammam was filled with BIG naked women and their kids all chatting and bathing and scrubbing.  The attendant said locals come weekly for the full cleansing treatment.  No wonder they have such gorgeous skin.  One of the young gals that we started talking to looked 15.  I thought she was with her siblings.  She was a 27 year old wife and mother.  Damn!

Anywho.  It was wonderful.  Go find yourselves a Hammam before they all get closed down and the owners get deported.  xxoo me

Who woulda thunk it?  I'm looking upon George W with great affection, thinking, "Ahhh George, you were just a hapless cowboy stuck in a big poncho.  You surrounded yourself with evil men but you yourself weren't evil.  Just a simple guy.  I'd take you any day over what we've got." Now THAT is frightening...

It is THE DAY and all I wanted to do at school was curl up in a ball under my desk, but they expected me to work in that place!  The nerve.  So I will tell stories of my kiddies to stop thinking about what is happening over that-a-way.

One of the little kindergartners told me the other day that she came from Boston.  As she is Italian and barely speaks English I'm thinking she may have spent some time in Boston but is not exactly a native to Bean Town.  I asked her if she had liked it and in her broken English she said, "A koon scratch me and bite my head!",  all the while scratching at her arms.  "A KOON?" I asked. (I must admit at this point I was a bit worried.)  "Yes a KOON!. He scratch me and bite my head!"  "A big koon!".  So I asked, in a hopeful voice, (other options would have been too dreadful to consider), if it was an Orsetto Lavatore, the Italian word for raccoon. (translates into "Little washer bear", ain't that adorable??)  And she said YES!  So this is the only memory the poor kid gets out of time spent in Boston.  Being attacked by a raccoon. 

I teach reading to a second grade Italian girl from a massively wealthy, important family.  They own I****, a company that designs autos as well as other stuff for companies around the globe. Her family are all engineers and hoped that she would also do well in maths and sciences.  Not so much.  She is sweet but in a whole world of her own.  I often find her hiding in corners around the school "praying" or "talking to angels" or "just thinking".  Her birthday is in late December and that makes her "almost like Jesus".  Gotta love it.  Tuesday I read a book about Evolution to her class, (always a risky subject as many of the Americans here a "Christians"), and she told me that she was descended from Fairies.  Good to know.  Explains a lot.

 

Parents would be mortified to know the things children tell their teachers.  Since coming back from break my kids have told me:

 

His dad sent mom and the boys to live in Italy to keep them safe.  Yikes. (A Russian second grader)

 

Dad met mom in a bar where she danced with a pole and he brought her home.  They say it's great exercise. (Italian/Eastern European 4th grader)

 

Uncle lost everything, job, house, car and now lives in her basement.  (Italian/American 2nd grader) 

Mom is out all night at the club and sleeps all day so it's the nanny who does her hair.  One of the many mothers much younger than dad.  (Italian/Russian 3rd grader)

From the mouth of babes.

xxoo me