Jan 29, 2003 / revised and expanded Jan 26, 2007 When we arrived in Italy in December, 1990, our daughter Rossella was 16 months old. I had been full-time at home with her for most of her life, except for two months of increasingly long hours in a parents’ cooperative daycare center at Yale in … Continue reading Asilo Nido: Daycare in Italy
Almost every Christmas, we drive halfway down Italy to Abruzzo, where my in-laws are retired by the seaside. This puts us on the road with millions of other Italians going home for the holidays. Much of the flow is north to south: the many southern Italians who migrated to northern Italy decades ago to find … Continue reading Holiday Hell – Italian Vacation Traffic
“Stanlio, non fare lo stupeedo!” When an American speaks Italian with a particularly bad accent, Italians often refer to Stanlio e Ollio: Laurel and Hardy, whose accents in the Italian versions of their films are legendarily hilarious, full of flat Rs and words stressed on the wrong syllable. I used to wonder why these films … Continue reading Italian Accents
I rarely watch television as such. At home in Milan, our TV is used mostly to display videotapes, DVDs, Video CDs, and Super Video CDs. Italian television (almost completely in the hands of Prime Minister Berlusconi now) is so awful that it’s not worth switching on (except for Montalbano, about whom morehere). So if I … Continue reading Watching Television in India
Nov 12 – arrival in Delhi, 1:30 am After the intense disappointment of not being able to attend my class‘ 20th anniversary reunion in Mussoorie last year, I wanted this trip so badly that at every step of the way I feared something would to prevent it. I was afraid I would be refused a visa … Continue reading India, 2002
