#250 1st Day of School

Here is a quick picture of the kids on their first day of School. Dulwich College in SIP is their school again this year. This year they all have teachers from Asia - two from Austrailia, one from Taiwan, and one from Singapore. Those expat teachers do not come cheap - tuition at Dulwich is almost $20,000 per year per child. Can you believe that ?! Nonetheless, it is a great school with terrific teaching and programs.

I also went back to school today - my first Chinese lesson in a month. I found I have suffered some serious regression, especially in remembering the characters I had previously learned. I also now have the problem of mixing Italian words in my spoken Chinese sentences.

Not much else to report. We are still unpacking in the new house. Kathleen's goal is to be fully unpacked by Friday. I think we can achieve that.

#249 Summer's End

We have adopted a tradition in our family of going out for ice cream on the night before the first day of school. Being without a car on Sunday night, we chose to hail cabs to go to Coldstone Creamery at Xindu Guang Chang. You can see us above climbing out of a taxi, ordering hand-slammed cups of ice cream, and enjoying it on the sidewalk seating.

The Coldstone ice cream was a little weak in comparison to the Italian gelato that we have been enjoying for the last three weeks, but nonetheless, still very satisfying on a (still) hot summer night in Suzhou.

The kids return to Dulwich College tomorrow where Juliana, Joseph, Marco, and Maria will be starting 5th, 3rd, 1st grade, and kindergarten respectively. In the British system used by Dulwich they are in years 6, 4, 2, and 1.

Also, interesting to note, every child upon arrival at Dulwich will have their fever taken by an IR scanning device to determine if they are possibly carrying the H1N1 virus after their homeleave overseas. The initial plan was to have every child stay home for a week to ensure that they were flu-free before returning to school. However, when that policy was emailed to the mothers, a violent protest broke out and caused the school administration to issue an updated policy. Technology will allow the children to return to school as scheduled on Aug-24th and not a single manicure, pedicure, or Dragonfly jet-lag massage will need to be rescheduled !

#248 New House

I had limited internet access in Italy, so I had several blog entries saved up which I have now posted all at once. Hopefully it didn't get too boring reading so many entries about our trip to Italy. But if you cannot tell, we had a wonderful time and I am thrilled that we had the chance to go and stay for an extended time.

Back to life in China. We arrived in Shanghai on Saturday morning and spent the weekend unpacking in our new house in China (formerly known as Jim and Mona's house). Above are pictures of the interior of the new place. The decor has lots of natural wood giving it the feel of a hunting lodge. The primary reasons to move were to gain an extra bedroom and a bigger master bedroom closet. The big winner in this move is Juliana who no longer has to share a room with Maria. Can you see the joy on Juliana's face ?

We expect to stay in China for one more year. It was debatable whether moving was worth the trouble with only one more year to go. Nonetheless, we decided to go ahead but try to minimize the period of disorganization associated with the move so we would maximize the time we have to enjoy the new place. I sympathize for Kathleen - she is coming back to a lot of work to unpack and organize the new place.

#247 Salento Swims

I titled this section "Salento Swims" because two of the areas we went swimming were in Tricase but the third was in a Salentine town called Torre Vado. The entire lower half of the heel of Italy (from Bari to Leuca) is called Salento. As far as I can tell, Salento is not a political entity, but a region with common history, landscape, and cuisine.

The first two pictures above are a swimming area near Tricase called Marina Serra. It is a natural inlet in the rocky shore that forms an area like a swimming pool. The second two pictures are of the beach at Torre Vado. We love this beach because the water is clear and warm and the view is magnificent. In the group picture you can see my cousins Marco and Paola along with Marco's wife Monica and daughter Nathalie. Plus of course the Cazzatos and Ralphs.

The final picture is of the swimming areas at the Tricase Port. The port has a small sandy beach area and lots of spots where you can jump off the rocks and the breakwater. We had a memorable time on our last day swimming at the port when Marco climbed to the top of the breakwater and dared to jump into the water from the 20 foot height. Swimming in Sorrento is truly magical.

I have posted my collection of pictures from the week in Tricase at snapfish.com. Please check them out.

#246 Lecce

The nearest large city to Tricase is Lecce. Lecce is the provincial capital and is a 2000 year old city with many Roman structures remaining. It is known as the "Florence of the South" because of the many buildings in the Baroque style of architecture. The population is about 100,000 people, comparable to the population of our hometown of Peoria, Illinois. We were very impressed by the energy and activity present in the streets of Lecce, especially being that we were there on a Tuesday night. The streets were packed with people. The historic buildings were lit up, the shops were open, and the piazzas were humming. We liked Lecce.

Our hosts for this outing were my cousin Lena and her husband. Lena and Emmanuele live in Lecce. She works at the Bank of Puglia and he is a sergeant in the Italian Marine Corp stationed in Brindisi. Emmanuele is a native of Lecce and was very enthused to give us a tour of his hometown.

Some of the sights we saw were the statue of Saint Oronzo, the Roman Ampitheater, the Church of Santa Croce, San Giovanni Battista Church, and the Piazza del Duomo. We also visited a famous sweet shop, saw many shops with Lecce's traditional paper mache, and bought a replica of Santa Croce carved from Lecce limestone.

Emmanuele and Lena treated us to a dinner of Lecce traditional sandwiches called panichiotta (or something close to that). It is a prociutto (ham) and cheese sandwich made with the Italian version of pita bread and filled with a variety of toppings ranging from olives to tuna fish. We capped the night off with a stop at a Creperie where everyone was treated to a Nutella crepe. Joseph, a self-proclaimed Nutella freak, was in heaven.

#245 Tricase Market

Tricase has a town market every Tuesday which sells everything from underwear to fruits and vegetables. It is a nice example of life in an Italian town - very social and very traditional. The market is set up on about two square blocks of streets on the southwest side of town. When I was a kid, this same market was held in the historic center of the city.

We all had different interests in things to explore at the market. Juliana bought sunglasses, Kathleen bought shoes (four pairs), Maria bought a small red snakeskin purse, Joseph a musical toy Smart Car, and Marco a new wallet. My father bought seeds for next years garden - tomatoes, basil, chickory, and arugula. I bought a wheel of hard cheese, provolone cheese, hard salami, capers,and two bags of olives - all items that I love and are impossible to buy in China. Margie helped Kathleen pick out shoes but didn't seem to buy anything for herself. Don also didn't buy anything and was focused primarily on finding vendors with free shade. It was really hot in the sun.

#244 Tricase Town

The town of Tricase is hundreds of years old with the buildings in the city center dating to the 1400s. The house in which my father grew up is located on the tiny street named Vico Torto (first picture above) and dates to this time period. Ottavio, his six siblings, so his family of eight people shared this two room house with a dirt floor and no running water.

The streets of Tricase are mostly stucco-faced row houses built to the edge of the street. When my mother first visited here in the 1960s there were no cars in town, only horses. The town seems to be more of a a tourist destination today than I remember. There are high end clothing and purse shops in town and the piazzas are busy with people day and night.

My father was very proud to give us this walking tour of his old stomping grounds. Multiple times, a person on the street would call out "Ottavio" and stop him to talk. My father has lived in the U.S. for over 40 years. It is astounding to me that so many people remember him from his childhood in Tricase.

#243 Tricase Family

After about five more hours of driving from Salerno, we arrived in Tricase. Tricase is my father's home near the southern most point of the "heel" of Italy. I have been to Tricase many times in my life. During my childhood, my parents, brother, and I took family vacations every three or four years to see my grandparents and extended family in Italy. My father was one of seven children so I have ten aunts and uncles, 9 cousins, and 13 second cousins who live in or near Tricase (plus Paola and Marco in Rome and Perugia). Above you can see pictures of my Aunt Paolina with Kathleen, Uncle Salvatore with my father Ottavio, Uncle Mario giving a tour of his house, and Aunt Maria Assunta with cousin Paola on their shared birthday of August 15th.

Our agenda for the next week is primarily focused on swimming in the Mediterranean sea, soaking up the sun (for the darker skinned people), eating good southern Italian food, and enjoying the town. We will do a little bit of sightseeing in Tricase and perhaps visit a nearby city or two.

My aunts have help arrange the rental of two Tricase apartments. Kathleen's parents are staying in a one bedroom place while our family is renting a three bedroom apartment. The location is in town and on the same block as Aunt Paolina's. We can walk to a grocery store, cafes, bakeries, piazzas, and church. The final picture above shows Maria standing in front of our apartment.

To get to the ocean, we need to drive 10 minutes to the Tricase "beaches". The swimming areas are on the rocky shore at two places called Tricase Porto and Marina Serra. We also have the option of driving about 30 minutes to a sandy beach.

#242 The Amalfi Coast

On the morning of the 13th day we left Sorrento for a drive around the Sorrentine Peninsula. You can see our caravan above and a section of the winding, cliffside road that we drove. This drive from Sorrento to Positano then Salerno is very narrow, very busy, and very stressful to drive on. There are tour buses, motorcycles, and lots of cars on a road that is barely wide enough for two cars to pass. While the views were spectacular, as I driver I needed a change of underwear by the time we reached the autostrade.

We stopped in the morning for a couple of hours in Positano. Positano is a former fishing town that clings to the side of a cliff on the Amalfi coast. The houses are painted bright colors and there is a gold-domed church with some Moorish influence. We parked the cars near the top of the cliff and walked down to the ocean. There was lots of grumbling from our family group about having to climb all the way back up to the car. Happily, we found a public bus that took up back up from the beach and the city center to the lot where we left our cars.

#241 Isle of Capri

This morning we took a boat to the Island of Capri, just off the coast of Naples and Sorrento. This is another incredibly beautiful place with clear blue water, sheer cliffs, and charming towns with winding stone streets. Capri in August is also packed with people and tourists.

As we waited in the queue to board the boat from Sorrento to Capri, we were propositioned by a guide named Jerry who gave us a hard sell on a tour of the island. His sales pitch described Capri as crowded and too difficult for incompetent tourists like us to navigate without professional assistance. He continued to insult us throughout the sales pitch and when I finally convinced him that we did not want the guided tour, he told me he was glad that we were not joining his group !

Upon arrival in Capri, we took the funiculi from the Marina to Capri Town and explored the church and the shopping streets. The views were great and you can see Juliana and Joseph on a terrace overlooking the bay. We had a wonderful lunch at a place called the Gemma Restaurant, again with views overlooking the blue ocean and marina. Kathleen and I shared a delicious blackened whitefish and white wine made in Capri.

We took a boat ride around the entire island and saw caves, rock formations, and amazing swimming sites. We even saw one guy dive off a 50 foot cliff as we sailed by.

I have added some pictures of Pompeii and Capri at snapfish.com.

#240 Istituto B. Gesu

Our next accomodations were also from in "The Guide to Lodging in Italy's Monasteries". We stayed in the Istituto Bambino Gesu in downtown Sorrento. The place is run by nuns and was causing Don flashbacks to his Catholic grade school education. The hillside location had amazing views of the ocean, Mt. Vesuvius, and Naples across the bay. The place was a reverant and historic setting. You can see that the boys bedroom had a 20 foot ceiling with painted detail on the vaults and a statue of the Virgin Mary in the corner. The drawbacks were the lack of air conditioning and the train that passed outside our window every 30 minutes during the night.

Nonetheless, with a party of eight including four children, these alternative accomodations were a bargain compared to standard Italian hotels. We rented our three bedroom apartment at Bambino Gesu for only 120 Euros ($170) per night. The alternative would be two standard hotel rooms at probably $250 each per night. There are literally hundreds of lodging places like this nunnery that can be found all over Europe, especially in Italy.