deba and dad do europe

in june deba and dad came to visit before i leave this place for good. i showed them my favorite places in italy: rome and the cinque terre. it was so exciting!! they took a million pictures!! (821)

we hung out at the roman forum. (b's pose is saying, "hey look, i'm sitting on a ruin.")

we posed like tourists. because that's what we were even though b tried to convince himself he looked like a local. he needed more gel and much tighter jeans. and maybe less flexing.
this is corniglia. there are no pictures of us here because in nearly every single one i am holding gelato. each day wasn't complete until i'd had three.
i showed them the breathtaking smog of lugano and the most important places in montagnola. (please click on the photo because it took me nearly an hour to get those stupid arrows on there.)

deba finally got to see castles, like she'd always wanted.

it was a good time.

if you bought me this book i would not be mad with you.

click here if you are cathie or aimee and you are very glad that sweetpagene is coming home soon.

my rays of sunshine

sometimes life seems to be full of rain clouds and darkness and just when you think you can't take any more, a rainbow appears in the most unlikely place.




often, as a teacher, i believe i have certain students because, for one reason or another, they need me. however, i have no doubt that i spent the last four weeks with these exact ten middle schoolers because i needed them.

i'd been counting down for months

but when june 3rd arrived, there were still a lot of tears: tears from knowing that these ten kids who'd wormed their way into my heart would no longer be a part of my daily life and tears from knowing i was walking away not only from them, but from a place that i love and a job i was born to do.

now that it's over, i can admit that it was a tough year for a lot of reasons, but there are still so many things i will miss:

the maintenance guys, with their friendly "CIAO!!" every morning, giving me the urge to whistle, "tell me, who are the people in your neighborhood? in your neighborhood? in your neighborhood!"

speaking russian daily.

the lunch ladies dumping all the extra pesto from pasta monday into a large jar for me to take home.

eating breakfast at school.

learning italian.

looking out my classroom window at that lake that never ceases to make me grateful.

two tetherball poles.

my friend and italian teacher, mara.

asking alessia every single day if she's ready for the history test and laughing when she responds every single day with a panicked "WHAT?!?!?!?"

a school that is so diverse that the word "diversity" doesn't exist here. diversity isn't something we teach or something we strive for, diversity is what we are.

40 third, fourth and sixth graders who were, as always, the best part of my job.

since when are pink floyd t-shirts not considered snazzy dressing?

and so what if i have three of them?
dad has more than that. (and no, we didn't plan to wear them on the same day. when i have three and he has six, it's bound to happen...often.)

i know i'm not the sharpest dresser and that's pretty common knowledge as evidenced by the fact that i had TWO people last week tell me i needed a makeover. (who says that?)

you can imagine the shock of my students when, near the end of the school year, for the first (and only) time in my entire teaching career, i wore heels (i bought my first pair of heels at age 30). they were the world's tamest heels: one inch. you would have thought i walked in the classroom naked, judging by the looks on their faces.

all day they made comments about my "high" heels:

"why are you wearing high heels?"

"are we doing something fancy today?"

"what happened to your flat shoes?"

"you look so funny!"

by the end of the day, i'd grown tired of the attention, so when one student asked me again why i was wearing heels, i automatically responded with "would you guys relax? it's not like they're not hooker heels!"

thank goodness these kids don't speak english.

what is the technical definition of a groupie?

it's not like i go to EVERY show, i mean, i skipped the zurich show 2 days ago. but i did make my way to milan last night for one last hurrah with cake (because soon i'll be unemployed and there will definitely be no hurrah-ing when that day comes.) when i saw they were coming to milan i immediately bought a ticket and didn't think for one minute about logistics, which is why, after another stellar show, i found myself wandering the unfamiliar streets of milan at 2 am. the subway was closed, making me miss my last train to switzerland. finally, i was able to get a taxi to the train station...which was also closed, so, just like a homeless person, i hunkered down outside the train station and tried to get some sleep. i hung out with 2 kids (oh my word, they were early twenties and i just called them "kids") who had been to a metallica/megadeth/anthrax/slayer concert along with a million other guys in metallica t-shirts who were my competition for a taxi. finally, the train station opened and i sat on the platform waiting for my train where i met a guy from angola. we awkwardly (it was in italian) chatted for 30 minutes before the conversation took an ugly turn:

creepster: can i have a kiss?
me (sliding away): no
creepster: take me to america.
me (standing up): please stop touching me.
creepster: but i love you.
me: you don't know me.
creepster: i've known you for one hour:
me: good bye.
creepster: let's make a baby.

oh, gross. but my train came and i escaped, only to fall into the clutches of a peruvian man who wanted to inform me of his entire love history. i rudely fell asleep while he was talking and i did not feel one bit bad about it. i made it back to school just in time for breakfast, zombied my way through classes, and slept right through my next duty. (oops.)

BUT. it was totally worth it. i only wish i'd gone to zurich, too.

plus, it's an added bonus that i can add "sleeping on the streets of milan" to my ever growing list of "things i'd never hoped to do and thank goodness it's over now and also, thank goodness i didn't die."

you say it's your birthday

well, it was.

it's a strange thing to be at an american school in europe with very few americans on the fourth of july. normally, the fourth passes nearly unnoticed at this school, but for some reason this year, they made a huge deal out of american independence.

i definitely didn't feel comfortable standing and brazenly singing my national anthem with a handful of american teachers and students in front of one hundred non-american children. i don't think that fosters the unity among nations that this school is trying to nurture. so when a colleague told me he was "disappointed" that i didn't show patriotism, it gave me a lot to think about.

i am a xenophile. (doesn't that sound dirty?) i have been incredibly lucky to experience so much of what makes the world an amazing, beautiful place to live. i have been to countries where poverty defines the existence of people who believe that clean water and regular meals are luxuries they'll never have and i've been to countries so removed from poverty that well-educated, worldly adults cannot grasp what it truly means to be poor. i've been to countries that have made countless scientific, economic, political, and cultural contributions and i've been to countries where their biggest contribution made to the world is a tasty dessert. yet, all these people in their respective countries, regardless of how inconsequential their country may seem on the world stage, love their homeland.

and i do, too. but i think being patriotic depends on how you define it. i am grateful for those who are willing to defend my way of life. i think these words

"we hold these truths to self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

are some of the most inspired, beautiful words ever written. (that ol' tom jefferson may have been a womanizer, but man, what a poet!) (and i wrote that from memory...so there, you naysayers!) i vote. i don't litter. i pay my taxes. i stand up straight when i say the pledge of allegiance. i try to be an ambassador when i am abroad. i appreciate wide roads and ice in drinks and root beer. i recognize that many of the opportunities i have had in my life come, not as a result of my own awesomeness, but by being born in the right place at the right time. i will forever be grateful to be an american, a privilege that i, for some reason, have been blessed with, despite having done nothing to deserve it.

but, if being patriotic means wearing an old navy flag t-shirt, while singing that cheesy "god bless the usa" and ignorantly proclaiming that america and americans are better than everyone else and can do no wrong, then i guess i'm guilty of being unpatriotic.

however, if it means loving my own country for the blessings and opportunities it brings to my life, while still appreciating the goodness of the people and countries in the rest of the world, then it turns out sweetpagene is patriotic after all.

happy birthday, america. i'll see you soon.